As of yesterday, there have been 232 murders in Philadelphia this year. Since 2001, there have been more than 10,000 gunshot victims in Philly. That’s astounding, and that’s sad. CBS’s The Early Show is doing a series on the problems in Philly. Here’s the link. It includes several stories and video, and it’s fascinating and horrifying at the same time.
People have asked me why we at Charlotte magazine are doing a series on crime in Charlotte. (Plenty of people have thanked us, too.) One reason: we don’t want to become like Philly. As a city, Charlotte is different from Philly in many ways–people are choosing to move here and live here, and Charlotte has a prevailing sense of optimism. Philly has neither. That leads to desperation, which leads to crime. But Charlotte is also growing very quickly. As our series is demonstrating, we have problems with gangs, juvenile crime, and clogged courts. Our police department has some good ideas on how to combat crime (in fact, we seem to be much advanced beyond Philly’s department), but it may not be executing them properly. In short, we have a chance to make changes now to save us a lot of trouble and heartache later. I don’t think we’ll ever become like the Philadelphia of 2007, but let’s hope we never come close. —R.T.
