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