PHILADELPHIA (AP) – The Democrat who is almost certain to become Philadelphia’s next mayor wants to hire hundreds of additional police officers to walk the streets and meet residents. She wants to devote resources to recruiting more police and says officers should be able to stop and frisk pedestrians if they have a legitimate reason to do so.
Those positions, particularly search policies that have been criticized for mistargeting people of color, would seem out of place in a progressive bastion like Philadelphia. But Cherelle Parker defeated her rivals in this week’s mayoral primary with a message focused on tougher law enforcement to combat rising crime and violence.
While local politics don’t always align with the ideological divisions that drive the national debate, Parker’s victory offers a new case study for Democrats as they wrestle with how to address the issue of violent crime, which has risen in many US cities during the pandemic and continues to be the starting point for voters across the country. The issue has divided Democrats from city halls to the White House, particularly over how much to rely on police and incarceration to solve what many see as social problems such as drug abuse and homelessness.
Parker, a former state lawmaker and city council member, argued it’s a false choice to decide between investing in police and addressing broader social issues.
“It’s not, it’s not,” Parker, 50, said on the campaign trail.
This approach helped her defeat progressive challenger Helen Gym by more than 25,000 votes. Gym, who has championed measures such as stronger police training and faster 911 response times, was backed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and appeared with lawmakers at a demonstration on the eve of the elections. Gym and his supporters blamed his loss, in part, on late attacks funded by wealthy donors opposed to his progressive policies.
The debate over policing intensified in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police sparked worldwide protests about policing and calls to defund the police, a push that the GOP used against Democrats in the 2020 election. While Democrat Joe Biden won that year, some moderate Democrats said the party was not quick enough to denounce it.
In major US cities that are Democratic strongholds, voters have also split in recent years.
New York elected Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain who promised to invest more in public safety, and San Francisco voters recalled a progressive prosecutor amid frustration over public safety. In Chicago, progressive Brandon Johnson, who favored investment in areas such as housing and youth jobs, beat a more moderate challenger backed by the police union. And progressive prosecutor Kim Foxx, who prioritized violent crimes over lower-level crimes and faced pushback to drop charges against actor Jussie Smollett, said she will not seek re-election.
In Philadelphia, Parker was the only black candidate among the top tier of hopefuls on Tuesday and was supported by black-majority precincts across the city in both early and Election Day voting. In addition to more than 300 more officers, his public safety plan also called for fixing broken streetlights, removing graffiti and investing in programs for at-risk youth.
Parker also defended his support for “Terry stops,” or officers using “fair and reasonable suspicion” to stop pedestrians. She and other candidates faced criticism, including a protest at City Hall last month from those opposed to “stop and frisk.”
The policy has irked the city in the past, with critics saying it was used disproportionately against black and brown pedestrians. According to the ACLU Pennsylvania, Philadelphia police nearly doubled the number of pedestrian stops during Mayor Michael Nutter’s administration in the 2000s. Civil rights attorneys said at least half of the more than 250,000 stops of this type in 2009 did not comply with the legal norm and almost none resulted in arrest. The ACLU sued to stop the practice and oversees police use of stop-and-frisk under a settlement with the city.
“We want to build that relationship and we also want people to know that there will be zero tolerance for any misuse or abuse of authority,” Parker said in response to questions about his position. “But a proactive law enforcement presence is a key part of this plan, and I make no apologies.”
Tuesday’s result suggests that the importance of police reform may be waning from the days when people protested in overwhelming numbers, said Michael Sances, a political science professor at Temple University.
“(Crime) has removed concerns about over-policing,” he said. “This does not mean that people have become anti-reformist, that can be easily discovered. It’s just a sign of where the public’s attention is and where the political leaders have moved, and that’s really towards the center.”
Philadelphia saw a record number of homicides in 2021, most of them gun-related. That number fell from 562 to 516 in 2022, but was still significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels. An 18-year-old man was re-arrested in Philadelphia on Wednesday after escaping from a city jail along with another inmate. The man was being held on charges of four murders.
But remembering that there is no easy trend line in crime-related political dynamics, Pittsburgh voters took a left turn in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for county attorney. Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala, in office for nearly a quarter century, trails challenger Matt Dugan by double digits in unofficial filings, even as Republicans launched a write-in campaign for him so the two could face each other again in November.
Dugan, the county’s top public defender, implemented a number of progressive policies, including eliminating cash bail, diversion from low-level, nonviolent crimes, and an emphasis on mental health treatment and substance abuse.
What happens in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh could have national implications, as Pennsylvania will once again be a primary battleground in 2024.
Biden has taken a hard line on crime, policing and communities that have been disproportionately affected by both. The president has said it is possible to reduce crime while also reforming criminal justice and policing at the same time, although Republicans claim that crime has increased because of those reforms.
Biden often says he believes police need better tools and training, calling them heroes who do a tough job. He has also spoken about the need to reform how policing has worked in black and other non-white communities in the wake of Floyd’s death and other black people killed by police.
This week, the Senate voted to overturn a local Washington, DC law enacted to improve police accountability that was supported by the district’s Democratic mayor. It was the second time this year that Democrats joined with Republicans to reject a DC measure amid high crime rates. Earlier, Biden agreed with the GOP that some of the measures, such as reducing penalties for car theft, went too far.
Biden was expected to veto this week’s vote, which would have meant keeping the D.C. law, saying that while he doesn’t support every provision of the D.C. law, he does support “police reforms of common sense” that are part of it, such as banning chokes. limiting the use of lethal force and improving access to body cameras and requiring additional training.
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Burnett reported from Chicago. Associated Press writers Colleen Long in Washington and Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania contributed to this report.
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Brooke Schultz is a staff member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national nonprofit service program that places reporters in local newsrooms to report on undercover issues.
