"Perfect storm" behind murder in Philadelphia

By Jon Hurdle

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Jerry Watson knows the mean streets of North Philadelphia, and he has the scars to prove it.

The 51-year-old stonemason, sitting on a wall in the Germantown section of the city, says he was stabbed in the neck with the sharpened edge of a Pepsi bottle by one of a group of eight or nine men who attacked him as he was walking his dog.

In an earlier incident, he says he was shot in the head while dealing drugs, and spent six weeks in a coma.

Watson, who is black, is lucky to be alive in a city that has the highest homicide rate among the 10 biggest U.S. cities, and where the killing continues after hitting a nine-year high of 406 in 2006.

"Civil law is nonexistent," he says. "It's just street justice, survival of the fittest. You have to have a certain kind of macho. You have to be a goddamn commando. You have to have a scowl on your face."

As of June 1, there have been 167 killings in Philadelphia, up from 151 in the same period of last year. By comparison, New York City, with six times the population but much tougher gun laws, recorded 176 murders in the first five months of 2007, down 17 percent from a year ago.

The FBI's preliminary uniform crime report for 2006, released June 4, showed Philadelphia's murder rate at 27.8 per 100,000 inhabitants -- the highest among the 10 largest cities.

Philadelphia's dead and wounded are mostly young black men subjected to a cocktail of drugs, guns, poverty and a brutal street culture that has long tormented U.S. inner cities.