Thanks for Four Years of Awesome
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Blogged Around Philly: Farewell Edition
Photoist
The Philadelphia Inquirer has a disturbingly effective visual aide that brings together the homicide data from last year - data we are quickly on our way to surpassing in 2007.
Philadelphia was once referred to as the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ but lately, it has been making a name for itself as one of the most violent and murderous cities in the nation. A recent Inquirer article said that the murder rate is indicative of Philadelphia’s “substantial impoverished underclasses.” There have been over 240 murders so far this year, and the rising rate shows no signs of slowing down.
The most important question: Why?
Well, there are a lot of numbers and a lot of analysis floating around the internet and print and television news outlets. Primary sources, however, are the most revealing. Phillyist examined the Uniform Crime Reports, compiled and released by the state for use by the FBI and other law enforcement organizations. The raw numbers show that between 1999 and 2006, only instances of rape and murder increased at all. While the data showed a 3% increase in rape cases, murder showed a stunning 28% increase over the same period. The increase in murder is greater than the combined decrease of all other major crimes.
A fascinating article on the NBC 10 web site points out the growing problem of convincing witnesses to come forward with vital information about the shooters and circumstances of many of these shootings. In one case mentioned in their article, detectives still have no witnesses on record for a recent fatal shooting in a bar that was apparently full of “dozens of patrons”.
Eventually, several witnesses contacted police, and the information they provided led to an arrest in that particular case. But maybe this reluctance to speak up belies the dangerous brand of street justice that operates just beneath the surface of a city at war: If you snitch, we’ll find you and make you pay. This is often how things are played out when local law enforcement simply cannot spare a cop to patrol someone’s block after they cooperate with police. Resources are already stretched thin in the wake of budget revisions made in recent years to usher in the Department Homeland Security.
Take the murder of petty officer John Marshall, a veteran of two tours in the Middle East who was here to visit relatives. He was shot as the result of an argument between his younger brother and his ex-girlfriend, who had brought a posse with her to Marshall’s mother’s home. He was shot in front of his wife, mother, and four children, and died ten minutes later.
Or fifteen-year-old Raheem Grant, who was fatally shot in the back of the head at 2:30AM Saturday morning in the city’s Overbrook section. It was supposedly a murder of ‘retaliation.’ The fact is that there is nothing safe or legitimate for a teenage boy to be doing when roaming his neighborhood at so late an hour.
The Philly.com story about the boy’s death points out that while no one immediately knew the circumstances which led up to the shooting, no one was eager to talk to reporters about it, either. Aside from the standard ‘bad neighborhood’ comments, residents of the area were clearly keeping quiet out of fear of similar reprisals.
Just Wednesday, police found the decomposing body of a 60 year old North Philadelphia man who had been stabbed “dozens of times” and left in his own basement.
Regardless of the level of cooperation, though, the fact that Philadelphia has more murders than New York, a city with six times as many residents, means that the issue is as much one of legislation as it is of enforcement.
The big issue often raised in news reports about our murder rate is that New York City has the ability to write its own gun control legislation, while ours must come from state lawmakers. The argument goes back and forth between the idea that rural enthusiasm for hunting keeps lawmakers from giving Philadelphia more power over gun control on its own turf and the opposing claim that responsible gun possession is somehow a deterrent or defense in the face of hostile fire.
A murder, though, is still a murder.
Read more after the jump...
Numbers are daunting, but they can be dehumanizing, too. Sadly, there is no shortage in this city of family and friends left to grieve in the wake of more than a murder a day so far in 2007. While almost 220 days have passed this year, over 240 homicides have been recorded. Those are numbers that translate too easily from ink and pixels into a tragic reality for residents all over the city.
Six murders over the weekend. Shootings, stabbings, beatings, and even a woman whose hands were bound before her corpse was found burning somewhere in the Strawberry Mansion section of the city. An autopsy is still pending at the time of this posting.
It seems that there are a few consistent aspects common to these and most homicides: They all involve drugs, debts, or tempers.
First of all, the gun control issue is a no-brainer. Make the hunting enthusiasts from western PA come spend a night in one of our more gun-ridden neighborhoods and see if their own firearms deter the criminals that troll those streets from shooting them like so much seasonal pheasant.
Next, the drugs. This one is not so easy. The best way, traditionally, to fight drugs, is simply to put more cops on the streets. This is a budget issue and if increasing the number of beat cops ultimately demands a tax hike, it is one we’ll have to deal with or die without.
The only other option is a well-trained and vast neighborhood watch system – one that unifies existing groups and fills the gaps between them, using the same communications channels and working in direct radio contact with police dispatchers. No fancy uniforms or flashy hats for these folks, though: they don’t have the firepower to defend themselves if things get nasty.
The truth is that the people who wouldn’t volunteer for such a people-powered force are also the ones who wouldn’t want to pay higher taxes to bring in more cops. That’s a shame.
Also, I don’t care how Orwellian or Communist or fascist you think it is, folks: We need a curfew. Many of these killings happen when drunken people or wayward kids with guns are allowed to walk around all night long. Buzzes wear off, people get tired, and tempers flare. That is when guns start going off. Like I said earlier, there is nothing legitimate going on in the streets after 2AM unless it involves road crews. Is this an overreaction? Maybe after the first fifty or 100 or 150 murders of the year. Not, however, when we’re set to surpass 250 by the end of next week.
Finally, there is a very important aspect of this epidemic that is not being addressed at all in the mainstream local media. Philly.com posted an article quoting a local funeral director. The woman pointed out that the majority of these homicides are being committed by African Americans against African Americans, and suggested that if the majority of victims were white, the response would be very different.
There is absolutely no evidence to support the assertion that she is wrong, and the stories speak for themselves. I’ve got no suggestions – it’s a problem that goes beyond a post on a local blog. It does seem that predominantly affluent white communities do a good job of ignoring issues like these until they creep into Old City, Merion Township or Manyunk – which is rare. Until there is some alliance of communities that spans the entire city, including major metropolitan areas, the problem will remain a depressing two-minute story on the evening news.
The worst part is that I had such trouble wrapping this article up. I started it a week ago and every time I tried to wrap it up, there was another murder – sometimes a few in a day. It is a scary situation when a city is consuming itself with violent crime from the inside out. It becomes even more disturbing, though, when the deadly problem hits so close to home.
We encourage readers to post their opinions and ideas for dealing with the local culture of violence.
Image from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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