“Crime is a big problem in this area, and we’ve seen a drastic increase in gang activity,” says Stefanie Salavantis, the district attorney of Luzerne County. “In Wilkes-Barre, two factions of the Bloods shoot at each other in broad daylight right in front of police officers. I took office in 2012, when there were about five homicides a year in the county. In 2013, there were twenty-three. I’d say about 85 percent of those were related to drug abuse or addiction. We have people from New York and Philadelphia moving in here and transporting product.”
There is probably some truth to this, but it would be quite useful to see how crime rates in diverse areas correspond to the overall rise in opiod-related miseries. Is the increase in Luzerne the result of immigration-borne drug-trafficking, or representative of a wider problem? Maybe compare it to crime rate changes in areas less impacted by immigration?
Kristy liked this
