Lol... I work half a block away from where the latest shooting happened. This article makes it sound like it's a warzone... it isn't. And as far as there being a supposed lack of police... the police station is a block down on the other side of the street. And directly across is the T Station... which usually has a noticeable PAT Police presence. You want to fix crime? Try fixing poverty, income inequality, and the affordable housing crisis. Try making mental health services accessible and affordable so the people on the street that desperately need it can get it. Crime is a symptom of problems that we don't even try to fix... and more police are just a bandaid on a bullet hole.

A “string of shootings”, but he only mentions two. One this month, and one in May.

Fuck all the way off with this fear mongering malarkey. What a chode.

What a piece of shit bootlicking column. Send in more police to solve everything except address the deep economic and social injustice that we face day in and day out.

I'm sorry but what he has described isn't the downtown that I've experienced. I spend a lot of time downtown at all hours and I have not felt unsafe. Dude sounds dramatic and like he has only experienced downtown by watching the news.

There are common areas of concern, e.g., violence and poverty, but our reactions could not be more different.

His discussion of NYC was also peculiar. I think he thought it offered contrast but, instead, it just seemed like he forgot that he was writing about Pittsburgh.

Unless the answer is a basketball team put together by a psychic named Mona Mondieu based on all the players having the Pisces zodiac sign and led by Dr. J, I ain’t interested.

Dude's writing to his audience. The people who read the Trib are old, white, and suburban. It makes grandpa angry, and grandma scared, it's the perfect article for the Trib.

“Can clouds be fixed?”

• old man writes editorial

There is nothing funnier than petrified old conservatives acting like downtown is a lawless gangland like LA during the early 90s race riots. I went to school and worked downtown for over a decade and never saw any of this alleged crime they've been pissing their pants over. These people are scared of their own shadows but act tough. Its cute.

It seems to me that those who are taking exception to the editorial are long on criticism and short on near term solutions. Let's say for starters, that we raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour within Allegheny County. How is that going to impact the drug trade, the violence culture, gun ownership and usage and the feeling that seems to be universal around downtown, that the city is my personal garbage can. I went downtown last fall and noticed that Fort Duquesne Blvd. looked like a garbage dump. The city has made an effort to make that area more hospitable but it seems to require a round the clock presence to stop the alcohol use, the trashing of the benches, sidewalks and greenery and general lack of healthy outdoor ambience. It is horrible. I called the city to report it and when I went back all the trash had been swept up into piles but not picked up and put into bins. Cans were full but I am sure the first good wind must have blown everything back where it was. One thing that can be done within the city is the adoption of some form of rent control. Pittsburgh is such a small city that when an area becomes popular and gentrified it has a huge impact all over. Now, they are planning new upper class housing on the Civic Arena site. Subsidized housing is an absolute necessity. Who would ever have thought the day would come when working people could not afford to live in Lawrenceville, the South Side or Mt. Washington. This has to be corrected.

Until it becomes more of a place to live than primarily a place to visit, it will be difficult.