AS OF today, Philadelphia murders are up 42 percent over last year. Most of this year’s murder victims, like the employee of a Lowe’s store who was shot nine times as he was walking through the parking lot, did not become national stories. They did not precipitate an outbreak of peaceful looting and shooting. They were not killed by systemic racism. They were in most cases black victims killed by other blacks.

Their families won’t make big money or appear on TV crying. They don’t fit the script.

— Comments —

Terry Morris writes:

Neighborhood Scout currently shows the City of Brotherly Hypocrisy falling at number 86 on its annual Most Dangerous Cities in America list. I have been semi-keeping track of the list for four or five years now. It’s almost invariably the same cities found in the top ten, although they will swap positions from year to year with, e.g., Detroit being no. 1 in 2018 and, say, East St. Louis replacing Detroit for top honors in 2019 or whatever. Whatever the gory details are that cause these cities to swap places from year to year, the commonalities that keep them hovering around the same nucleus is the demographic numbers. In other words, majority-minortiy demographics.

While Philadelphia is currently way down the list of most dangerous cities, the 42% increase in violent crime you cite certainly has the potential to vault the city into the upper percentile region. There is something else that the city’s white residents need to be duly warned of, namely that the most violent and dangerous cities in America are almost invariably the ones with high concentrations and high percentages of black residents. The numbers I’ve looked at show that Philadelphia has a black population numbering 42% of the total population. That number in itself should be alarming to anyone not a brain-dead fool, but the bigger problem is that the non-white population is very near 60% in the “fair city.”

Now that Philadelphia will almost assuredly be vaulted into the upper percentile region of Most Violent and Dangerous Cities in America, with the likes of Detroit, Baltimore, Atlanta, St. Louis and so on, it should be duly noted that the demographics are certainly there to sustain it in that region for years and years to come.

Laura writes:

Philadelphia has had very dangerous neighborhoods for many decades. Most of the victims and perpetrators of violent crimes are blacks, who are experiencing the harshest after-effects of Black Lives Matter.

The list you mention includes cities of 25,000 or more so that would include very small cities that have experienced steep decline.

I haven’t looked at the numbers recently, but I believe among major cities Philadelphia is ranked much higher.

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