Philadelphia, aka "Murder City, USA" Makes Most Dangerous Cities List

Maxwell Payne, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Nov 20, 2007 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

So I spend most of the year living in Philadelphia,PA in one of the worst sections of the city up in North Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love is often times now called Murder City, USA and Killadelphia due to the insane number of murders that occur at a rate of sometimes more then 1 per day. As of November 1st there have been 339 murders committed within city limits and as of writing this on November 19th, there are more likely at least 14 more to add to that number. The violence in Philadelphia is completely out of control with most of the murders being committed with illegally obtained handguns. Most of the murders are drug related although many are innocent victims caught in the middle of gunfights. The streets of Philadelphia have become the Wild West urban style with gun fights, robberies, and stray bullets flying at all times of the day and night.

You'd be hard pressed in Philadelphia to not hear sirens at least a few times in a day and to be sure, the city hospitals and police force are kept more then busy every day. Many of these murders go unsolved and no one seems safe these days. A lot of Philadelphians seem to figure a lot of drug dealers and gang members are being murdered because of their own involvement in these things and thus it is the bad eliminating the bad. Sadly too many of the murders have been innocent bystanders, robbery victims, even police officers. It seems that there are people in Philadelphia who have no problem killing someone in cold blood for that new pair of basketball shoes, a few bucks, or over a pointless argument. I think many from this city are ashamed to call themselves Philadelphians because the low lifes of this city make those who live here seem like a bunch of gun toting thugs with itchy trigger fingers.

But what is to be done? What will be done? Thanks to useless organizations such as the NRA and other gun toting idiots, most laws pushing for harder gun laws have not been able to reach the light of day in most of the country, including Philadelphia. It seems the right to bear arms trumps the protection of innocent lives. Even as Philadelphia has instituted laws such as one that allows for an automatic 5 year jail sentence if one is found with a gun and drugs, the murder rate has done nothing but consistently rise. Its almost absurd to believe that cities like Detroit top the country's most dangerous cities, when we're seeing a murder a day or more on the streets of Philadelphia. Straw purchases (which are purchases in which an eligible person buys a legal gun for someone who isn't legally able to obtain or own one) have been recently under attack and now Philadelphia officials are punishing caught straw purchasers just as hard as those doing the shootings.

Of course a big challenge in combating all of the violence and murders has been the oddly popular idea of 'stop snitching', an idiotic marketing ploy created by rappers I'm sure of which many have never lived a street life, to protect one's back and their friends backs. The concept is that people won't ever talk to police about any crime and any knowledge they may have of the murders. Thus many of Philadelphia's murders go unsolved (except of course the murder of a police officer) and many murderers remain armed and on the streets. As the murder rate has risen, so has the attacks on police as well. It isn't uncommon in Philadelphia now to hear of police being shot at; in fact a few weeks ago there were 3 cops shot within a 24 hr period alone in addition to one being murdered in cold blood and at least 2 other murders.

The only solution in Philadelphia is to begin searching anyone and everyone who is suspected of gang activity, drug activity, or owning a weapon illegally. The same manpower that was put forth to catch the recent cop killer needs to be put to this task of taking guns off of the street and putting murderers away for life. Philadelphia hasn't lost all hope though as cash for guns campaigns have been somewhat successful, the stop snitching garbage has died down as more people realize they stand a greater chance of getting caught in the middle of a gunfight then being threatened for snitching, and a large group of men have begun work on forming a citywide band of volunteers who will patrol the streets in large groups at night to aid police in preventing crime. Philadelphia has also had it's share of bad solutions for this problem such as installing cameras in high crime areas which only ended up moving crime to less monitored areas.

While cities such as Detroit, Camden, and St. Louis may rank far higher in being dangerous as overall crime is higher, it would seem that Philadelphia is the most likely place where you might not get mugged, but you might catch a bullet.

Published by Maxwell Payne

I write to entertain you, or at least to inform you. View profile

Philadelphia, aka "Murder City, USA" Makes Most Dangerous Cities List

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