JMH, a fellow blogger and Urbanitist wrote a post awhile back about a shooting near his home.  I've been meaning to write something as a sort of response.  About what it's like to live in middle class bliss, blocks away from horrifying conditions.  The news doesn't let us forget what life is like over there.  Over there under the helicopters and police cameras.
I wanted to write something about how sometimes it trickles over.  The boy who killed the other boy up the street and around the corner.  They were both from over there.  One of the boys robbed the other's brother and beat him up so bad he'll never walk again.  So brother number two chased him down down down the street for a mile and finally caught up to him very near to my house.  My home.  And when he caught him, he killed him.  They were so young, 12, 13 maybe.  And poor.  And black.  And they were famous for 15 minutes but now I haven't heard mention of it for three or four years.  It happened right after Jake was born, in the spring when the weather broke.

Lots happens when the weather breaks.

And a young girl was killed two blocks away from here.  Her boyfriend killed her about a year and a half ago.  They were teenagers, parents of a child about Jake's age.  A memorial altar went up.  Candles that burn for days, stuffed bears, flowers that were half dead before they made it there.  It may have been in the news.  Another dead Puerto Rican girl.  Another being the operative term there.  Eyes roll when the story gets passed from neighbor to neighbor.  It never made the local paper and I didn't see mention of it on philly.com when I looked it up to see what happened.  "Perta Rickens", my neighborhood watch person said.  "You know how they are.  Always so passionate and quick to escalate a situation."

When you check the crime maps, my street is relatively clean.  Three blocks east and four blocks west is where the trouble starts.  Ten blocks up sees some trouble, but twenty up is where it really starts.  Twenty blocks in my town is equal to twenty miles in most. 

If something happens a quarter mile away, I rarely give it any thought.  If something happens last night, I dismiss it by noon today.  The time space continuum here is askew.  Here in Philadelphia, here in my mind.

But tonight it's a bit different.  Last night was different.  The night before that.  There's a killer out there.  One that gets white girls. 

A couple years ago a man was dragging women into alleyways and raping them.  Raping them in the middle of the day right off of Girard Avenue between Front and Fifth and walking away like nothing happened.  3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon, 3 or 4 women, 3 or 4 years ago.  I forget if they caught him.  I stopped worrying.  I forgot all about the whole thing until a couple days ago.
Oh and hey, then there were the bodies they found up there with the organs harvested.  Two of them, I think.  Found in abandoned houses and precisely cut like surgery.  Who knows what becomes of that.  It's big news at first and then nothing.

That neighborhood isn't too much different than mine.  It's not as good, and I wouldn't live there, but it's okay for the most part.  It's half pretty good and half not great and about a mile from town and nearby to a place that I've worked in enough to know that it isn't decent for anyone at all.  There are lots of college kids and young educated families settling in, and the nightlife is pretty damned fantastic.  If you're into nightlife, that is.  The rest of everyone else has been there for generations.  The new folk live alright with the old folk and there's a sense of community that makes one feel safe and watched and appreciated. 
The turnover from shit to chic happened so fast.  That's the difference between my neighborhood and that one.  It happened so quick.  Maybe too quick.
If I lived there, I'd probably do what I do here.  Leave the house all the time and bum around.  Stop in for a drink or two at the bar with my friends and leave before they do.  Leave alone.  Walk home alone.  Aware of the people around me but not worried whether they were aware of me.

I've done it hundreds of times.  A thousand.  Here, downtown, on the other side of South Philly when I lived over there.  In my college town when I was there.  In my college town where I never felt very safe.  Too many trees and bushes and big yards and sheds and drunk boys and deranged townies.  Too many stories of date rapes and sneak attacks.  Nothing that ever made the news of course.  It was the suburbs.  No one wants to hear about those things out there.  But it made the people talk and the university ticker tick.  You can always find real crime reports in university records.  There are stricter reporting laws.  You just need to know where to look.  Being a Criminal Justice major, we knew everything about everything that was going on.  It was part of the program.  Awareness.  Knowledge.

So, there's a killer on the loose.  One that gets white girls.  Well, whitish.  Half white I'm guessing.  Her last name is Irish.  That's enough to cause quite a stir.  Bad stuff happens to black girls all the time.  And Asian.  And Hispanics.  But it never rallies a community.

Funny how that works, isn't it? 

On Wednesday a 20 year old girl left a friend's house after midnight on her bike and someone took her from in front of her house right there on 4th and Girard in front of God and everybody and beat her and sexually assaulted her and strangled her to death.  The police think she died two or three hours later.

Two or three hours is a very long time.

So now we are all on guard. 

I went out last night.  I stayed in South Philly.  I refused to take a cab home.  Not my normal cab boycott though.  Not the boycott that saves me $7 and saves me from leaving a bigger carbon footprint than I need to in a walkable city with an excellent public trans system.  I refused to take a cab because I didn't want it to be just me and a man in a car, alone together. 

Makes me wonder if that's why I really instilled the boycott in the first place.
 
I walked home alone, about a block and a half.  But there were plenty of people out and when I got home I locked the door and checked the house for anything amiss and found the cat and double checked the locks and text message everyone I saw between the bar and my house to let them know I was home. 

Even though I know bad bad things happen to women my age every day here, and in other places.  Other places like your town.  I know bad bad things happen in my town to girls and to women just like me.  Just like me except their skin is darker than my skin.  When bad bad things happen to people with darker skin I'm not reminded by news reports and watercooler talks and facebook groups and and and so I'm not on guard like I am right now.  Like everyone is right now.

It makes me angry that not everyone - every victim- is given the collective community heart and sorrow that is going out for Sabina Rose O'Donnell.  That not everyone can be an adorable waitress whom everyone loves and misses.  That not everyone gets their name in the papers and in the internets like little Sabina does.  Or gets the entire police force on watch.  That gets all security tapes between the Piazza and the murder scene gathered and studied.  That gets funds and memorial groups and vigilantes organized in their name and on their behalf.

I'm glad that we women are on our toes.  That the men are stepping up to make sure we are safe and sound.  That fathers are calling their daughters and mothers are saying their prayers and kissing their babies these days.  That friends are banding together and neighborhoods are pulling close and families are staying in at night and enjoying the warmth and safety of each other.  I'm glad for that.

Tonight I've lit candles in my tightly locked house and I'm thinking about Sabina and everyone else who has been raped or beaten or killed or any combination of the three.  Saying my prayers and kissing my baby and letting my heart bleed for the victims and their families who have suffered alone.  Would you take a moment and do the same?  There are so many forgotten people and I'm just one person. 

It's a lot for me to handle.