Homicides soar in second-tier East Coast cities

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19513374/

Homicides soar in second-tier East Coast cities

Lack of immigrants, shift to anti-terrorism cited as possible explanations

June 29, 2007

PHILADELPHIA - Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities in a bloodstained

corridor along the East Coast are seeing a surge in killings, and one of the

most provocative explanations offered by criminal-justice experts is this:

not enough new immigrants.

The theory holds that waves of hardworking, ambitious immigrants

reinvigorate desperately poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods and help keep

crime down.

It is a theory that runs counter to the widely held notion that immigrants

are a source of crime and disorder.

"New York, Los Angeles, they're seeing massive immigration - the

transformation, really, of their cities from populations around the world,"

said Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson. "These are people selecting to

go into a country to get ahead, so they're likely to be working hard and

stay out of trouble."

It is only a partial explanation for the bloodshed over the past few years

in a corridor that also includes Newark, N.J., and Boston, but not New York

City.

In interviews with The Associated Press, homicide detectives, criminal

justice experts and community activists point to a confluence of other

possible factors.

Among them: a failure to adopt some of the innovative practices that have

reduced violence in bigger cities; the availability of powerful guns; and a

shift in emphasis toward preventing terrorism instead of ordinary street

crime.

'They felt immune'

Philadelphia is losing one resident a day to violence, recording 196

homicides through the third week of June. That is slightly ahead of the

total at this point in 2006, a year that ended with 406 homicides, the most

in almost a decade. On the first day of summer alone, six people were killed

in Philadelphia in three street shootings.

In Newark, the homicide toll has soared 50 percent in four years, from 68 in

2002 to 106 in 2006. Baltimore had 140 slayings as of June 10, up from 122

the same time last year. Boston had 75 homicides in 2005, a 10-year high,

and 75 in 2006. So far this year, there have been at least 30 slayings.

Some cities "never bothered to institute the reforms, policies and programs

that impacted violent crime because they felt immune from what they saw as

big-city issues," said Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on

Violence at Northeastern University in Boston. "Now they're paying the

price."

These efforts include limiting gun purchases, suing rogue dealers and

deploying officers more strategically, based on crime data analysis.

Others blame a resigned acceptance of "quality-of-life" crimes, such as

running red lights and vandalism. Some law enforcement authorities argue

that ignoring such crimes breeds disrespect and cynicism and leads to more

serious offenses.

The vast majority of U.S. homicides - nearly 90 percent in Newark last

year - involve guns. And they are more powerful than ever. The weapons of

choice are semiautomatics that can spray dozens of bullets within seconds.

"We're seeing 40, 45 shots," said Richard Ross, Philadelphia's deputy police

commissioner. In one recent killing, "I think they fired 20 shots into him.

That's remarkable." He added: "For some of these young people, it's the

glamour of it. They want to carry [guns] on their block."

Shifting resources

Some cite a drop in federal aid for ordinary law enforcement in favor of

homeland security spending. According to Ross, federal grants used mostly

for police overtime in Philadelphia fell from more than $4 million in 2002

to about $1 million last year.

The number of police officers per capita has fallen 10 percent since 2000 in

cities of more than 225,000, according to Northeastern University

criminologist James Alan Fox. Yet post-Sept. 11 fears, especially in Boston,

have forced police to monitor government buildings and transportation hubs

while also watching for street crime, he said.

"We've shifted our resources from hometown security to homeland security,"

Fox said. "We have left relatively unattended the poor and powerless who

face violence every day and hear gunshots every night."

University of Pennsylvania criminologist Lawrence W. Sherman is a prime

exponent of the theory that immigration exerts a moderating effect on crime

among poor black men.

"Cities that have heavily concentrated and segregated African-American

poverty are the places that have increases in homicide," Sherman said. "The

places that have lots of immigration tend not to have nearly as much

segregation and isolation" of poor blacks.

Sherman acknowledges the theory is evolving and unproven.

"The fundamental driver of the homicide rate is honor killings among young

black men," Sherman said. "What is it about immigration that tends to tone

it down? I don't think we know the answer to it."

He said immigrants "change the spirit" of a community and affect the way

young black men in poor areas relate to each other.

"It seems a plausible way to account for the big difference in the

trajectory of homicides" in stagnant cities versus ones with lots of

immigration, he said.

'I'm not getting it'

The percentage of foreign-born residents is 11 percent in Philadelphia,

compared with 22 percent in Chicago, 37 percent in New York and 40 percent

in Los Angeles, according to 2005 census figures.

Alison Sprague, executive director of Victim/Witness Services of South

Philadelphia, suggested there is some merit to the theory. Immigrants in

Philadelphia tend to be crime victims rather than perpetrators, she said.

"I really do think the vast majority of people are trying to earn a living

and support their families and stay under the radar," Sprague said. Illegal

immigrants, especially, "have every motivation not to get involved in

something."

Dorothy Johnson-Speight of Philadelphia, whose 24-year-old son was shot to

death over a parking space in 2001, doesn't buy it.

"If there were more immigrants in the city of Philadelphia, there would be

less violence? I'm not making the connection here. I'm not getting it," she

said.

'Their own devices'

In New York, city leaders have pushed through strict gun-control laws while

attacking social ills such as littering and loitering. New York's homicide

toll has plummeted to one-fourth its 1990 high of 2,245. The count could

slip below 500 this year.

Just across the Hudson River, in Newark, the poverty and employment picture

remains grim. Unemployment hit 18 percent in 2004, and 27 percent of

families live in poverty. New York's unemployment rate, by contrast, was 4.9

percent in May.

"The second-tier cities have fewer economic possibilities for people," said

Arlene Bell, a former prosecutor who now runs youth centers in Philadelphia.

"When there are no opportunities for kids growing up, no possibility of

entering the work force - particularly with their level of education - they're

left to their own devices."

Chicago, whose jobless rate was 4.7 percent in May, has seen its death toll

drop sharply from the first part of the decade, when more than 600 homicides

were recorded for three straight years. The city had 467 homicides in 2006,

and this year the numbers are running about even.

Similarly, Los Angeles, where unemployment stood at 4.7 percent last month,

recorded 481 homicides in 2006 - less than half the number seen in the early

1990s. By mid-June of this year, the city had 172 killings.