What Goes Up Still Goes Up

Philly just announced that its homicide rate, which exceeded 400 in 2006 and put the City of Brotherly Love at the top of the "Kill Baby Kill" list among the nation's 10 largest cities, just cleared the bar with only 392 killings in 2007. That's success??

Now that Nutter has won, appointed the former DC police chief as its new commish, we can say adios to the corrupt Street and impotent police commish Sylvester Johnson, who frankly didn't do shit about the carnage. Hopefully Nutter will fulfill his promise of bringing crime down. The question remains - how is he gonna do it?

The core issues remain - a lack of jobs (most of the killings are economically-related: robberies, drug dealing, and other related disputes), a lack of trust in the community between the police and citizens, black-on-black crime, and the creation on two Philadelphias - the properous white one and the economically-disadvantaged remainder of the city. With these issues still in play, and what appears to be an emerging recession on the horizon, the likelihood of more crime seems a real possibility.


So will stop-and-frisk (Nutter's solution) work? Can the new administration bring jobs to the inner-city community, and will those jobs sustain a livable wage that keeps pace with the cost of living? Can the drug trade be controlled (forget the fantasy of eliminating drug use, our resources need to focus on containment, not wasted on the impossible task of elimination) to reduce the violence associated with it? Can Philly create a culture, along the Rendell model, of economic opportunity for the whole city? Can the greater good be achieved over the interests of politicians and interest groups (i.e. the self-interest unions, lobbyists, and law firms interested in tapping the lucrative city bond business)?

Without positive answers to these questions, what goes up (the murder rate) will keep going up. Oh, by the way, HAPPY NEW YEAR.