Writing about murder in Philadelphia almost seems like a waste of time, but this one had to be mentioned.
Why? Because I saw Mayor John Street on WPVI-TV this morning, with a five second quip:
This is a terrible problem, but it is a problem all over the Commonwealth, and in fact, all over the country.¹
Yeah, uh huh, right. According to the FBI, “Philadelphia had the highest murder rate among the nation’s 10 largest cities last year, and violent crime and property crime grew at a rate that exceeded the national average.”²
-
Summer’s beginning: Six dead in one day
Five died in two triple shootings 15 hours apart in which gunmen opened fire on people on city streets.
By Andrew Maykuth, Vernon Clark and Art Carey, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writers
On the first day of summer, two violent outbursts less than 15 hours apart and about two miles from each other left five people dead and a sixth person clinging to life. And before the night ended, another homicide was recorded, this time in Kingsessing.
Yesterday’s six murders – three young men gunned down in North Philadelphia in the early hours; two people killed, one critically wounded, in Kensington in the afternoon; and an unidentified man shot to death about 10:30 p.m. in Southwest Philadelphia’s Kingsessing neighborhood – pushed the year’s homicide total to 195, compared with 177 at the same time last year, police said.
Few details were available in the Kingsessing shooting other than the victim was found near 54th Street and Willows Avenue. He had been shot in the chest.
In Kensington, police said gunfire erupted at Somerset and Emerald Streets about 5:10 p.m., leaving a man and woman dead and another woman in critical condition.
Police said Raheem Haines, 20, was declared dead at the scene. Two sisters were taken to Temple University Hospital, where one, Diana Patrick, 30, was pronounced dead. The surviving sister’s name was not released because she is a witness. She was in critical condition.
Initial reports indicated that police were looking for two men who drove off in a vehicle. They were later arrested away from the scene, and were being interviewed late last night at Police Headquarters. A homicide investigator said they would likely be charged overnight.
At the scene, a detective said the shootings apparently resulted from an argument, but it was unclear over what.
The slayings occurred in a neighborhood of tattered rowhouses that one resident described as “a melting pot – black, white, Hispanic, all kinds.” Alleys are littered with tires. Vacant lots sprout waist-high weeds. The yards of supply houses and body shops are protected by chain-link fences topped with concertina wire.
Hours after the shooting, detectives were still working the neighborhood, and about a dozen markers near Haines’ body indicated where the spent cartridges had fallen during the fusillade.
Dozens of neighbors gathered behind the yellow crime-scene tape that cordoned off the intersection.
“Didn’t see nuthin’,” one middle-aged man said gruffly in reply to a reporter’s question. “You know how it goes down here.”
When it came time to remove the body, the police surrounded it with vehicles, and two members of the crime scene unit held up a sheet to block the view of spectators.
“That’s . . . ignorant,” a woman complained.
“No, it’s respect or something,” said a man next to her. Another man saw the corpse as an object lesson, a warning.
On April 6, 2007, Inquirer coulumnist Annette John-Hall published the following:
-
Silence is the enemy of justice
‘No Snitchin’ ‘ is part of a wide moral breakdown.
By Annette John-Hall, Philadelphia Inquirer Columnist
In broad daylight, at least three people fire 40 shots in front of 20 witnesses, killing a mother trying to protect her children on a narrow little street in Southwest Philadelphia. And nobody sees a thing?
In North Philly, a shell-shocked mom tries to point out the person she thinks shot her teenage son and people in the crowd warn her she’d better not say anything or “we’ll get you, bitch.” And she doesn’t say a thing.
The message is clear. No snitching. Or else. . . .
“If you snitch, you buy into the white man’s system,” a system that “has been so systemically against you,” says Penn sociologist Elijah Anderson, who lays it out in his book, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City.
Back to Mayor Street’s repugnant comment. As I noted last October, there are some places in which we are not killing each other at fantastic rates. In the mostly rural, plus small towns, county in which I live, we have exactly 195 fewer murders this year than has Philadelphia — which has had 195. Thus far, our murder rate is zero.
Zero. As in, not even one, none at all.
If Carbon County had Philadelphia’s murder rate, we should have had, adjusted for the population differences, seven or eight (the math works out to 7.54) murders so far this year. We’ve had zero. Since the beginning of this century, we’ve had two.
So, sorry, Mayor Street, but you can’t push off the blame on places “all over the Commonwealth,” or “all over the country.” This happened in your city, on your watch, among the people who voted for you. Why is your city such a terrible place to live — and such an easy place to die?
__________________
¹ – Report on WPVI-TV, approximately 0535 on Friday, June 22, 2007.
² – “Philadelphia leads big cities in murder rate,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 5, 2007, page A-01. Article available on the internet only by archives subscription.
