Skip to main content
Tuesday, November 10, 2026Nov 10
Subscribe
All Sections
Search
More

Sohn: Don’t shoot the messenger for society’s imperfections

Chattanooga police officers work the scene of a homicide in early September at the corner of 4th Avenue and 28th Street. It was one of the 119 here in the past five years.
Chattanooga police officers work the scene of a homicide in early September at the corner of 4th Avenue and 28th Street. It was one of the 119 here in the past five years. Chattanooga police officers work the scene of a homicide in early September at the corner of 4th Avenue and 28th Street. It was one of the 119 here in the past five years.

By Pam Sohn 3 min read

One-hundred-and-nineteen homicides in five years.

Five children, 16 teenagers, 21 women and 77 men.

That’s been the toll – the victims of homicide – in Chattanooga between the first day of 2011 and Oct. 18, 2015.

On Sunday, the Times Free Press ran a front-page story and opened a web page by that name – The Toll – to give faces to those frightening numbers.

Sadly, the most feedback we’ve gotten is not that of outcry for the pain of our community loss. Nor is it a pocketbook outrage for the result of a Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology study finding that each murder (anywhere in our country) costs society $17 million.