There has been a lot of discussion lately about the 15th District
Split and the genesis of the idea, so I wanted to take a moment to share with you all how it all came to be.
The Mayfair Civic Association received
numerous phone calls and emails from neighbors complaining about the
lack of police protection in our neighborhood, and that is what
motivated us to look for a possible solution. Our neighbors feel either
unprotected, or under-protected. Hearing
the same battle cry again from every Captain that has been in the 15th
for as long as we could remember is where the idea of splitting the
district came from. Time and time again we'd hear "The 15th is the
biggest and busiest district in the city". Since the size of the
district was always the reason cited for the lack of police coverage or
service, we set to hopefully change that.
Doing some research and meeting with local leaders from every
neighborhood within the 15th, we found that this has been an issue
within our neighborhoods for over 25 years - Since 1989!
In 1989 after the Civic's rallied, and residents were happy to get more
police within their neighborhoods, however sadly since then the 15th
has once again become under served, and under protected. Learning a
lesson from the past, we decided that splitting the 15th into two
smaller districts was a better solution. We would then always have X
amount of police protection within each district, as opposed to having
our police force running back and forth leaving neighborhoods at times
without any protection at all. We now know that any police that we are
given will only be a temporary solution to a permanent problem.
With respect to the budget.
We're not talking about creating an entirely new police force ... All
we're talking about doing is taking an already existing police force,
and splitting it in half. Not even in half, more along the lines of a
70/30 split. Manpower, cars etc that already exist would simply be
reassigned.
With respect to a new district.
We've
discussed the possibility of perhaps using a portion of Holmesburg
Prison, and I believe Councilman Henon is looking into that as a
possibility. The thought being that we already own it, and it's already
built to house prisoners. Yes there would be some costs associated with
the retrofit, however they would be small compared to building an
entirely new building.
Everybody agrees that Philadelphia needs
more police officers - There is no disputing that. The idea here is to
split the 15th in half, and then concentrate on filling both halves up.
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Split the 15th
Neighbors,
civic leaders and concerned citizens have been calling for decades to
split the 15th police district into two separate districts.
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