Wilmington, Delaware

:For other places called Wilmington, see Wilmington

Crime

Given Wilmington's central location between Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City, the city saw a massive rise in drug sales in the early 1990's. Dealers would use Wilmington's poorly patrolled streets and underfunded police force (at one time only eight police cars would monitor the city at night) as an easy hideout or stop-off from the major cities that were less than two hours away.

Related Topics:
Washington, D.C. - Philadelphia - New York City

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With drugs and gangs appearing more and more on the streets, violent crimes such as murder, assualt, and armed robbery rose at a frightening pace, putting Wilmington among the most dangerous cities for its size nationally. Many local residents, living in Victorian homes in Wilmington's WestSide and Hilltop neighborhoods, petitioned the local government to address these matters, but often gave up and moved out, leaving rows of abandoned homes open to dealers, users, and criminals.

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To make matters worse, the segregation of Wilmington's blocks made it easy for residents to turn a blind eye. As in most northeast cities, the dense neighborhoods juxtapose the poor against the relatively affluent areas only blocks apart. Ursuline and Padua Academy, two of the cities best female private schools, and even once Tom Carper, the Governor of Delaware, lived only a handful of blocks away from some of the most violent streets, separated by elevation changes or parks.

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To counter this crime wave Wilmington became the first city in the U.S. to have its entire downtown area under surveillance: some $800,000 worth of video cameras (some bought with public money, some by downtown businesses) have the exteriors of all the buildings in view, and the technicians who monitor them dispatch the city's police to the scene of any crime or suspicious activity they see, while it is still happening.

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Among the residental streets the Wilmington Police Department started a controversial program known as jump-outs, in which unmarked police vans would cruise crime prone neighborhoods late at night, "jump-out" at corners where residents were loitering and detain them temporarily. Using loitering as probable cause, the police would then photograph, search, and fingerprint everyone present. This would improve the police's records in case fingerprints or eye-witnesses were available at future crimes, along with catching anyone with drugs or weapons on them. Controversy spread from a cry of violation of civil-rights and racial-profiling, while other residents claimed it was helping and the only way to counter the gangs' grip on their streets and homes.

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