My Little Town

This morning, my favorite "Golden Oldies" station played a 1975 hit tune by Simon and Garfunkel called "My Little Town". The lyrics went something like this:"

"In my little town
I grew up believing
God keeps his eye on us all
And he used to lean upon me
As I pledged allegiance to the wall
Lord I recall
My little town."

That old song got me to thinking about my own "little town." The place where I was born; grew up and still live today, over two-thirds of a century later. Today, my little town has 5.3 million residents. It's the largest city in the southeastern U.S. and the ninth largest metro area in the country.

Established in 1837, my little town was originally called "Terminus." Even back then, the convergence of a number of major railways here made the city an important transportation hub and thanks to Hartsfield-Jackson, the busiest airport in the nation, it still is today.

When the Civil War broke out, my little town had less than ten thousand inhabitants. But Union General William Tecumseh Sherman recognized the city's strategic importance, and in July of 1864, he began his successful siege. Not content with its capture, Sherman set much of my little town afire before he and his troops began their infamous "March to the Sea."

After the Civil War, things around here had to literally be rebuilt from the ground up, not by a government bailout, but by the sweat of hardworking, dedicated citizens. My little town became the capital of Georgia in 1868, and today, the city's seal appropriately includes a fiery Phoenix rising from ashes.

Former six term mayor William B. Hartsfield (1937-41, 1942-61) once called my little town "a city too busy to hate." But given the content of the local eleven-o' clock news most evenings, I doubt he would say that today. Consider these headlines from the past week:

APD Officer Charged In Off-Duty Shooting

Franklin Asks Feds To Look Into Baseball Bat Comments

Third Suspect Arrested In Beating

Police Investigate Smash-and-Grabs in Buckhead

Two Dead In Park Shooting

Police Probe Downtown Fatal Shooting

Two Arrested In Home Invasion

Day Care Burglars Caught on Tape

GBI Probes Break-In At Police Department

Hole In The Roof Gang: Safe-Cracking Jewel Thieves Strike with Cool Precision

Four Charged In Hurricane Katrina Fraud

Reward For Former Deputy Charged With Double Murder Increases To $10,000

Police Seek Swastika-Tagging Vandals

 ... and folks, as they say in the media, last week was a light news week!

Based on the final 2006 FBI Crime Reports, the crime index overall in Atlanta is twice the national average (8188.3 incidents per 100,000 people in Atlanta versus 4479.3 incidents per 100,000 nationally). In violent crimes, it's three times the national average (1553.7 incidents per 100,000 people in Atlanta versus 553.5 incidents per 100,000 nationally). In crimes against property, the city fares a little better, racking-up numbers that are not quite twice the national average.

A recent article at RealClear Politics using FBI data from 2009 named Atlanta "America's second least safe city". They concluded that Atlanta now has a sixteen-percent per capita crime rate ... thus earning it the distinction of being the "second least safe city in the United States" - behind Memphis, but ahead of San Antonio, Texas, Detroit and Milwaukee who round out the bottom five. The folks at RealClear Politics suggested that law-abiding citizens around here should celebrate this dubious honor by locking up their flat screen TVs, locking their cars and keeping their valuables out-of-sight.

With equally clear politics, Atlanta's mayor Shirley Franklin rebuked the report. She said, "Real Clear Politics jumbled its numbers." Besides, as we learned in today's fish wrapper, she's too busy fighting the medical claims of several severely injured police officers and dealing with baseball bat-gate to worry about crime.

Creative Loafing, an alternative newsweekly, and the second-most broadly distributed newspaper in Georgia, said that Real Clear Politics' rankings about crime in the city were indeed correct. They concluded, "In 2008, Atlanta indeed had more crime per person than all-but-one U.S. city with more than 500,000 people. "The numbers were calculated by adding the total number of violent crime and property crime incidents in 2008 (not including arson) divided by the population." (All of the numbers and rankings can be found in an Excel spreadsheet on the FBI's web site.)

The second verse to the song "My Little Town," goes like this:

"Coming home after school
Flying my bike past the gates
Of the factories
My mom doing the laundry
Hanging our shirts
In the dirty breeze."

Now I don't know about you, but these days, you wouldn't catch me riding my bike past the gates of the factories in this city. And any mom that hangs her clothes on a clothesline around here is likely to be brought-up on charges by the local Homeowners Association!

Okay, so things change, politicians are liars and crooks ... and you can't go home again. However, in doing some research for this article I did run across some interesting stuff. Take a gander at the two maps shown below: the first shows the demographics of crime of all sorts in my little town. The second shows the counties that went for Sir Hopenchange in the 2008 Presidential election:

Eureka! They're a perfect match! No wonder crime was down on November 20, 2008 ... instead of creating their usual mayhem, all those folks were out voting for el PrezBO! Did you ever doubt it?

Ah yes, my Little Town. Simon and Garfunkel sum it up this way:

"And after it rains
There's a rainbow
And all of the colors are black
It's not that the colors aren't there
Its just imagination they lack
Everything's the same
Back in my little town
Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town
Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town

"In my little town
I never mean't nothin'
I was just my father's son
Saving my money
Dreaming of glory
Twitching like a finger
On the trigger of a gun
Leaving nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town
Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town."

Yep, my little town ... "nothing but the dead and dying and all the colors are black" ... film at eleven.

tags: crime  politics  crime statistics  liars and crooks  election demographics  crime demographics  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit