Crime in Philadelphia discussion (Wilson, Penn: to live, bars, campus)

[selhars]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

galaxyhi: ......

Germantown, where I live, doesn't have a neighborhood-wide Town Watch, and since the neighborhood is the city's single most populous (it has more residents than the city of Lancaster, for instance: about 65k to 70k), this makes sense. But there may be some Town Watch patrols in parts of the neighborhood. However, there are usually signs in such neighborhoods informing those passing through that they're patrolled, and I've seen none in G'town.

....

Hi. Can you please post the source for that? Thanks.
The statistics site I'm looking at doesn't say that.
But, of course, it could be a different set of parameters than your source is using.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by selhars

Hi. Can you please post the source for that? Thanks.
The statistics site I'm looking at doesn't say that.
But, of course, it could be a different set of parameters than your source is using.

If you're looking at this site's stats, C-D treats Germantown and East Germantown as separate neighborhoods (and has a weird, funky boundary for East Germantown that ropes in part of West Oak Lane; about half of the East Germantown Station postal district [ZIP code 19138] lies in that neighborhood).

Add the two together and you get 63,528.

The Wikipedia article on the neighborhood gets East Germantown's boundaries right but gives its 2010 population as 75,935.

The source it footnotes is a Pew Philadelphia Research initiative report on racial and ethnic changes in the population of Philadelphia and its neighborhoods from 1990 to 2010. It uses ZIP code 19144, part of which lies in East Falls, as a proxy for Germantown much as most Germantowners do, and labels ZIP code 19138 as Germantown East.

Add up the ethnic population figures for 2010 for 19144 from that report and you get 55,443. Some Wikipedian must have gone to the trouble of separating out the Germantown census tracts in it and ZIP code 19138 [45,047] to reach that 75,935 figure.

This map shows modern Germantown's boundaries (East and West) almost accurately, IMO (I'd draw the northern boundary at Johnson rather than Upsal Street between Germantown and Chew avenues):

OpenStreetMap image, licensed under the Open Database License (ODBL) 1.0

63,528 sounds to me about right.

PolicyMap's 2020 Census figure for ZIP Code Tabulation Area 19144, however, is a good bit lower: 41,555. Add 19138 [26,945] to it and you get 68,500, however. I'm not going to drill down to the census-tract level on that app right now, but I'm willing to wager that if you remove the East Falls and East Oak Lane tracts in the two ZIP codes from that figure, you will get a total close to C-D's combined figure.

What was your source and number, and for what territory? And what other city neighborhood has more than 63,000 residents in it?

[selhars]

I wasn't challenging you. Just curious about the source, since I know analysts can make numbers say pretty much anything.
As I already conceded, the numbers depend on boundaries and years.
And, of course, there's always the chance I could be reading what I'm looking at incorrectly.

Moderator cut: link removed, competitor site
Population by neighborhood in Philadelphia.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by selhars

I wasn't challenging you. Just curious about the source, since I know analysts can make numbers say pretty much anything.
As I already conceded, the numbers depend on boundaries and years.
And, of course, there's always the chance I could be reading what I'm looking at incorrectly.

Moderator cut: link removed, competitor site
Population by neighborhood in Philadelphia.

Germantown doesn't even show up on the bar chart on that site, quite likely because the site breaks the neighborhood down into seven sub-neighborhoods (East, Morton, Wister, West Central, Penn-Knox, Southwest, Westside; it looks like I live in Westside).

Add them up and you get 44,045 (somewhere around the population of York). On that site, Germantown would rank second in population to Oxford Circle.

In which case, the statement "one of the city's most populous neighborhoods" would be true in any case, regardless where you're looking.

[MPK21]

Originally Posted by Duderino

I'm also getting incredibly exhausted by the notion that crime is somehow exclusive to the borders of Philadelphia.

Here's story just this week in the Lehigh Valley suburbs (Palmer Township) about an armed assault and carjacking:

https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/eas...d-assault.html

The sad reality is that this kind of stuff can happen in any area with any amount of population, folks. And for the one millionth time, the vast majority of violent crime is between two familiar parties, resulting from domestic disputes or conflict resulting from an adversarial relationship.

No one likes crime, and it's very important to be aware of your surroundings in an urban setting, but I can't imagine living one's life in constant fear. The way some people talk about this topic, I think they'd be better off living on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Tell that to the folks living in areas of Philly where they do live in constant fear, especially the kids and parents afraid to go to and from school. It's a real thing and they don't have the option of living on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or anywhere else for that matter.

[Duderino]

Originally Posted by MPK21

Tell that to the folks living in areas of Philly where they do live in constant fear, especially the kids and parents afraid to go to and from school. It's a real thing and they don't have the option of living on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or anywhere else for that matter.

Okay. And I never stated anything to the contrary.

The fact of the matter is our society doesn't experience crime evenly. The most impacted by far are impoverished neighborhoods of color.

Yet who does the most pearl-clutching and vitriolic social media posting against Philadelphia's crime problem? I guarantee you it's not black grandmas in Fairhill.

Point being: crime IS a problem and real concern for real people, but it's amplified and weaponized, often in politically motivated fashion, by some of the people LEAST affected by it and who have literally no constructive solutions to solve it.

[JacksonPanther]

Originally Posted by Duderino

Point being: crime IS a problem and real concern for real people, but it's amplified and weaponized, often in politically motivated fashion, by some of the people LEAST affected by it and who have literally no constructive solutions to solve it.

Hallelujah.

[mphilly]

Originally Posted by Duderino

Okay. And I never stated anything to the contrary.

The fact of the matter is our society doesn't experience crime evenly. The most impacted by far are impoverished neighborhoods of color.

Yet who does the most pearl-clutching and vitriolic social media posting against Philadelphia's crime problem? I guarantee you it's not black grandmas in Fairhill.

Point being: crime IS a problem and real concern for real people, but it's amplified and weaponized, often in politically motivated fashion, by some of the people LEAST affected by it and who have literally no constructive solutions to solve it.

Yep, if I thought some of these people were actually trying to be constructive, I’d be willing to listen. However, the argument usually amounts to “black people bad, we should punish them more”.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by mphilly

yep, if i thought some of these people were actually trying to be constructive, i’d be willing to listen. However, the argument usually amounts to “black people bad, we should punish them more”.

+1,000

[selhars]

Originally Posted by mphilly

Yep, if I thought some of these people were actually trying to be constructive, I’d be willing to listen. However, the argument usually amounts to “black people bad, we should punish them more”.

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

+1,000

That's laughable.

Criminals are bad.