August 5-11, 2004

city beat

Walking the Beat

ON GUARD: Brad Baldia (right) may not live in South Philly, but he's helping to start a town-watch group there. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Honoring a homicide victim, the city's first Asian town-watch group forms in South Philly.

by Helen i-lin Hwang

On a dismal, dark December evening, 19-year-old Cambodian college student Luckily Ky was working with his mom at their South Philly corner grocery store at 17th and Moore. Two men burst in, waving a gun at Ky's mother, who was behind protective glass. They demanded that she come out from behind her shield and give up her money. When Ky moved to get between his mother and the robbers, he was shot dead.

Crimes like that have led Brad Baldia, a 31-year-old Filipino-American from Chester Springs, to organize a group of Asians to form Philadelphia's first Asian town watch. He's taken the initiative even though he doesn't live in town and has never lived in a largely Asian neighborhood where violence is on the rise, as in South Philly. According to police figures, in the 3rd District, which runs from Tasker to South, and Broad to the Delaware, robberies rose to 301 last year, up 184 percent from 1999.

Gregarious and always sporting a dress shirt and well-pressed trousers, Baldia works in gritty South Philly as a community organizer at United Communities Southeast Philadelphia, an umbrella group composed of three neighborhood resource centers. He says part of his job is to "work with different ethnic populations to come up with constructive solutions." He's been working with the Asian community for 11 years on issues such as public health, youth violence and Asian gangs.

"I take it personally as an Asian-American. If it's not me, then who's going to do it?" says Baldia about starting the town watch. He says he hopes to unite Asian communities to show "we can't be picked on and we're not going to let something that happened to Luckily happen again."

To combat violence, he speaks of residents needing "to empower themselves." But to persuade them to volunteer, Baldia must also address the fear and mistrust of police harbored by Asians from countries where the police presence was more dictatorial and military. Another hurdle is the apprehension among some Asians who are, or employ, illegal immigrants who fear that calling police might draw the spotlight on themselves.

Five would-be volunteers attended the first meeting last month at United Communities' Houston Center, near Eighth and Snyder streets. The room, however, was packed with police officers.

"It's going to be difficult to start," Baldia says, "but we have a lot of people that are supportive."

For the next meeting, scheduled later this month, Baldia intends to publicize the town watch more: He plans to recruit people through the newly revived chapter of the National Association of Asian American Professionals that he's heading up. He also plans to post fliers on Washington Avenue and at churches and Buddhist temples while also reaching out through the ethnic media.

While Baldia's group will mark the city's first Asian town watch, it's not the first ethnic-based one. Art Potts, trainer and recruiter for the city's town watch program, says dozens of Hispanic organizations are involved. It's also not the first that's drawn volunteers from out of town to help fight crime on city streets, as there's an in-line town watch consisting of skaters from South Jersey. Potts says there are about 800 town-watch groups with 17,000 volunteers in Philadelphia.

The program has been in operation here since 1968, but Chief Inspector James Tiano, the department's community-affairs liaison, says the concept dates back to 1850. Some volunteers are part of the Eyes and Ears program — they look for things that are out of ordinary as they go about their everyday lives. When these volunteers gain more confidence, they can start patrolling the streets, says Potts. The city provides walkie-talkies, vests, hats and T-shirts.

Baldia's plan is also becoming a bit of a tribute as volunteers say they may name the group after Ky. When he told Ky's mother — she still works in the family-owned store where her son was killed last year — about that, she started crying, happy that was something was being done to honor her son's memory.

His killers have still not been found.