With new budget, city officials show they have no idea what life is like for real Philadelphians | Helen Ubiñas

The tone during the city’s latest biweekly gun violence briefing call sounded almost cheerful as officials touted Philadelphia’s new 211 violence prevention telephone hotline.

At least until a reporter from Univision asked a question on behalf of a city resident — and then the mood soured almost as quickly as Mayor Jim Kenney’s typically pinched expression.

It was a question inspired by a conversation the reporter recently had with a mother afraid for her children’s safety as summer approached. The type of conversation that those of us who write about the city’s gun violence with any regularity have daily.

In fact, two days earlier I’d been talking to Saleem Jones, the older brother of Juawann Mason, a 27-year-old former Audenried basketball star and Bloomsburg University grad, nicknamed Whomp, who was killed in 2020. Jones, who lives in Delaware, said he tries to stay away from Philadelphia as much as he can.

A day later I was talking to his mother, Cindy Mason, and then another mom, Pamela Scott-Bey, whose 19-year-old son, Cameron, was killed less than a year ago. Both were distraught about their son’s murders remaining unsolved. But they were also afraid for the safety of other children and grandchildren in a city where gun violence had already claimed a loved one.

The reporter on the briefing call echoed these feelings by asking Kenney what he would tell residents who don’t feel safe, and believe police aren’t protecting them.

The mayor scoffed: “The police are working their rear-ends off trying to keep people safe,” he said. He added that residents should instead be asking state legislators in Harrisburg why it’s easier to get a gun than a driver’s license in Pennsylvania.

“Don’t put this on police ...”

But the reporter pressed on: What about the mother who is afraid of letting her kids go outside this summer, who feels that the streets are unsafe and that a violence hotline isn’t enough?

Annoyed, Kenney punted the question to Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw: “Commissioner,” he sniped, “could you please take this …”

As tired as I am of public officials who seem to forget the public part of their jobs — you may not like the questions, you may even find them annoying, but you answer to the public — I could almost understand Kenney’s frustration. Almost.

On paper, it does look as if the city is making a serious effort to combat gun violence. (At least when I put aside my feelings about the city’s ongoing unwillingness to evaluate its programs.) Besides the promoted hotline, there were the items that Kenney asked City Council to approve in his latest budget proposal, announced Thursday. That list included $184 million in short- and long-term investments into the city’s violence prevention plan, an 18.5% increase over last year.

The mayor wants to expand programs that partner police with unarmed violence “interrupters. " He wants an additional $2 million to launch this summer a pilot of a program modeled after READI Chicago, which offers mental health services and job opportunities to men at risk for experiencing violence. He hopes to send an additional $1.5 million to fund two new “Community Evening Resource Centers,” which provide space for young people who are out after curfew.

Sounds good, right?

And yet, here was Cindy Mason, Pamela Scott-Bey, and countless other residents of neighborhoods where a summer spike in violence is all too common. All of them feeling the same sense of dread as the calendar ticks toward June.

“There’s a disconnect,” said Scott-Bey, alluding to the pride being felt in City Hall and the apprehension being felt on so many city streets.

I think it’s even bigger than that. When it comes to gun violence, it’s often as if city officials and city residents are living in parallel universes — and nothing seems to be bridging that gap.

Answering for the mayor, Outlaw said she regularly fields questions about safety from concerned citizens.

“We’re not just dealing with the fear of crime. We’re dealing with the perception of the fear of crime,” she said.

Well … to a point.

There is no doubt that soaring gun violence in cities across the country has provided a new opening for law-and-order types to scream literal bloody murder to slam supposedly soft-on-crime liberals. Of course, what they conveniently ignore is that violence has surged both in places with reform-minded, progressive prosecutors (like Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner) and with those who take more traditional approaches.

“It’s a dog whistle that is used to ignite white fear,” one academic said in a recent Inquirer article about how crime in the city has become such a hot topic among Republicans running for Pennsylvania governor.

Except for people who are intimately affected by violence, this isn’t political. And it isn’t perception.

It’s not perception when, despite all of these efforts and initiatives and road maps, Philadelphia is still on pace for another deadly year with more than 120 homicides and 500 shootings so far.

It’s not perception when the gunshots Pamela Scott-Bey heard down the street from her Mount Airy home before her son was killed continue with regularity — and with not a police cruiser in sight, she said.

It’s not perception when she and countless mothers watch the days and months and years pass by, while the killings of their sons and daughters go unsolved.

It’s one of the reasons Cindy Mason and her family held a basketball tournament last weekend in her son’s name. They plan to make it an annual event to honor him, and ensure that his death is not forgotten.

Hours after Wednesday’s gun briefing, I listened in on a virtual town hall about the city’s gun violence pandemic hosted by the activist clergy group POWER, where the Rev. Mark Tyler of Mother Bethel AME church said something that reminded me of the two universes inhabited by hopeful city leaders and apprehensive city residents.

By way of introducing the group, Tyler said that it centers on those suffering most from gun violence by making sure they don’t “stray too far away from people who are living closest with the pain.”

In one universe, less than 24 hours later, the mayor would deliver a prerecorded budget address to City Council.

“As mayor, my number-one priority is to keep people safe and protect our residents,” he said. “The surge in gun violence that we’ve seen across the nation and here in Philadelphia is heartbreaking, it’s maddening, and it makes me as outraged as everyone else.”

In another universe, mothers were calling detectives in hopes of any updates in solving their child’s murder. They were organizing a summer retreat for an increasing number of children affected by gun violence. And they were turning to the only place they could find even the slightest bit of solace — each other.