New police chief takes aim at Phila. crime

Commissioner John Timoney is well known for fighting quality-of-life crime in New York City. Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney's first day on the job was March 9, roughly a week after a young North Philadelphian was murdered in a horrific drug-related gunfight outside the Palestra. As the city mourned its seventh homicide that weekend -- a perennial reminder of the violent crime that has become commonplace -- Timoney began speaking out on two of Philadelphia's biggest fears: the murder rate and what he said is its catalyst, drugs. "I am thoroughly convinced that drugs are the engine driving the crime rate," said Timoney, 49, during a recent phone interview. Trafficking and usage of drugs are among the severest "quality-of life crimes" Timoney became famous for aggressively combatting as New York City's deputy police commissioner, a job he held from 1992 to 1996. In Philadelphia, where the Irish-born Timoney recently replaced Richard Neal as commissioner, Timoney said one of his first initiatives will be a "beefing up" of the police department's narcotics division. He refused to say exactly how many officers he plans to add to the division. But Timoney's focus on drugs is a significant revision of the common perception of quality-of-life crimes as being on a smaller scale. When then-New York Police Commissioner William Bratton coined the phrase in 1994 shortly after his inauguration, he spoke of citizens' fears when "disheveled"-looking people approached them. Over the last few years, the term became associated with nuisances such as excessive noise, public urination, panhandling and graffiti. In the wake of the city's rash of violent crime, Timoney has made it clear to Philadelphians that he does not plan to focus on ridding the city's streets of homeless people. Yet Timoney still maintains that it is important to crack down on the little things. In less than five years of heading New York's Police Department with a "quality-of-life" agenda, Bratton and Timoney whittled the city's murder rate to a 1997 figure of 756. Philadelphia, a city with a quarter as many people as New York, had about 400 murders last year. New York's resounding success was part of a nationwide trend toward improving the "quality of life." in cities. The recently created University City District, with its safety ambassadors and street-cleaning vehicles, is evident of this trend, as is the Philadelphia Police Department's increased enforcement of smaller offenses. Tom Seamon, the University's managing director of Public Safety and a former deputy Philadelphia Police commissioner, explained the theory's logic. "Somebody who sells drugs on the corner and carries a gun isn't too vigilant about his license plate, or his boom box being too loud or drinking in public," Seamon said in a recent interview. He added that enforcing minor offenses makes it more "problematic" to engage in large-scale criminal activity. But there are drawbacks to using such an approach. "Some people maintain that it's an effort by the police department to go after minority youth," Timoney conceded. Such are the criticisms aired in court documents last year by the owners of University Pinball and University Laundry at 4006-4008 Spruce Street. Last April, city officials, working closely with the University, closed the establishments, calling them a public nuisance. The businesses reopened a week later under a court order. During the course of a lawsuit filed in federal court by the owners against the University and the city, Penn hired Timoney as a consultant on quality-of-life crime. He is expected to testify when the case goes to trial. Timoney refused to comment on the results of his report to the University. But he said it was "ridiculous" for people to criticize quality-of-life initiatives for unfairly scapegoating minority youth. "When you have low-level quality of life, whether it's marijuana dealing or graffiti, that people confront on a daily basis, it's a real, genuine concern," he said. But Timoney made it clear that he didn't feel the Philadelphia Public League high school basketball championships -- which preceded the Palestra gunfight and had brought the murder victim and his alleged shooters to campus -- negatively impacted the quality of life in the city. In the week following the shooting, Seamon posed the question of whether it would be "appropriate" for the University to host an event "where you need all this security and metal detectors." Timoney, however, said that "the shooting had nothing to do with basketball games and it had nothing to do with quality of life issues." He stressed that both the victim and the one suspect arrested thus far had lengthy criminal records.