Extra Credit, Missed Blog Post #3, Statistics

            The murder rate in the city of Philadelphia is in my eyes the greatest problem the city needs to deal with year in and year out, especially when children are involved. I found an article from March of this year, 2011, that addressed the problem of the increased number of murders in 2011 in comparison with previous years. At that point in the year, fifty six people had already been killed. This was the highest number of murders since 2007, when Mayor Nutter had promised to decrease the number of homicides in half within five to seven years.

            In this article, multiple statistics are displayed, comparing homicide rates of this year compared to previous years. However this article fails to show in depth detail (no detail actually), in regards to how the statistics were acquired and what went into the numbers. The article mentions nothing about children and the tragedies that children have been the victims of, which I believe should be addressed before anything else. The writers also talked with criminal justice professors at Temple University who displayed no concern and believed that the city should only be alarmed if the murder rate continued on its track until the final months of the year. The article describes how under Mayor Nutter homicide had dropped twenty two percent and violent crime had dropped thirteen percent from 2007 to 2010. Again, the whereabouts and how the numbers were decided upon are completely left out of the article. Instead of trying to go out and decrease the numbers, the deputy police commissioner talked in the article about how the police should not be blamed because thugs are the ones starting all the problems. Not to rant too far away from the focus of this blog, I just believe more should be done considering the statistics the article displays. This article should have gone into more detail about what actually goes in to figuring out the statistics regarding homicides in Philadelphia, the article would have been more informative.

Here is the link to this article http://articles.philly.com/2011-03-03/news/28649502_1_homicide-rate-murder-rate-mayor-nutter

Group Work

                When the groups were decided upon I was excited to see that I was able to do the topic I wanted and was going to have a strong group around me. Everyone in the group is very hard working and has made sure everyone has been up to date on their sections of the project. After one of the members walked away from the group, everyone accepted their role to do a little extra to make up for one less member. This is when the storming phase kicked in and everyone decided on what they would be doing for the project and no one felt left out or upset with their tasks. This was also relatively easy because everyone had a general idea of what they wanted to do going into the project. After we decided on what everyone was going to do the performance phase kicked in. We all went to the library that day to find articles on our topics and worked close to one another to help each other out if anyone needed it. Since then, aside from class, we have not worked together due to every ones different crazy schedules but everyone has kept each other up to date on what is going on with their part of the assignment. We will work together more next class and hopefully more outside of the class room in the upcoming week. I am looking forward to seeing what kind of work this group will create for this assignment.