(Editor's Note: Honey Brook Borough does have a police force; its chief is Patrick Ely.)

City Manager Harry Walker last night called Coatesville a city under siege brought about by ill-thoughout county programs that turned the city into a welfare state and the breeding ground for lawlessness.

Saying city residents have a constitutional right to self defense, Walker took aim at the Chester County Housing Authority whose policies he said have made the city the dumping ground for Section 8 housing and all its accompanying social and economic woes.

"In the not so distant past the city has suffered the decline of its major industry and job base. But even more debilitating to its affluence and tranquility has been the erosion of community values and general well-being by the concentration of the county's welfare population within the city. This ill-conceived policy has resulted in crimes that attack the basic rights of the residents of Coatesville," Walker said.

Last night Walker called for the county to begin a more equitable distribution of low income and broken homes throughout the county by putting a freeze on subsidized housing projects and Section 8 placements in Coatesville.

Since June there have been seven shootings in Coatesville that have left two people dead. Last week a Coatesville man, Dashen White, 22, was killed in a shootout with police at a West Goshen hotel. A 15-year-old-youth, Calvin Haines Jr. was arrested fleeing the scene. Both men were from Coatesville. And Saturday night two men were injured in a shooting in the 300-block of Walnut Street. Last night Council Member Patsy Ray, who lives near where the shooting took place, said the two people injured were her relatives.

Still, city Police Chief William Matthews told council last night that overall crime in Coatesville for the past six months is 4.5-percent lower than it was for the same time period last year. He also said the number of arrests for violent crime is down. He blamed that on a street culture that enforces a no-snitch philosophy.

"We have parents who are in denial . . . some parents encouraging crime," said Matthews.

Walker, in his manager's report, said curfew centers are being established for youth violators. "Ordinances are being developed to punish shamefully negligent parents," he said.

Walker described such actions as short term, however. For the future, he said, nothing less than the complete revitalization of the city will drive out what he termed the dark forces of lawlessness. "Call it gentrification or any other name, the elimination of blight and redevelopment of the middle class has served many other cities, some poster children for crime, very well," he said.

Walker also had a strong message for those in county government demanding the city spend more on police. "Send money to pay for the city's unfunded mandate of policing the county's criminal element at the expense of its citizens," he said.

Walker said the prevalence of crime can be traced to social disorganization: broken homes; unemployment, miseducation and the temptation of easy money. "All these factors are multiplied concentrating them in the county's most densely populated and lowest income municipality without thought to consequences or funding to ameliorate quite predictable outcomes," said Walker.