Philadelphia: Who’s Getting Shot

The Inky released a great article this morning detailing the cities problem with violence:

A new study by Philadelphia criminologists says that an increasing number of people shot in the city have had previous brushes with the law.

Twenty-four percent of shooting victims last year had pending criminal court cases against them at the time they were shot, according to a report by researchers with the Philadelphia Adult Probation and Parole Department. In 2002, 18 percent of shooting victims had “open bills” against them.

So, basically, the people getting shot and doing the shooting probably shouldn’t be on the streets. But the city politicians continue to blame the rest of the state’s gun laws for their problem.

While not wanting to minimize the killings, Kurtz said: “Many of these people were not choirboys on their way to church when they got shot.”

What a shocker.

According to Sherman, as many as three-quarters of the murders in Philadelphia may involve convicted or charged offenders who are under the supervision of the probation department or another supervision agency, such as the court’s pretrial division.

Sherman testified that adult offenders are seven times as likely to commit murder as the average city resident, and four times as likely to get murdered.

We need a 1.6 million dollar computer system to tell us that? For twenty bucks, you probably could have asked any cop, any paramedic, or emergency room responder.

5 thoughts on “Philadelphia: Who’s Getting Shot”

  1. Reminds me of something Jeff Cooper once wrote. One of his students in a class was a tac-team member from Los Angeles during the really bloody gang-war days, and he said that except for the innocent bystanders being hurt at times, most people he dealt with weren’t very upset about the killings because almost all of the dead and wounded were gangbangers; the general attitude he ran into in the barrio was “Good riddance”.

  2. Wonder it was the some research team that discovered the reason why HOT pizza burns the roof of your mouth. And,you are completely right, most of your shootings are in drug infested,poor,and urban areas. You do not see drive by shootings in the suburbs or in the rural areas.

  3. The unfortunate thing is these guys are so bad at shooting, they are killing a fair number of bystanders, and based on the number wounded vs. number killed, aren’t very effective at killing each other.

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