- 'An End to the Southern Strategy, But No Post-Racial America' says David Love
- "A Question of Place": An essay on the power of community
- Just Equally Speaking….
- Eagles owe Philadelphia the 8 million it needs to keep libraries open
- who would like to see Verizon offer cable TV in Phila?
- Council Committee Passed the Freeze
- Carol Campbell Passes Away
- My first trip to the public library
- Fight digital exclusion
- What if half of Philadelphia didn't have roads?
On Murders, and Blaming the Victim
Submitted by DebtorsPrison on Wed, 07/18/2007 - 9:56pm.
I share the despair and anger of many here over the number of murders here in Philadelphia. I also was particularly affected by Saturday's murder of a 14 year old bicyclist at 9th and Federal. Partly because, yes, this is just around the corner from me. Partly because of the fact that it took place alongside a playground filled with children on a summer afternoon. Partly because of the randomness of it, that such a minor altercation could so swiftly lead to a deadly conclusion.
On the other hand, it also angers me that this particular murder gets so much more media play largely because it took place in a 'good' neighborhood. Yes, part of the media attention also stems from the circumstances, but in truth a lot of the gunfire deaths in this city, in 'bad' neighborhoods, are also shockingly random, involve bystanders, and explode from minor altercations. No, I fully believe that neighborhood is the prime factor in the media play.
I might as well throw in my anger over guns as well. Yeah, the NRA types love to say 'guns don't kill people, people kill people.' But if the 18 year old driver of that car had not had a gun at his side, it's very doubtful his road rage would have led to murder. People kill people quickly, easily and impulsively with guns.
But what especially spurs me to this blog entry are a pair of articles in the Inquirer. The first was Andrew Maykuth's front-pager in Monday's paper, Shooting victims often are violators:
A new study by Philadelphia criminologists says that an increasing number of people shot in the city have had previous brushes with the law.
Twenty-four percent of shooting victims last year had pending criminal court cases against them at the time they were shot, according to a report by researchers with the Philadelphia Adult Probation and Parole Department. In 2002, 18 percent of shooting victims had "open bills" against them.
Thirty percent of gun-homicide victims last year had pending criminal cases at the time they were killed, up from 20 percent in 2003, according to the report.
What the article seems to be saying is, hey, a lot of these murders are just the bad guys shooting each other, so it's nothing to worry about. Hey, let 'em keep knocking each other off and the problem will take care of itself.
Did I say seems to be saying that? How about almost explicitly says that:
"It's not happening everywhere, and it's not happening to everybody," said Ellen Kurtz, director of research for the probation department.
While not wanting to minimize the killings, Kurtz said: "Many of these people were not choirboys on their way to church when they got shot."
Funny thing is, the article ultimately has some very good things to say, but not until the last third of the article, after the jump to the inside page--in other words, not until many casual readers will stop reading. The article describes how the city is using this data to better focus its anti-violence efforts:
"Now I know who's getting shot and who's doing the shooting," [Robert Malvestuto, chief probation and parole officer] said. "Only a small number of people are doing this. We can go ask for additional resources to target and supervise people in additional ways."
The Adult Probation and Parole Department this year created the Strategic Anti-Violence Unit, which will target about 75 offenders thought to be the most likely to commit homicide, based on predictive modeling done by the University of Pennsylvania's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology. The unit's clients receive cognitive behavioral therapy, job counseling, drug treatment, and home visits.
"By focusing on the cases most likely to commit the most serious offense - homicide - the APPD now has access to what may be the most advanced risk-assessment tool in the country," Lawrence W. Sherman, the director of Penn's criminology program, told a congressional hearing this year.
So yes, the Inquirer article ultimately good things to say, hopeful strategies to bring to our murder-plagued city. But I DO NOT like the fact that the lead paragraphs of the article instead seemed to play to a blame the victim, don't worry, it's only bad people getting shot viewpoint.
The second article that bothered me was an Op-Ed by John Lott and Maxim Lott in yesterdays Inquirer, entitled Guns don't kill people, Phila. does. For the most part, it's a typical anti-gun control rant, but it did offer up this interesting statistic:
It would appear that Philadelphia's problems have something to do with Philadelphia, not the lack of more gun control coming out of Washington or Harrisburg.
Could it be that Philadelphia simply isn't doing such a great job at law enforcement? Since 2001, Philadelphia's arrest rate for murder has fallen by 20 percent, according to the Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Reporting System. Nationally, and among cities with more than 250,000 people, arrest rates have remained virtually unchanged. It isn't so surprising that Philly's murder rate has gone up more than in other cities. After all, criminals are getting away with murder in Philadelphia.
Well, I'm sure the reasons for so many murders going unsolved can be debated endlessly, and the Op-Ed authors seem to attribute it to fewer police.
But for me, after reading Andrew Maykuth's article, I have to wonder to what extent the police share this mindset, that as long as it's just bad guys killing each other off, well, let it be, makes the job easier in the end.
As for the occasional collateral damage, innocent bystanders and children being blown away, well, I guess that's just the price you pay. And as for tackling the socioeconomic issues of poverty, education and racism underlying the violence...good luck with that.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Coverage
On another messageboard I read someone's unrelenting deconstruction of the Baltimore papers' coverage of their gun violence. The level of coverage, the language used, how it reveals or obscures who and where and why people are being shot.
Every time I read this careful analysis, I want to see that level of attention here, for Philadelphia. There's a lot of handwringing about violence, sure. But Dan's other thread recognizing the media's responsible coverage of issues during the mayoral election raises this point for me: they're falling short covering the violence, and coverage matters.
Along with the handwringing the articles feature halfbaked grab-bags of sociological theories about crime. But this is an area where detailed and accurate reporting could crucially help in two ways: raising the level of public concern beyond fatalistic number-counting AND providing good raw material for analyzing the crime wave.
I don't mean to just finger-point at the papers. We have to demand it. But it should be demanded: the level of discourse about crime here should be raised. Articles about incidents should have details, and accurate and specific ones. Each murder. And the sociological analysis should advance beyond maybe it's because of A and maybe it's B from the usual suspects. We shouldn't be filling in the blanks on a narrative we think we know, we should be actively engaged in figuring out what the narrative is.
Jennifer
two points...
1. How many YPPers actually purchase a copy of the newspaper on a regular basis, let alone have a subscription?
It seems to me that it is not fair to criticize the newspapers for failing to have in-depth coverage of the murder problem considering not only is the average newspaper reader is not likely interested in this kind of stuff and therefore not likely to pay for it, the nature of the medium (a daily news cycle) makes it very difficult to create this kind of coverage.
All that said, I would disagree with the premise that not enough has been written about this issue. There have been many really good articles written that discuss the violence problem and analyze its causes. The only problem is philly.com's archive policy and its non-existent search capabilities makes it impossible to review what has been written.
2. Newspapers are not required to operate for the benefit of the "public interest," whereas television stations are.
Unlike newspapers which owe no obligations to the general public, television stations, as part of the FCC licensing renewal process, are supposed to demonstrate how they are operating in the public interest. Not only do local stations distort our elecoral process by profiting enormously off of out-of-control campaign spending, I'd argue that they completely fail on the "public interest" side of their licensing requirements by not addressing any real news issues.
Take for example the FOX news coverage lampooned by DMac today - when Fox News is running segments about ColeHamelsFacts.com (http://willdo.philadelphiaweekly.com/archives/2007/07/its_not_dancing.ht...), I'd say they are the ones letting down the public. The broadcast spectrum is owned by the public and we should demand that we get more than this pathetic fluff in return for Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC making use of it.
So, if peeps are going to rip our local media for failing to dig deep enough into the murder crisis,
I suggest we toss our bombs (metaphorical of course) at our local TV stations.
P.S. Here's to hoping that that this comment doesn't result in a bunch of personal attacks.
______________________________
Phillyville
Hi DeWitt!
I can't speak for the YPP readers I don't know, but I read philly.com (so the Inquirer + Daily News) every day with the random exception. And I read it just for local news, since sadly they've had to cut most of their good foreign correspondents. Anyway, I click through to News/Local so basically I see all the local coverage of both the papers. (I'm pretty sure others here do too, since for better or worse a ton of the threads link up to philly.com stories. We pretty shamelessly cannibalize their reporting, including here, right?)
But yeah, it is hard to see the big picture without the archive, though I exploit the free Lexis subscription a lot (sucks that it is coming to an end).
My point's not that there is no coverage. Very specifically, I think the content of that coverage matters, and that there is more handwringing (including large volume of reference to the numbers of deaths, sensationalized stories where there's a hook) than there is specific grounded information about the individual shootings that seem to lack those hooks OR nuanced sociological analysis. Lots of articles, lots of the same bullshit references to NYC's quality of life measures and counter-quotes from people worried about civil liberties and not a lot of serious discussion of causality or engagement with, say, other cities' media's analysis when they've faced high gun violence rates or when they've considered or analyzed similar crime policy changes.
There sure may not be a legal duty binding newspapers but the writers do serve a civic function and I definitely believe they want to serve it well. None of this is to castigate the papers; simply I think there is a real hole here in the coverage as we've been sort of stagnating at this high gun violence rate for longer than anyone had hoped.
They may not provide it on their own, if you're right and there's really no market with the average reader (I don't know, people like detailed crime writing, even if it isn't obviously sensationalized it's sort of inherently somewhat sensational). They are naturally inclined to make decisions reflecting their ideas of profitability. But readers don't have to be limited in what they ask from the papers in that way.
Jennifer
DN/Philly Confidential
Amazing how the timing of certain things work out...
In today's DN, Simone Weichselbaum, writes an article that addresses many of the points raised here (http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20070720_Simple_truth__More_guns__...):
"I am deeply concerned about this counting of dead bodies," she said. "It makes us feel powerless."
It's a very good article that people interested in this thread should definitely read. The only thing missing from the article is a h/t to Johnny Cash who evidently had this whole gun violence thing figured out at least 50 years before all the fancy Penn criminologists did.
______________________________
Phillyville
sort of...
The article is covering a forum in response to a crisis that the Daily News declared.
There's no doubt that gun violence has gotten out of control over the past couple of years and that homicides have been on the rise, but it hasn't been a 0 to 60 acceleration.The reality is that the Daily News has always sold more papers when it is being hysterical and so it has created a campaign to talk daily about the idea of random, senseless violence that is rooted in some sort of cultural misprogramming (like our kids have gone bad).
Whereas as I think we all know the availability of illegal guns, the drug war and a really, really crappy economy and education system are the real culprits in this drama. Those roots causes have received little coverage directly (actual connections to gun violence) and even more so through less direct stories (little coverage of social justice work, outside the party political efforts, etc).
The point I think Jennifer makes earlier is that the news media has not been very interested in or responsive to the need of real people to figure out concretely why this is all happening and concretely what they can do about it.
So, today's DN article is great, and as I said before the DN and all the print papers are way better than TV, but I am less than thrilled with how badly a real exploration of the idea of an increase in violence has been discussed by all of us Philadelphians.
PS
I don't mean to ignore the point about TV. But good lord, I think that is something of a black hole, or a mountain of Sisyphus, or whatever.
Jennifer
Media Monitoring
The problem with this kind of discussion is it too often based on personal anecdotes. Last fall and leading up to the primary season, I was volunteering for Media Tank on their Media Monitoring project which sought to quantify just exactly the news covers.
I am not sure where the project now stands (I excused myself when I found myself with not enough free time having been caught up volunteering for Damon's campaign) but the biggest problem was always a lack of committed volunteers who were interested in getting this done (watching hours of television coverage and assiduously reading the paper every day) to determine what exactly the news covers.
Anyway, if the project is still ongoing, and there are people out there who are interested in determining just what the news covers, people should try to hook up with the project.
Here is the website: http://www.mediatank.org/Events/localvoices/monitoring.html
______________________________
Phillyville
Mediatank!
They're good and well-meaning. I don't know exactly how their mission has evolved since my former roommate helped co-found before he decamped for New York and putting on cool stuff like this (in case you'll be in NYC sometime soon and are looking for awesome stuff to do). Anyway back then they had a broad mission that involved a lot of education, specifically to make people more critical consumers of media including news.
I don't know if they are working on a crime-news-specific project or could, but yeah that's what I think we need. A good website focussed just on this, and it could also have the function of helping circulate community experience/input. Baltimore has a bunch, discussed in this article including this mapping one, which tries to go beyond what information is available from released police statistics, and this more general one, described as "something of a virtual clubhouse for people interested in local crime".
Basically I want some website doing analysis of coverage, and I want some sort of ongoing feature--from a weekly, a website, or a daily--that gets closer to what the Kia Gregory article does and features details of each killing. Again, details about the who (on both sides), the where, the how, and the why (to the best we can tell from investigating deeper). Details that make these crimes real, and in the most accurate and non-distorted way possible. All the things you want to know and wonder about when you read those two-sentence things or those combined articles summing up the three murders that happened in X weekend.
Jennifer
The Problem Isn't the Press
It's you, Jennifer!
You're not SUPPOSED to want to know the specifics of who got killed, where, when, and how. Not unless the victim fell in, shall we say, an unexpected neighborhood.
Certainly you're not supposed to care about every single murder if you're a browser of the front page of Philly.com or a reader of the Inquirer.
You'd know that by looking at Philly.com's front page. Click on Local News.
Oh, that's right, there is no Local News to click on, on Philly.com's front page. Then click on Philadelphia News section instead...but don't look too hard for it.
It's not there either.
Starting to get the picture?
Inquirer readers will have a similar problem finding much information about the area's last few murder victims, but not because these murders went uncovered. They were written about and--in this Writing Professor's opinion--written about pretty darn well in articles accessible from the Inky's website. It's just that (except for one paragraph by the seemingly overworked Joseph Gambardello), they weren't covered by the Inquirer at all.
They were covered--and in my estimation covered well--by the Daily News. Only.
Take Klever Varela, a 53 year old native of Ecuador, who was discovered by his daughter Jessica Tuesday morning, after his throat was cut, at his place of business, the Sabor Latino grocery store on Indiana Avenue in Fairhill. Damon C. Williams' article seems to me more than adequate. Coupled with the unnamed photographer's shot of Jessica, it is even very, very moving. Williams even contextualizes Varela's murder with that of a previous owner of the same store a few years ago(!) and that of 21 year old Terrell Adams, who was killed at 3rd and Indiana on the Fourth of July after an argument over fireworks. It's all meaningful, sympathetic to the neighborhood: good solid humane journalism.
It just won't ever be seen by the vast majority of readers of Philly.com and the Inquirer.
The murders of Kwok Wai-Ho in Oxford Circle last Wednesday, and 13 year old Jahmir Ricks on Sunday are similarly well-chronicled by Cristine Olley and Stephanie Farr, respectively. Joseph Kaczmarek's photograph of Ho's family is quietly devastating.
I compared these murder stories to the last few chronicled in Baltimore, since Jennifer mentioned that city's press. Certainly the deaths of Stephen Brandon Sr. and the unnamed men who fell in Belair-Edison and in Central Park Heights will probably mean less to readers, as they are all given more or less the same swift treatment by the Sun's Gus G. Sentementes, who seems to be Baltimore's Joseph Gambordello, the overworked guy who has to cover every murder. He does however dutifully list in each first paragraph the number of each murder towards the year's total, either a de-personalizing or helpful tactic, depending on your point of view. The Inky's and People Paper's frequent printing of the year's murder totals in a box seems to render this trope superfluous on this side of the DelMarVa peninsula.
What's different though is that these murders were at least (and in some cases very least) covered by the region's one major newspaper, The Baltimore Sun. And while it may not be easy to find them on the Sun's front page, at least there is a Baltimore County link to click on.
So in the Tale of these Two Cities, one message is that Philly's media is reading the Mason-Dixon line in reverse. We're the ones suffering from segregation.
It's not even a City/Suburbs thing between the Inquirer and the Daily News anymore. Poor young Mr. Ricks died in Lansdowne, on a beautiful street of giant rowhomes where I used to ride my bike in my Upper Darby childhood, one of the few streets in Delaware County that can rival the great rowhouse streets of West Philly for pure fin de siecle grandeur.
What separates the People Paper and the Not-People Paper seems to be a tale of two old things that separate media too often: race and class.
And while I'll happily go to bat for our local writers who cover the city's murders, I think another Upper Darby native, Brian Tierney, could do a better job of making that good coverage more accessible to area readers.
Looking forward to seeing you all at the PHILLY FOR CHANGE PICNIC July 29 @ Clark Park
Yeah, I think the Daily News gives more
Just more. More depth, more fabric of the story.
Maybe I'm reading you or the site wrong, but I am pretty sure that the sub-page for local news collates both papers' coverage (maybe it's a trick to find it--not off the front page, but via two steps through the sidebar). Anyway there'll be a portion at the top for 'updates', but as you scroll down they list in separte blocks Inquirer stores, then Daily News, then AP for Pennsylvania, etc. I definitely try to see both, because of the difference in coverage you highlight.
It's the Sun's coverage, though maybe extensive, that the people I've been talking to in Baltimore are intensively critical of in terms of it's framing of the murder stories and it's alleged obsfucation of the accurate details of location and context, again allegedly due to their assumptions about the interests/fears/prejudices of their readers. This is all secondhand though--I'll definitely admit to not having as much time to comb through our coverage, much less Baltimore's, as I'd like.
Jennifer
a good example
Last summer, an article appeared in the paper appeared that i s very similar to this ABC 6 summation of the story.
So, a quick read of this story when it appeared in the paper would have been crime is one rise, man takes out vigilante justice. If you didn't know Center City or the Gayborhood well, this might make sense.
Now, I am not making any accusations, but most people don't sit in cars at 11th and Pine 3 AM unless they are looking for sex. There is clearly more to this story than would meet the eye. Yet the first reports of this incident in the Daily News, were written in a style that slyly approving of the vigilante who took a robber down. Only when a community meeting was called about the incident did the DN begin to explore the motives behind the killing.
Beyond this anecdote, i could never really reconcile the Daily News' outrage about the murder rate in early 2006 when that same paper had endorsed Lynne Abraham in 2005. I mean crime and violence are intimately linked to the DA's office, and yet the DN had endorsed a DA whose conviction rate and inability to find resources to deal with illegal gun sales were well documented.
Of course, print media is consumed by far fewer Philadelphians than TV and there is no doubt that our TV media does a really crappy job of giving any depth to stories about murder or violence.
Despite the level of interest and concern expressed by so many of us about violence, you'll note that there is no Legacy Project idea that has been submitted on it. We had a small group session on the topic at the PFC MeetUp and they had a really hard time coming up with anything concrete that Mayor and Council could do in the next six months.
I think this is the real issue with media coverage of murders and violence: there's been no arc. I have not seen any attempt to report and investigate on the very concrete policy solutions that could be achieved in a timely fashion to deal with the problem. In fact, the DN has repeatedly called for the resignation of Commissioner Johnson because he has dared to say that he can only apply band-aids to the situation without support from all the other parts of city, state and federal government than the ones that "fight crime."
A good example (of what's missing)
There are so many stories like that, with so much in between the lines.
And I think even in the more "banal" cases, where we think we figured out the narrative (say, two youngish black men at X street corner in X bad neighborhood, the reader fills in the drugs-robbery-argument blank) I think there we benefit from knowing those details that either confirm or complicate the facts we're basing our support for various policy decisions on. (And then there's just an ethical imperative when people die to really acknowledge each death, for their and their communities' sakes.)
This is what I was trying to inarticulately get at, and Ray's invocation of historical editorial support for Lynn Abraham helps. I don't think it is okay, this late in the game, for the papers to throw around the sociological half-truths about why this is happening, what policies should be adopted, are on deck, or have already been tried. There's a huge opportunity here for real good, engaging reporting, that would also serve a huge civic purpose.
Jennifer
This is a goood post. I
This is a goood post.
I want to address or expand on one point. It does not bother me that a murder like that of Law or Thomas Faheem-Childs gets more play than what is the papers purported to be the "standard victim." Honestly, I feel terrible that anyone's child is killed, but there is something about the murder of Law or Childs, or the shooting of an innocent kid by a stray bullet.
For me it is that they did not create a situation that would result in their being the victim of crime. They have no control over poverty and other socioeconomic issues. They haven't had a chance to "beef" with someone. They haven't disrespected someone. They are just kids on their way to school, playing with their friends or sitting with their parents. These are things we all do or have done at some time. They are common, decent behaviors in which most of the law-abiding world partakes. I can more easily relate to these circumstances than the alternative. I can imagine having a child (or younger cousin) playing on his bike with friends and being that child. Or, having a child who gets caught in the middle of something unintended for him. Granted, I don't live in one of those places, but niether did the cold-blooded murder Charles Meyers. He grew up in working-class South Philly like I did. He could have shot anyone's child who got in his way that day. It just so happened he and Law crossed paths.
Honestly, it is a red flag that children can't have a childhood in America. And, I do not feel remotely bad about my symapthy going in one direction more than the other.
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
Your uneven sympathy can be justified
but that doesn't mean uneven coverage necessarily is. If that was so (and apologies in advance for unfairly putting words in your mouth) you've resigned yourself to news coverage simply playing on our prejudices, sympathies and fears. Sometimes it should be challenging those.
I think the violence epidemic is an example of our expectations needing to be challenged. We can't really form any opinions--about how we should feel about the incidents or more importantly what the solutions should be--based on two-sentence summaries of shooting that lack all sorts of specifics.
Functionally, what we need from the news is accurate representation of who, where, why and how people are being shot. Even, thorough, treatment of shootings will take us much further in that direction.
That's the news in its reporting function. Otherwise, it's entertainment. Morbid entertainment, but entertainment.
Jennifer
I'm sorry, but I disagree with your take.
Didn't the paper try and tell us who, where, why and how people are being shot by reporting on the characteristics of a large proprotion of the victims AND killers.
It does not come as a suprise to many Philadelphians to learn that, by and large, shooters are repeat offenders. Further, it isn't shocking that many of the victims have had run-ins with the law. I thought that by reporting this fact, the news took a bold step in showing people in places like Rittenhouse or Chestnut Hill that there is a problem and short term solutions must focus on a segment of the population most likely to kill and be killed . . .
Then Law was killed. That is news for all the reasons I said. It is worthy news. Because if a kid like that can be killed, randomly, than so could your kid or your neighbors kid. That doesn't play on fears. That is reality and, it is scary.
How would you have liked the news to report the murder of a "good kid" versus the reporting of dealer wherever and whenever?
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
To clarify-- I disagree with
To clarify--
I disagree with you perception of the coverage--not your ultimate point about coverage. If that makes sense.
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
Yes it absolutely does play on fears
and distorts the real risk and problem.
(But I'm talking about the coverage cumulatively, not pulling apart the single article or criticizing it's acknowledgment of the characteristics of the shooting or shot population. Though those quotes could have maybe been more politic, which I think is part of what prompted the original post.)
Jennifer
Moving beyond the killers and killed
Beyond the people killing and being killed, I would like to see a little more coverage of what life is like in these neighborhood's that are being held hostage by crime. There are a lot of innocent people who are scared to leave their house or talk to police because drug dealers control their block. I am interested in hearing those stories and so far I don't think that has happened. The impact of the murder/crime/gun epidemic is much larger than just people being killed. We all know that these things are only happening in a small number of neighborhoods and there are a lot of people impacted beyond just perpetrators and victims.
---
Check out my blog!
Excellent Point, Ben.
Truthfully, I couldn't agree with you more. And, to jump back into the mayoral race, I think that is reason #1 why Nutter's crime plan was attractive to so many people--because it conveyed a sense of urgency that people wanted to hear.
Just my take.
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
You're Half Right
The other half is that Nutter's crime plan was attractive to people who did not live in the areas that will be affected by it. Nutter won the five most affluent parts of Philly. He didn't win my neighborhood.
If Chestnut Hill residents were the ones who could be expected to be harrassed by police, we'd have a very different election.
In the end, rich Philadelphians decided that seeing our rights abridged was worth it to assauge their guilt over the bad news in bad newspapers.
And that is why we see dominant coverage of folks killed in areas with lower crime rates. I went to high school close by where Law was killed, and there's no question that it's a much safer neighborhood than one which will fall under Nutter's Code 10 emergency. So the thought process is easy to understand. When guilt is not enough, throw in a touch of fear. If you can't fix our neighborhoods, the thought process goes-- and it *will* be harder to fix the neighborhoods with Nutter's support for TIF and his plan to cut social services-- at least contain the crime within them.
Just for the record --
Just for the record -- Nutter also won Point Breeze, Strawberry Mansion, Allegheny West, and all of West and Southwest Philadelphia. Essentially, Nutter and Knox split North Philly, while Nutter won every other low-income, high-crime neighborhood (in addition to the higher income neighborhoods outside of S. Philly and the NE, which went for Knox and Brady).
Know What I'd Like to See?
First coverage of what it's like to live in these neighborhoods-- mine, for example-- and then coverage of what it's like after living in these neighborhoods is criminalized.
I live in East Tioga, and as rough a neighborhood as it is now, I don't want to be living here when the declaration of a Code 10 emergency makes my area unlivable.
I think a lot of the confusion toward what it's like living where I do comes from a lack of understanding of how difficult it is to get around the obstacles of not being able to easily identify violators and not being able to trust police with the authority to make that decision.
Not the beginning and end of what we need
But this is one of the only articles I've read that I felt really put the reader there and forced empathy or recognition (because of its total groundedness in specificity).
His Best Shot: Temple University Hospital’s trauma outreach coordinator Scott Charles wants to do everything for young gunshot victims. Keeping them from returning to the emergency room is a good start. by Kia Gregory
Jennifer
Kia Gregory is my hero
I think, more than any other journalist, Kia Gregory has covered crime and poverty in a way that makes sense. I always look forward to her articles and I think other reporters should absolutely follow her lead. She really sets the standard for reporting on these issues.
---
Check out my blog!
If I remember right
I didn't agree with her take on the Nutter plan, and I think she is sometimes hamstrung by being a columnist and dealing necessarily in anecdotes and generalities---
But I totally agree that her continued focus on the problem and the people touched by it has been really important. And I think when you look at her more substantive work, like that cover article, you really wish more writers were taking the really obvious cue to delve deeper.
Jennifer
Great Discussion
I wish I had more time to write a thorough addition to this discussion, but I actually have an appointment at 2:30 with the director of the criminology program at Penn. I want to pick his brain on his take on our problem and possible solutions. I am glad to read that so many others on this blog are sincerely concerned with this tragedy. Our collective challenge is to shape public opinion and policy to make real change.
I just wanted to agree that Kia and the Philadelphia Weekly have consistently put in the time to educate us in more ways than just reporting on the horse race aspects of crime.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
— Margaret Mead
Seth
Access to Information
You know, one of the things about the Law murder is that reporters had access instantly to a huge amount of information. They knew the identity of the victim, had identified and found the killer, and a police officer had witnessed the murder before making the arrest, and was able to tell the news media exactly how and apparently why the killing had happened. Since it happened in the afternoon, they were also able to interview relatives, neighbors, etc., to get context for the story and bios for the victim and the killer before going to press/reporting on the evening news.
Coverage of most other murders usually only tells you the location where the body was found, the approximate time of the killing, and what "number" of homicides the city's reached -- which drives me nuts. Sometimes the victim hasn't even been identified. Reporters are usually running just with what the police know or are willing to disclose, what they can glean from phone calls, and relatives and neighbors who are often understandably less willing to talk. And if the story the next day is another murder, it gets bumped from everyone's memory, often even before a suspect or motive is produced.
Which is one reason why long-form, extended coverage journalism like Gregory's at the PW is so important -- because the reporter goes back to the neighborhood and gets the details that the initial reporting were unable or unwilling to get the first time around.
Philly Confidential
while the site is not updated quit as often as I'd like, the folks over at Philly Confidential do a great job filling in the back story to what doesn't make the paper. Their most recent post (http://blogs.phillynews.com/dailynews/crime/2007/07/behind_the_85_shots_...) tells of the difficulty they had covering the 85 shot fiasco down in Point Breeze. Shrift's observations are in stark contrast to the problems Simone faced trying to cover this murder.
Some of the interesting observations:
"This phenomenon seems to occur when a Philadelphia cop shoots a well-liked neighborhood resident. Usually, only a handful of people see the incident take place. But, somehow, within minutes the whole community claims to have seen the event. They then swear to local media that they are telling the truth. In the Taney Street case, a bevy of "witnesses" told PC that white cops were firing at Butter while screaming racial epithets. Some brazen cops even reloaded their Glocks to continue firing on the dying man, these people said. Before PC drove out to South Philly to hear the stories, she made sure to check in with a handful of police officials to learn their facts of what took place. She was told that none of the seven cops were white and none of them reloaded to continue to shoot."
another:
"Cops complained that when an officer shoots a person the whole neighborhood is ready to go on-record to tell the media what they saw. But when a thug kills a regular ole’ civilian no one wants to speak up. Interestingly enough, the department sorta did the same thing. Most of the time, when a Philadelphian is victimized, police release some sort of information.. Yet after the Taney Street drama, officials had little to say."
Maybe if enough people start visiting Philly Confidential, they'll feel compelled to update it on a slightly more regular basis. From this thread, it seems people are definitely interested in their perspective.
______________________________
Phillyville
I think they're complimentary
Well, a police shooting raises different issues. But the point's well-taken. Misinformation and obfuscation, regardless of the source, affects coverage of shootings as much as a lack of information altogether.
P.S.: I read Phillyville when it first started, but stopped subscribing to the RSS feed when they stopped updating the site. I'm a big believer in the idea that blogs can compliment the regular news cycle by stretching stories out, and keeping them alive, in addition to sometimes being first to break/publish news, and covering stories that bigger outlets won't.