Safe Town USA?

"Most [federal defendants] plead guilty because they’re looking for something to get the weight off their backs," Abraham notes. "They hope that instead of doing 15 years, they may get seven or five."

Federal prosecutors hired through Operation Cease Fire recently won 15-year sentences for two Philadelphia men who each had two prior drug convictions on their records. One was caught with 25 grams of marijuana and an illegal gun. The other’s only offense was the illegal gun, but he also had a prior aggravated assault conviction. There are no parole provisions for federal prisoners, so each is expected to serve the full 15 years.

With a special $1.5 million appropriation from Congress, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Michael Stiles and Mayor Rendell introduced Operation Cease Fire to great fanfare last January. The federal money paid for five new prosecutors and added clerical staff to help with an expanded gun offense caseload that, according to Stiles, has quadrupled during 1999. U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno has since urged all of her district chiefs to examine increasing their gun prosecutions, and President Clinton has set aside money in the budget to hire more prosecutors for the coming years.

There are a few reasons, nonetheless, to question the program’s role in reducing crime. Some critics have pointed out that the murder rate nationally has reached a 30-year low anyway, and that cities without similar efforts are also experiencing sharp drops in violent crime. And although the total number of murders in Philadelphia is down this year, the vast majority of them, more than 80 percent, are still by gun — one of the highest such rates among big U.S. cities.

Operation Cease Fire also has severe caseload limitations. Abraham points out that "we can’t send every felon who’s in possession down to the federal court. There would be thousands of them." Meanwhile many local judges, she grumbles, refuse to give prison sentences to felons with guns. In Philadelphia, Abraham maintains, "Unless you are using a gun to commit a serious violent crime, there is absolutely no consequence for being caught with one."

The most severe shortcoming of Operation Cease Fire, however, has been its almost nonexistent media exposure. At the time of last January’s announcement, Stiles, the local U.S. attorney, pointed out that publicity was crucial to the program’s deterrent effect. "We could lock up 2,000 people," Stiles said at the time, "and if we didn’t publicize it, nobody would know about it or be deterred."

But city officials never managed to raise the funds to buy airtime for an ambitious radio and TV campaign that had been slated for the summer months this year. Rendell says that while Operation Cease Fire billboards have gone up, along with posters inside buses and subways, the broadcast media will have to wait for now.

"There was a problem raising money, although we’re still hoping to get money for it," he says. "You still need TV. TV is first and foremost. We’re frustrated." He and Abraham are arranging to bring Janet Reno here to make a sales pitch to potential local donors. Says Rendell, "We’re hoping she’ll convince the corporate community to get significantly involved."

Palmer, however, says he hears from the police and from federal agents on the program’s task force that the word has been circulating for sometime in what might be called "the criminal community." "It’s anecdotal, it’s not statistical," Palmer says. "Police officers say that when they make arrests, they hear people say ‘Is this case going federal? Am I going in the federal system?’ Some say, ‘Damn, this Cease Fire caught me.’"

And the ad campaign, developed by O’ND Marketing and Communications, has actually reached out a little bit farther than just buses and billboards. Thomas F. O’Neill, the agency’s president, has craftily put Operation Cease Fire posters in places where they have little competition from other advertisers — bail bondsman offices and police holding cells.

"These guys are sitting there for hours," O’Neill laughs. "They’ve got nothing else to read but ‘We’re making a federal case out of it. An illegal gun can get you five years in federal prison.’"

It’s an adman’s dream — a truly captive audience.