Not Buying the Most Dangerous City in America Label
You know by now that Parenting Magazine put out a piece yesterday that states that Wilmington is the most violent city in America, ahead of places like St. Louis, Baltimore and New Orleans:
A short drive from South Philly and Camden and midway between New York and Washington, Wilmington managed to snag the number one spot on our list for highest rate of violent crimes per 100,000 people. And while the overall state of Delaware ranked moderately well in the peace index (which looked at factors such as police per capita, percentage of population behind bars and access to small arms), Wilmington came in the top spot for sex offenders per capita.
That’s all there is. You don’t know for what year they got their violent crime data, you don’t know what year they used on the Peace Index (plus the current rating is for the whole state not the city, so there is apples and oranges), nor do you know where they got their sex offender information, much less any explanation as to why they used a per capita rate here when they used a per 100,000 rate for violent crime. In other words, if this is a genuine study, it is a mess. A mess because it looks like they jumbled up a bunch of data and a mess because they did not source either their data or methodology. So there is no way to backcheck.
Two years ago, though, Parenting Magazine ranked Wilmington as one of its Best Cities (ranking of 80) in 2010:
Wilmington was named by Thomas Penn for his friend Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who was prime minister in the reign of George II of Great Britain.
The Delaware Children’s Museum in Wilmington is Delaware’s first and only kid-centric museum, teaching math, science and technology through hands-on exhibits appropriate for toddlers through the teen years.
This time they gave more data supporting their ranking, so you could back into some of what they were trying to get to, but they still don’t source their data, which is Very Bad Form.
So what to think? Basically that Parenting Magazine is in the business of creating click bait — these galleries of ginned up lists and (psuedo) information that is largely meant to drive people to their site and drive up page views. It doesn’t seem real, but it looks like John Rago has called the magazine to get some info on where they got their data and how they used it. But there are other ranking studies out there and they all have somewhat different methods to make their assessment. Most of them tell you how they get to their answers though.
Wilmington is nowhere near as dangerous as plenty of folks want to make it out to be. It is more dangerous than it *should* be and that is due to alot of factors. We’ve been hearing alot about public safety plans (at leas you do if you live in the city), but I think that ground zero of Wilmington’s safety problem is largely about incredibly poor leadership. People have been concerned about crime in pockets of the city for a long time. A few years back, a number of community leaders and City Council began advocating for a Community Policing plan that would put officers directly in neighborhoods. After advocating for more police resources to make this happen, the city pulled back on this plan and decided to implement this as a part-time unit. You can trace alot of the current frustration with the Administration’s posture towards crime to this. And while no one can say if this approach would have worked, what is clear is that this Administration utterly rebuffed a community (taxpayers!) who cared enough about their own safety to come up with an approach to change it.
You can mark the point at which city residents began to turn on this Administration. When your leadership doesn’t take your concerns about your safety and the safety of your family seriously, you start worrying even more about safety issues. Which is how we get to today, where safety seems to be the biggest issue that Mayoral candidates (at minimum) are running on. And safety is a genuine problem — as it is in alot of cities. Wilmington is a small place, which means that the ripple effects of crime are pretty immediate and pretty far-reaching. But you can make the same claim for the leadership vacuum on public safety — the ripple effects are pretty immediate and far-reaching. The worry about crime starts occupying the space where leadership should have been and it gets harder for the people who are trying to do good things in the city to accomplish those things.
It is worth it to take a good hard look at the candidate’s safety proposals, which I hope everyone does. We’ve talked alot about some of this here (see the comments). It is clear that whoever is Mayor, there will be change in the WPD. It is harder to tell from these plans what you get in terms of change or refocus on the safety of the citizens of the city — Bovell and Spencer’s websites are pretty thin on this, as is Montgomery’s interestingly. Kevin Kelley focuses strongly on Community Policing, data driven deployment of WPD resources and marshaling of city resources in targeted teams designed to try to raise the bar in every neighborhood. Dennis Williams’ plan is focused on doing what the WPD is *already* doing — whether it is focusing on high risk offenders (the WPD has been doing this for more than a year and a half now), a gun unit (the WPD is working on standing up this unit now, if it isn’t operational already), a Community Policing unit (which we have now), strategic partnerships with other law enforcement agencies (which we have now for certain types of issues) and a list of other items that are largely a part of what the WPD does now. I can’t begin to guess what kind of changed direction policing will take in Wilmington when the candidate who is working at making public safety his calling card is basically proposing business as usual.
Business as usual isn’t going to change the City’s safety issues.
Tags: Mayor Race, Polls
That ranking sounded BS-y to me. Thanks for digging into it.
Many years ago, my now-ex was a girl scout leader because she wanted First Daughter to have a chance at scouts and no one else was willing. At the time, I worked for Amtrak based out of the building next to the station; she came from a family or railroaders.
She arranged for a patch or a badge or whatever the girl scouts call them on “transportation.” It involved catching a Septa train in Wilmington, going the Philly, taking the Market-Frankford El, etc. etc. etc. with various educational experiences along the way.
She was horrified to find that we would have to give most of the girls rides to the choo-choo.
The mothers were afraid to drive to the Wilmington train station because “it’s so dangerous in Wilmington.”
Fear is not proportional of or indicative of danger. Often, fear comes from ignorance. People don’t want flouride in their water. Won’t fly on planes. Won’t go to Wilmington. All examples of ignorance of facts, data, and information.
Since moviing to Delaware I have been to the Amtrak station during the day and after dark and have not felt fear or seen anything that would cause me to feel fear (and no I wasn’t packing heat). Aside from the fact that the station has placed the handicap drop off in the wrong location to facilitate drop off and then being able to park, I have no complaints. It’s not the lobby of the Ritz Carlton but then I didn’t expect it to be.
Wilmington DOES have the distimction of the most recent american city to be occupied by the military and the record holder for longest occupation.
Have the people of Parenting walk through Chester and Camden then tell me where they feel safer.
I don’t know if Wilmington is the most violent city, but it definitely has the most violent police force.
Fact: 3 additional shootings in Wilmington yesterday, with one new homicide on Eastside. News Journal buried the story on the bottom of page B3. It was more critical to cover the Kayak Race in Broadkill on B1 to raise funds for the Milton Theatre?
question for cassandra_m Do you live in the city of wilmington?
She most definitely does. As do I. And Wilmington most definitely ain’t as violent as Camden and Chester.
I live in the city as well, and I’m not buying this ranking.
My question was to Cassandra only! So why would you other people answer it?
It is a blog, not an email. Lots of people can read your question and the can certainly weigh in to answer or to engage.
I know its a blog. But my unanswered question was directed to one person only.
I have a question for you? How stupid are you? Just askin’?
Your question was answered. She lives in the city, and has stated such on this blog more times than we can count.
Wilmington has the distinction of being a “smaller” city. Mathematically that makes small swings appear bigger in percentages. For instance one murder in Wilmington, is 1/71,000 or 0.00148% whereas one murder in New York is 1/8,200,000 or 0.00001%… So for every murder in Wilmington, you would need 148 in New York to match it. If say you only got 147 murders then New York could be ranked as having fewer murders than lovable old Wilmington, Delaware, even though (Wilmington currently has 21) New York had 209 in 2011……
The same swing benefits us positively when our trends go there.
YEA!!!! ANOTHER SHOOTING!!!!!! WERE NUMBER 1. GO WILMINGTON!!!!!
12 years of increased crime. If certain people get elected it will continue.
You can always tell a Dennis Williams supporter because they all think that he will Put An End To Crime in Wilmington As We Know It.
And it is all bullshit. Crime happens and there is no where on earth with enough resources to put an end to all crime within their borders. And not would you want to pay the taxes on that LOE, either. There is much that can be done to help reduce the incidence within the city, but Dennis P. Williams with his crime plan that is basically the crime plan we have now will not be Putting An End To Anything.
In 2011, the WPD made almost 5900 arrests for almost 11K charges. This year, they are about 3700 arrests for more than 6400 charges so far. What Dennis P. Williams does not want you to know is that the WPD is crazily productive in arresting people who are misbehaving. There has to be more than just targeting the bad guys, because the WPD ALREADY DOES THIS. A reasonable person would look at those stats and come to think that there is a more complicated problem here than just hunting down the bad guys and locking them up. Because the WPD is doing alot of this already. All of those arrested are certainly not in jail waiting for trial or locked up because they have been convicted. Why is that? And if they *were* all locked up and sent off to do some time, where would they go?
So the message is quite right that if certain people get elected some of this lawlessness will continue. Some of it because expecting that any of these candidates has the formula to Stop All Crime means that I’d like to talk to you about some great beachfront property in Nebraska. The other of it is that there are candidates who are pretty much promising current business as usual as far as policing goes.
What Dennis P. Williams does not want you to know is that the WPD is crazily productive in arresting people who are misbehaving.
Let’s not get carried away. Many WPD officers don’t even get out of their cars for “quality of life” crimes like public urination, drinking in public, littering, loitering, etc. These offenses seem minor, but they degrade the community & they break the spirit of the dwindling number of people who give a shit about their neighborhoods.
I’ve had really mixed experiences with the Wilmington police, but would say overall they have been responsive to issues in our neighborhood.
Williams seems to be running for police chief.
I’ve had mixed results too. Nearly run over in my parking lot–apathetic cops show up 2hrs later & do nothing. Property crimes (theft)–nothing happens. Report taken over the phone or 2hrs later in person by apathetic cops.
Mention that someone has a weapon–half the WPD shows up & cracks heads, justified or not.
There’s no doubt that the WPD doesn’t address everything — they run right up 4th St routinely without stopping in the corners where kids are hanging out after curfew. But candidate Williams tells audiences that the solution is to get out and get the bad guys. My point being that they are arresting alot of people every day. And if they are arresting this many people, there are issues well beyond going out and getting the bad guys.
That said, I get pretty good responses to calls to the WPD. But I also work alot with our Community Officers who try really hard to address issues. I’m a big fan of the Community Officers model — we just need them to be here 24/7.
First of all I’m a proud Republican, the Democrats are the reason we are in the situation we are in now. You on the other hand are a pure hater. It very obvious from your postings! The worst thing for you is that you appear to be a failure on here you have given into the criminals with you statements. Remember one thing in your life “Crime is like a cancer if you do not cure it, it will kill you; your loved one and your city. So be a postive force not a negative force.
“First of all I’m a proud Republican, the Democrats are the reason we are in the situation we are in now. You on the other hand are a pure hater.”
Republicans vs. pure haters? What exactly is the difference?