Our city is caught in a crisis of violence. We must address it directly with anticrime measures and by investing in broader solutions to poverty, hopelessness, and lack of opportunity.

I believe that the most effective direct anti-crime measures we can take are:

Increased Community Policing. Right now, more police on bicycles and walking beats is the best way to make our neighborhoods safer and stronger, and dismantle our culture of violence. A police officer who walks the streets on a regular basis and gets to know the neighbors is an effective deterrent to crime and a great motivator for community participation in crime prevention efforts.

Get the Guns off the Streets. We must prosecute unlawful firearm possession as a serious crime. Gun laws must be better enforced, and we must effectively lobby Harrisburg to gain local control of our gun laws. To gain local control of gun laws, we will need to make alliances with the suburbs, county-by-county, borough-by-borough, town-by-town, and individual-by-individual. Suburban counties have been trending Democratics on guns and other key issues for the better part of a decade, and we owe it to ourselves and to Philadelphia’s residents to make regional alliances so we can lobby Harrisburg most effectively.

Reduce Community Violence. We should invest in proven anti-crime and anti-violence techniques, like those outlined in the Blueprints for Violence Prevention (http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/blueprints/). As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported last year, the Blueprints have been studied extensively and proven to work (http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/16207107.htm).

Increased Economic Opportunity. Broadly speaking, we need to create more opportunities for at-risk youth, including after-school programs, midnight basketball, and summer employment programs. We need to vastly improve the way we provide social services, education, and career training for people transitioning out of jail and back into society. These services are proven to channel people into productive, law-abiding lives, but they only work if the money follows the people — if we can follow the individual through the system and keep supporting him or her until the job is done.

If we fail to address these issues, we will find ourselves forever caught in cycles of violence, forever subject to unpredictable upsurges in crime, unless we improve our schools and engage more Philadelphians in work and society.