Review Of Philadelphia Police Policies Gets Underway
By Jim Melwert
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A review of Philadelphia police department policies is getting underway, it begins in the wake of several police-involved shootings in the city.
In just one week last month, seven people were shot by police, six of them allegedly pointed guns at cops, the other had a knife.
But Commissioner Charles Ramsey says it was even before that, last November, that he began looking into a Department of Justice program called COPS, Community Oriented Policing Services, not to investigate individual shootings, instead more of an overview of things like training or department policies, in hopes of limiting the need for deadly force.
"There's no easy answers. This won't give us the satisfaction that there will never be another police shooting, that's not the point," Ramsey said outside police headquarters. "The point is to make sure I'm providing my officers with all the tools they need to be effective in their jobs. I'm very proud of what they do every day, but there's always things that we can do to fine tune our operation."
Next up is a meeting in Washington July 10th, then later next month a team will visit Philadelphia, the entire process expected to take about a year and a half.
