Thursday , May 16, 2013

75 Mostly Cloudy
Forecast Subscriber Services |
|

Home | News | Sports | Entertainment | Business | Food | Lifestyle | Health | Marketplace

BREAKING VOICES PHILADELPHIA NEWS NEW JERSEY POLITICS EDUCATION OBITUARIES NATION/WORLD WEATHER TRAFFIC LOTTERY

Exclusive: Shootings by Philly police soar as violent crime plummets

SHARE: 138 COMMENTS

Latest Videos:
Raw: Marines Come to Obama's Aid in the

Latest News Stories:

Could lower DUI level be decades away?

A man who ran away on foot during a car stop on Aug. 9, 2012, in West Philadelphia was eventually shot to death by police after the pursuit.

Dog left to die in

Story Highlights
Philadelphia police shot 52 suspects last year w hile responding to calls for reported crimes. The number of police shootings climbed to the highest level its been in 10 years. Philadelphia has had one of the highest rates of shootings by police in the nation.

Sam Wood, PHILLY.COM

POSTED: Tuesday, May 14, 2013, 6:00 AM

Dog left to die in creek gets a home

The number of violent crimes fell last year in Philadelphia, as did assaults on police officers. But the number of people shot by police is up. Way up. The number of shootings by police in 2012 resulting in death or injury climbed to the highest level its been in 10 years. Philadelphia police shot 52 suspects last year while responding to calls for reported crimes. Of those shot, 15 people died.
MORE COVERAGE

Powerball $550M; Pa., N.J., Del. just miss

Also on Philly.com
SPORTS:

Travel Deals

'Cautiously optimistic' about Halladay's return

HEALTH:

Poll: Should the Philadelphia Police Department be investigated?

$129 -- Florida: 4Diamond 'World's Best' Hotel, Save $100 See all travel deals

What's better: Sports drinks or water?

And the city's own police watchdog says the department hasn't provided a reason for the increase. The Police Advisory Commission has been repeatedly blocked in its efforts to review shootings and, according to the executive director of the Police Advisory Commission, Internal Affairs has refused to supply requested information about any of the shootings. Police Internal Affairs investigators and the district attorney's office have not raised any known concerns about the shootings. But the number dwarfs that of the previous year. In 2011, 35 were shot. In 2012, the shootings increased almost 50 percent. Critics say the data, collected and analyzed by Philly.com,

ENTERTAINMENT:

Video: Daniel Tosh spoofs legendary nerf ball phenom

FOOD:

Di Bruno's: Philly's big cheese

BUSINESS:

raise questions about the use of deadly force in Philadelphia. It certainly raises a red flag, said David Rudovsky, the civil rights attorney and University of Pennsylvania law professor. The numbers almost speak for themselves. If it is higher, we need to know why, said Kelvyn Anderson, of the Philadelphias Police Advisory Commission. Philadelphia in recent years has had one of the highest rates of shootings by police in the nation. When measured against violent crime, Philadelphia, more often than not, tops other major cities for which data were available: Dallas, Baltimore, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New York City. In an interview last month, Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said he saw no need to reevaluate the use of deadly force. "I think we have a solid policy and consider it best practice," he said. Of the statistics, he said, "The numbers fluctuate from year-to-year."
JOBS:

House advances student loan fix

Ways bosses demotivate their employees

Stay Connected
Get the latest Philly.com Daily Headlines newsletter delivered to your email. Sign up now! Enter email address to sign up
Already a philly.com member? Yes No

The Police Commissioner also said he was skeptical about drawing conclusions by contrasting Philadelphia to other big cities. "You have to put in all in context," Ramsey said: "The question is: 'What is the officer confronting on the street or why they are shooting at someone?' You have to take a look and see what the situation was at the time." One factor: Assaults on police. "We have a lot of people on the street with guns, a lot of people not afraid to use guns, and a lot of them are not afraid to assault a police officer," Ramsey said.

He said the number of suspects who were armed with guns while assaulting police had climbed by a third last year compared with 2011, though the total number of assaults on officers was down. And despite that trend, the number of suspects who actually fired on police fell from a high of 12 in 2010 to a total of 3 in 2012, according to police statistics. The total assaults on police - regardless of whether the suspects were armed - continued their downward trend falling from 912 to 896 last year. "We only shot back 52 times," Ramsey said. "So it's not in every incident involving a gun do we shoot, but roughly half." Before coming to Philadelphia, Ramsey was commissioner in Washington D.C. When he first took command in 1998, he described the number of shootings by the Metro police force disturbing. The next year, he asked the Department of Justice to review the departments use of force practices and ordered a crash firearms qualification program, according to the Washington Post. By the time he left in 2007, the number of policeinvolved shootings had dropped precipitously. Shootings by police have been a problem in Philadelphia for decades. As recently as 2005, an accountability officer for the department released perhaps the most detailed and comprehensive report ever on gunfire by Philadelphia police. The report, by Ellen Green-Ceisler, now a Common Pleas Court judge, pointed to a troubling trend that deserves close attention and monitoring a surge in the number of people killed by police compared with the late '90s. Since then, the accountability position has been abolished. And the figure for last year shows that the trend identified in the 2005 report has continued unabated. In her study, Green-Ceisler reported that over the five-year period from 1998 to 2002, police killed a total of 24 people. In contrast, in the most recent five years, police have fatally shot 65 people. The data also show that during the initial period analyzed in Green-Ceislers report, no Philadelphia officers were killed by gunfire in the line of duty. But in the last five years, 4 have died.

All shootings are reviewed by the District Attorney's office to determine if they are legally justified. There have been no prosecutions of police-involved shootings since Ramsey took command of the force in January 2008. Some cases from 2012 are still in the hands of the DA's office, Ramsey said. Within the police department last year, Internal Affairs found 11 violations of police directives, the fewest in at least four years. Some of those violations involved shooting at, or from, a vehicle or a delay in reporting incidents. Comparing the use of deadly-force in comparable cities is an imperfect process, criminologists said. The FBI does not require police departments to divulge all shooting data. And theres a problem in using the total number of fatalities and woundings as a basis to measure differences, said Robert J. Kane, director of the program of criminal justice at Drexel University and author of Jammed Up: Bad Cops, Police Misconduct, and the New York City Police Department. Philadelphia officers just may be better shots, Kane said. The best standard would be to measure all uses of deadly force - all incidents in which an officer fired a gun even if they didnt hit them, Kane said. Ramsey has made that data available. While he has been commissioner, the use of deadly force has fluctuated annually between 42 and 64 incidents. In 2012, police used deadly force 59 times, up from 45 in 2011. The number topped out at 63 in 2009. Other cities do not routinely provide that information to the FBI or the public, said Kane. "So you use the data that's available," the criminologist said. One notable surge was in the sheer number of bullets police fired at suspects last year: 474. That's the most shots fired at suspects since 2004. The number of rounds has steadily increased since Ramsey's first year, when officers squeezed off only 211 shots. In 2011, police pulled the trigger 316 times firing at suspects. The Philly.com analysis shows that Philadelphia's rate of police shootings, when compared against the number of violent crimes, was 2.90 per 1,000 incidents.

In recent years, five of the police departments in comparable cities were put under increased state and federal scrutiny. All have had lower rates of shootings than Philadelphia. In December, the U.S. Department of Justice announced an investigation in Houston regarding six cases in which officers fatally shot or injured six unarmed individuals. The rate of shootings in Houston for 2012 was 1.25; in Philadelphia, 2.90. In August 2012, Dallas Police Chief David O. Brown announced major changes in department policy including mandatory Taser training for all officers following several police-involved shootings. In 2012, the rate of police shootings in Dallas was 2.39; in Philadelphia, 2.90. In December 2011 in Las Vegas, the U.S. Department of Justice ordered a review of officer-involved shootings after the Las Vegas Review Journal published a five-part series documenting police-involved incidents. In 2011, the rate of police shootings in Las Vegas stood at 1.66. That same year in Philadelphia, the rate was 1.92. In January 2011, Baltimore launched an investigation following a police-involved shooting where two died and four were wounded. The Internal Review Board recommended several changes to deadlyforce policies. The rate of police shootings in 2010 in Baltimore was 1.07; Philadelphias in 2010 was 2.32. The next year Baltimores rate was 1.58, Philadelphias 1.92. In 2008 in Chicago the comparable rate was 1.54, vs. Philadelphia's 1.59. In early 2009, Chicago Police Superintendent Jody P. Weis ordered a Force Analysis Panel (though a report apparently still has not been issued) to review firearm discharge incidents to determine whether training, tactics, equipment or safety issues could be improved. Anderson, of the Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission, is baffled by the rise in officer-involved shootings. But his efforts to review them have been stymied. Investigations are cloaked in secrecy. The Commission can't rule whether shootings are justified because they are denied access to the police records.

Anderson said the police bureau of Internal Affairs has refused written requests to provide information to Commission investigators - despite an executive order requiring them to do so. We believe that the department does not provide any public reckoning, Anderson said. That causes a lot of problems with the community. If we continue to hide the results, the public isnt going to have much confidence in the police. "Its something the city really needs to deal with," he said. You cant take someones life without a public reckoning. Contact staff writer Sam Wood at 215-854-2796, @samwoodiii or samwood@phillynews.com. This is the first story in an occassional series by Philly.com examining police shootings. To view graphics charting the Rate of Police Shootings by city and others, open the drop down menu below. Other graphics follow. Rate of police shootings by city

Rate of police shootings by city

4

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Philadelphia

Dallas

Baltimore

Chicago

Houston

New York

Las Vegas

----Rate of police shootings in each city is calculated by adding number of fatalities and injuries in a given year, dividing that result by the number of violent crimes, then multiplying by 1,000.

Sources: FBI Uniform Crime Reports; Philadelphia Police Department; Dallas Morning News; Justin Felton at Baltimore Sun; http://www.iprachicago.org; www.civiliansdown.com; NYC Annual Firearms Discharge Report, www.nyc.gov; Department of Justice, http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/e10129513Collaborative-Reform-Process_FINAL.pdf;

Rate of police-involved shootings City Philadelphia Baltimore Dallas Houston Las Vegas New York Chicago 2012 2.90 1.80 2.39 1.25 n/a n/a n/a 2011 1.92 1.60 1.68 1.05 1.66 0.55 2.24 2010 2.32 1.07 2.4 1.29 1.98 0.45 1.62 2009 2.04 1.58 1.96 1.25 1.46 0.69 1.90 2008 1.59 3.27 1.84 0.89 1.05 0.64 1.61 2007 1.61 1.74 1.39 0.77 1.03 0.57 n/a

Sources: FBI Uniform Crime Reports; Philadelphia Police Department; Dallas Morning News; Justin Felton at Baltimore Sun; http://www.iprachicago.org; www.civiliansdown.com; NYC Annual Firearms Discharge Report www.nyc.gov. Department of Justice, http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/e10129513Collaborative-Reform-Process_FINAL.pdf Phila. police shootings resulting in death or injury Year Killed or injured by police 2012 2011 2010 2009 52 35 43 39 37 23 32 24 15 12 11 15 17,902 18,268 18,535 19,163 Non- Fatal Violent Assaults Assaults fatal crimes on w/ gun on Officers 896 912 1,372 1,686 officers 101 76 87 71 Civilians who fired at police 3 6 12 9

2008 2007

33 34

21 19 156

12 15 80

20,771 21,180 ---

1,805 1,528 ---

94 98 ---

5 5 ---

Totals 236

Source: Philadelphia Police Department

Phila. police discharge incidents Year Total officers discharging Officers firing at Officers Officers firing at firing All offender Total Officers shots killed/ injured by civilian fire 2012 149 2011 111 2010 120 2009 120 2008 93 2007 132 104 69 74 82 56 97 40 37 37 30 34 30 5 5 8 8 3 5 59 45 51 63 42 64 577 396 467 394 315 583 0 1 0 3 4 4

offenders animals accidentally incidents fired

Source: Philadelphia Police Department

Violent crime by City

Year (U.S. Census, 2010 population estimate) 2012 2011 2010

Philadelphia Baltimore Dallas (1,528,074) (620,560)

Chicago

Houston

NYC

Las

(1,201,715) (2,698,283) (2,108,278) (8,186,443) Vegas (584,539)

17,902 18,268 18,535

8,440 8,885 9,316

8,377 8,330 9,161

n/a 26,814 28,402

21,610 20,892 22,491

52,993 51,209 48,489

n/a 10,813

12,648 2009 2008 2007 19,163 20,771 21,180 9,664 10,080 10,816 (Baltimore 2012 figure derived from BPD claim that violent crime had fallen 5% 10,221 11,420 13,248 32,062 34,159 n/a (Chicago totals do not include forceable rape) 25,593 24,779 24,564 46,357 48,430 50,453 13,039 13,324 13,641

Source: FBI Uniform Crime Report, state and city law enforcement agencies

Civilians shot by police by city Year Philadelphia Baltimore Dallas (620,560) Chicago Houston NYC Las (2010 (1,528,074) population) 2012 2011 2010 52 35 43 (1,201,715) (2,698,283) (2,108,278) (8,186,443) Vegas (584,539) 20 14 22 57 60 45 27 22 29 n/a 28 22 25 2009 2008 2007 39 33 34 22 33 16 20 21 33 61 55 n/a 32 22 19 32 31 29 19 14 14 11 18

15 14 10

Source: FBI Uniform Crime Report, state and city law enforcement agencies
Sam Wood PHILLY .COM Myrtle Beach Summer Deals
www.VisitMyrtle Be a ch.com Visit Myrtle Be a ch - O fficia l Site Sa ve Now W ith Sum m e r Ge ta wa y De a ls!

137 COMMENTS

MORE FROM THE WEB

MORE FROM PHILLY.COM

Is Stacy Keibler's Bikini Too Small? (Celebrity Toob) Delicious Birthday Cake Recipes: For Adults Only (Betty Crocker) 22 Things You Should Never Do Again After 50 (AARP.org) Tips on Replacing Old Shower Caulking (DIY Network) Why Do Guys...Do THAT in the Bedroom
(Glamour.com)

DJ fatally shot in South Street ice cream shop NJ man used spy cameras to shoot naked girls Northern NJ dad sought in severe beating of infant Father of N.J. boy, 4, who fatally shot playmate charged Savage guilty in 2004 firebombing that killed 6