Mayor Nutter’s Sad Media Spectacle

Mayor Michael Nutter last week mocked legislation passed by City Council that would make carrying small quantities of marijuana subject to a $25 fine rather than an arrest. And he mocked its supporters.

“Suddenly, this is the great civil rights issue of our day — that black guys should be allowed to smoke as much dope as they want,” Nutter said, according to the Inquirer. “Eighty to 85 percent of the people being murdered in this city are black, 75 percent of them are young black men. I don’t see anyone writing about that. I find all of this sudden interest in the lives of black men by … some elected officials fascinating. They never talk about the real issues black men care about, like getting a job.”

A civil rights issue indeed: Eighty-three percent of the 4,314 marijuana-possession arrests made by Philly police in 2013 were of African-Americans. The comments Nutter made showed him at his worst: arrogant, condescending and combative. And particularly so when speaking about poor black people. 

So goes Nutter’s favored posture, keeping his raised middle finger in sharp focus even as he fades into political obscurity. Do you recall April 2012, when the School District announced its radical “Blueprint for Transformation”? In response to widespread outrage over school closings and privatization, Nutter told critics to “grow up and deal with” it. Or last year, when he basically defended the state of Philly schools to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes? 

But it is on the subject of crime that Nutter excels at being Philadelphia’s stern father. In August 2011, amid the flash-mob commotion, he delivered a sermon decrying absent black fathers as a “human ATM” and “sperm donor[s] … what the girls call out in the street, ‘That’s my baby Daddy!” And last year, when he appeared on CNN to warn against the “knockout game,” host Don Lemon pointed out that it was unclear whether such a game existed. Nutter responded, “I’m not exactly sure what’s real or not.”

What’s real is that Nutter, a onetime crusader on City Council for police accountability, has never articulated a proposal to strengthen police oversight as mayor — not even in the wake of the recent tidal wave of federal indictments against Philly narcotics officers accused of being abusive and corrupt. No wonder Nutter’s primary opponent in 2011, former state senator and onetime convict Milton Street, garnered an enormous protest vote in the city’s black wards after running a campaign appealing to Philly’s “don’t counts.” 

By September 2013, Nutter’s approval ratings among black Philadelphians had tumbled to a meager 30 percent. Another 2013 poll found that he had a higher approval rating in the suburbs. It makes you wonder for whom Nutter, famously but quixotically pondering higher office, is performing.

It’s an attitude that’s repeated ad nauseam by this administration and its top law-enforcement officials.

In response to the July 31 article I wrote with Ryan Briggs about a police crackdown on small-time crime, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey lashed out on WHYY’s Radio Times. He criticized reporters who don’t “live in one of these communities,” but are “writing about it and then going up to Abington [in suburban Montgomery County] to go home where you don’t have to deal with it.” The fact is both Ryan Briggs and I live in West Philly.

Nutter spokesperson Mark McDonald quickly followed suit, tweeting that “CP styles this an ‘investigation.’ Hardly. Why not interview lots of area residents. CP cites unnamed guy at corner.” 

The guys, plural, who complained of being targeted were unnamed because they asked us not to name them, or they gave us their names but we withheld them because of our concern that they might be mentally ill. 

Crime is a serious concern on my block, and Nutter and Ramsey should be applauded for overseeing a steep decline in this city’s high murder rate. But the mayor would do well to speak to some of these unnamed men on the corner, the “don’t counts,” before he mocks the great civil rights issues of our time.