Letter: Elected officials must act to lower crime and gun violence

The gun violence and crime is still happening persistently throughout southeastern Pennsylvania. Especially in our city of Philadelphia. Most people who have resided in Pennsylvania for more than a decade would have the same question about all the unlawful behavior. Why are there still multiple shootings with crime incidents all the time?

At the rate this inhumanity is going our elected officials representatives who as citizens in their legislative, senatorial, congressional districts voted for have to be irate with all this madness. As a Pennsylvania citizen living in southeastern Pennsylvania I am seriously distraught and demoralized. We can point the finger at each other as to what we are doing as constituents to stop the spread of gun violence and crime but it all goes back to our political representatives to enforce change in our community neighborhoods.

Speaking with the baby boomers age range generation, most of them say that they are in shock that the rise in crime and violence has risen and gotten worse since their time. More resources for mental health care need to be established at schools along with jobs, to put an ease on some of these acts of violence such as domestically. Certain incidents should not have to escalate as much as they do.

Another issue to address is sanitation. When contacting a township, Borough municipality, or city of Philadelphia department of streets they say that it is up to the person that is residing on that specific property to be responsible for cleaning up their property line. In my opinion all sanitation departments in Pennsylvania could help with that besides on a residential property.

A prime example is Septa. On February 21st 2024 Septa received a federal grant award to help replace the Market-Frankford Line rail subway route vehicles. Most to all of the Septa buses have been upgraded which is great but on “The L” specifically you will see trash and recyclables everywhere. The federal grant will put a tremendous help on cleaning up all Septa transit systems in combination with a cleaner transportation environment. Leslie S. Richards, CEO and General Manager of Septa and leadership team did a great job retrieving the grant and putting something into action with trying to make a more efficient, functioning, sanitary environment.

But overall it has just seemed to be an everlasting cycle of failure to deliver on stopping the crime and gun violence politically.