Was crime really this bad in real life back then??

I was an adult in 1982, not from Philadelphia but from the midwest. I don't remember crime being noticably worse then than it was a decade earlier (which I kind of remember) or a decade later. It does seem that the idea of neighborhood patrols was catching on around then, and that's in part what this movie is about.

It's realistic in the sense that the people who made it (I'm guessing their average age to be about 40) felt their neighborhoods were less safe, probably a lot less safe, then they did when they were 20 years old, sometime around 1960.

I think what they were trying to do with Fighting Back was to take the Death Wish premise (law abiding citizen wronged by thugs, The Systrem fails to adequately deal with it, law abiding citizen takes the law into his own hands) and apply it to neighborhood vigilante organizations.

I do remember neighborhood watch groups becoming more prominent back then, groups like the Guardian Angels, and Take Back the Night events going on.

I know New York in the late 70's-early 80's was facing bankruptcy, the police force at the time was just being rebuilt after large corruption, crack cocaine was hitting the streets for the first time. I don't really know that much about Philly, but i'm just making the point that New York at the time did have high violent crime rates.

born and raised in chicago. Chicago has far worse areas that others like any other big city, i went to high school on the north side and 9 out of 10 classmates were gangbangers. There was cabrini green and most knew to stay out of that area, but we had neighborhood situations quite similar to this movie. But Chicago now is full of Starbucks, and hipster yuppie condo living professionals.

It's worse now. We need more movies like this to remind people living with crime is not an option.