Philadelphia safety high priority in new blueprint endorsed by city leaders
CENTER CITY - A Blueprint for a Safer Philadelphia was unveiled by city leaders Thursday. The Blueprint for a Safer Philadelphia provides more than 100 critical recommendations to improve quality of life and reduce violence.
Councilmember Curtis Jones, Jr. presented the over 150-page report to Mayor-Elect Cherelle Parker.
"We know we can use this to develop what we refer to as our action plan," said Mayor-Elect Cherelle Parker.
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Jones, who chairs the Committee for Public Safety, said the solutions were developed by more than 140 stakeholders during a crime summit at Saint Joseph’s University in September.
Some of the stakeholders include: law enforcement, government agencies, Mothers in Charge, Ceasefire PA, Father’s Day Rally Committee and dozens more.
"Not to point fingers at each other, but to point fingers at solutions," said Democratic Councilmember Jones. "The City of Philadelphia is slowly moving in the right direction with a 25 percent reduction in murders, but for the 388 souls that were lost, not fast enough."
The Blueprint covers a wide array of topics to fight crime including education, poverty, the threat of illegal guns, use of technology, mental health and so forth.
The District Attorney’s Office has a grant funded data lab that the Blueprint said city council and administrators must work to fund moving forward.
"The Data Lab has worked very closely with data at the Philadelphia Police Department. We’ve been able to bring a level of science, accuracy and truth to criminal justice that will be the blueprint for how we work together to get things done," said District Attorney Larry Krasner. "We’re talking about crime patterns and being able to map where things are going on. We’re talking about being able to see who is not showing up for court and why some cases are failing in court because certain kinds of witnesses are not there."
Jason Hill of Northern Liberties said city leaders need to address the small issues if they ultimately want to tackle the larger ones.
"If we can’t even use public transportation, we can’t get regular trash pickup, nobody obeys traffic laws, it’s a little bit of the wild west out here," said Hill. "I’m optimistic about the outcome and I think Philadelphia will come back around."
Incoming Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said the Blueprint is aspirational and will serve as a template moving forward.