The fly on Rendell's wall

It was one measure of Ed Rendell's self-confidence - or ego- that he let the hard-eyed reporter Buzz Bissinger watch his every move as he tried to lead the city out of a crushing fiscal crisis. Bissinger emerged with a great book about America's cities. Too bad for his sales that the city was Philadelphia.




SILENT WITNESS TO THE CITY'S STRUGGLES
BYLINE: Howard Goodman, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
SECTION: FEATURES ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. F01

For four years he was commonly mistaken for one of the mayor's aides.

Which is just as Buzz Bissinger wanted it.

Believing that "access is king," he'd perch on a leather loveseat in Room 212 of City Hall for hours and days at a time, dressed in a nondescript gray suit and conservative black shoes, jotting down everything he overheard as Ed Rendell plunged in to manage the basically unmanageable city of Philadelphia.

If asked, he would say who he was and what he was up to. But people rarely asked because he was so obviously one of those earnest young suits always seen dancing at a politician's beck and call.

He was so convincing a nonentity that Henry Cisneros, then secretary of Housing and Urban Development, turned to him after discussing some very hush-hush matter with the mayor and instructed: "Don't let any of this get to the press."

Well, Mr. Secretary, you'll be relieved to know that he didn't give it to the newspapers or TV.

But, er, sir:

He put it in hardcover.

The Badlands outside, filth inside

One of the hardest things to convey in words is what the decrepitude of a major city is truly like. I tried to get at it with this one.





CITY POLICE WORK IN A "PIGPEN" AS RED TAPE DELAYS A NEW STATION
BYLINE: Howard Goodman, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. A01

The reek, the stench, the stink from the juvenile detention cell should be enough in and of itself to force the closing of the headquarters building of the 24th and 25th Police Districts of North Philadelphia and Kensington.

But that would ignore the uncollected garbage bags cluttering the grimy stairwells, the overcrowded offices for detectives, the permanent grime on their gray metal desks, the heating system that goes awry and the air-conditioning that doesn't cool, the unusable locker rooms.

The roaches.

A state legislative report, released in December by Rep. Benjamin Ramos, a Democrat from the area, called the facility "totally inappropriate and unsafe."

As if that were news. Back in 1995, the city government set aside $8 million for a new facility for the 24th and 25th, after Mayor Rendell toured the run-down station at the request of the police wives' organization. "One officer described it as a pigpen," Rendell said in his 1995 budget address, "and he was being charitable."

Three Januaries later, $8 million is still set aside for a new building. Blueprints are ready. But with the tortoise pace of a bureaucracy trailing political and community bickering, no site has been determined and no groundbreaking is in sight.

Police here patrol some of the lowest-income and highest-crime swaths of Philadelphia - a battered landscape of ruins, marked by graffiti, brazen drug-dealing, domestic chaos, sporadic gunfire.

To lock up suspects, question witnesses, write reports, wrap up their shifts, officers trek back to a headquarters at Front and Westmoreland Streets that's every bit as bleak as the turf outside.

"The 24th and 25th contain some of the poorest and worst conditions in the city," said Robert Borden, treasurer of Philadelphia's Fraternal Order of Police, showing the place to a visitor recently.

"It's hard on a police officer, and it compounds it even more if you come in and this is your building."

Here's what it's like. When corporals with desk jobs take a day off, sergeants flip a coin to see who fills in. The loser stays indoors.

"You'd rather be out on the street," said Sgt. Joe Jackson, referring to terrain so chaotic that it's been nicknamed "the Badlands" and "Oz."