There were nine shooting incidents in Philadelphia over the weekend, only one of which resulted in a fatality. Most shootings in Philly occur in poor areas far removed from Center City. That was true this weekend, too, except for the one that took a life.
Homicide detectives are on South Street this morning investigating the overnight murder of a DJ who was shot and killed while returning home from a music gig.
The 36-year-old victim, whose identity police have not released yet, lived above a Haagen-Dazs ice cream parlor on the 200 block of South Street.
Police said two men rushed the victim from behind in an apparent robbery attempt as he was loading his gear back into his apartment.
This is in the Queen Village area of the city, just south of Society Hill. It’s not only a part of the city that I visit regularly, it’s one that attracts thousands of suburban visitors every weekend night.
Two weeks ago, a pharmacist at the CVS around the corner was shot on his way home from work. That shooting occurred near 4th and Pine Street, which is just two blocks north and a block and a half west of this weekend’s shooting.
There’s a megaton worth of difference between a shooting in the far North, far West, or Southwest of the City and one in the heart of the tourist industry. For one, people will demand answers about this shooting on South Street, while they will completely ignore the 22-year-old man who “was shot in the hip on the 2300 block of South 61st Street,” the 24-year-old man who “was shot in the leg in the area of 2nd and Cumberland Streets,” the 16-year-old boy who “was shot in the leg Saturday on the 5100 block of Irving Street,” the four shooting victims in East Germantown, and the 47-year-old man who “was shot in the leg on the 3400 block of North 9th Street.”
When respectable residents of Queen Village and Society Hill are being robbed, shot, and murdered, the mayor has a political problem that just doesn’t exist when people are being murdered elsewhere. Parents won’t let their kids visit the city. Businesses will lose money. The media will create pressure.
But the problem isn’t fully in the mayor’s control. The city cannot keep these guns out. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams (who is awesome) wants to nail anyone found with an illegal gun in the city with two years of jail time. He says that 85% of the 334 homicides in the city last year were committed with handguns, and not one of those guns was legally possessed.
Not one.
So, strict gun laws may reduce violence in the city but they certainly can’t reduce it enough. As long as there are lax laws elsewhere, and as long as straw dealers can supply the criminal element of the city with firearms, there is going to be a lot of shooting going on.
Yet, it’s only when the shooting bleeds out into supposedly “safe neighborhoods” that there is any political will to do something. We should be figuring out ways to reduce the violence in the neighborhoods where violence is expected. That’s the real tragedy, that we have neighborhoods where people dying in a hail of bullets isn’t even considered news. Where homicides and shootings are barely mentioned and no one follows up to see if justice is being done.
