Terrorism and Urban Crime

This week’s Philadelphia Weekly has an article about a neighborhood that is not too far from where I live. It is actually closer to my old house than it is to my new apartment. I like Kia Gregory’s writing; she does a fine job of evoking the flavor of our rougher South Philly neighborhoods. The 2100 block of Sigel (map) is a little rougher than where I live, but not exceptionally so. My neighborhood is in the early stages of gentrification. In the 1970’s it was the most notorious neighborhood in the city. Anyway, an extended snip is below the fold. Maybe you’ll see why I have such a hard time getting worked up about terror threats. When you live in my environment, the threat of sudden inexplicable violence is always there.

The 2100 block of Sigel Street is a narrow stretch of tightly packed row homes. It’s a block where on a sun-soaked Thursday afternoon in early summer, neighbors set up water ice stands and kids splash in an inflatable pool. It’s a block where little girls sit on a step and giggle over a notebook, and where a little boy runs to the corner store for a soda.

It’s a block where boarded-up houses are overshadowed by pretty ones, where neighbors celebrate children’s graduations by putting their pictures in the window, and where one front-door sign proclaims: “JESUS IS LORD.”

It’s a block where neighbors congregate on front steps, and kids play in the street all day.

It’s also a block where, not too far away, there are shootings, and where less than a month ago, when a stray bullet critically wounded a 4-year-old girl who was playing outside, no one said a word.

Her name was Nashay Little.

Police say dozens of people were on the 2100 block of Sigel Street when the bullet hit Nashay, and she collapsed in front of the house that she and her mother had been visiting.

“Everybody knows what happened,” says a Sigel Street neighbor, sitting on his step. “If they’re not going to say anything, why should anyone else?”

“It’s not that people don’t want to talk to the police,” says another neighbor who’ll identify himself only as Mr. M. “But you still have to live here.”

Mr. M is holding court across the street from where Nashay was shot. The group grows as neighbors stop to offer their sad, fractured thoughts—like how it’s always the innocent babies who get it, and how half the parents are scared of their own kids.

“Everybody feels sorry for that family and that little girl,” says Mr. M. “But if you start running your mouth, those cats are gonna find a way to get at you or someone you love. Today’s snitches are going to the grave.”

The neighbors recall their own dead.

A nephew, 18, shot five times in the head over a turf war.

Another nephew, this one 20, shot in the back of the head on his way home from the store.

The woman on the corner who lost two sons in two months.

Gregory, 18, was shot and killed over a football game as he got off the bus near a mobile police station.

Asked what it would take for him to come forward with information about who killed Nashay, Mr. M stares straight ahead.

“Nothing,” he says, finally.

It’s not cold indifference or brotherhood with criminals that explains the silence on Sigel Street. It’s fear—paralyzing fear—due to the bitter reality that cops are unresponsive, the criminal justice system is a revolving door, and snitches often get killed.

Neighbors here are desperate for a safer community. But in the meantime they have to protect themselves and their families.

If you lived on the 2100 block of Sigel Street, they say, and you knew what they knew about how life and death works here, you wouldn’t snitch either.

Some people can’t deal with this lifestyle. They shouldn’t live in Manhattan, D.C., Philadelphia or anywhere terrorists are likely to strike. They also shouldn’t set our foreign policy with an eye to protecting us. They don’t know shit about keeping safe in a dangerous world. They might not even know real life Muslims, or go to school with them, or eat at their restaurants, or employ them, or work for them. How could they know how to improve relations between us? Listen to the people of New York and D.C. They will give you the best advice on how to keep our cities safe.