Milenko Kindl aka Cvrcko
tra...@shiftmail.com
PHILADELPHIA - A bloody, bullet-filled weekend left 11 people dead
across the city, where drugs and disrespect have trumped brotherly
love and the murder rate is on pace to be the highest in a decade.
ADVERTISEMENT
-
Philadelphia has seen more than one killing a day this year, totaling
127 as of Monday afternoon. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles - whose
populations are much larger than Philadelphia's 1.5 million residents
- have had fewer homicides this year.
The spike over the weekend was partly blamed on the first warm weather
of the season. But rain or shine, Philadelphia police say the chronic
problems remain the same: poverty, lax gun laws and a culture of
intimidation that keeps witnesses silent and leaves shooters on the
streets.
"It's the community's decision right now," Capt. Benjamin Naish said.
"They are the people that must stand up and get angry and say, 'Enough
is enough.'"
They have, in a way. But the countless candlelight vigils, anti-
violence rallies and community meetings have done nothing to stop the
murder rate, which is 17 percent higher than last year at this time.
Officials, too, are at wit's end.
"Do something!" District Attorney Lynne Abraham admonished Mayor John
Street at one news conference.
Abraham and others have criticized Street for a perceived lack of
urgency in responding to violence that killed 406 city residents last
year - a nine-year high.
This year, Street has pledged to have 1,000 community activists and
clergy trained in conflict resolution. He has paired a tougher
juvenile curfew law with stricter enforcement, an effort mayoral
spokesman Joe Grace said has reduced shootings by teens in one
targeted area.
The city also is spending $3 million to hire 400 parents as truancy
officers to keep children in school.
The efforts are commendable, but juvenile crime is a small part of the
problem, said Lawrence Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center for
Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. None of the murder
victims over the weekend was a juvenile.
Most of Philadelphia's killings are by gunfire, most involve young
black men and most are the result of arguments, often over drugs but
sometimes over trivial insults or perceived slights.
Last month, city officials announced plans to assign 80 additional
police officers to a particularly violent neighborhood in southwest
Philadelphia, where nevertheless 28-year-old Jovonne Stelly died March
25 trying to get her children out of the crossfire, authorities said.
The next day, police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson announced that top
police brass would begin working in uniform in high-crime areas for
four hours, one night a week. There were two murders that day.
City officials' repeated calls for tougher gun-purchase laws have gone
unheeded at the state Capitol, and Philadelphia does not have the
authority to pass its own firearms legislation.
While stricter gun laws would help, so would fewer truants, higher
employment and lower poverty rates, Capt. Naish said.
"The commissioner has said a thousand jobs could go further than a
thousand police officers," Naish said.
The five Democrats hoping to succeed Street, also a Democrat, have
proposed crime plans. Nearly all recommend hiring hundreds of new
police officers to buttress the current force of about 6,600; one plan
includes spending $15 million to post more surveillance cameras around
the city.
At Stelly's funeral, state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams told the
hundreds of mourners that he grew up on the streets that have turned
into battle zones.
"The question is, to the politicians of America: What do they do? What
can they do?" Williams said. "The answer, truthfully, is: I'm not
sure."
Williams, who is black, then asked the black men present to stand.
Invoking the names of Stelly's four motherless children, ranging from
6 months to 9 years old, Williams had the men repeat a promise to
"protect the women and the children of our 'hood."
"I will be an example that these babies can look up to," the men
vowed. "I will no longer be a predator in my own back yard."
Home:
Town:
City:
Address:
Country:
Phone: