Safety
The concentration of poverty tends to concentrate other problems like violent crime. Criminologists have long agreed on this relationship between poverty and crime. The city of Richmond, as the map to the left suggests, is plagued by both social ills.
A rape as brutal as the recent attack at Richmond High can affect more people than the victim and her family members. Hearing the details of the crime, especially when details are repeated over and over again in news stories and on television, can extend the trauma throughout the community. 20091123_crisis/crisis.mp3|Victim Advocates Discuss Secondary Trauma
Gunfire occurs in the city of Richmond nearly every day. A video and written account of how denizens near a 23rd street restaurant reacted in the instant aftermath of at least one shooter unleashing a hail of bullets on a busy intersection.
ShotSpotter, a series of sensors that detect when shots are fired, shows that gunfire is a daily occurrence in Richmond’s Iron Triangle. City residents describe the painful effects of hearing shots fired as part of daily life.
Richmond has taken a step other, larger cities nationwide have taken with some success: Launching and funding an agency to conduct community outreach and crime intervention to stem violence before it occurs.
Without the eyes of news media fixed on them, district board members have displayed no urgency to protect Richmond’s largest school with fences and cameras.
Richmond’s YouthWORKS, a city-run youth-employment program, employed 705 local teens and young adults ages 16-21 last summer at 140 Bay Area public and private work sites. The civic youth jobs program is one the nation’s largest in proportion to the population of the city it serves.
Total homicides this year stood at 45 as of Nov. 6, nearly double the number killed in all of 2008, an increase that has raised renewed concern among city leaders and law enforcement officials. Twenty-seven homicides were recorded in all of 2008. Forty-plus homicide totals were the norm for most of this decade until last year, when law enforcement and a new crime intervention team focused resources on the “Iron Triangle,” section of the city, helping reduce homicide totals citywide,…
The Richmond Police Department on Thursday released the 911 call that helped end a reported two-hour rape of a Richmond High student outside of her homecoming dance Oct. 24. Richmond resident Margarita Vargas made the call just before midnight that night. Police today also corrected the victim’s age as being 16 instead of 15, as previously reported. At Wednesday night’s district board meeting, Superintendent Bruce Harter said the school has recieved 322 cards and $15,317 in donations for the victim….