One valuable way to gain perspective on an area is to leave. I left Northeastern Pennsylvania twice and returned twice. I think there is a gravitational pull this region has on its longtime residents, whether it’s the traditions, the landscape, the food, the personalities of the people or the relaxed pace of life.
In 1995, I moved away to attend college and returned to take a job locally. When that didn’t work out, I left for the Philadelphia area in 2002. About two years ago, I came back home to work at the Weekender.
When I lived in State College and Philadelphia, I began to appreciate pizza, for example. It’s something we take for granted around here; many people in other areas settle for really bad pizza. One trip to Old Forge would spoil them for life.
While living in Philadelphia, I began to appreciate some subtle aspects of our area. It’s not as crowded. The traffic is nearly non-existent, by comparison — in the Philadelphia area, it takes 45 minutes to get anywhere, whether it’s 10 miles away or 25 miles away.
For a few years, I worked in Pottstown, a burnt-out former industrial town between Philly and Reading. I would hear stories of about how great things were there back when Firestone, Bethlehem Steel and Mrs. Smith’s Pies were still in business (kind of like the “before-the-flood” stories we hear around here). But while I was there, it was depressing and sometimes scary. With people moving out in droves, buildings became abandoned, fly-by-night businessmen took advantage, and drug dealers ran rampant, thanks to a strong demand for drugs in the town and a proximity to dealer hubs in Reading, Philadelphia, Norristown and Camden. And in Philadelphia, stories on the news about murders were commonplace, to the point where many residents became desensitized to the escalating death rate.
One of the perks of moving back home was the safety, I thought at the time. Two years later, I’m not ready to say “we’re screwed,” but if we don’t do something soon, one of the best aspects of growing up or moving to NEPA will be gone — while we don’t have many of the amenities of a major city, we are starting to resemble a major city when it comes to crime.
There is a perception that violent crime is simply “them” killing off each other. Nothing for us clean-living, employed folks to worry about, right? This is dangerous for several reasons, and only one of them is subtle racism. If we don’t acknowledge that the quality of life in NEPA is being threatened by the pushing of hard drugs, violence and outsiders that don’t value human lives — not even their own children’s lives — then we all stand to lose.
It’s not only “riffraff” that get caught up in drugs. It’s not only gang members that get shot — or shoot people. It can happen to any of us: a politician’s daughter, a bank president’s son or a man working at a bar. We can’t work on solutions until we acknowledge there is a problem. Getting defensive and bent out of shape about bringing up the discussion about crime in Wilkes-Barre, which we did in last week’s cover story, will do no good. Saying “if you don’t like it, move” is a knee-jerk, meat-headed response, akin to chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” while watching war footage on CNN.
Why is Wilkes-Barre not as safe as it used to be? If that was an easy question to answer, someone would’ve made everything OK by now. It’s a complicated social, economic problem, one that can’t be fixed by placing blame. But talking about why we think it’s happening could help find a way to make things better.
For example, is the city doing enough to enforce deadbeat-landlord offenses? Are landlords doing background checks on potential tenants? And what repercussions are there if they don’t? Do we think a home occupied by a gun-toting smack dealer is better than a vacant home? Even most criminals pay taxes, right?
The quick fix — dirt-cheap rents, closing a “nuisance bar” here and there — has not worked. Saying that there isn’t a problem, or that the problem is contained in the “bad neighborhoods” and among “that element,” won’t work. And even if the problem was contained, how is that OK? Is it OK for a gang member or drug dealer to be murdered? I don’t think it is. If that was the case, we’d all be issued guns and be told to gun people down if we see them breaking the law. It’s not our place to decide if one person’s life — even a criminal’s — is expendable.
Don’t think there’s nothing you can do. Go to a City Council meeting. Talk to a neighborhood watch group. Pay attention to your neighborhood, and if you see something suspicious, call the police. Escalating, violent crime — whether it’s in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton or elsewhere — is not just an issue for politicians and cops.
When we were kids, we thought that if we’d ignore something, it would go away. There’s too much at stake this time to take an ignorant, childish approach.
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