On Thursday, October 12th, Philadelphia Police Officers Richard Mendez, 50, and Raul Ortiz, 60, were when the officers attempted to stop a gang of goons from attempting to break in and steal a car in a parking garage at the Philadelphia International Airport. Officer Mendez was killed, and Officer Ortiz wounded. The officers returned fire, and one of ths suspects was wounded. Teenager Jesus Herman Madera Duran was wounded, and his accomplices threw him in the back of their Dodge Durango — which was reported stolen a weak earlier — and dumped him on the floor of a parking garage at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and then fled. Young Mr Duran, of Camden, New Jersey, was pronounced dead at CHOP.
The stolen Durango was found several hours later in South Brunswick, New Jersey, burned out, as the criminals had attempted to burn out any incrimination evidence.
Two more arrested in killing of Officer Richard Mendez, placing all remaining suspects in custody, police say
Hendrick Peña-Fernandez, 21, of Pennsauken, and Alexander Batista-Polanco, 21, of Camden, were arrested over the past two days, police said.
by Max Marin, Chris Palmer, and Ellie Rushing | Wednesday, October 18, 2023 | 12:15 PM EDT | Updated: 5:06 PM EDT
Police have arrested two more men who they believe were involved in the airport parking lot shooting that left one Philadelphia police officer dead and a second injured last week — meaning that all remaining suspects in the crime have been taken into custody, authorities said Wednesday.
Interim Police Commissioner John Stanford said at a City Hall news conference that authorities had apprehended Hendrick Peña-Fernandez, 21, of Pennsauken, and Alexander Batista-Polanco, 21, of Camden, over the last two days, and that both men would be charged with murder and related crimes in the killing of Officer Richard Mendez and the wounding of Officer Raul Ortiz.
Peña-Fernandez was arrested early Wednesday morning in Bellmawr, Camden County, said Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore. Batista-Polanco also was taken into custody in New Jersey, on Tuesday, but police did not say where. Batista-Polanco was then taken by police to two different jurisdictions where he was facing warrants — including in Scranton, where he was charged for his role in an April burglary, according to court documents.
It would appear that Mr Batista-Polanco might not be a very nice guy, with two previous criminal warrants.
Yobranny Martinez-Fernandez, 18, had been apprehended in Cherry Hill on Monday. The mugshot of Hendrick Peña-Fernandez was not available at press time.
Looking at those mugshots, perhaps it’s my imagination, but it appears to me that the two fine gentlemen pictured had some previous experience in front of police cameras. The Philadelphia Inquirer, of course, did not publish the available mugshots; that was up to Steve Keeley of Foz 29 News.
The Philadelphia Police believe that all of the directly involved shooters have been apprehended, but that there are after-the-fact accomplices who drove the three surviving suspects away from the scene where the Durango was set ablaze, and may have rented hotel rooms for the suspects under different names.
I might not have written about the case, save for this OpEd in Tuesday’s Inquirer:
Death by incarceration must be abolished
At this moment in the United States, over 200,000 people are sentenced to die in prison.
by Kempis Songster and Nikki Grant, For The Inquirer | Tuesday, October 17, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT
Last month, a group of experts from the U.N. Human Rights Committee published a report condemning systemic racism in the United States criminal justice system. After an official visit to the U.S., where experts visited five detention centers and heard testimonies from 133 affected people, the authors of the report noted that a “racist criminal justice system erodes all efforts towards addressing systemic racism.” They offered 30 recommendations for reforms, including eliminating death by incarceration, also known as life sentences.
At this moment in the U.S., more than 200,000 people are sentenced to die in prison. Pennsylvania has the second-largest population in the country of prisoners serving life sentences without parole. No matter how much these individuals have transformed over the decades they’ve been behind bars, they will never see life beyond prison walls again.
Might I suggest here that Messrs Peña-Fernandez, Batista-Polanco, and Martinez-Fernandez should be, if convicted of the murder of Officer Mendez, released on the day that the Officer recovers from death?
The U.S. employs life sentences at an unparalleled rate. A global human rights analysis of 113 countries found the number of people serving life sentences in the U.S. is more than all of the rest of the countries combined. It is a cruel form of punishment that takes away the human capacity for redemption.
There have been many sentenced-to-life criminals who achieved some sort of redemption, normally through religious conversion, while in prison, but nevertheless lived out the rest of their lives in the prisons in which they belonged.
Furthermore, life sentences disproportionately impact people of color, our elders, and our children. According to the Sentencing Project, more than two-thirds of those sentenced to die in prison in the United States are people of color. While only 12.4% of the U.S. population is Black, 46% of all of those serving life sentences nationwide are Black. Half are over the age of 50. A life sentence disappears sources of wisdom from Black families and communities forever.
Really? Perhaps Mr Songster and Miss Grant have failed to consider the possibility that the racial disparity among those sentenced to life in prison is due to a disproportionate number of “people of color” committing crimes which have the possibility of life sentences. As for a life sentence “disappear(ing) sources of wisdom from black families and communities forever,” perhaps the “sources of wisdom” from murderers ought to be “disappear(ed)”. Perhaps the greatest “source of wisdom” which can come from this case is that, if convicted, Messrs Peña-Fernandez, Batista-Polanco, and Martinez-Fernandez will be conspicuous by their absences around the families’ dinner tables, their absences reinforcing the obvious lesson, don’t do this stupid stuff.
So, who are the authors?
One of us — Songster — suffered under the weight of this inhumane treatment for 30 years. After running away from his home in Brooklyn with a childhood friend at age 15, he spent the next four months caught up in the drug trade in Philadelphia. In a fight one evening, he and that friend stabbed a fellow runaway to death. Because the mandatory minimum for first- and second-degree murder in Pennsylvania is life without parole, Songster was sentenced to die in prison.
An obvious question: has the unnamed “fellow runaway” recovered from death yet? His sentence is permanent.
In Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), the Supreme Court held that mandatory life without parole sentences for crimes committed by juveniles was unconstitutional, and Mr Songster became eligible for parole; he served 30 years behind bars, but is now free, and able to live the life he denied to that apparently nameless runaway.
Author Nikki Grant is Policy Director and co-founder for Amistad Law Project, an organization which seeks to end imprisonment almost completely. According to her site biography:
Nikki Grant
She is the proud daughter of Jamaican immigrants and grew up in a tightly-knit, working class West Indian community in Orlando, Florida. As a young person, she witnessed poverty, racial segregation and inequitable schools in her community, as well as her father’s disabling chronic illness. She was inspired by the demonstration of care by primarily Black women neighbors and church family to work towards social equity through a Black feminist lens. Nikki is a movement lawyer and a founding member of the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration. She is also a board member of the Abortion Liberation Fund of Pennsylvania, where she serves on the Community Organizing committee.
I suppose that Miss Grant doesn’t care all that much about people who have been killed, given that the homepage of the Abortion Liberation Fund of Pennsylvania, of which she is a proud board member, states, in big, bold letters, “We envision a future in which abortion liberation is normalized + celebrated.” Miss Grant wants to actually celebrate prenatal infanticide! Given that the aborted are just as nameless as Mr Songster’s victim, it pretty much all fits together.
There’s a wryly interesting issue of timing here. I do not know when Mr Songster and Miss Grant submitted their OpEd to the newspaper, but its publication during the pursuit of Officer Mendez’s killers weakens the authors’ point: is any killers deserve to be locked up for the rest of their miserable lives, it’s those who kill police officers in the line of duty. Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §2502, murder is defined as
(a) Murder of the first degree. — A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the first degree when it is committed by an intentional killing.
(b) Murder of the second degree. — A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the second degree when it is committed while defendant was engaged as a principal or an accomplice in the perpetration of a felony.
both of which fit the crimes of which the suspects are accused. Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §1102, an adult convicted of first-degree murder can be sentenced to life imprisonment or even the death penalty,[1]While there are people on death row in the Keystone State, in practice a death sentence is never carried out. Only three men have been executed in Pennsylvania since the restoration of capital … Continue reading while a conviction of second-degree murder shall be sentenced to life imprisonment.
So, I have to ask: how many Pennsylvanians are going to be persuaded that life sentences should be abolished while the story of Officer Mendez’s murder in in the public eye?
To me, it’s simple: no one who is guilty of murder should ever see the light of day again as a free man.
_______________________________________
Updated: 8:33 PM EDT
OK, I am officially stunned: The Philadelphia Inquirer actually published mugshots of two of the three suspects!
Two of the three men accused of killing Philly Police Officer Richard Mendez have been arraigned on murder charges
Alexander Batista-Polanco and Yobranny Martinez-Fernandez were denied bail and jailed after being arraigned overnight. Hendrick Peña-Fernandez is awaiting extradition.
by Chris Palmer | Thursday, October 19, 2023 | 11:16 AM EDT | Updated: 4:34 PM EDT
Two of the three men arrested this week in the fatal shooting of a Philadelphia police officer and the wounding of another officer during an attempted car theft at the airport last week have been arraigned on charges including murder.
Alexander Batista-Polanco, 21, and Yobranny Martinez-Fernandez, 18, were denied bail and jailed after being arraigned overnight, according to court records. A third man, Hendrick Peña-Fernandez, was awaiting extradition to the city after he was apprehended this week in New Jersey, officials said.
There’s really not much more in the second story than what I’ve quoted above. I was simply surprised that the Inky published the mugshots.
References
| ↑1 | While there are people on death row in the Keystone State, in practice a death sentence is never carried out. Only three men have been executed in Pennsylvania since the restoration of capital punishment in 1976, and all three voluntarily dropped all of their appeals. |
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I wonder if it’s a coincidence that all three of the suspects have hyphenated last names.
That’s significant to me because it indicates that they were either products of broken homes, raised in families in which the mother did not have enough respect for the father to take his last name, or both A and B are correct.
Death by incarceration may be pretty miserable for the people stupid or evil enough to commit crimes to warrant it, but isn’t that preferable to death by, say, Hanging? Firing squad? Electrocution? Heck, probably even better than death by lethal injection.
Actually, hyphenated names are fairly common among Hispanic populations. Some Latin American cultures use both the father’s and mother’s last names, sometimes in the form of Father’s Last Name y Mother’s Last Name.
There have been many cases of condemned men voluntarily dropping their appeals to just get it all over with, but they are certainly in the minority.
Of course, the Amistad Law Project are saying that every prisoner should have an eventual release date, that no one should be incarcerated until he dies, and they are bitterly opposed to what the left call “mass incarceration.” I disagree: I believe the problem is not mass incarceration, but that not enough people are incarcerated, for not a long enough time.
“I believe the problem is not mass incarceration, but that not enough people are incarcerated, for not a long enough time.”
I agree completely. I’ve seen several studies and reports that indicate that the vast majority of crimes are committed by a relatively small number of repeat offenders and that they invariably progress from less violence to more violence as they “grow” in their chosen career field.
People who have demonstrated that they cannot or will not peacefully coexist with others in a civil society should be taken at their word and removed from said society.
“Actually, hyphenated names are fairly common among Hispanic populations.”
That actually didn’t occur to me. I guess I’d have expected the “name y name” formulation. I didn’t associate the hyphenation with hispanic, but I can see that in second+ generation American hispanics, especially those of mixed ancestry.