It was interesting for what it didn't say; Philadelphia didn't get so much as a fleeting mention among the nation's killing fields while Orlando, Jacksonville, Detroit and D.C. got dragged through the blood. It seems the land of Disney is only three murders short of its all-time record. (For perspective's sake, the annual record is 36 homicides, or what we in Philly call a weekend tally.) Meanwhile, Detroit should hit 460 this year, a 22 percent increase over 2005.

The piece doesn't mention what Detroit's doing to stanch the blood flow, but Orlando's dropping another 75 cops on the streets. My handy cop-to-killer conversion chart indicates that's more than two new officers per projected homicide. Minnie must be sleeping a lot easier, knowing that Mickey's less likely to be taken down during a drive-by.

Maybe we're overreacting, I thought. Detroit's certainly got it worse than we do. Philly's not the only place where people are dropping at a record pace. Perhaps we can just wait it out and the statistics will veer toward a correction.

But then I picked up the local Sunday periodical and came back to reality, realizing that both our elected and law-enforcement leadership seem to be talking one hell of a good game — regurgitating the "We need to work together" spiel time and again — but accomplishing squat-tah when it comes to actually getting people to work together. Noticing how Commissioner Johnson doesn't think people should "blame police" —I don't — I flipped a few pages into the Inquirer's regional section and found a sidebar to a story about Michael Nutter declaring his mayoral candidacy titled: "Nutter's Plan for Fighting Violence."

Nutter

Therein, a politician once on the Dead to Me list thanks to the smoking ban said, "It is a matter of political will and determining how aggressive Philadelphians are prepared for policing to be to create a safe environment."

This, I thought, was better than any ceremony at which a governor grips an oversized $7.5 million check and grins before announcing a program that could bring a potential 100 new cops. Better than any redeployment of existing resources or repackaging of an initiative named with any variation of "Safe" or "Streets." Better than calls for the National Guard. And better than any bang-head-against-NRA-wall cry for handgun-control legislation.

Campaign-launch cynicism aside, I saw these as the words of a man willing to actually expend intellectual capital and find a fresh approach to saving Philadelphians' lives — the words of someone who, if he continues on such a path, might actually be able to make a difference.

So Monday, I called Nutter. I loved what I heard.

Initially, I mentioned my post-Skerski-murder suggestion that the city learn lessons from the successes of drunken-driving enforcement and establish illegal-gun checkpoints [Philly Blunt, "Stops or They'll Shoot," May 25, 2006]. It was an idea that irked a blogger who adds nada to the public discourse, and civil libertarians, who, while closed-mindedly crying unconstitutional in this case, are a valuable check on power. "We're not too far off in the way we're thinking," Nutter responded.

"People are comfortable walking out of their house with illegal weapons, driving around in cars with illegal weapons, standing on the corner with illegal weapons," Nutter said. "We have to tell them that we're not going to let you do that. We're going to figure out ways, within the law, to take that weapon away from you."

It's time to break the gun toter's comfort zone, whether it be by exploring how to make car stops fall within the parameters of law (easier than critics think), establishing public-safety zones with periodic searches (an idea Nutter should further develop before dropping it on the campaign platform) or appealing to the military to provide the technology they use to pinpoint armed enemies.

In many ways, it sounded like this guy was taking the violence much more personally than the current mayor.

"We have a form of black genocide going on in Philadelphia," said Nutter. He's referring to the sad fact that the majority of the victims and perpetrators are young black males, most of whom have records, and that thanks to those demographics, some folks feel less pressure to act. "I think every death makes a huge difference. Every death is tearing out the human fabric of this city."

After the towers fell, we accepted the need to take off our shoes at Philly International, so before we push our cops into a can't-win situation, a la Detroit, Philadelphians need to demand more than stock replies from our leaders. We need to force them to think the way Nutter's talking during the opening days of his campaign.

"We have to retake control of the streets," he concluded. "For some, it might be upsetting, but a death a day is upsetting to me. What are people willing to do to be safe?"

Before we elect our next leader, we must collectively answer that question.

(hickey@citypaper.net)