Hope and pray for the citizens and city leadership of Greenacres and West Palm Beach.

Very sad news. In 2016, by April 28th, there were 30 homicides in Palm Beach County. So far this year there are 41. The hopes that last year may be setting a new downward trend for murders in this County is still very possible but the numbers so far do not bode well.

Sadly, there were 2 more murders yesterday of young men in the City of Greenacres. 

There have been 9 homicides in West Palm Beach so far this year. By this time last year there was one. To put this in perspective, in all of unincorporated Palm Beach County there have been 7 homicides this year.

Of the nine homicides in WPB so far this year, 7 were Black males, and 5 of them were between the ages of 20–34; the weapon used was a firearm.

Several years ago the Post database, “Homicides tracker”, had a search filter for ages of murder victims. That was removed. Why? Draw your own conclusions.

In early April the banner headline in The Palm Beach Post was “County to tackle heroin epidemic”. Don’t recall seeing any banner headlines in the Post warning about all the Black males being murdered in Palm Beach County — fully half of all homicides — almost all Black males between the ages of 20–34.

Something happened last year in Palm Beach County when the number of murders dropped so significantly, from 109 in 2015 to 87 in 2016. This should be front page news in The Palm Beach Post: You know, “Real News Starts Here”. They should have reporters scouring the County and cities to find out why that happened last year. Possibly, there’s a lesson to be learned.

However, back in 2015 and well into mid-2016, the Post reporters and editors were reporting and editorializing about things even more important to them than the “Opioid Epidemic” — which by then was already tearing apart our cities and communities — do you remember what was so important to them in 2015–2016? Use this link to find out.

By the time the Post took up reporting about the scourge of “Opioids” last year, they were already too late for cities like Lake Worth, West Palm Beach, and the rest of Central Palm Beach County.

Remember. The heroin epidemic didn’t begin in 2016. It began much further back than that.