New measures to improve security at 30th Street Station (and other Amtrak stops) started the last week of February, and apparently center around some sort of bread-sized chemical analyzing machine that checks for residue, just like at airports. Thankfully, we don’t have to remove our shoes and belts; only “randomly selected” passengers will be tested. (I love it when they say that.)
The people in this video sound just like what people sounded like at the onset of the Patriot Act: It’s better that we be inconvenienced for safety; if we’re not hiding anything, then it’s okay to search, and if you don’t agree to be searched, then you are hiding something. Not that I’m against security measures, obviously; I use 30th Street Station and want to feel safe as well.
But what I fear at 30th St. isn’t terrorists and bombs, but all the shady characters who lurk there at night, who sleep on those filthy benches, who pick through garbage cans and ask me for money when I’m just trying to eat my sandwich. If Philadelphia really wants to make this city safer for its residents, then it should be thinking about the real and very tangible threats that the city goes through every day, not fictional “orange level” threats from “terrorists.” Yeah, I’m still scared of the monster under my bed, but I know he doesn’t really exist.
I’ve seen bums harassing people trying to eat lunch in 30th Street Station before, and the police just let them walk on by. There’s nothing they can do about that? Philadelphia’s rampant (what’s the politically-correct term here?) vagrant problem is more dangerous than imaginary terrorists, especially in and around 30th Street Station. My perception of this problem isn’t just from observing 30th Street Station, but Center City as well. Perhaps our own Mayor sums it up best: Mayor Nutter says when day turns to dusk, Center City becomes “a Philadelphia version of a South African shantytown.” (And kudos to the Inquirer for covering this topic. This piece is a really interesting and question-raising piece about the problem.)
It seems harmless to let people sleep in 30th Street Station if they have nowhere else to go; but it is still against the law in Philadelphia to use public space as living space. However, it’s hard not to get the feeling from police that it’s just too difficult to combat the homeless problem, and so they aren’t too stringent with dealing with it at all. I guess I can’t blame them; panhandlers don’t have anywhere else to go, if police kick them out of 30th Street, they’re only going to wait and then come back later.
The problem of safety here is that 85% of Center City’s homeless population (I don’t know what percentage in the whole city) are mentally ill, addicts, or both. While I know that the mentally ill are more likely to hurt themselves than others, it’s still a scary notion. Today, a homeless man punched a car right next to me; a second later, a homeless woman called me a slew of filthy words – and all this was right on Drexel’s campus, “policed” by our esteemed “bike patrol” and right in front of 7-11 (although, admittedly, this is probably the worst place on campus in regards to the homeless). A friend of mine has been followed home by a group of homeless men and attacked with a 2×4. I know several people who have been mugged. It is a problem, even if no one has a good solution. It needs to be talked about. And things in front of 7-11 aren’t that different than they are inside 30th Street Station, especially when it’s not during business hours.
So where does that leave Amtrak in the midst of these new “safety measures”? While I have never once been scared that my Amtrak train (whose tickets cost me a hefty $60 one-way to Penn Station) is going to be bombed, I have been scared about being in 30th Street Station alone by myself, taking a train to the airport early in the morning, or to Newark. I think that the safety measures Amtrak is implementing are great, just misplaced, like so much else that Philadelphia does. And while funding for this probably happened through Amtrak, not through Philadelphia, it is the Mayor and the city who need to deal with the real problems in 30th Street Station. Until then, I guess, the trains are safer to ride than before. And that’s a positive note, at least. Maybe Amtrak addressing safety will encourage the Mayor to do the same.
May 16, 2008 at 12:20 pm |
This raises a whole host of issues–but at the core I think you are developing a conversation on how we rank safety threats in the city. The murder rate is obviously number one, but where do we prioritize from there?
How are other cities managing the homelessness issue? My expectation is that the majority of homeless are actually temporarily in such a state, with a small subset that make up the harassment factor you speak of–but are there hard numbers out there?
May 16, 2008 at 2:10 pm |
I found this graph (http://phillyimc.org/media/static/homelesscensus.gif) through Philly IMC (indep media center). It has a whole slew of information on the homelessness problem in Philadelphia (http://www.phillyimc.org/media/static/homeless.shtml), including organizations that help, articles and photo essay.
The thing that I find most bewildering is how people turn away help, won’t move into shelters, etc. The laws for mental illness say that unless you’re a threat to yourself, no one else can check you into a clinic, but I think that if you would prefer to live on the street and possibly freeze to death, starve, etc., then you’re a hazard to yourself.