"It's a disturbing statistic, we're very concerned about it, and we're going to do everything we can to reduce it," Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said yesterday.
Property crime, which includes motor vehicle theft, burglary and larceny, decreased 2.9 percent nationwide. In Philadelphia, such thefts increased 3.6 percent.
Other top-10 cities had higher growth rates in violent crime last year - New York experienced a 10.6 percent increase in murders, and Houston recorded 12.9 percent more murders last year.
But Philadelphians were more likely to be murdered than residents of other cities whose populations exceed one million people. Philadelphia had a murder rate of 27.8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2006, compared with 18.9 in 2002. Houston, the second-most-murder-prone city in the top 10, had 18.2 murders per 100,000 last year.
The release of the data prompted local officials to renew calls for more assistance from Harrisburg and Washington. "We need stronger gun laws from the commonwealth and more support from the federal government," said Joe Grace, Mayor Street's spokesman.
The statistics show that Philadelphia's peer group is not really other mega-cities, but other cities with substantial impoverished underclasses - Atlanta; Baltimore; Washington; Memphis; Oakland, Calif.; Richmond, Va.; St. Louis; Detroit; and Newark, N.J.
Among 34 cities with populations greater than 500,000, Philadelphia's murder rate ranked fourth. Detroit, Baltimore and Washington recorded murder rates of 47, 43 and 29 per 100,000 inhabitants last year. Philadelphia also had the fourth-highest rate of violent crime among cities of a half-million or more, behind Detroit, Memphis and Baltimore.
