Bullets tore through a warm summer night, slicing into a crowd of 200 jamming a Philadelphia street for an impromptu block party, says the Philadelphia Daily News. A 2-year-old girl took a bullet to her stomach as she stood between parked cars. Three other people were struck. Dozens of witnesses scattered.
Everyone clammed up. For nearly a month, infuriated police and city officials say not a single person has come forward with a tip, not even the girl’s mother. Although “stop snitching” is nothing new, this latest outrage provides a galling example of the culture of silence that grips some neighborhoods and cripples efforts to bring criminals to justice. “It’s a disgrace. This is shameful,” city Managing Director Richard Negrin said. “We’re not asking someone to stick their neck out. This is about giving us a name so we can get an investigation started, so that we can try to do good police work around a tip, and we don’t have one.”