Philadelphia City Council President Looks To Implement New Initiatives
By Special Contributor Larry Kane
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The president of Philadelphia city council is taking on a higher profile and talking vigorously about fighting crime.
Darrell Clarke is looking at new initiatives like advertising on city buildings to produce new revenue and enhancing cameras to fight crime. He's looking South to Baltimore for his ideas. Philadelphia has 200 anti crime cameras while Baltimore has 700.
Clarke says its not the amount that counts but how Baltimore sets them up.
"They've done their intelligence on patterns similar to what they do on Guns Stat. They've actually looked at Crime Stats as it relates to commercial cartel crime, neighborhood crimes. And they not only deployed the cameras but they actually have a system where the monitors are targeting those particular areas to insure a very proactive way that they can deal with any particular crime initiative."
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Clarke believes that combined the city can coordinate a live-camera team with other agencies that can make a difference.
"SEPTA has 12,000 cameras. The Philadelphia Housing Authority has thousands of cameras. The School District has cameras. So what I'm saying is the first thing we need to do is integrate all the cameras both private and public and form a private-public partnership."
