TOP COP TAKES POLICING PERSONALLY

Sylvester Johnson Walks The Corners And Neighborhoods Taken Back By
Operation Safe Streets

AFTER SPENDING 37 years working his way from foot patrolman to top cop,
Sylvester Johnson gambled all his hard-earned credibility on Operation Safe
Streets.

Barely two weeks after becoming police commissioner in late April, Johnson
launched his multi-million dollar, overtime-driven cleanup of the city's
300 worst drug corners by keeping cops on the corner up to 24 hours a day.

His baby is now six months old and, depending on who you ask, it's Godzilla
or godsend, hell-bent or heaven-sent.

Johnson, 59, could've retired as the Police Department's number two guy
with a nice pension.

He could've walked away from decades of battling the city's relentless,
bullet-riddled corner drug sales with weed-and-seed,
down-with-dope-up-with-hope, operation this, operation that, marches,
rallies, meetings and memorials. Lots of memorials.

Instead, he floated his Old Millennium, almost-nostalgic idea - the
uniformed "serve and protect" cops on the corner shielding good citizens
from bad guys - with such a high New Millennium price tag that for six
months, Mayor Street refused to say how many millions it costs.

Last week, Street put a $100 million price tag on it over the next five
years - $35 million next year, $25 million in '04, $15 million in '05, and
$12.5 million each in '06 and '07.

His $100 million commitment to Safe Streets is astounding.

So is Johnson's. The commissioner said he intends to keep those overtime
cops on the city's 300 worst drug corners "for as long as it takes."

After the failure of so many war-on-drugs programs that solved little, why
would Johnson risk his rep for Operation Safe Streets?

He relaxed his impassive, just-the-facts-ma'am "cop face" to show his
intense anguish:

"From '92 to '98, we locked up 54,000 people. Many of them got out almost
as fast as we locked them up. So 54,000 arrests don't mean a thing if I
can't come outside my house because I'm afraid of getting shot. That don't
mean a thing if my children can't play outside my house."

Prevention mode

As a veteran of countless community meetings where decent people showed him
their scars and begged for his help, Johnson takes the drug war personally.

When he drives through North Philadelphia to talk to residents and the
uniformed cops who protect them on the city's worst drug corners, he drives
alone.

No bodyguards, no entourage - just Johnson guiding his black Ford Crown
Victoria Police Interceptor through streets he grew up in and has remained
connected with throughout his four decades as a cop.

"I walk these streets alone because the people who live here have been
walking these streets alone all their lives," he said, allowing a reporter
and a photographer to accompany him on a routine ride.

Johnson calls the operation destruction-by-disruption of corner dealing.

"We're not in arrest mode," he said. "We're in prevention mode. We're in
'disturbing' mode. When two cops are standing on the corner, we know a
buyer and a seller can't get together on that corner."

He said this as he drove through North Philadelphia's version of a
demilitarized zone - eerily deserted ghost-town streets, some with more
abandoned houses than occupied ones; rubble-filled lots, storefronts with
the faded names of businesses that died long before all but the oldest of
the current residents were born.

"I was talking to the officers at 12th and Huntington when an old woman - I
think she said she was 87 - approached me and gave me a hug and thanked
me," Johnson said.

"The woman said, 'I just strolled down to the store.' She said it just like
that: strolled. When she got to the store, the guy asked her what she
wanted. She told him, 'Nothing. I came because this is the first time in
two years that I could come here at night without fear.' "

That woman, Johnson emphasized, is at the heart of what Safe Streets is all
about: turning the city's most predatory corners into normal neighborhoods
again.

Minutes after he said this, Johnson was standing at 8th and Jefferson - a
notorious heroin and cocaine marketplace that is now drug-free - talking
with officers Richard Alderson and Greta Lamar, when a tall, elegant woman
walked up.

"My parents are in their 80s and they can finally sit outside, thanks to
you," said Ivy Lewis, who retired after 26 years as a Philadelphia public
school teacher. "I grew up here, but I don't live here anymore. They've
lived all their lives here. They won't move. There is a bullet hole in
their car. I see police on the corner, I can go home and not worry about
stray bullets. I thank you for that."

Her mother stood on the sidewalk half a block away and waved. Johnson
savored the moment.

On first impression, Johnson seems the polar opposite of his extroverted
predecessor, John Timoney.

Yet, Timoney hand-picked the stolid, quiet-spoken Johnson as his
second-in-command, then as his preferred successor.

"He's not flashy, nothing like yours truly," Timoney deadpanned. "He's not
a braggart in any way - which, in some sense, as commissioner, you have to
be. But he has this crime-fighting thing in the gut."

Timoney said that Johnson's cop's-cop credibility stretches back to 1972,
when the off-duty police corporal was shopping with his 6-year-old son at a
Cheltenham supermarket, and walked into the middle of a gunpoint robbery.

As a female shopper shielded Johnson's son on the floor, Johnson shot two
gun-wielding robbers, one of whom shot at him first. A third robber fled.
Johnson was given the city's highest honor, the Award of Valor.

"He was a hero within the department," Timoney said. "He was in all those
units that cops look up to: detectives, homicide, highway patrol... He was
not a pencil pusher. That's important for cops. Don't underestimate that. I
knew the troops would rally behind him."

So did Cynthia Johnson, the commissioner's wife of 38 years.

"It started with the children in East Division and seeing them suffer
instead of just being able to play outside on the street, seeing them not
being able to lead a normal life," she said.

"The younger generation of drug dealers was taking over the corners because
they thought nobody cared. The neighbors thought nobody could do anything
about it. But when the Safe Streets police stepped out on those corners,
the neighbors banded together with them. That's how Sylvester wanted to
take the streets back. And that gave the children a chance to be outside
and be safe.

"Sylvester is courageous. He is a workaholic. I am so proud of him."

Grew up in projects

Born in Pocomoke City, Md., Johnson grew up in the Tacony Projects and then
on Bouvier Street near Huntingdon, in North Philadelphia.

His father worked at the Naval Supply Depot. His mother worked at the Bayox
Cigar factory.

He went to Stanton, Fitzsimons Junior High and Dobbins. "I graduated at 17
on a Thursday night," he said. "By Monday, I was in the U.S. Navy. You
didn't go to college in my neighborhood.

After the Navy, Johnson joined the Philadelphia Police Department in
October '64, working his way up by the book from foot patrol to Highway
Patrol, homicide detective, police corruption investigator, narcotics
deputy commissioner to Timoney's right hand and finally commissioner -
never losing his focus on street-level policing.

By the mid-80s, Johnson was a lieutenant with North Central detectives and
Wilson Goode was the city's first African-American mayor.

"I was told that the mayor was looking for a black lieutenant to head his
security detail and that there would be lots of overtime," Johnson said. "I
told Mayor Goode, 'I don't want it.' I saw it as a finesse job, not a
police job. I wanted to do police work. The spring and summer went by. I
kept saying no. In October, Commissioner Tucker called me in and offered me
two choices: go to the mayor's office, or quit."

Johnson went to the mayor's office. "First day," he remembered, "a deputy
mayor said, 'Have my car gassed by 3.' Then he left a note on my desk in
big red letters to remind me to gas his car and deliver a package for him.
Later that day, he came by to find out why it hadn't been done. I said,
'I'm not going to gas your car. You're a grown man. Deliver your own
packages.' "

Johnson remembers Tucker calling him in and telling him, 'You've been at
the mayor's office four days. I've already gotten eight complaints.'
Johnson replied, 'I'm nobody's servant.' "

Tucker agreed. Johnson and Goode became friends.

"The thing that I found refreshing about him was that he was always very
direct," Goode recalled warmly. "I think the basic thing about him is that
people like him. He's like your next door neighbor. He's a person you can
talk to because he seems like a person you've always known, a regular guy."

Pleased with progress

When Johnson pulled up at 8th and Jefferson recently, both Safe Streets
cops there were working the second half of a double shift. They weren't
complaining.

"The other day, I was working the Whitehall projects in the Northeast,"
Officer Alderson said. "I've been a police officer for 23 years, and I've
never been thanked so much in one day."

Officer Lamar said she was working the 1600 block of Filmore in the
Northeast, when suddenly she found herself surrounded by children. "I never
knew there were so many children on that block," she said, "because this
was the first time their mothers felt it was safe enough to let them out to
play. Then they left the kids with us. All day long. Those kids wore me out."

Johnson was pleased by the corner's peacefulness.

"We know that those who sell drugs live in our neighborhoods," Johnson
said. "Of the 309 homicides in 2001, 40 to 50 percent were drug-related,
and of those drug-related homicides, 85-90 percent involved
African-Americans or Latinos. But of the 392 people who went to a hospital
after overdosing on drugs, 75 percent are white.

"So we know that those who sell drugs in minority neighborhoods live there,
but many of the buyers are outsiders and they are Caucasian. Safe Streets
cops make the buyer afraid to approach the seller. I want the whole city
locked down like this."

Not everybody accepts anecdotal success stories as evidence that Safe
Streets is worth all that overtime.

"I have the utmost respect for Sylvester Johnson," said City Councilman
James Kenney. "He is a true hero, a fine commissioner and has been a
terrific commander in this police department for a long, long time.

"But Safe Streets sounds to me like it's chasing young drug guys from one
corner to the next without attacking the root of the problem, which is
supply and large drug organizations. Did we stop doing that? What's going on?

"And how long will this program really be in place? Till just after the
November 2003 election?"

After Street finally released his $100 million price tag last week, Kenney
said, "Considering the dire financial situation he said we're in, that
number is very stark and very large. He mentioned things like raising taxes
and cutting jobs. In Council, we have no control over what information he
gives us and when he gives it to us. It's very problematical to work this
way. If Safe Streets is such a wonderful program, tell us exactly what it
has done."

South Philadelphia Councilman Frank DiCicco agreed.

"Do the Safe Streets results justify the cost, or is it like the problem
with prostitutes?" DiCicco asked. "If you move them from one corner to
another, what have you accomplished? The mayor says crime is down in Safe
Streets neighborhoods. Where are the facts to back this up?

Takes corner personally

Johnson pulled over at the infamous 9th and Indiana, once a 24-hour drug
corner, now quiet and manned by the Narcotics Strike Force 24 hours a day.

Johnson remembers that in an adult lifetime of police work, "I had never
seen a corner like 9th and Indiana. It was the land of the living dead."

When Mayor Ed Rendell made him Deputy Commissioner/Narcotics in December
1997, Johnson remembers being told that it was so far gone, the city would
never take it back.

"I said, 'We'll take it back, and we'll keep it.' Ever since then, I've
always taken this corner personally."

"Somebody has to be here all the time," said Narcotics Sgt. Joseph
McCloskey. "That's how it works."

"And you can thank that man right over there," he added, pointing to the
departing Johnson.

"I think a lot of stuff that's bad is bad because we let it be bad,"
Johnson said, driving. "Especially," he added meaningfully, "in certain
areas of the city."

Now, Johnson said, it's all about patience and teamwork.

"As long as there's a chance to save a life, I've got all the time in the
world."

Or as long as it takes.