The Philadelphia Police Department posted a guide on carjackings to its social media page Wednesday amid a surge in crime throughout the city.
The instructional guide shared “safety tips,” “scenarios” and warning signs that residents of the City of Brotherly Love should look for when driving around town. It suggested that residents confronted by a carjacker should “give up” the car and leave the scene.
“Your vehicle can be replaced. You are irreplaceable,” the guide stated. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw shared a message on the department’s Facebook page, saying there is “no single issue that is more important” than “fighting the surge of violent crime that continues to plague our city.”
“The onslaught of violence happening in Philadelphia is entirely unacceptable, and we remain committed to stemming these trends,” she added.
According to the post, there were 757 reported carjackings in Philadelphia, an increase of 34% over 2020. Commissioner Outlaw appeared Friday on Fox 29 Philadelphia’s “Good Day” show to explain the rise in crime, saying in the first two weeks of January 2022, there have been 90 carjackings.
She advised residents who find themselves in a carjacking situation to try and look for distinguishable features from their attackers. “Maybe you see their eyes or hear their voice. What did they specifically say to you? Little nuanced things that we brush off as nothing could be something.” (RELATED: Teenaged Girls Accused In Botched Carjacking That Led To Death Of 66-Year-Old Man)
The commissioner also said more plain-clothes police officers would be deployed to targeted areas as well as an operational Task Force “dedicated to combating carjackings in the city.”
“We are going to continue to work with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners who are unified in making Philadelphia a safer city, and we also need the public’s help in reducing these incidents.”
In a high-profile incident, Democratic Pennsylvania Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon was carjacked at gunpoint following a meeting in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park in South Philadelphia in late December.
Philadelphia has suffered from skyrocketing crime rates since left-wing District Attorney Larry Krasner took office. The city set a record for most murders in a year in early December with more than 523 homicides. The figure is a 13% increase year-to-date compared to 2020 and nearly double the amount of total year-end homicides in 2016 before Krasner took office.
Former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter, a Democrat, issued a rebuke of Krasner, saying the D.A. is living in a “messed up world.” “I have to wonder what kind of messed up world of white wokeness Krasner is living in to have so little regard for human lives lost, many of them Black and brown, while he advances his own national profile as a progressive district attorney.”
Nutter was responding to comments made by Krasner at a press conference in early December, in which he declared, “we don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence.”