DM – With 39 murders this year on its ravaged streets, this is the grim statistic that makes Camden, New Jersey one of America’s most deadly towns. Last month, 27-year-old Robert Carstarphen was shot dead in an alley during a fight over drug dealing territory between members of the Bloods street gang. The following day, two more men were dead after a retaliation hit. The deaths brought the total number of homicides for July to 13 – making the month the city’s worst since September 1949 when mass murderer Howard Unruh left the same number dead in a shooting spree. Last year, there were 48 murders in Camden but a record of 58 homicies in 1995. Most of the murder victims this year were male, with the youngest a 16-year-old boy and the eldest a 42-year-old woman. Camden was once a bustling industrial town but drugs and alcohol abuse now run rife in an area that is economically deprived – 44 per cent of residents live below the poverty line.
I see no reason why we don’t just name this award the Camden NJ Annual American Murder Award and call it a day. You can’t have a city where 44% of the people are below the poverty line. This is what the poverty line is today:
Like how is it even possible to only make $11,000 in a year? I could spend 2 hours a day picking up pennies out the gutter and 6 hours a day masturbating and in twelve months I’d still have at least twice that. Is that really how low we’re setting the poverty bar? That means in reality at least 70% of that city is poor.
The answer isn’t politics or gun control or throwing money in the education system. It’s getting these kids the fuck out of Camden for extended periods of time and showing them that in most places in the world you don’t see dope fiends leaning over a pile of chicken bones or random syringes in the streets. If there was a program to ship Camden school kids out to Montana or North Dakota for 6 months a year I’d support the hell out of it.
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