Boss on the beat

By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer

April 18 was not a happy night for typically mild-mannered Philadelphia police Capt. Frank Bachmayer, commander of the Northeast’s 15th district, the busiest patrol district in the city.
The veteran cop had a hunch that it would pay to keep an eye on Lower Mayfair Playground, at Robbins Avenue and Hawthorne Street.
Bachmayer and the center’s director, Joe Camm, have been working together of late to get a handle on conflicts between youths who want to use the center for its designed purposes — like playing basketball and hockey — and those who consider the place more of an urban "territory" that they want to control and fight over if necessary.
So, about an hour into his four-hour tour of street duty, Bachmayer visited Camm. It was about 7 p.m.
They spoke for a few minutes. Camm said he was about to lock up the office to go to a hockey game at the far end of the center. Bachmayer departed, heading for the lower end of the massive 15th district to check on other goings-on.
At 7:15, a call came in on police radio — attempted home invasion, possibly with a gun, on the 3100 block of Robbins Ave. That’s a half-block from Lower Mayfair Rec.
A sector car and two tactical vehicles arrived at the scene ahead of the captain, who made his way up from the Frankford section. On his way, the captain instructed the first arriving unit to wait for backup before entering the rowhouse.
He did it because a gun was involved and, despite the badge and uniform, an officer can never know for sure what’s waiting behind an unopened door.
Soon, police radio informed officers throughout the district to be on the lookout for two teenage black males in "hoodies," one gray and one brown with Arabic lettering.
The suspects had fled through a rear alley toward Frankford Avenue. Police cars — some marked, some not — wove their way through the blocks surrounding the reported crime scene, but the suspects were nowhere to be found.
Back on Robbins Avenue, Bachmayer joined tactical Sgt. Scott Drissel and other officers trying to get a straight story from the supposed victims of this apparent failed burglary attempt.
At one point, one resident of the home admitted that as the alleged gunmen fled, he chased them down the street with a baseball bat. It didn’t take a police officer to think twice about that account of events.
Obviously, there was something going on here behind the scenes. Nevertheless, the officers carried out their duty to investigate the report at face value.
After all, it could have happened like the witness claimed. Lord knows that guns are readily available on the streets these days.
Guns and the violence associated with them are a main reason why Bachmayer was on the street to answer the Robbins Avenue call in the first place.
It’s not like he’s a stranger to the street. Since he moved to the 15th district from the violent 25th district in West Kensington last August, Bachmayer has logged plenty of late weekend nights and early mornings looking after the district’s notorious hot spots for crime.
But he’s doing it from 6 to 10 every Wednesday now, too, in response to a recent directive from Commissioner Sylvester Johnson ordering all commanders into regular street duty, including about 150 captains, inspectors, chief inspectors and deputy commissioners.
The order took effect April 2 as the city’s homicide rate continued to spiral beyond control. It still is, with 10 reported killings last weekend, boosting the year-to-date total to 127. That’s in only 112 days.
The police commanders aren’t necessarily expected to go out and single-handedly arrest a bunch of murderers. After all, as the Robbins Avenue incident highlights, police can’t be everywhere all the time.
But it’s the department’s hope that their experience and training will help beat cops combat and deter all levels of crime and be safer when violence rears its ugly head.
"It’s important to have commanders out here because commanders have to know what’s going on in the district," said Bachmayer, who welcomed a Northeast Times reporter and photographer to ride with him on April 18.
"You’re not going to get that from behind a desk. For officers, it’s a very stressful time because of violent crime. Anything we can do to relieve that stress helps."
Street violence struck a personal chord with officers in the 15th last May when an armed robber of a Northwood bar shot and killed community relations officer Gary Skerski as Skerski responded to the crime in progress. Solomon Montgomery is charged with the murder and is in prison awaiting trial.
Bachmayer arrived about three months after the Skerski shooting. Today, despite the well-documented upswing in murders across the city, gun violence in general is down in the 15th district this year.
Total violent crime is down nine percent year-to-date. That includes homicide, robbery, aggravated assault and rape. Shootings are down 27 percent, Bachmayer said.
Homicides are down 70 percent year-to-date, from 10 to three. Similarly, gunpoint robberies are down 19 percent, other robberies down 2 percent, aggravated assaults with guns down 22 percent and other aggravated assaults 7 percent.
Reports of rape are driving violent crime in the district, however, as the 25 reported through April 18 were 127 percent more than the 11 reported over the same period in 2006.
Rape is a problem that Bachmayer would like to address, but a large portion of the incidents involve victims and perpetrators who are known to each other and occur in a private environment, he explained. In such cases, prevention relies on public education more than police presence.
As for the reductions in other areas, Bachmayer is neither taking credit, nor taking it for granted.
"I hate to say ‘success stories’ because every time you do, you jinx yourself," he said.
Nevertheless, when looking for reasons for the strong first quarter statistics-wise, he believes that a detail-oriented approach by police in the district and neighborhood outreach efforts by his community relations staff are paying dividends.
"When I got here, I wanted to do a lot of quality-of-life arrests and truancy," Bachmayer said. "Quality-of-life arrests are up 108 percent, curfew (arrests) up 227 percent and truancy (arrests) up 103 percent."
Quality-of-life arrests include disorderly crowds, underage drinking, public drunkenness, prostitution, vandalism and other lower-graded offenses.
"What’s so significant about that is we’re so busy out here going from job to job, but we take time out to do the little things," Bachmayer said. "That is really beyond what I felt we could accomplish in the first four months of the year."
Days earlier, on April 14, according to the captain, officers responding to complaints about a Wissinoming bar arrested 29 underage drinkers who allegedly were inside the bar at one time. There were so many violators that the officers needed to borrow wagons from other districts to transport everyone.
Two other examples of officers looking out for the "little things" occurred on consecutive weeks early this month, according to the captain.
Members of the district’s plainclothes anti-violent crime team, commonly known as a burglary team, made "sight apprehensions" on two juvenile males for possessing handguns. The officers spotted one of the youths on the 1600 block of Dyre St., chased him and caught him. About a week later, they did the same thing on the 5200 block of Marlowe St.
"There’s a lot of guns out here and that’s the reason why there’s lots of violence," Bachmayer said. ••
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 and bkenny@phillynews.com