Better community involvement
Our Philadelphia Police Department has to do a better job of having community engagement and outreach. It is saddening to see an officer pass away and family members be in mourning from a civilian’s violent attack who basically wanted revenge.
More police officers have to have positive involvement with our community members. Now it seems that there is a law enforcement and civilians pessimistic divide between us as civilians who are not members of law enforcement and the police officers.
If more events will take place geared toward all age groups hosted by the police that would be a slight change for turning the city around in a positive light.
Crimes will unfortunately not go away completely especially viewing the news in today’s generation. Also certain citizens who are considered violently off the wall will be encountered with the police.
But at the same time crime and gun violence could be decreased if the police would show just a bit more effort into generating community trust.
Giving the vibe of the police are here to protect us not be totally against us. It is above a certain gender or ethnicity. It is more of the police versus non-police.
We should not be receiving more targeted news on police officers and civilians’ detrimental traffic stops. On the other hand we as civilians have to try to have more cooperation with the police when being stopped. Not on a continuous occasion being non-cooperative with police while being stopped.
Alim Howell
Lots of good news
As a retired teacher and grandmother to a thriving little boy, I was very encouraged to read several items in last week’s Review about improvements to environments in our aging school buildings and surrounding neighborhoods.
It was so wonderful to read the report about a special grant of $7.8 million from the Department of Education to improve such items in Philadelphia schools as cooling, heating, lead and asbestos removal and roof repairs (“School district receives $7.8 million for environmental repair”). It’s about time.
Of course, it was also delightful to read an article by Mark Zimmaro highlighting again the passage and signing of the Solar for Schools bill, which is a major attempt to improve conditions in all our Pennsylvania schools (“Ceremony for Solar for Schools bill”). This will be a program to award grants for schools to create their own energy source to reduce pollution while creating jobs. Bravo!
And certainly it would be a blessing to make the neighborhoods around our schools cleaner. So we must applaud the plan by Mayor Cherelle Parker to clean up our streets (“Clean sweep”). The plan is just getting started, but there will be more.
So thanks to the South Philly Review for providing all this information. The bottom line here, of course, is that we must continue to dedicate our time and resources to making the world our children grow up in safe, clean and healthy in all ways. A good start so far.
Gloria C. Endres
