With One Month Still Left in the Year, Blue Philadelphia Breaks 30-Year-Old Homicide Record
Homicide has skyrocketed in Philadelphia and, this week, hit a record high with only a month left in 2021.
CNN reported Friday that 500 people had been killed this year in the city.
Philadelphia had not seen this many homicides since 1990, when the crack cocaine epidemic was sweeping across America.
Then over the weekend, three more homicides occurred, WPVI-TV reported, making the 2021 homicide numbers in Philadelphia officially surpass those of 1990.
Even before the most recent deaths, many were predicting that 2021 would set a new record for homicides in the city.
“[T]he number of killings this year will be the highest since at least 1960, which is as far back as the Police Department said it kept statistics on homicides,” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Philadelphia officials have expressed horror at the rising numbers and violence that has plagued the city this year.
“Please stop shooting each other. Stop killing our community please,” City Council President Darrell Clarke said at a news conference, according to CNN.
“It’s terrible to every morning to get up and have to go look at the numbers and then look at the news and see the stories. It’s just crazy. It’s just crazy and this needs to stop,” Mayor Jim Kenney said, according to WPVI.
But Philadelphia’s officials and city government have blamed the uptick in violence and homicides on gun laws. The gun laws are not restrictive enough, the mayor has said, and he wants to pass laws which would make it harder for people to obtain firearms.
“There are people making money selling these guns, making these guns, and the legislature, not the people behind me, don’t care. They don’t care how many people get killed. It’s ridiculous,” Kenney said.
“And cities like Boston and New York that are not dealing with this problem the way we’re dealing with it, there are strict gun laws … we need to have some semblance of that.”
Kenney is a Democrat, just like New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio and Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu. However, despite Kenney’s assumption that New York City and Boston’s gun laws are helping decrease violence, these cities also had problems.
Though New York and Boston’s 2021 numbers are decreasing, that’s natural after the extraordinary uptick in crimes that both cities saw in 2020.
The New York Post reported that the number of shootings in New York City soared to 1,531 in 2020. It was a 97 percent increase from 2019’s 777 shootings. Murders also jumped to 462 in 2020, a 44 percent increase from the 319 NYC saw in 2019.
New York is now finally seeing a downward trend in 2021, but only after a very violent and deadly 2020.
Boston’s trends are very similar to New York’s: Homicides rose by double digits in the city, from 37 to 57, the Boston Globe reported. But after such an increase, Boston is finally seeing a decrease in 2021, according to WGBH.
Philadelphia, also had a very deadly 2020, with 499 homicides, according to data gathered by Kenney. Unfortunately, it appears the violence is only getting worse.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, all across America, there has been a massive uptick in violent crime and homicide.
The rising numbers have notably occurred in mostly Democrat-run cities. Former President Donald Trump noted this in September 2020, when he said that the 10 most dangerous cities in the U.S. are all run by Democrats. The BBC fact-checked him on that and discovered he was largely correct.
Al Jazeera reported that Chicago already had 649 people killed by mid-October. Houston has reported 339 homicides, while Washington, D.C., has had 183 so far.
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