Philadelphia Crime

Like many American cities, Philadelphia saw a gradual yet pronounced rise in crime in the years following World War II. Murders peaked in 1990 at 525, for a rate of 31.5 per 100,000. There were an average of about 400 murders a year for most of the 1990s. The murder count dropped in 2002 to 288, then surged four years later to 406. Out of the ten most populous cities in the United States in 2006, Philadelphia had the highest homicide rate at 28 per 100,000 people, though the number of murders decreased to 392 in 2007.

In 2004, there were 5,513.5 crimes per 100,000 people in Philadelphia. In 2005, Philadelphia was ranked by Morgan Quitno as the sixth-most dangerous among 32 American cities with populations over 500,000. Among its neighboring Mid-Atlantic cities in the same population group, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. were ranked second- and third-most dangerous cities in the United States, respectively, and Camden, New Jersey, a suburb across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, was ranked as the most dangerous city in the United States.

In 2006, Camden was the fifth-most dangerous city in the country, lower than its 2004 ranking, but still high for a city its size, while Philadelphia was ranked 29th.

On September 12, 2007, police commissioner Sylvester Johnson called on 10,000 African American men to patrol the streets to lessen crime. Johnson, who is black, set up "Call to Action: 10,000 Men, It's a New Day" in response to the city's disproportionate homicide rate of young African Americans. Dennis Muhammad, Nation of Islam official, and Mayor John F. Street supported the project. The program was to begin on October 21. The call was seen as a response to a widespread refusal by many African-Americans in Philadelphia to cooperate in police investigations.

Source of Article:

Wikipedia. (2008). Philadelphia. Retrieved May 16, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia#Crime