Contrarian: Murder Doesnt Matter
The vast majority of big-city killings are not “senseless.” They are unfortunate, but they are purposeful. There’s usually a gunman settling a score or resolving some financial dispute he really couldn’t take to small claims court. Most victims of street shootings actually survive, but a police inspector once told me the cops rarely make arrests because victims cover for their attackers. The yearly fluctuation in homicides might depend less on police tactics and more on whether the criminals had good aim.
Still, when Philadelphia’s annual murder rate gets toted up each January, the Mayor and the police commissioner perform a familiar charade: Any decline from the previous year proves the brilliance of their newest strategies. Any increase gets drowned in excuses. Mayor Street actually claimed during his 2003 reelection campaign that a warm-weather streak of fatal shootings meant that his Safe Streets program was working. Drug dealers, he said, were fighting over diminishing turf. It’s a reasonable assumption, but don’t expect the Mayor ever to entertain the corollary — that a drop in homicides this year would mean the cops had taken pressure off the drug corners.
By the end of 2003, Philadelphia’s homicide total was up by 60 over 2002, and the papers all bemoaned the surge in violence. The number of robbery victims in 2003 also went up, by 748, but that fact went completely unreported. And yet the rate of robberies — predatory stickups and sidewalk muggings — is the real test of how safe ordinary people feel in their neighborhoods. Almost 9,800 people in Philly were jumped or threatened for their money by a violent stranger last year. Only 327 were murdered, and 90 percent of them died at the hands of people they knew. Robbery, unlike murder, is a career. Robbers tend to keep doing it until they get caught. They also get bolder and more violent with practice. Most killers start out as robbers. To preserve the city as a decent place to live, it’s probably more important to solve muggings than murders.
But death is finite and terrifying. Murder is the ultimate social transgression. We flock to movies and bookstores for murder mysteries, not mugging mysteries. For the cops and the media, murders are also more reliably documented than other violent crimes. That’s no small thing in a city where police historically erased robberies by logging them as “disturbances.” But it also suggests that murders count the most just because they’re easiest to count.
Robberies inched up yet again in 2004. The media took no notice, and there’s no evidence of a fresh response from City Hall or police headquarters. Action News will lead tonight with a pointless tale of a bad guy shot dead by some badder guy who was mad at him, while thousands of subway riders will go unwarned of vicious assaults and robberies by kids who attend the city’s disciplinary high schools. The cops publicize “Philadelphia’s 10 Most Wanted” (most of whom have probably fled town) but leave us clueless about the real dangers lurking in our neighborhoods. The Baltimore police put all their crime data right up online, so citizens can recognize trouble when they see it, and maybe even help catch a crook or two. Philadelphia police have the same computerized crime data, but they’ve got no plan to share it online.
