In Philadelphia, a 'disturbing' black murder rate
With more than triple the US average of African-American homicides, the city is battling to protect kids from gunfire.
from the February 13, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
A nighttime oasis
At 10 o'clock on a bitterly cold night, a bundled-up Carolyn Walton unlocks the Dixon House Community Center in South Philadelphia. "I hope we don't get any kids tonight because it's too cold for any child to be out," she says.
Ms. Walton works for what's known as the Curfew Center. Along with other initiatives to combat youth violence, the center was set up at Dixon House by city and community members last July in this neighborhood of row houses.
The number of homicide victims between the ages of 10 and 17 had been growing steadily in recent years. By 2006, citywide, about 10 percent of the 406 homicide victims were younger than 18, according to the police department. In South Philly, 24 percent of homicide victims were under 18.
"Last summer, every night all night, you could hear gunfire," says Jean Gillen, the receptionist at the Curfew Center who lives on the next block. "These kids can get a gun faster than they can a pencil or a book."
After meetings with city officials, the community asked the police to start enforcing a curfew that had been ignored for decades. Mayor John Street agreed to enforce it, but only on one condition: that the community step up to help the police deal with violators. And so the idea of the Curfew Center was born.
"It has a twofold purpose: first, to get the kids off the streets and stop the mayhem, and then provide the kids and/or their families with supportive services," says Cheryl Weiss, executive director of Diversified Community Services, which runs Dixon House.
It's here that police bring curfew violators, and staff like Kareem Davis talk with them about why they're on the streets.
"A lot of the kids who come here are juniors and seniors in high school, and a lot of them want to go to college," says Mr. Davis. "But people in the schools don't know that, the parents may not, and the kids don't know to take the right courses to prepare for college."
The staff at the Curfew Center call parents to bring their kids home. If the parents come, they're interviewed in case they need services like job training. But when parents can't be contacted – whether they're out working, or partying – the center provides the kids plenty to eat and a room with cots to sleep. In the morning, the staff takes them to the Department of Human Services (DHS), the city's primary social-service agency.
On an average night, police bring in four or five teens. But when it first opened, the staff dealt with as many as 19 in one night. On that bitterly cold night last week, police did bring in two boys, ages 15 and 16, at 4:30 a.m. They were from New Jersey and said they'd missed the train home. Since no one could be reached to pick them up, they were brought to DHS in the morning.
Since the Curfew Center opened, the percentage of murder victims in South Philly under age 18 has dropped from 24 percent to about 15 percent, according to Inspector Stephen Johnson, commanding officer of Philadelphia's South Police Division. "We have made some significant strides," he says. "But we need to do much more."
Inspector Johnson would like to see the legislature impose more limits on who can carry a gun – a move he knows is controversial in a state with many rural areas. A decade ago, the city made it almost impossible to get a permit to carry a gun, he says. But gun advocates brought legal challenges, and in 1996, Philadelphia was required to abide by the same gun-control laws as the rest of the state – adding significantly to the number of guns on the street.
With more curbs on gun ownership, Johnson says, fewer guns would be in the hands of adults, and the trickledown effect to youths would also be lessened.
"You have people living in an intense urban area. You have so many disputes that would normally be resolved by talking or even by a fistfight," he says. "But you don't have that now. People feel omnipotent because they have a gun and they feel as though they don't have to back down in some scenarios."
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