There have been enough robberies involving masked men that the 15th Police District’s commander has instructed his officers to stop anyone they see wearing them.
“We are looking for guys wearing pig masks,” Capt. John McCloskey told residents during the Aug. 28 Police Service Area 1 session in Aria Health’s Frankford campus. “I tell my officers to stop anyone with masks.”
Every police district is divided into service areas. PSA meetings are informal sessions in which residents can bring questions as well as information to police, and police can tell them about crime trends and arrests in their neighborhoods. The 15th’s PSA 1 is the district’s lower third and includes Frankford and Northwood.
PSA 1’s Aug. 28 meeting was a wide-ranging discussion of cops, robbers, hookers, drugs, late-night hangouts, illegal businesses and surveillance cameras.
• The captain said he was hoping to get 30 additional officers. McCloskey said he would deploy them all over the district, the city’s largest, and that he would put bike-mounted cops in Frankford.
• McCloskey said he has seen an increase in crime along the 4700 block of Frankford Avenue. Ditto, he said, for the 1600 block of Foulkrod. “Some people can’t let their kids come out and play because they’re scared,” he said.
• Asked about surveillance cameras in the neighborhood, McCloskey said many of the city’s cameras don’t work, or they get water in front of their lenses.
• The captain said restaurants and other businesses located in residential areas are required to close by 11 p.m. Some of those that don’t, he said, are hangouts for drug dealers. He said his officers are closing them if they see them open later, and are issuing them citations. “The fines are only $75,” he said. “They should be higher.”
• Referring to a recent home invasion in Northwood, McCloskey said police shot and killed one of the culprits, but a second remains at large. Business owners are frequent targets in home invasions and, sometimes, he said, the criminals go to the wrong house. The vast majority of them, however, involve narcotics, he said.
• One Worth Street resident said she believes some of her neighbors are afraid to come to the PSA sessions because they believe the criminals in their neighborhood would target them.
• A Church Street resident said she believes an illegal garage is operating on her block and staying open late as well. They’re very active 10 to 11 p.m., she said. She added cars are being sold out of the garage’s lot at Church and Orchard. Pete Specos, president of the Frankford Civic Association, said he sees storage containers going in and out. The captain said he sees no reason for them to be open that late and added he’ll look into it. “I have a similar problem on the 4800 block of Duffield,” he said.
• One resident said she was glad to see police arresting prostitutes in her neighborhood. McCloskey said he instructed officers to keep the hookers in police headquarters for five or six hours to keep them off the street “so they don’t make any money and go elsewhere.” Officers have been hauling in men as well as women on prostitution charges.
• Citywide vice officers are arresting johns. “They take their cars, their money, and they get locked up,” the captain said. “I think that’s a good deterrent.”
• One resident said she sees activity in a building on the 4700 block of Oxford Avenue that she thought had been sealed by the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections. An illegal club had operated in the building, but a retail store seems to be in part of it now, she said. The captain said that, if he gets notified that there had been a cease operations order, “I can stop them and arrest the owner.”
The 15th District’s next PSA 1 meeting will be at 7 p.m. on Sept. 25 in the second-floor conference room of Aria Health’s Frankford Campus, 4900 Frankford Ave. ••
