I haven’t addressed this issue before today because the media has managed to give this enough publicity. I have been looking at crime statistics in detail since the PPD has been kind enough to put this information out on the web on a timely basis.
What started my interest was that the crime log published in the Northeast Times does not include rape or murder. Well, we all hear about the murders. “If it bleeds, it leads” is a real policy on our local news. On the other hand if you happen to meet a rapist on the street one morning, it may very well go unreported in the media. I really can’t tell you why that is.
The PPD slices and dices the crime stats and has a system of classification that pretty well tells the story. Rape is subdivided into several goups. First it can be rape or attempted rape. Then it can be domestic. No I don’t know what that means. Then it can be done by an acquaintance or a stranger. They are all pretty bad but the rape by a stranger seems to be the mose henious. That is the type or crime now being reported. So far this year, there have been 25 rapes or attempts committed by strangers in the 15th District.
The serial rapist accounts for 8 of those. It seems that to get any attention as a rapist, you have to go into high gear. There was no outcry over the other 16 rapes so far this year. Whoe committed them, were they caught, did they go to trial, where are they now?
There other thing that bothers me is, while we now can get some pretty good information on crime, we get squat on arrests and less on convictions. We got a part of the picture of the problem but nothing on the solution end.
Crime is fairly simple. It has always existed and always will. The issue is where and what will be tolerated. How will we arrest and deal with the criminals. How long will we let this continue in Frankford before we have to take action. What are our elected officials doing to address the issues. They are very busy trying to make believe that it does not involve them at all.
This is a map of the locations and some details of the events.
You make some very interesting points here, Gil. Thanks for writing this.
It seems the Frankford rapist has been caught. DNA linking him to 4 violent rapes in a months time.
It has been reported that this rapist was released from a “supervised half-way house” in the Philadelphia area.
Can you find out if this “facility” was in the Frankford area?
I think you would do your Frankford readers and all citizens of Philadelphia a real service if you could reveal this information.
Disturbing that many of these rapes/attempts go unpublicized. When the public is made aware of this type of crime, they take precautions. Travel in groups as they were doing , and probably still are, since the media pounced on this loser last week. We just moved here and are already active in everything positive going on. I hope many more people do also, town watch, civic, etc. Keep up the good work Gil.
Joey K