HE'S THE MAYOR OF THE NEIGHBORHOODS

Operation Safe Streets Is One Of Many Programs That Address A Need And Make
Good Street's Promises. It's Where Policy And Politics Converge.

On a muggy night last week, Mayor Street spent two hours pedaling a
well-worn police mountain bike past some of North Philadelphia's most
notorious drug corners before pulling onto the patio at North
Philadelphia's Cruz Recreation Center and doing what politicians do: He
delivered a speech.

Unsurprisingly, it was about Operation Safe Streets.

The anticrime program, rolled out May 2, exists squarely at the critical
intersection of policy and politics.

In some of the city's most troubled neighborhoods - the heart of Street's
political base - the mayor is both fighting crime and running a campaign
that has barbecues, stump speeches, dramatic entrances, and people asking
him to pose for pictures with them.

While these rallies stir up citizen morale in the fight against crime, for
the mayor they also help him politically - unfolding at a time when the
mayor badly needs a recovery from a series of miscues.

Politics aside, the expensive Safe Streets program is one more important
element defining Street's mayoralty. If his predecessor, Ed Rendell, was
sometimes viewed as the mayor of downtown, Street seems clearly bent on
being the mayor of the neighborhoods.

Since taking office, his administration has towed 127,000 abandoned cars
and put together an unprecedented $300 million bond issue to knock down
abandoned buildings. Now, without any political debate, he is spending
millions on overtime to step up law enforcement in some of the city's most
troubled areas.

At the Cruz Recreation Center, with its empty pool awaiting repairs, a bead
of sweat dripped from beneath the mayor's bicycle helmet as he paused to
answer a reporter's question about whether his campaign to rid the city of
drugs was helpful to his reelection campaign. Eva Caraballo, a Democratic
committeewoman from Juniata Park, couldn't hold back her own answer.

"I love you, Johnny," she said. "On Election Day, I want to work for you."

So far, Safe Streets appears to have been met with overwhelming support in
those neighborhoods where police are on the corners. People say they're
letting their children play in the street. They sit on their stoops. They
aren't so afraid.

New police figures show that crime is down. Presumably, Street's popularity
is up.

This has left some Street critics troubled. Councilman James Kenney says
the anticrime program ought to be called "Operation Save Street."

Motivations aside, there is little doubt that, for now, the program has
helped cancel lingering questions about Street's remote style and a spate
of whopping political miscalculations, notably his defeat on a bid to
freeze the wage tax and the backlash over that speech in which he said "the
brothers and sisters are in charge."

George Burrell, Street's top political aide, said the mayor would suffer no
lasting political damage from those controversies. Other political analysts
agreed.

"What would make him vulnerable [in an election] are none of those things,
really, because people think they are isolated examples of a fairly
complicated and aloof person," said Saul Shorr, a political consultant who
ran the campaign of a Street rival in the 1999 Democratic primary.

Those offended by the missteps, Shorr added, "are not the people who matter
in terms of him. His base in the African American community is pretty solid."

And, getting stronger, added Bruce Caswell, a Rowan University political
scientist who lives in West Mount Airy and also worked for a candidate
against Street in 1999.

"The neighborhoods in which he is doing Operation Safe Streets are the
neighborhoods which gave him almost 100 percent of their vote in the
primary and general election," said Caswell. "The most important reason
they voted for him was [that] he said, 'I will come back and deal with your
problems.' "

Caswell who has spent 30 years studying big-city mayors, said Street may
well win a reputation uncommon among politicians: "He is doing what he said
he would do."

There are, though, nagging questions about whether Street can sustain
Operation Safe Streets because of its high costs in police overtime -
estimated at $4 million a month - as well as the effects on
less-crime-ridden neighborhoods.

One of those areas is the Rittenhouse Square area of Center City. There,
10-year resident Norris Jordan said he has seen a spike in such violent
crimes as gun and knifepoint muggings and home-invasion robbery.

"It's just like this wave of crime has flowed into our neighborhood like
never before," he said.

Of Safe Streets, Jordan said: "It is certainly a worthy cause. No one is
saying stop this. Just find a way to do both."

Though dramatic police overtime figures from the City Controller's Office
have shed some light on the program's big expense, Street has refused to
publicly detail the program's cost. To his opponents, Street's silence on
the issues is yet another sign of his arrogance.

At the Cruz center at Sixth and Master Streets, there was not an opponent
in the hall last week.

The crowd burst into applause at Street extolled Safe Streets.

"Open-air drug sales is the local equivalent of terrorism in these
communities," Street said. "There are people who are being terrorized by
the drug dealers - they are afraid to walk to the corner! I'm concerned
about these neighborhoods. We must never go back. Are we going back?"

They shouted their answer: "Noooooooo!"

In an interview at the center, Street dismissed the criticism that his
policies were aimed at his reelection next year.

"Anything I do, people are going to say it's political. I guess on some
level almost everything people do has some kind of political implications,"
he said. "Frankly speaking, I think some of it is sour grapes. Look, not
everybody loves me."

As to sustaining the program, he said, "We don't have a very much choice.
It's ruining neighborhoods everywhere. If we don't deal with drugs, it
makes transforming neighborhoods practically impossible."