Philly's Homicide Rate Down 3% from 2006, So Far

[rev214]

This obviously must be a misprint, with the "City in Crisis" special logos and music spewed across the local Philly news on a daily basis...

Philly's Homicide Rate Down 3% from 2006, So Far
by KYW’s Michelle Durham

In spite of tremendous publicity all year long about the city of Philadelphia's skyrocketing homicide rate, the number of murders in the city is actually lower then it was this time last year.
Philadelphia homicide inspector Joseph Mooney cites the data:
"At this time last year we had 401 reported murders in Philadelphia. At this time, this date we have 390 for this year, 2007."
And what does Mooney attribute this 3% drop to?
"I think with the difference this year; you have to give credit to increased community awareness and involvement in the violence."
John Appledorn of Citizens Crime Commission whole-heartedly agrees:
"Basically what you have is that people are fed up. They are sick and tired of the criminals running this community. They're getting away with murder, they are terrorizing people and they are going to make that phone call and get them off the street."

http://www.kyw1060.com/pages/1394036...tentId=1323490

[knight0334]

Its probably due to 401 from last year and 390 from this year killing each other off. Dead people cant kill. Sooner or later they will run out of badguys. lol (assuming a good portion of the 401 & 390 were "thugs")

If we can just neuter them on their first arrest - then in the future there should be less bad people too.

[rev214]

however, there's a few days left in the year...lets hope its a quiet weekend...

[Kendrickson]

Wow, I am very impressed! Only 390 murders instead of 401!
Are we seriously supposed to consider this a major reduction in the number of murders? I guess I don't need to be concerned about my safety in Philly now that we have seen such a significant murder decline.

[Story]

Papers, please

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/na...rime_plan.html


Nutter calls on Ramsey to develop crime plan
Declaring an emergency, the mayor fulfilled a vow. The commissioner will "step it up a notch."
By Andrew Maykuth

Inquirer Staff Writer

Mayor Nutter set an ambitious target in aiming to reduce the city's homicide rate by 30 percent to 50 percent in the next few years.
Last year's tally of 392 homicides translates into a rate of about 27 per 100,000 residents. A 50 percent reduction would amount to fewer than 14 homicides per 100,000 residents. The last time the city had a rate that low was in 1969.

However, a 30 percent reduction, to 18.9 homicides per 100,000 residents, would match the level of just six years ago, in 2002, when there were 288 murders in Philadelphia.

"Anything is doable, but it's going to take the collective efforts of a lot of people to make it happen," Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said yesterday before he was sworn into office. "It doesn't happen overnight."

Over the nine years that Ramsey was police chief in Washington, the homicide rate in that city fell by 49 percent. But it is difficult to compare Philadelphia to Washington.

As much as Philadelphians lament the high homicide rate here, Washingtonians were more than twice as likely to be killed in the years before Ramsey took over as Philadelphians were in this city's most murderous year, 1990. Washington's much-improved murder rate in 2006 was still deadlier than Philadelphia's of the same year, when 406 people were killed.

"We got numbers down in D.C., but it really takes a strong, sustained effort," Ramsey said yesterday. "You have to be relentless when you go after people who are causing harm in the community."

Nutter, fulfilling a campaign promise, declared a crime emergency yesterday with his first executive order. The order gave police no additional powers but required Ramsey to devise a crime-fighting plan by Jan. 30.

Ramsey said the citizenry was likely to immediately see more aggressive action, including "enhanced patrols" and increased stop-and-frisk actions against those suspected of carrying illegal weapons.

"We're going to step it up a notch and really focus our resources as smartly as we can, so that we take advantage of what we have available to us right now," Ramsey said. "We don't have the luxury of waiting a year or two until we hire more cops or get them equipment. We have to hit the ground running."

He said the department would be instructed to make a greater effort to reach out to the public - so-called community policing. "One of the things I need to do is to definitely settle things down so we don't have officers flying all over the districts answering calls for service," he said. "They've got to become familiar with communities, and that's going to be a very important cornerstone of our strategy."

Ramsey, who has spent more than a month familiarizing himself with the city Police Department, was cautious about going into more specifics until he submitted his report to Nutter.

"I don't know the broad range of strategies that have been tried here before," he said. "So I don't know if I'd be saying something that has already been done or is currently being done.

"Let me just say this - we'll tailor it to fit Philadelphia. Philadelphia is not Washington, D.C, it's not Chicago, it's not New York. Philadelphia is unique in its own ways. And we have to tailor our strategy to fit in with Philadelphia to be effective in every single neighborhood."

[500Mag]

Check out the demographics of those murdered. The Inquirer did a story on it in early 2007. Sorry no link. But in 2006, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% black males aged 18-35 as the "victims". I say it like that because later on there was a story where the majority of said victims had felony records or were awaiting felony trials. So if you don't fall into those categories your good.