Ensuring Safe Streets and Public Safety

By Franco Dok Harris

Under my administration we will employ community focused development to create economic opportunity and eliminate structural poverty while doing everything we can to ensure that our streets are safe in every neighborhood.

Focusing simply on the acute symptoms + the street level crime, the corner drug dealers and muggers + will not eradicate this plague. We must do a world class job of eradicating those symptoms, and we have to go further. For the most part crime is caused by three factors:

- substance abuse;
- structural poverty;
- lack of any traditional economic opportunity.

These three cancers produce the atmosphere in which criminals are created. Under my administration we will employ community focused economic development to create economic opportunity and eliminate structural poverty while doing what we can to ensure that our streets are safe in every neighborhood.

EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC HOPE Our neighborhood economic program is designed to help small business owners in our most impoverished neighborhoods create economically viable companies and help their communities at the same time. I do not believe that big-box developments are the way to truly help those suffering the most. Only education and the opportunity to work can combat those social ills. A strong education policy championed by a passionate Mayor, that focuses on children not just while they're within the school house but all day long is what it will take to reduce structural poverty and give our young men and women actual realizable options + in short, to give them the economic hope that destroys crime at its roots. Children do not turn to crime when they learn early the power of the dollar earned and have an opportunity to achieve that. Education and economic hope also create the strong youth who do not fall prey to the terror of substance addiction.

STOPPING THE KILLING NOW These solutions take years + they will create a Pittsburgh of Tomorrow which will not have the same crime problems as our City does today. We do not, however, have the luxury of waiting that long. Our young men and women are stealing, using, killing, and dying. Gun violence continues to shock our City.

As Mayor, we will attack crime at its roots, and empower our Police by:

- Going After the Money + crime almost always involves money on some level. There's always a money trail, and it leads to the major suppliers of guns and drugs. My administration will employ the latest techniques, including forensic accounting, to discover the money trail and to focus on getting the drugs and guns out of our communities. Let's show criminals that Pittsburgh is no longer open for their business.

- Returning towards the principles of Community Oriented Policing. We have wonderful young men and women who serve this city and protect it. From the Mayor's office on down must come the energy and enthusiasm for building relationships with community leaders and individuals themselves. I will work to help build those relationships, and develop mutual trust.

- Stopping the illegal gun trade and the practice of straw purchasing, and promoting the use of every play in the DA's playbook, including the use of negligent homicide charges against the criminals who continue to put illegal guns in the hands of our children. I also commit to protecting the rights of hunters and law-abiding gun owners.

- Equipping and training our safety officers; Ensuring that our men and women in uniform have the latest in technology and training; ensuring that we have sufficient staffing at every Police department, and that all our emergency personnel and first responders are ready for large scale threats and localized violence.

- Requiring all new graduates of the City's police academy to serve in Pittsburgh; if they choose to serve in a different municipality the tuition should be paid back + we shouldn't pay to train candidates who then go and work in the suburbs.

- Focusing on the quality of life for our public safety officers both on duty and off. Life in uniform is very difficult, and I greatly respect the sacrifices these men and women make every day. To that end, we must support officers health and wellness outside of the uniform and do as much as possible to ensure a positive employment and life experience for our City's protectors.

- Working towards making our Police force look more like our City, through recruiting and mentoring efforts to attract more minority and female officers.

This is a city of neighborhoods and of neighbors. Keeping our streets safe for our older generations, and keeping our younger generations safe from themselves must be the cornerstone of any plan, and they are the bedrock of my plan for public safety.