CHESTER, Pa. (AP) — Marjorie Clark lost her husband to the swing
of a baseball bat against his skull after he dared confront a drug
dealer in 1993. Her daughter, who has cerebral palsy, was attacked
about 12 years later by a man who broke into their home. Last week,
her 2-year-old neighbor was shot in the head and killed just
outside.
“It’s getting worse and worse. I’m angry. I don’t want to be
here no more,” said Clark, 66, who has lived for 20 years in this
historic but troubled riverside city of 29,500.
Leaders, also angry and desperate as they try to see through a
$500 million revitalization plan that includes the inauguration
this weekend of a Major League Soccer stadium, are preparing to
extend a five-day state of emergency to at least a month.
Wendell Butler Jr., mayor of this once-mighty manufacturing
center halfway between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del., responded
to the recent shooting deaths of four people in eight days by
instituting a curfew in five of Chester’s high-crime neighborhoods,
putting police on 12-hour shifts and announcing that eight more
officers will be added “as soon as possible” to the 96-member
force.
The shootings and resulting crackdown will have no effect on the
Philadelphia Union soccer team’s home opener Sunday, team
spokeswoman Aimee Cicero said. The game, a sold-out event that has
been hyped for months, will be the team’s first there.
The city council is expected Wednesday to approve a one-month
extension to the emergency declaration, which bars anyone in the
designated zones from being outside “without a legitimate reason”
between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. and requires a permit for any gathering
of three or more people.
The move would also give police authority to stop and question
anyone in those areas after curfew and cite them if they’re without
a “reasonable or legitimate reason for their activity.”
Some residents in the city’s most violence-prone sections doubt
those changes will make them any safer.
“It’s kind of too little, too late, isn’t it?” said Charles
Stansbury, 56, whose 2-year-old cousin, Terrence “Pop” Webster, was
among the victims of the recent spate of slayings. “This is nothing
new in Chester. Why did they decide to not do something until
now?”
Terrence’s parents were ambushed outside their apartment June
13, police said. The boy was shot in the head, and his parents
suffered minor injuries and have not returned home.
Clark, the little boy’s next-door neighbor, said that the crimes
against her daughter and her husband, who had shoved a drug dealer
near the family home, were never solved.
“He came home and went to bed, and his brain swelled. He died,”
she told The Associated Press, wiping her brow and her eyes as she
sat in a folding chair under the shade of a tree outside her
home.
“We have been through a lot of tragedy in this neighborhood, and
nobody ever knows nothing,” she said. “It’s just gone sour. People
don’t stick together any more.”
Situated on the Delaware River, Chester was settled in 1644 and
was the site of William Penn’s first landing in America in 1682. It
grew into a robust manufacturing and shipbuilding town of 65,000 by
1950; “What Chester Makes Makes Chester,” boasted a sign greeting
visitors.
After World War II, however, Chester made less and less.
Unemployment and poverty rose as factories that assembled cars and
locomotives and mills that made lace, parachutes, yarn and textiles
vanished.
The 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census
Bureau estimated 29.8 percent of Chester families live below the
poverty level, compared with 9.6 percent nationwide.
The city has had 11 homicides this year, compared with seven in
the same period last year. In recent years, the murder rate has
averaged about 20 per year.
Some bright spots have appeared recently. A Harrah’s racetrack
and casino opened on the waterfront in January 2007, adjacent to
the county prison. In late 2008, Chester got its first major hotel
in more than three decades. None are located in the high-crime
neighborhoods affected by the curfew.
Still, though, the bloodshed continues. Police say the illegal
drug trade is behind much of it, though residents who live in areas
plagued by drugs appear apprehensive to agree, a reticence common
in areas where dealers have been known to mete out retribution to
snitches.
Stansbury, 56, a Chester native, faults a lack of discipline at
home and at school, easy access to handguns and lack of community
engagement.
“I understand what they’re trying to do with the curfew, but you
can’t just step on people’s civil rights,” added his wife, Rose
Stansbury, 51, who lost a female relative to gun violence in 2004.
“We have kids out here with no remorse, and with guns. It’s like
the Wild West.”
Clark, who said she doesn’t leave her house after dark for fear
of being caught in the frequent shootouts happening within earshot,
said she prays her young neighbor’s death will “finally wake people
up.”
“This wasn’t somebody out making trouble. This was a baby,” she
said. “My grandson is the same age; he’s 2 years old. It could have
been him.”
Directly outside Terrence Webster’s front door, now piled high
with teddy bears and covered with written messages of sympathy, a
sliding board and jungle gym sit unused on a warm summer afternoon.
Drug dealers sometimes conduct their business on the park benches
rimming the little playground, neighbors say, making it too
dangerous for children.
“He should be out here, running around and playing,” Charles
Stansbury said. “But he’s not here. He’s gone. Whose child is going
to be next?”
___
Online:
City of Chester: http://www.chestercity.com
