I'm not going to put up much of a fight.

I will say this. I support "stop and frisk" as constitutional (if implemented correctly) and Philadelphia's best chance to reduce pointless homicides in the short term - which I see as a pressing problem. I think stronger local gun laws that aren't enforced are an excercise in futility.

The culture of carrying illegal guns is deeply engrained in this city. We have parents who think the appropriate response to kids throwing snowballs at their kid is to an attempt a drive-by at the kinds throwing them. This was an actual case in a part of West Philly not terribly far from me a few years back. In my neighborhood park a few steps from my front door I watched a young man die several years ago, after he had been shot over a petty feud in the middle of the day less than 10 feet from a jungle gym packed with kids playing on beautiful sunny Summer day.

The concept that if you carry in illegal gun routinely it will likely be taken away from is not the guiding concept in broad swaths of the city. It needs to be.

No, I don't think law enforcement can fix the lasting problems of poverty, failing schools, etc. Neither do I think those problems can be fixed realistically in a time frame that is as pressing and immediate as Philadelphia's problem with gun violence is.

Its my honest belief you need to do both and that both sides are a sympathetic effort to succeed at either. Improving schools, stemming crhronic unemployment and poverty in Philadlephia can only really take hold I believe if an immediate reduction of the level of gun violence is part of the program. I realize that I may be in something of a minority in terms of that here but I will just put it out there.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.

I sense the beef here is less striking between you and I, jennifer, as between me and the author of this email you are quoting.

We agree that any strategy as drastic as the so-called "Targeted Enforcement Zones" requires strict scrutiny in terms of protecting civil liberties and appropriate police professionalism - which we both agree that PPD sometimes has a somewhat um "mixed" track record.

My beef I guess is with a couple things in the email.
1.

This initiative is appalling and likely unconstitutional, despite the Mayor's insistence to the contrary

Sorry but thats a pretty bold statement of purported "fact" in the face of Terry vs. Ohio I'm pretty sure a lawyer s smart as you would say - its possible to argue that some element of Terry is over-stepping or that its implications are should be interpretted fairly tightly but its not really Kosher to say point blank its "likely unconstitutional".

2.

Initiatives of this type attempted in other cities have failed to effectively and sustainably reduce gang violence.

Kind of a red herrig here. The version of "Stop and Frisk" Nutter and Ramsey have talked about for Philly is not about gangs, drugs, or even reducing "crime" across the board. Its aim is much, much simpler in scope - to reduce the number people carrying illegal firearms in their routine day-to-day activities. Use intensive enforcement against people with bulges in their clothes suggesting the presence of a concealed firearm to make it a widely acknowledged risk to carry firearm. Folks stop carrying their guns as routinely and the number of petty beefs that escalate into shootings drops dramatically. Lawrence Sherman of Penn is of course the big proponent of this approach and the source for a lot of Nutter's thinking. Nutter's crime plan quoted Sherman's research extensively, including that famous study in Kansas City where an approach like this - focused on enforcement against illegal firemarms - led to a 49% reduction in gun crimes in areas where the strategy was applied.

Since we all are probably pretty rehearsed on this at this point from the 2007 mayoral primary I'm assuming, I wont go into details just point once again to the Radio Times radio show with Sherman and attorney David Rudovsky as one of the best concise discussions of topic and Sherman's research (and by extension Nutter's approach). Its as good a discussion as exists that I know of.

In short I kind of bristle whenever people attack "stop-and-frisk" based on gang activity or overall level of say petty property crimes. Thats not the flavor Nutter's "Targeted Enforcement Zone" strategy aims to deal with, thats not its target. Homicide by gun is its target and by virtually all empirical data, when used correctly, its startlingly effective at that specific aim - whatever your view on the topic.
3.

Finally, given the skyrocketing property values in the Trinidad neighborhood (an average increase of around 14% annually over the last decade), we must explore connections between this initiative and the larger trends of gentrification and displacement in DC.

I don't know where to go with this. Yes frequent shootings tend negatively effect the property values of a particular neighborhood - not really surprising there. DC in general saw a dramatic increase in housing values during the period when Ramsey was police chief and Anthony Williams was mayor, but the country saw similar trends in cities nationwide, and there was concurrently a much noted trend of middle class African Americans settling in neighboring PG County in large numbers thats been the subject of a couple hundred sociology studies and news articles.

My point is its a complicated topic and a 14% increase in property values in the neighborhood where Ramsey did his Crime Emergency plan is not particularly impressive at all to me compared to say what areas like Adams Morgan did in that same period of time. Its hardly a "smoking gun" to prove that Ramsey consulted with real estate developers to "flip" a neighborhood which this quote seems to imply.

So basically yes - lots of reasons to be concerned and vigilant in terms of civil rights in terms of "stop and frisk"- we all agree. I guess just some of the wording in the quoted email, I might take some exception to.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.

This sounds more like the aspects of Nutter's original primary-era plan that he's stepped away from than it does either what Ramsey has been doing so far, or the pure Terry-type stops you are talking about, Sean:

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

Note that:

Lanier has been struggling to reverse D.C.’s spiraling crime rate but has been forced by public outcry to scale back several initiatives including her “All Hands on Deck” weekends and plans for warrantless, door-to-door searches for drugs and guns.

Though the city's attorney general says, “This is a very targeted program that has been used in other cities...I’m not worried about the constitutionality of it,” I am not sure targeted is the right word. (Note also that the head of the police union is quoted as calling the plan 'breahtaking'--in what valance does he mean this, I wonder--and the ACLU guy cutely calls it 'cockamamie'.)

Actually cockamamie might be right: rather than our buddy Larry Sherman's favorite targeted stop and frisk model programs, the first thing the DC plan reminds me of is Philadelphia's "Operation Cold Turkey" (not a success, either in terms of law enforcement objectives or constitutionality). That's the 1985 policing intiative where the police set up checkpoint-like stops around Spring Garden and which was way more successful in getting the city some heavy financial liability than it was in making useful drug arrests or getting the information the police had wanted.