Philadelphia, Where are we going?

There has been a rash of violence in Center City Philadelphia, for those not familiar with the city that is downtown. The elevated train to Center City has seen three attacks in the past ten days. It is a concern. Two of the incidents involved groups of teens attacking single persons and the final was three men attacking a lone man. The first two happened at about 3:00 and 8:00 pm where the last was late at night. I understand the reality of living in a large urban area there is crime. Yet, there hadn't been daylight attacks on public transportation in my recent memory. I am sure that this will lead to an increased police presence in Center City. A perception of city hall being a dangerous place is simply not good for business. If visitors are afraid to visit the city it will affect the city revenues and they will do what is necessary to prevent any ill effects.

I think what gives me pause is not that there is violence on the train system. I mean things can happen any place and any time. I think what I am concerned about is the first two attacks. In both cases the attackers were groups of teens attacking adults in a random fashion. There is some fundamental disconnect that I just don't understand. Today life is different than it was when I was a teen, of this I am sure. That said, I can't imagine a set of circumstances under which the series of options in my head as a high school student would lead to "attack random person". I just can't get there. Maybe these kids don't think about the consequences. The first attack is a homicide so that is a murder charge the second is robbery and aggravated assault. From my time with a local district attorney's office, I can say that these are not the type of charges that the Commonwealth takes lightly. These young people are looking at multiple years behind bars for these random acts of violence, to get some sort of thrill (I guess that is the reason).

I certainly don't know the situation of the kids parents in this case. I am left wondering what is going on, especially in second attack. It happened at 8 pm. These teens were out at 8pm on a Wednesday night attacking a woman on her way home, this was 6 boys and 6 girls. Shouldn't these kids been doing other things on a school night? This confuses me. I do understand poverty, I grew up with the kind of poverty that makes most people uncomfortable. I also think that condoning violence as an outlet to poverty is the wrong reaction to the issue. So what do we do. More cops and more jails? I certainly wish that was not the answer.

I believe that we do need more police. In this city it has been shown that this does work. However, this does not treat the real problem. The youth of our city, maybe our nation - I don't know, have less of a problem with committing acts of violence than is comfortable. It's bad. Our city seems to be losing some of its humanity. It is sad.

We sit back and look at the violence in places like Kenya, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur and we think how sad. How could such things happen? There must be something different about those places: there isn't and we are not that far off.