Posted on December 30, 2011

Kill-adelphia: Yet Again, City Tops List of Homicide Rates

Stephanie Farr & Dana Difilippo, Philadelphia Daily News, December 30, 2011

{snip}

Murders are up again this year in Philadelphia, and the city still has the highest homicide rate of the nation’s 10 most populous cities, according to stats provided by each city’s police department. At the same time, fewer murders are getting solved.

With a few days left in the year, the city’s homicide tally stood at 324 Wednesday, including the eight victims allegedly killed in previous years by West Philly abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Last year, 306 people were killed, and the year before, 302.

{snip}

Mayor Nutter, at a debate during his 2007 campaign, pledged that he wouldn’t seek re-election if the 2010 homicide tally was more than the 288 killed in 2002. Then at his inauguration in January 2008, he set what turned out to be an overly ambitious goal of slashing the city’s murder rate by 30 to 50 percent in three to five years. He won re-election this year.

So, number nitpicking is de rigueur at City Hall.

“We’ve been pretty much flat for about two years, if you take the Gosnell numbers out,” said Everett Gillison, deputy mayor for public safety, who spoke for the Nutter administration.

{snip}

Comparing murder rates with the rest of the 10 most populous cities, Philly comes out on top, with 20.7 homicides per 100,000 residents. The next closest are Chicago, 15.7, and Dallas, 10.9.

New York’s rate is 6.1, and even notorious Los Angeles’ is only 7.8, though rates for some smaller cities–like Detroit, New Orleans and St. Louis–are much worse than Philly.

{snip}

Black citizens comprised 84 percent of homicide victims from January to June 2011, according to police statistics. [Police spokesman Lt. Raymond] Evers said he expects that trend will remain consistent once numbers are crunched through December.

“Responsibility has to be taken by members of the African-American community to address the issues that deal with this particular problem,” Gillison said. “African-American males killed by other African-American males is literally the elephant in the room.”

Chad Dion Lassiter, president of the Black Men at Penn School of Social Work, agreed: “Some of the black politicians in Philadelphia sit quiet on institutional racism and the black homicide rate. If I was giving them a grade, they’d all be in summer school.”

{snip}

Retaliation also continues to be a problem, he said. Argument was the most common motive for murder, followed by what are categorized as unknown reasons, highway robbery and retaliation, according to police data from January to June.

{snip}

As for the falling murder-clearance rate, Evers said the department has made 221 murder arrests this year, down from 271 last year. “Our clearance rate was definitely better last year,” he said. “Unfortunately, when you have more homicides, there’s more jobs to go around to the same number of detectives.”