There is a saying; “Don’t pee down my back and try to convince me it’s raining!” And, there seems to be a lot of peeing going on in my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, especially regarding Wilmington’s homicides.

 

To clarify, over 70% of the people who read this BLOG are not local people. As such, I try to keep my points applicable to national issues, as opposed to local ones.

 

While I’d love to devote a week to the myriad lies, phony statistics, and the continued proliferation of DAMN lies concerning healthcare reform… ON BOTH SIDES, it won’t happen this week, maybe next.

 

Delaware is a tiny state to say the least. In fact, I wrote a separate article about it a few months ago. Click here to read it.

 

Even so, I recently met a few Arizonians who are under the impression that Delaware, our nation’s FIRST STATE, is located in eastern PA, just north of the “Delaware” Memorial Bridge.

 

Yes, even though acute geographic halitosis seems rampantly out of control in this country, unfortunately, neither Jerry Springer nor Maury Povich cover ANY Geography on their respective shows.

 

Regardless, this week’s topic is going to cover Wilmington, Delaware’s record of ineptness in dealing with an increasingly serious homicide rate. It’s grown worse over the past twelve years and the current city Administration has to abandon its “head-in-butt” policy in dealing with it.

 

Wilmington’s population of 73,000 people makes it Delaware’s largest city. Of the ten cities listed for Delaware, Wilmington is about twice the size, in population, of either of the state’s next two largest cities: Dover and Newark.

 

And, even after combining the populations of Delaware’s eight OTHER cities, Wilmington’s is STILL about 155% larger.

 

Wilmington is also in New Castle County, which sports a land area of ONLY 494 square miles, while housing about 64% (558,000) of the state’s population of 873,000 people.

 

But, even with an average countywide population density of 1,130 people per square mile (MUCH higher—by a factor of around 2—in the inner city), the homicide rate is UNACCEPTABLE.

 

In fact, homicides in Wilmington have been too high now for several years. We had 24 of them in 2008. So far, for 2009, we’re already up to 14 and we’re only seven and a half months through the year.

 

Even if this linear average does not increase—DON’T bet on it—we’ll still see around 22 of them by year’s end.

 

This is down from the 24-homicides in 2008. And yes, absolute numbers like 22, 24, etc are SMALL compared to Philadelphia’s 322 and New York City’s 506.

 

But, absolute numbers don’t account for population size effect. Once we do this, Wilmington’s, horrible showing stands out like a Rabbi with an Irish name.

 

Let’s look at just 2008’s numbers; even though some of the earlier years’ numbers are much worse.

 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s population of one and a half million people had 332 homicides. New York City’s population of eight and a half million people tallied 516 homicides.

 

And, to our west, and mostly on the south side, Chicago, Illinois’s population of 2.9-million people suffered through 509 homicides.

 

Simultaneously, Wilmington, Delaware’s population of 73,000 people saw, by absolute comparison,  a “paltry” 24-homicides. So, WHY the complaints? Here’s WHY!

 

In order to make relative sense out of the comparisons, we have to use a common measurement. In the United States, we use homicide rates per 100,000 population.

 

Calculating it requires only three things: a given area’s population size, the number of homicides that occurred during a set period, and the application of some VERY basic math skills.

 

First, divide the area population by 100,000. This will give us a divisor (the number of 100,000 groups). Then, divide this divisor into the number of homicides that occurred for that period.

 

For Philadelphia, 1,500,000 people divided by 100,000 equals a divisor of 15 (15-groups of 100,000 people). Divide 15 into the number of homicides for the year 2008: 332. The homicide rate was, therefore, about 22 for each group of 100,000 people.

 

Do the same calculations for New York City to arrive at its homicide rate of approximately 6/100,000. Likewise, for Chicago the rate comes to about 18/100,000.

 

But Wilmington, Delaware’s population was only 73,000 people. The divisor is less than one because 73,000 divided by 100,000 equals 0.73.

 

While Wilmington had only 24 homicides for 2008, its homicide rate, when adjusted for population size, was much higher than the larger cities: 24 divided by 0.73 or 33/100,000 people.

 

Let’s consider these rates/100,000 as simple “crankiness” factors. New York City’s, for 2008, was only six (6). Philadelphians were a lot crankier with a factor of twenty-two (22).And, at a factor of eighteen (18), Chicagoans were just a tad LESS cranky.

 

But, talk about CRANKY! Wilmingtonians, with a factor of (33) raised human irritability to an art form in 2008—and WORSE, it’s been higher in past years.

 

But crankiness is NOT the issue. Americans are a cranky lot and always have been. No, the issue is the competence and effectiveness with which a city government deals WITH crankiness.

 

Wilmington’s city government is laughable in this respect. And this includes the Mayor, his Communications Director, his Public Safety Director, his Police Chief, the City Council President, and all but two City Council members.

 

This group, as a whole, consistently demonstrates the attention span of Daffy Duck and a level of common sense comparable to that of F-Troop, only without ANY humor.

 

Even worse, they’re top heavy with arrogance and continually mistake an anvil for a life preserver, even as they drown in a sea of acute innovative starvation.

 

They ricochet excuses and stupid rationalizations off everything in sight. The favorite one is that Wilmington sits smack in the middle of drug alley: that long I-95 corridor running from Florida to New York City.

 

BALONEY! Drugs are pervasive in cities throughout this country. The larger the city, the more pervasive the drug presence. By this reasoning, homicides should be strangling these other cities. But, they’re NOT.

 

Looking at it another way, had New York City had Wilmington’s factor of 33 during 2008, that city would have seen almost 3,000 homicides. Chicago would have had about 1,000 homicides and Philadelphia would have fared a tad better at around 500 homicides.

 

Conversely, if Wilmington had Philadelphia’s factor of 22, we’d have seen about 16-homicides for 2008. Chicago’s factor of 18 would have yielded us roughly 13-homicides that year, and NYC’s factor of 6 would have strapped us with only about 4-homicides.

 

As bad as it is now, Wilmington CAN solve its homicide problem, but not as long as the city Administration arrogantly defends its long-standing status quo. It will also require a city council president with guts.

 

We need one that’s going to represent the citizens of Wilmington instead of being a rubber stamp for the mayor, one that LEADS city council members rather than manipulate them.

 

The current city council president misses this mark by LIGHT-YEARS. But, an astute mayor, determined to prevent crimes, could take full advantage of this, not to mention the fact that most of the city council members could not hit the water if they fell out of a boat in the middle of a river.

 

If I were mayor—I’m NOT running, mind you; I’m too damn old—I’d begin the process by calling in BOTH, my current Director of Public Safety and current Police Chief.

 

We have one of those “come-to-Jesus” meetings. It would go something like this.

 

“You two have 45-days to give me solid, workable alternatives—within the current budget—to the way we’re NOW policing this city.

 

I want innovation, too… you know, like the stuff that seems to work well in much larger cities. And, if I don’t get them, you’ll BOTH need updated resumes.”

 

Following THAT meeting, I’d call in my Communications Director. “We’re going to change the way we do preventative policing in this city,” I’d tell him.

 

I’d then tell him that HIS job is to explain to the people of Wilmington the new, positive direction in which the mayor wants to go, INSTEAD of his continued arrogant defense of the status quo.

 

Last, I’d call WDEL’s The Rick Jensen Show (1150 on the AM dial). He loves to blindly rile against all things Liberal, deserving or not, including his disdain for our “indelibly” BLUE state of Delaware.

 

While I truly believe that Delaware deserves an ample share of political criticism, Mr. Jensen’s primary motivations are increased ratings through sheer stupidity and a futile attempt, at least in my opinion, to portray himself as THE premier pimp for imaginary expertise.

 

“Kiss my butt,” I’d tell him. “If you dislike the ‘indelibly’ blue state of Delaware, so much, pack your stuff and leave, making sure that the door does NOT hit you in the ass on the way out.”

 

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.