How the city’s leaders are failing its residents
How the city’s leaders are failing its residents
T he effects of Covid-19 on urban crime have made American cities much more bleak. In Philadelphia, tragically, the murder rate rises. This year, the city has broken its previous homicide record of 500 killings in 1990. Now, the record is 535 and will almost certainly rise before the year ends. This follows 2020’s tally of 499 murders.
As recently as 2016, 277 people were killed in the city. While the Covid plague era made matters worse, murder has been trending upward in Philadelphia for a half decade. The city isn’t yet on the brink, but it is a cautionary tale of neglect and decline. A few observations can be made.
1) Crime is very concentrated. While Center City and neighborhoods throughout South Philly, Northeast Philly, and West Philly can be more pleasant than the citywide statistics show, it means that bad neighborhoods are even worse. Gun violence in the city, once mapped out, means that some parts of West Philly and North Philly can be perilous. The recent murder of a 21-year-old Temple University student during an attempted carjacking was awful, but a rarity. Instead, the usual victim is a young black man — and it’s not even close. Black residents are 85 percent of shooting victims in the city, and black men ages 18-34 are the majority of homicide victims, as Axios Philadelphia reported. Property crime is a problem in the nicer neighborhoods, but young black men in the city experience the worst violent crime. The city is failing them.
That concentration of crime also explains why a sense of normality holds, and no forced resignations threaten city officials: The burden rests on the marginalized. The social-justice rhetoric of Philadelphia politics centers on the poor and the at-risk, but it also prevents anyone from advocating an obvious solution: Hire more police officers to protect people.
2) The unprecedented murder rate is a failure of political will. Mayor Jim Kenney is an embarrassment, a conservative caricature of a feckless progressive politician come to life. The City Council is little better, with Councilman Bobby Henon convicted of bribery and conspiracy in federal court and another, Kenyatta Johnson, indicted on (separate) federal corruption charges. Not to be outdone, the district attorney’s office plays the role of the ostrich. “We don’t have a crisis of crime,” District Attorney Larry Krasner recently said and then, bothered by the collective laughter of the city, blamed the media for twisting his words. Rumors swirled that Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw was up for the top job in New York City until she was passed over for it this week.
Philadelphia has a storied history of corruption and incompetence, but it’s important to remember that this spiral of bullets and death is a reversal of recent progress.
During the eight-year tenure of former police commissioner Charles Ramsey and former mayor Michael Nutter, starting in 2008, Philly had an average of 296 murders each year, lower than the mayoral reign of John Street and much lower than Kenney’s shameful record. Ramsey has pointed to the need for more cooperation and less “finger-pointing” among city officials to identify, arrest, and imprison the “hot people” committing violent crime. Nutter, in a scorching op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer, lambasted District Attorney Krasner for his “anti-police narrative” and his “messed up world of white wokeness:”
If Krasner does not have the fortitude or the guts to carry out those duties [of locking up criminals], he should resign and turn things over to someone who is not trying to sell Philadelphians on the false choice of having either public safety or police reform.
3) This is not a simple political story. The mounting crisis can’t be blamed on the city defunding the police (because it didn’t). The “Ferguson effect” of police pulling back seems to hold up in Philly, demonstrating the importance of police on patrol and interacting with people. Officers made fewer arrests. Not that it would matter that much, anyway; the DA’s office doesn’t vigorously prosecute gun-related crime, let alone less-serious offenses, violent or not.
In rough neighborhoods, the public is reluctant to engage with the police; a lack of trust pervades. By August, the homicide clearance rate in Philadelphia was a paltry 43 percent, and rates for non-deadly shootings are worse. It’s not hard to see why crime victims and their families would be cynical about the police. Years of police neglect has made many averse to act as witnesses, especially when criminals are back on the streets within days and cases dropped or withdrawn, per the DA’s warped vision of criminal-justice reform.
The alleged murderer of the Temple student, for example, is 17 years old and has had multiple arrests — the DA’s office withdrew charges time and time again. Nor is it the only instance of Krasner’s office going easy on a criminal who later killed someone. It’s a cruel pattern, and one that will repeat itself again.
The grassroots, small-scale community groups that spearheaded anti-violence efforts have been scaled back or paused thanks to Covid-19 restrictions. Philadelphia’s public schools went 14 months without in-person classes for children. Without activities to keep young people out of trouble, or face-to-face meetings for neighborhood leaders to moderate the rashness of youth, murders and shootings have been out of control. As Alec MacGillis noted for ProPublica, the city shuttered drug-treatment programs and limited parole and probation visits.
Crime is more decentralized than in years past, drug-related crime competing with local feuds over respect.
The failure to stop murders in the city before the pandemic turned into a crisis when the plague broke loose, the ancient fury asserting itself in the modern world. Politicians collapsed. Policing collapsed. Community cohesion collapsed. The powerful could cope, but the powerless lost their safety net. A redux of the Athenians and the Melians: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
Thus, as MacGillis details for ProPublica, residents who spent their lives doing the right thing, striving for independence while raising a family, saving money, moving to safer neighborhoods, now face the tragedy of losing a son.
Philadelphia faces a crisis of leadership. A political class rules over the people, a class that craves power but refuses to exercise it for the common good. One-party rule for decades has slouched into decadence and threatens the city’s revival.
A mayor governs without wisdom. A district attorney feels more sympathy for criminals than victims. A police department alienates those it is supposed to serve and protect. A city council, corrupt and parochial, talks of racial equity and social justice while sitting on its hands.
Philly is not the only city in this position. From Philadelphia to Columbus, Austin to Albuquerque, a dozen major cities have set new homicide records. All must learn from their mistakes. Mayors need to lead the charge in reducing violent crime and restore order in their cities. City councils need to pass appropriate legislation to fund public order and community groups that encourage cohesion and connection. Police departments need to accept good-faith criticism and make strides to restore public trust. District attorneys need to realize that protecting civil liberties means removing criminals from the streets.
Much is to be done. Inertia is a powerful force, as is the narrow-mindedness of the comfortable. Yet, the bloodshed requires boldness. The next few years will separate the leaders who take violence and order seriously from those who are preoccupied with the praises of the unhinged media and activist classes.