PHILADELPHIA — An exasperated Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said early Tuesday morning after two police officers were shot that he is so worried about safety at public events that he will “be happy” when he is no longer the mayor.
Standing alongside police brass outside Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Kenney made the comments just after midnight, about two hours after gunfire rang out and chaos ensued during the city’s annual Independence Day celebration on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
“There’s not an event or a day where I don’t lay on my back at night, looking at the ceiling and worry about stuff,” he said in response to questions about the administration’s response to gun violence. “So everything we have in the city over the last seven years, I worry about. I don’t enjoy Fourth of July. I didn’t enjoy the [2016] Democratic National Convention. I didn’t enjoy the NFL Draft. Im waiting for something bad to happen all the time.
“So I’ll be happy when I’m not here — when I’m not mayor, and I can enjoy some stuff.”
A reporter followed up, asking: “You’re looking forward to not being mayor?”
“Yeah,” Kenney said with a smirk, “as a matter of fact.”
Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw began speaking and returned attention to the response to the shooting, which left two officers with graze wounds. Both were treated and released Monday night. No one had been arrested as of Tuesday morning.
Kenney’s moment of candor swiftly garnered national attention and criticism from colleagues in City Hall, some of whom are considering runs to replace him. One of them, at-large Councilmember Derek Green, tweeted Tuesday morning that Kenney should resign, writing: “We are all exhausted by the level of gun violence in our City. However, our City needs someone now with the passion and vision to lead us forward. Resign.”
Another, Controller Rebecca Rhynhart, who has said that the city does not have strong executive leadership and that the administration’s response to gun violence lacks urgency, posted that the mayor’s statement was irresponsible.
Kenney’s comments stood in contrast to messages tweeted out from his official account minutes later, where he wrote that his administration would “continue to do everything we can to combat our city’s gun violence.”
“Our traditions cannot and will not be ruined by the scourge of gun violence,” the tweet said. “I love this city, and as Mayor, there’s nothing more I want than to help solve this problem and keep our residents and visitors safe.”
Kenney’s admission that he’s looking forward to not doing this job anymore — he leaves office in January 2024 — was in some ways unsurprising coming from a term-limited mayor who has appeared increasingly isolated and unengaged in his second term.
It was also illustrative of just how fed up he is with the surge of shootings in Philadelphia that began in 2020 and led to last year being the city’s deadliest in recorded history.
He has said his administration is doing what it can to stem the tide. The Police Department has been making arrests for illegal gun possession at a record pace, and the administration will spend millions of dollars in the coming fiscal year on a variety of antiviolence programs outside law enforcement.
But Kenney also often places blame with the GOP-led state legislature, the national political environment, or society writ large. After a mass shooting last month left three people dead and 11 others wounded, he appeared in public for the first time two days later after flying home from a conference in Reno, Nev. He said that without stronger gun regulations at the state and federal levels, the proliferation of firearms in the city will continue.
“I’m not passing the buck to the legislature or the U.S. Congress, but it really does make it more difficult,” he said last month.
After the police shooting late Monday night, Kenney also blamed a recent Supreme Court decision that struck down a New York law intended to limit the public carry of guns.
“We live in America, and we have the Second Amendment, and we have the Supreme Court of the United States telling everybody they can carry a gun wherever they want,” he said. “We have to come to grips with what this country is about right now. We had a beautiful day out there today except for some nitwit … who has a gun and probably shouldn’t have had it.”
