Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker stresses safety once again on first full day in office
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Wednesday was Mayor Cherelle Parker's first full day in office as Philadelphia's 100th mayor. She joined an event previewing this year's MLK Day of Service events and says she's organizing meetings with city department leaders.
But she also stressed safety remains her primary focus.
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"The current levels of crimes against persons and properties in Philadelphia constitute a public safety emergency," Parker said.
One of Parker's first moves in office was issuing an executive order to declare a public safety emergency in Philadelphia.
On Wednesday, Parker said the order serves as a signal to all departments that they need to be involved in making the city a safer place.
"So that's Social and Human Services, that's License and Inspection, that's the Streets Department. Every department in the city of Philadelphia has to be a part of those efforts," Parker said.
The order directs the police commissioner and managing director to come up with plans to get more officers on the streets, reduce gun crimes and cut quality of life crimes like retail theft and riding illegal ATVs on the streets.
But there's another area Parker made clear she wants to target.
"It's developing a strategy to permanently shut down all open-air drug markets here in the city of Philadelphia," Parker said.
Parker has long stressed her goal to clean up areas with a lot of drug use like Kensington.
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Pastor Carl Day has done community work in the neighborhood for years and knows the new mayor will face challenges from crime to drugs and poverty.
"Layers and layers and layers of issues in Kensington, and this has been for decades now," Day said.
How the Parker administration will address those issues remains to be seen. But Day believes it can't just be a focus on arrests.
"Also there's another element of where does all the people who are addicted, who are homeless, who are living in a camp there, how do they move them around? Those are some real challenges, and not everybody's gonna be pleased," Day said.
Day says he's optimistic about the mayor's safety plan and likes the ambition of it. But he says for any plan to be successful, the Parker administration will need community buy-in.
"You can cast a vision, but as a city, as a community, we all have a role to play to make sure, and ensure, that that happens," Day said.
Parker says that the public safety emergency is in effect for 100 days but says it can be extended if she deems it necessary.
