Issue date: 2/2/06 Section: News

Penn's effort to make campus safer is about more than University President Amy Gutmann's new $5 million initiative to improve security. Local community leaders are also joining forces with the University to take a grassroots approach to fighting crime.

The University is currently engaged in talks with about 70 West Philadelphia community organizations ranging from City Council representatives to Friends of 40th Street, an organization of local community activists, said Glenn Bryan, Penn assistant vice president for the Office of Community Relations.

Bryan added that Penn is working with University City groups "to provide more eyes and ears among the community and look at crime not just as a Penn issue but as a neighborhood issue."

Proposed initiatives range from neighborhood watch programs to donating Penn students' old cell phones to help local residents call 911. While some experts say it is difficult to predict how effective such grassroots mechanisms will be, many community leaders seem eager to collaborate.

Matt Walker -- senior director for economic development with the West Philadelphia-based Community Development Corporation and member of Friends of 40th Street -- said crime in the area is not just bad for Penn but for the entire neighborhood.

Block watches -- encouraging community members report suspicious activity to the police -- are being organized and executed nightly by ad hoc community groups such as the Mantua Community Block Captains Association and the West Philadelphia Concerned Block Captains.

Penn Government and Community Affairs Vice President Vanda McMurtry said that the University must reach out to local leaders.

"The community leadership, naturally they're not policemen," McMurtry said. "But block watch programs have been demonstrated to deter crime."

Sociology professor Elijah Anderson -- who studies urban crime -- agreed that block watches can be an effective crime deterrent.

"Some street criminals take advantage if you have people who are not looking," Anderson said. "There is a reason why so many crimes occur so late at night."

Phones for Life, a New York non-profit group that collects cell phones and reprograms them to call 911, led a cell phone drive last year. Over 200 cell phones were collected on Penn's campus in January 2005 using 45 collection boxes and were distributed to West Philadelphia residents over the age of 65 in the hope that residents would use them to stay safe and report crime.

But Anderson said it is difficult to predict whether the University's collaboration with West Philadelphia leaders will actually help reduce crime.

"These things happen so arbitrarily," Anderson said. "The shooting [of a student] that happened on 38th Street [on Jan. 15] could happen anytime. I don't think it has anything to do with not watching yourself."

He also called on government officials to do their part to reduce crime in Philadelphia.

"We need to address the problems of guns in the neighborhood," he said. "Our political leaders have to deal with that ... and we as a citizenry have to tell our leaders that we don't want guns" in the neighborhood.

Walker also credited local residents with providing valuable tips to police.

"A lot of the times when they apprehend individuals it is because the community gave a tip," Walker said. "Obviously just having a dialogue between Penn Police and [locals], you can't really go wrong with that."

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A community-wide effort
- Penn officials are working with over 70 local groups to help combat crime in the area
- New York-based nonprofit Phones for Life collected over 200 cell phones to be donated to local residents so that they can call 911 more readily
- Other efforts primarily focus on improving neighborhood-watch programs to encourage local residents to report crime

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