Veteran Fox 29 crime reporter
Dave Schratwieser offers a piece on how the Philadelphia Police is cracking
down on crime and gun violence.
PHILADELPHIA (WTXF) -
Violence has rocked our nation, and here in Philadelphia, we are no stranger to
gun violence.
Shootings continue to shake
up Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. Fox 29’s Dave Schratwieser took a closer look
at how police are working to put those gunmen behind bars.
Whether it's a drive-by
shooting in Hunting Park, a gunman with an assault weapon firing into a home,
or a gunman wildly firing a gun into a house in Southwest Philadelphia, gunfire
can terrify an entire neighborhood. It can also leave the intended targets and
innocent victims wounded or even dead.
Philadelphia Police say even
those shootings are currently down 7% this year, they've now put in place a
comprehensive new gun violence program aimed at reducing those numbers even
more and putting the gunmen behind bars.
“Our top priority is to drive down violent
crime, we're having some success at it, but we can never be satisfied until
you're at zero,” Deputy Commissioner Joseph Sullivan (seen in the below photo) explained.
Deputy Commissioner Sullivan
pointed to the murder of 38-year-old Gerard Grandzol as a tragic, but recent
example of how police resources with a laser focus can quickly put violent
criminals in jail.
“You can see that it resulted
in those two individuals being identified and taken into custody in an
incredibly short period of time,” Sullivan said.
In the Grandzol murder, two
brothers, Maurice and Marvin Roberts, were locked up within 48 hours.
The speedy arrest was thanks
in part to a trail of surveillance video recovered from the shooting scene, the
accused killers getaway route, and the SEPTA train they used to escape. It was
video, intelligence information and the use of cutting edge facial recognition
software that helped identify the Roberts brothers and solidify the case
against them, leading to murder charges.
“All of that is critically
important, but at the end of the day it's good old fashion police work that
brings the job in,” Sullivan added.
Police are also using
intelligence information to identify suspects, gang members and other violent
criminals near shooting scenes.
They’re pouring resources
into so-called hot spots to deter more gun violence. They use foot patrols,
highly versatile bike officers, and tactical units such as highway patrol to
squash retaliation shootings and prevent more violence.
“We're stopping less than
half the number of people that we stopped three years ago, yet part one crime,
violent crime, property crime, is down in Philadelphia. I think that speaks a
lot to our precision policing strategy,” Sullivan explained.
You can read the rest of the
piece and watch the video clip via the below link:
Note: I interviewed Joseph
Sullivan for Counterterrorism magazine when he was a chief inspector and head
of the Homeland Security Bureau.
You can read the piece via
the below link:
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