There were nine shooting incidents in Philadelphia over the weekend, only one of which resulted in a fatality. Most shootings in Philly occur in poor areas far removed from Center City. That was true this weekend, too, except for the one that took a life.
Homicide detectives are on South Street this morning investigating the overnight murder of a DJ who was shot and killed while returning home from a music gig.
The 36-year-old victim, whose identity police have not released yet, lived above a Haagen-Dazs ice cream parlor on the 200 block of South Street.
Police said two men rushed the victim from behind in an apparent robbery attempt as he was loading his gear back into his apartment.
This is in the Queen Village area of the city, just south of Society Hill. It’s not only a part of the city that I visit regularly, it’s one that attracts thousands of suburban visitors every weekend night.
Two weeks ago, a pharmacist at the CVS around the corner was shot on his way home from work. That shooting occurred near 4th and Pine Street, which is just two blocks north and a block and a half west of this weekend’s shooting.
There’s a megaton worth of difference between a shooting in the far North, far West, or Southwest of the City and one in the heart of the tourist industry. For one, people will demand answers about this shooting on South Street, while they will completely ignore the 22-year-old man who “was shot in the hip on the 2300 block of South 61st Street,” the 24-year-old man who “was shot in the leg in the area of 2nd and Cumberland Streets,” the 16-year-old boy who “was shot in the leg Saturday on the 5100 block of Irving Street,” the four shooting victims in East Germantown, and the 47-year-old man who “was shot in the leg on the 3400 block of North 9th Street.”
When respectable residents of Queen Village and Society Hill are being robbed, shot, and murdered, the mayor has a political problem that just doesn’t exist when people are being murdered elsewhere. Parents won’t let their kids visit the city. Businesses will lose money. The media will create pressure.
But the problem isn’t fully in the mayor’s control. The city cannot keep these guns out. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams (who is awesome) wants to nail anyone found with an illegal gun in the city with two years of jail time. He says that 85% of the 334 homicides in the city last year were committed with handguns, and not one of those guns was legally possessed.
Not one.
So, strict gun laws may reduce violence in the city but they certainly can’t reduce it enough. As long as there are lax laws elsewhere, and as long as straw dealers can supply the criminal element of the city with firearms, there is going to be a lot of shooting going on.
Yet, it’s only when the shooting bleeds out into supposedly “safe neighborhoods” that there is any political will to do something. We should be figuring out ways to reduce the violence in the neighborhoods where violence is expected. That’s the real tragedy, that we have neighborhoods where people dying in a hail of bullets isn’t even considered news. Where homicides and shootings are barely mentioned and no one follows up to see if justice is being done.
Oh, BooMan, I’m sure you know that the killings in “THOSE” neighborhoods ARE considered news.
They talk about them on TV – maybe not each, or all of them, but some of them. Enough of them.
In the sense of – “The only way to stop one of ‘THEM’ with a gun, is for YOU to have a gun. And look, now they’re coming out of ‘THEIR’ neighborhoods, and shooting up YOURS!!! BUY A GUN!!!”
Those shootings are on the news, to keep people scared of the “THEM’S!”
And this way, “THOSE” people are looked upon as being little better than animals, and unworthy of any help.
Yes, the shootings are usually part of the “if it bleeds, it leads” local news coverage, but it is never followed up. There isn’t really any media pressure on the police to solve these crimes.
The media doesn’t care about following-up, because someone else will bleed, or another white girl will go missing, tomorrow.
As my friend Max put it, “Philadelphia: We give you bodies, crackheads, and some beer. Come look at our broken bell.”
I looked it up and Philly does a better job of solving murders than a lot of similarly sized cities, but still:
At least Congress is getting ready to crack down on those straw purchases.
Oh. Wait.
but murders are down 42% in Philadelphia this year.
As I have written before perhaps the best way to reduce crime is to get serious about removing lead from the environment. It is not surprising that lead concentrations tend to be found in the poorest neighborhoods. The maps of lead concentration and violent crime in New Orleans are stunning – my guess is you would find the same thing in Philly.
I am all for getting rid of guns but I doubt that is close to the most effective public policy.
this is the second time you have used the murder rate as some kind of argument. I don’t understand it. Nine people got shot this weekend. One guy was murdered. Do you think I should compare this to the same weekend last year to see if it was an improvement? What argument are you trying to make?
Actually, the murder rate spiked for april, and I have a feeling May will continue that trend.
Actually strict gun laws won’t do squat, even if they also managed to enact them in other areas. We went through this in DC.
Back in the 90’s DC was the murder capital of the US, as well as the crack capital. This lead to humorous moments such as having to rename the Washington Bullets the Washington Wizards in an effort to tamp down gun crime, idiotic gun laws being passed, and a lot of hand wringing and blaming VA and MD for the guns.
Of course the real problem was something else. DC, like NYC and Chicago, was a liberal bastion of staggering economic inequality but progressive social views. Which is what modern liberalism is really about now it seems. Plus the entire political structure of DC had been hijacked for years to pay off political backers and supporters with middle class jobs created entirely by increasing the cities government. Of course none of those new positions did fuck all to help the poor residents (which is why our public schools are still a mess), they were just empty desk positions given to the most corrupt of the corrupt as political favors.
Gun violence eventually went down, but the reason is really ugly. DC raised the rent on people and gentrified the lower income (and minority) residents out of DC by pricing them out of all but the worst areas. Of course as this happened gun crime soared in once safe areas of MD, and now PG county is a bit of a mess. But hey, DC was always a rich city and now it’s even more rich and crime went down, just like NYC so progress!
It’s the same pattern time and time again. The root source of all this is income inequality and people being at their last rope. And until liberals are willing to stand for populism instead of just social liberalism that’s not going to change. Till then we’re just moving minorities around and trying to pass gun legislation so the 1% upper class cosmopolitan types can feel good about their city and not get mugged in Georgetown by the same people they screw into the ground economically during they day… and then go home and pat themselves on the back for being progressive because they support gay marriage.
Amen! We badly need a progressive economic party. But I’m a liberal….I support gay marriage, I’m pro-choice, I favor gun control, etc. These are side issues.