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Public safety will soon be under new management. But will that change anything for Philadelphia’s bereaved families?

No matter who ends up leading City Hall or the Police Department, families will likely keep waiting for someone to make good on promises of answers and accountability.

Yullio Robbins, of West Philadelphia, hangs a sign to help find answers to her son's murder in Germantown in 2018. James Walke III was murdered in 2016. His case remains unsolved.
Yullio Robbins, of West Philadelphia, hangs a sign to help find answers to her son's murder in Germantown in 2018. James Walke III was murdered in 2016. His case remains unsolved.Read more

The request came to me last month. Ever since her son, Troy Smith Jr., was killed in 2014, Renee Whitmore has done everything she can to draw attention to his unsolved murder.

She had a simple ask: Could she have some help getting detectives to return her phone calls?

A few weeks later, another mother, Yullio Robbins, made a similar request: Could I find a way to write another column about her son’s unsolved murder from 2016?

“I need to keep my James out in the public eye just in case someone has a change of heart,” Robbins told me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about all these mothers, all these families, and all this grief as we prepare for all this change in the city — a new mayor, a new police commissioner, a new set of promises from a new set of public officials.

No matter who ends up leading City Hall or the Police Department, what doesn’t change are the tendrils of pain that run through bereaved families in our city.

Think about it: Since Whitmore’s son was killed, there have been two mayors and four police commissioners, including an interim chief after Richard Ross’s abrupt departure amid allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination in 2019.

Now, less than two months before we elect Philadelphia’s 100th mayor, we are again making much of who might be our next commissioner. Cherelle Parker, the Democratic mayoral nominee, recently said that if elected, she’ll hire someone with “knowledge of Philadelphia.”

“We are at such a moment of crisis in our city that we need someone who knows our city and knows it well,” Parker told host (and Inquirer columnist) Solomon Jones during an interview on WURD.

Sure, let’s try that again, I guess. Though for far too many Philadelphians, the distinctions between people who hold these jobs can feel more than a little artificial. So even if we have a new mayor and a new commissioner — even if it’s someone who knows the city well — it all ends up feeling like more of the same. The same failed policies, the same unreturned phone calls, the same inertia that has kept the city from solving about half of its homicides, and struggling to make any real dent in gun violence.

And the same people most affected.

“Nothing changes for us,” Robbins said. “When people are out here looking for support or votes, they’re all about, ‘Oh, I’m going to be the change.’ But that never happens.”

Friday marked the end of Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw’s tenure as she leaves town to take on a new job as a deputy security chief at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Her three and a half years in Philly were marred by struggles that included mass resignations of officers amid the pandemic, just as shootings and homicides spiked, technological deficiencies in the city’s forensics lab that District Attorney Larry Krasner has often talked about, and differing philosophies between Krasner and Outlaw about public safety best practices.

The reasons why Philadelphia’s public safety promises are rarely kept may change, yet they leave grieving families in the same spot: hurting, waiting, expected to believe that the next person who moves into the big office will make good and provide answers and accountability that are long overdue.

Regardless of who Parker or Republican mayoral nominee David Oh hires as their commissioner, both should be acutely aware that the more things change at the top, in City Hall and in the Police Department, the more they’ve stayed the same for Whitmore and Robbins and countless other families.

It’s way past time for actual changes, and for the next commissioner to find a way to identify — and implement — solutions that can be felt by the hundreds of families who remain stuck.

It’s been more than seven years since Robbins’ son James Walke III was killed on a Germantown street in the middle of the day, and more than nine years since Whitmore’s son and his uncle were ambushed in West Philadelphia by armed robbers. While Whitmore has struggled to connect with the detective on her son’s case, the detective who worked Robbins’ son’s case, Gregory Santamala, with whom she had a close working relationship, retired last year. The new detective, she said, hasn’t kept in as close contact.

A few weeks ago, Robbins made the trek she’s routinely made since her son’s death to the neighborhood where he was gunned down, with a photo of Walke and a stack of flyers asking anyone who may know something about her son’s murder to come forward.

Today, she tells anyone she comes into contact with, she’s the one begging for help. Tomorrow, it could be them.

So let this be a reminder to anyone watching, especially those next headed into the city’s top jobs.

Robbins is still out here, as is Whitmore — along with countless others still searching for answers on their loved one’s behalf. Unlike the past, current, and (likely) future occupants of City Hall or the Police Department, they won’t stop until they get justice.

They have no choice.