Killadelphia

“Killadelphia” is what they called it. That was the name Nightline, the show on ABC, had called Philadelphia, the 2nd largest city on the Eastern Seaboard and city of brotherly love the other night. Apparently they had gotten this moniker from an article written by the Philadelphia Daily News reporter, Dave Davies who had commented on the status the city had achieved by having the 5th highest murder rate per capita in the country.

In 2007, there were 392 people killed due to robberies, gang violence or other reasons. And this was down from the 406 killed the previous year. The show said that things had gotten so bad that lessons and skills doctors and surgeons had learned from trying to save lives in Philadelphia had been taken to Iraq so that lives could be saved there.

The city’s new mayor, Michael Nutter was inaugurated January 7th and one of the first things he did was to declare a “crime emergency” for the city. Well, I’m not sure what that is unless it means the city is going to go back to the good old days of when Frank Rizzo was mayor and Civil Rights and Human Rights were just buzz words that people tried to say as they were beaten over head by a policeman’s night stick. But with the incoming police Charles Ramsey from DC, a city with an even higher murder rate, we can only sit back and watch what measures they take to try and stem the tide.