PHILADELPHIA (Tribune News Service) — A day after five shootings claimed the lives of two men and injured seven people, the founder of two anticrime community organizations called on Philadelphia officials to request that the National Guard be dispatched to the city.
“When they needed to protect buildings they brought in the National Guard. So now it’s not OK to bring in the Guard to protect people?” Stanley Crawford, cofounder of the Families of Unsolved Murder Victims Project and the Black Male Community Council, said Tuesday.
“Bring them in and use them strategically. They have the data and the statistics to know where the violence is occurring. Put the National Guard there,” said Crawford, 69, whose son William was murdered in 2018. “It doesn’t have to be for a long period of time. Just until you stabilize the murders and shootings.”
Jamal Johnson, who went on a 26-day hunger strike earlier this year to protest gun violence and started a march to Washington on Aug. 9 to meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and to lobby for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, said he called for the Guard to be brought in last year.