By Scott Calvert
WILMINGTON, Del.--Gunfire already has claimed eight lives this
year in Delaware's largest city, putting it on track to shatter its
annual record for killings.
At a time when many large metro areas have seen murders fall
sharply, Wilmington's toll remains stubbornly high. Last year's 28
killings fell one shy of the high mark reached in 2010 and 2011,
city figures show.
The violence overwhelmingly afflicts young African-American men
in poor neighborhoods in the city of 71,000 people. A recent murder
victim was a 16-year-old, high-school freshman killed in one of a
pair of shootings in late January that also wounded five.
The persistent violence also has unnerved some in the corporate
community, dominated by firms such as Capital One Financial Corp.
and Bank of America Corp. About 17,000 people work in the city's
financial-services sector, many in a downtown area experiencing a
burst of residential development. Vice President Joe Biden and his
wife, Jill, have a house roughly five miles northwest of
downtown.
"The fact that there is this problem does impact the city's
overall image when we're trying to recruit companies to locate here
or convince existing companies to stay here or expand," said state
Attorney General Matt Denn, a Democrat who took office in
January.
At Barclays PLC, which employs 1,600 at the revitalized
Christina River waterfront, job recruits routinely ask about crime.
"Virtually every one of them brings up the question," said Clint
Walker, managing director of Barclaycard US.
In separate incidents last year, two Capital One employees were
accosted for their phones, said Alan Levin, Delaware's economic
development secretary. A company executive mentioned the episodes
at an October public meeting while discussing a state-funded plan
to hire eight more unarmed "safety ambassadors" downtown, according
to minutes of the meeting.
While no one is comparing the theft of a phone with the loss of
a life, almost everyone agrees the spasms of deadly violence must
be brought under control. Older residents recall a more peaceful
time in the largely working-class city, which had a bustling
shipbuilding industry until after World War II and whose downtown
was once a regional shopping hub.
Now, roughly a quarter of residents live below the poverty line
and a similar share of adults have a bachelor's degree or higher,
according to the Census Bureau. African-Americans make up 58% of
the population.
"I feel like the community should get more involved with the
shootings and calm things down," said 61-year-old handyman Henry
Wright, who was inside a home near the second January shooting, a
drive-by on the city's West Side that injured two teens and a
21-year-old man. "That's not happening in the city."
Former Mayor James Baker traces the rise in violence to the
early 1990s, a time when crime rose nationally during the crack
epidemic. During his tenure from 2001 to 2013, the city tried a
range of solutions such as foot patrols and a data-driven approach
modeled on New York's CompStat, he said. "We had all kinds of
programs directed at youth," he added, including a dropout
prevention program. The city and county developed 7,000 affordable
housing units, he said, and joined with the business community on a
mentoring program.
He said that wasn't enough. "You really need to look at this
broken community, broken families, broken criminal justice system,"
he said.
Arrests have been made in only five of the 35 murders since
January 2014, Police Chief Bobby Cummings said. The department
thinks it knows who carried out a majority of them but lacks enough
information for charges, he said.
Mr. Cummings, who took over in May, said that although drugs are
a factor, attacks are often driven by petty disputes. "These are
individuals that are buying into the social norm of shooting each
other to resolve their differences," he said.
In late 2013, city Councilwoman Hanifa Shabazz sponsored a
resolution asking the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention to study the surge in gun violence, which she traces to
a myriad of factors, including easy access to guns and family
dysfunction. A CDC team visited Wilmington over the summer, and a
spokeswoman said the agency was reviewing its findings with state
health officials.
"You never know what's going to happen next or who's going to be
the next victim," Ms. Shabazz said. "You feel kind of
helpless."
Some point to scant resources as a problem. Mayor Dennis
Williams said that when he was elected in 2012, youth services had
wilted under budget cuts, and 22 police positions had recently been
eliminated from a force of 342 officers. Even as murders trended up
over the prior decade, the department didn't form a homicide unit
until last year.
City and state officials have recently pledged new police
measures, such as increased foot patrols and targeting individuals
suspected of criminal involvement, while advocating for more summer
jobs and drug-abuse treatment.
Last year, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat, got the city
added to a new Justice Department program, the Violence Reduction
Network, which offers technical assistance and training to five
cities. The others are Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Calif., and
Camden, N.J.
Meanwhile, Mr. Levin, the state economic development secretary,
said he worries about a perception that the city center is
unsafe.
Mr. Walker at Barclays said the company stresses to prospective
hires that its offices aren't in a high-crime area and no employees
have been victimized. He said he wasn't aware of anyone declining a
job offer because of the concerns. Most employees live outside the
city, he said.
Jim Kelly, a Capital One Bank executive vice president, praised
plans by the city and state for affordable-housing projects with
mixed-use development in Wilmington. The company has 2,400 workers
in the city and says it plans more hiring.
Write to Scott Calvert at scott.calvert@wsj.com
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