Mrs Pico and I are taking SSG Pico to Knightdale Army Reserve Center, as she begins her deployment to Kuwait! We’ll journey on to Oak Island for a couple of days at the beach. William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove will be tending to my poor site while we’re gone.
Author Archives: Dana Pico
Hold them accountable! Teachers who know another teacher is sexually abusing a student must report it, or face jail
With the leaking of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion overturning Roe v Wade, some people have forgotten that there actually is other news, and this one really gets to me. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:
A former Philly teacher sexually assaulted a student, and the district knew he was a predator, lawsuit says
A longtime teacher at Parkway Center City High School assaulted a student over four years at the school, despite warnings that the teacher had abused another student, a recently filed civil suit says.
by Kristen A Graham | Monday, May 2, 2022
A former Parkway Center City High School teacher sexually assaulted one of his students for four years — and the Philadelphia School District allowed it to happen, ignoring repeated evidence of abuse, according to a recently filed lawsuit.
Larry Perry, a veteran, popular English and history teacher at the Philadelphia magnet school on North 13th Street, was already convicted of sexual assault and corruption of a minor in this case and sentenced in March up to eight years in prison. He is pursuing an appeal.Photo and caption from The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 30, 2019. Click to enlarge.
So, Mr Perry has already been convicted; this means that the lawsuit is over an established sexual abuse case.
The internally linked story noted that Mr Perry first began ‘grooming’ the girl when she was 13, and began to have sexual intercourse with her when she was 15. Doing the math from data in that story, Mr Perry was around 40 years old at the time. He was 51 at the time of his arrest.
Several paragraphs down:
Teachers who were friends with Perry knew about his relationship with the victim, the suit says, but did nothing despite being mandated reporters. A noontime aide once saw Perry driving the victim on I-95. A school police officer began noticing Perry spending significant amounts of time with the victim and brought his concerns to the school principal, who responded by bringing the police officer to a meeting with her and Perry.
If the allegation in the lawsuit is correct, teachers, plural, knew about the affair, but did nothing! It was a police officer assigned to the school who apparently did not know of the relationship — if the reporting is accurate — but was suspicious, and brought his “concerns” to the principal.
The principal told the school police officer that Perry “had been investigated previously regarding similar allegations, and that nothing happened to him.” The principal took no further action, the suit says.
The school had been warned about Perry before — in 1998, Perry’s then-girlfriend discovered him naked with another underage student at their home. She kicked him out of the apartment and reported the inappropriate contact to Parkway Center City officials, handing over letters and cards Perry wrote to the girl. Nothing was done with those allegations, the suit says.
The Inquirer article does not go into sufficient depth here. It could be that there was more than one previous investigation, which turned up nothing. That Mr Perry was caught in flagrante delicto with an underaged student, and that his then-girlfriend turned over physical evidence to the school, and he retained his job, is damning. This is an allegation which, if substantiated, should lead to serious investigations, terminations, and criminal charges against anyone who covered up Mr Perry’s abuse.
Mr Perry would have been 30 or 31 at the time, which leads to an obvious question: did he have tenure in 1998? If he did not, why was he retained? Even if the information brought against him at the time was insufficient to fire him, if he did not have tenure the school could simply have not continued his contract. If he raised a stink with his union, the cahool could simply inform the union of the allegations, and one would think that the union would not go to bat for him in such a situation.
Perry’s abuse of the plaintiff was so well known by other students that he “addressed the comments with students in his class and said that if the talk and rumors about him and Jane Doe do not stop, he will fail the students and they will not graduate,” according to the suit.
This is the most damning part of all: if this was true, then the ‘relationship’ was common knowledge. The John Jay Report documenting sexual abuse among the priesthood was released in 2004, and The Philadelphia Inquirer had been all over abuse stories. The titillating stories about Washington state teacher Mary Kay Letourneau and her affair with a 12-year-old boy were all over the news, both in 1998, when it first became public, and again in 2004 following her release from prison and marriage to Vili Fualaau, by then 21, the student with whom she had a ‘relationship.’ No teacher with an IQ above room temperature could not have known about the illegality of such ‘relationships,’ and the penalties for it. Teachers were all instructed about their reporting responsibilities for suspected abuse.
So, if the allegations in the lawsuit are accurate, who in Parkway Center City High School, and in the Philadelphia School District administration, knew about this and took no action?
If the allegations are substantiated, those who knew and did nothing or said nothing need to be fired! Any who have teaching certificates or professional licenses or certifications need to have them revoked. Under Chapter 63, §6319, the failure of a mandated reporter to keep something like this secret is guilty of either a felony in the third degree (sentence 3½ to 7 years in prison), if the mandated reporter has direct knowledge of the abuse, or a misdemeanor in the second degree (1 to 2 years in prison) if his knowledge is less certain.
The cited article stated that Mr Perry was “a veteran, popular” teacher, and it needs to be pointed out to everyone: we don’t care how much you like a person, if you know that he is sexually abusing minors, it is your duty to report it, and if you do not, you can go to jail as well.
Conservative Kentuckians need to thank Mitch McConnell! He filled an inside straight when the safe bet would have been to fold.
Screen capture from The Washington Post. Click to enlarge.
When Senator McConnell took his decision, it was not at all clear that a Republican would win the 2016 election. The odious Hillary Clinton was the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, though Bernie Sanders was still making inroads, and Donald Trump was throwing the orderly Republican nomination process into chaos. Every poll, every poll, concluded that Mrs Clinton would solidly defeat Mr Trump if that was how the November contest would be held. If that turned out to be the case, the (purportedly) more moderate Judge Garland would be replaced as nominee by a really flaming hard leftist like, oh, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Even if Mrs Clinton would simply have renewed the appointment of Judge Garland, were he on the Supreme Court he would have voted to uphold Roe.
Senator McConnell placed a serious bet, against the odds, and he won; he filled an inside straight, when the safe bet would have been to fold.
I’m very proud to say that I voted for Mitch McConnell in November of 2020!
Why does a newspaper censor the news? The Philadelphia Inquirer kept from its readers information already available to the public.
With 6,245,051 people according to the 2020 census, Philadelphia and its surrounding metropolitan area is the seventh largest in the United States. With a population of 1,603,797, the city of Philadelphia itself is the sixth largest in the United States. So why, then, does The Philadelphia Inquirer rank only 17th in circulation? Could it be because they censor the news?
Grandson charged with murdering his grandfather and another man stemming from a dispute over bedroom conditions
The circumstances leading to the arrest of Czar McMichael, 22, of North Philly, began on Thursday when Benjamin E. McMichael, 67, conducted “a routine inspection” of his grandson’s bedroom.
by Diane Mastrull | Sunday, May 1, 2022 | 4:27 PM EDT
Czar McMichael, via Fox 29 News
A Philadelphia man has been charged with murder in two shootings over two days that left his grandfather and another man dead in a double homicide that emanated from a complaint over the condition of the grandson’s bedroom, police said Sunday.The circumstances leading to the arrest of Czar McMichael, 22, of the Logan section of North Philly, began on Thursday when, police said, Benjamin E. McMichael, 67, conducted “a routine inspection” of his grandson Czar’s third-floor bedroom in their home on the 4600 block of North Broad Street and was upset with the condition of the room.
Police said the elder McMichael grabbed his grandson’s arm and Czar McMichael spun around and shot his grandfather.
On Saturday Anthony Ham, 45, of Philadelphia, along with an acquaintance stopped by the McMichael home to check on Benjamin because they hadn’t heard from him in a couple days. Ham got into the home by climbing through a window and unlocked the door for the person with him, whom police did not identify.
There’s more at the original.
What did I predict? That the newspaper would decline to print the suspect’s mugshot and would do what it could to conceal the suspect’s race. And in fact the Inquirer did not include the suspect’s mugshot, though it was easily available and had been published on Fox 29 News. Steve Keeley of Fox 29 tweeted his mugshot at 1:47 PM EDT, 2 hours and 40 minutes before the Inquirer’s article was published.
Mr Keeley also published the Philadelphia Police Department’s press release on the matter, which noted that the victims were a (45/B/M) and a (67/B/M), but of course the very “anti-racist” and #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Inquirer were not about to publish that!
Yet the newspaper published the mugshot of Kathleen Kane, a Scranton woman who has been out of public office for six years, who has been disbarred and thus no longer practices law, and who has, as nearly as I can discover, simply been living on the spousal support from the wealthy businessman she divorced since she got out of jail.
Black murder suspect in the newspaper’s hometown? Conceal that information! Attractive white woman accused, but not convicted of, a DUI? Splash her photo all over the newspaper’s website, and Twitter!
This is what passes for journalism in the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper: conceal the facts which are inconvenient and do not go along with publisher Lisa Hughes’ ideas and goals.
References
| ↑1 | From Wikipedia:
I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid. |
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“It’s a stinking business, Mr Rutledge, a stinking business!” It seems that Planned Parenthood is having difficulties finding physicians who want to perform abortions
In the musical 1776, Roy Poole, the actor playing delegate Steven Hopkins of Rhode Island, shouts to John Callum, who played Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, on slavery, “It’s a stinking business, Mr Rutledge, a stinking business!” That’s how I see abortion, and I am appalled that anyone would willingly be a part of it.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 940 OB/GYNs employed in Georgia in May of 2010, the fifth highest in the nation. The ‘location quotient’ for OB/GYNs in the Peachtree State was 1.38; BLS defines the term as:
The location quotient is the ratio of the area concentration of occupational employment to the national average concentration. A location quotient greater than one indicates the occupation has a higher share of employment than average, and a location quotient less than one indicates the occupation is less prevalent in the area than average.
There are 21 OB/GYNs employed in Georgia per 100,000 population, which is the highest number in the South, and one of the highest in the nation, but somehow, Planned Parenthood can’t find anyone in the Peachtree State willing to perform preborn infanticides! Continue reading
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” — Benjamin Franklin
While Abteilung für Vaterländische Sicherheit is a more literal translation of Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, perhaps Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Reich Main Security Office, would be a more accurate one. And Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, frequently shortened to Propagandaministerium, was at least more honest than the ‘official’ name for Herr Biden’s Ministry of Truth, the ‘Disinformation Governance Board.’ As we hear about the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security and its new Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board, now we get this story, from The Wall Street Journal:
FBI Conducted Potentially Millions of Searches of Americans’ Data Last Year, Report Says
Searches in national-security investigations came without warrants, could stoke privacy concerns in Congress
by Dustin Volz | Friday, April 29, 2022 | 6:22 PM EDT
WASHINGTON—The Federal Bureau of Investigation performed potentially millions of searches of American electronic data last year without a warrant, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday, a revelation likely to stoke longstanding concerns in Congress about government surveillance and privacy.Also see: William Teach: FBI Conducted Almost 3.4 Million Warrantless “Wiretaps” In 2021, Media Mostly Silent
An annual report published Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed that the FBI conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of U.S. data that had been previously collected by the National Security Agency.
Senior Biden administration officials said the actual number of searches is likely far lower, citing complexities in counting and sorting foreign data from U.S. data. It couldn’t be learned from the report how many Americans’ data was examined by the FBI under the program, though officials said it was also almost certainly a much smaller number.
The report doesn’t allege the FBI was routinely searching American data improperly or illegally.
Well, no, but then again, it wouldn’t.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Various Supreme Court decisions, including Mapp v Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 (1964), and Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 (1963), have ‘incorporated,’ or applied the Fourth Amendment to state action as well. We take our constitutional rights seriously, but in its ever-expanding attempts to protect the United States, federal law has been gradually chipping away at those rights. And while the disclosure noted by the Journal occurred entirely under the Biden Administration, it has to be admitted that it has happened under Republican presidents as well. Remember: the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security was created under the younger President Bush following the September 11 attacks.
It was when the creation of that cabinet department was proposed that a very liberal friend of mine was calling it the Department of Fatherland Security. I gave it some credence, despite the fact he was pretty much a nutcase when it came to blaming the Bush family for everything bad under the sun.[1]The first World Trade Center bombing, she said, was aimed at the elder President Bush, even though he had already been defeated for re-election and left office, while the second was aimed at the … Continue reading
The disclosure of the searches marks the first time a U.S. intelligence agency has published an accounting, however imprecise, of the FBI’s grabs of American data through a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that governs some foreign intelligence gathering. The section of FISA that authorizes the FBI’s activity, known as Section 702, is due to expire next year.
While the ODNI report doesn’t suggest systemic problems with the searches, judges have previously reprimanded the bureau for failing to comply with privacy rules. Officials said the FBI’s searches were vital to its mission to protect the U.S. from national-security threats. The frequency of other forms of national-security surveillance detailed in the annual report generally fell year over year, in some cases continuing a multiyear trend.
The 3.4 million figure “is certainly a large number,” a senior FBI official said in a press briefing Friday on the report. “I am not going to pretend that it isn’t.” . . . .
Congress last renewed Section 702 in 2018, and then-President Donald Trump signed the renewal into law after openly questioning the measure over unsubstantiated concerns that it was used to spy on his presidential campaign. It is set to expire again at the end of next year, and current and former intelligence officials have said they anticipate a bruising political battle.
At some point, a point I think has not only been reached, but passed, we need to start realizing that yes, there could be increased danger to our national security, but that the endangerment of our constitutional rights is a far, far, far greater threat to Americans than attacks from foreign governments or terrorist organizations. President Clinton was overly concerned about going after Osama bin Laden might somehow violate international law without the proper gathering of evidence first, to the point at which then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright insisted that Pakistan, the government of which was rife with Taliban sympathizers, had to be notified about a cruise missile overflight in the attempt to destroy Mr bin Laden and his associated in a campground in Afghanistan. The attack went ahead, but the al Qaeda leaders had left the scene hours before.
Yet since that time, we’ve created federal bureaucracies which trample upon our constitutional rights in attempts to protect our nation against outsiders. Is it really worth it to protect America if we have to cease being America to do so?
Section 702 should not be renewed, and we have to find some other way, even if it risks being less efficient, to protect the United States. Mr Biden’s Ministry of Truth should not be allowed, or funded.
References
| ↑1 | The first World Trade Center bombing, she said, was aimed at the elder President Bush, even though he had already been defeated for re-election and left office, while the second was aimed at the younger President Bush, even though the planning and preparation for it had begun while Bill Clinton was President, and Al Gore was favored to win the 2000 election. |
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Isn’t this interesting?
Screen capture from The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 30, 2022. Click to enlarge.
Kathleen Kane was Pennsylvania’s Attorney General from 2013 to 2016, when she was forced to resign. She won election after a campaign in which she accused Governor Tom Corbett (R-PA), a former state Attorney General, of dragging his feet in building up the child sexual abuse case against former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, stating that more boys could have been raped due to Mr Corbett’s slow process; Mrs Kane was never able to find such a victim.
The case Mr Corbett and his successors built was almost air-tight, and Mr Sandusky was convicted, and sentenced to 30 to 60 years behind bars, which is tantamount to a life sentence for someone of his age.
Former State Attorney General Kathleen Kane was jailed again to await a hearing on a DUI arrest
Kane previously served eight months behind bars for her attacks on a rival.
by Craig R McCoy | Friday, April 29, 2022 | 4:36 PM EDT
Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was jailed Friday for violating her probation on a perjury conviction with her arrest last month on a DUI charge.
Kane, 55, turned herself in Friday morning after Montgomery County Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy issued a warrant for her arrest for violating her probation. The judge had previously sentenced Kane to prison after presiding over the 2016 perjury case that cut short Kane’s meteoric political career.
Kane will stay behind bars until a hearing on the probation violation, unless her lawyer can win an earlier release. No date has been set for the hearing, at which the judge could which revoke Kane’s probation and keep her in jail, order her to get alcohol treatment, or impose no further penalty.
The state’s former top prosecutor was released on five years’ probation in the summer of 2019 after serving eight months for the perjury conviction at the Montgomery County jail in Eagleville, where she is now being held again.
There’s more at the original.
Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Back where she belongs
Yes, Mrs Kane used to be a public figure, but she’s now just a convicted felon, with no public role, and hasn’t had a public role since she resigned as Attorney General six years ago. She does not live in Philly, but well up the Northeast Extension in Scranton. Following her conviction, the state Supreme Court disbarred Mrs Kane, so she’s no longer an attorney.
So, why publish Mrs Kane’s mugshot, but not the mugshots of the criminals apprehended and charged in the City of Brotherly Love? It couldn’t possibly be because most of the criminals in Philly are black, while Mrs Kane is a pretty white woman, could it?
Hold them accountable!
What happens when the District Attorney does not take crime seriously?
It was a series of small decisions, taken the wrong way, and the result was that a woman was sexually assaulted.
Suspect in SEPTA sex assault masturbated in a probation office two weeks before, officials say — but wasn’t charged
Some in the court system are questioning whether Quintez Adams could have been prevented from allegedly sexually assaulting a woman on the subway on April 24.
by Chris Palmer | Thursday, April 28, 2022
The man accused of sexual assault on SEPTA’s Broad Street Line last week had masturbated in front of probation officers inside their Center City offices two weeks earlier, authorities said Thursday.Quintez Adams, photo by Philadelphia Police Department and is a public record. Photo via the Bucks Daily Voice. Click to enlarge.
And though police took 28-year-old Quintez Adams into custody — landing him in jail for potentially violating his probation in a prior burglary case — they didn’t ask prosecutors to charge him with a crime for several weeks.
In the meantime, court records show, a city judge ordered that Adams be released and ended his probation. And just 12 days after that, police say, Adams sexually assaulted a woman on the subway.
- Mr Adams had been convicted of burglary in 2014, and sentenced to three years in prison. After his release, he was put on probation. Due to several probation violations, his probation has been extended.
- Mr Adams showed up for a probation meeting on April 4, 2022, and was visibly intoxicated. He had actually appeared on the wrong day. While seated, a probation officer found him masturbating in public. The police were called, and Mr Adams was taken into custody, and the probation officer taken to the police department’s Special Victims Unit to be interviewed.
- Following the interview, the Special Victims Unit failed to issue an arrest warrant, even though he was arrested after committing an obscene act viewed by several probation officers.
- Mr Adams could have been charged as a violation of his probation, but was not.
- Nevertheless, the Adult Probation and Parole Department notified Common Pleas Court Judge Frank Palumbo of the incident. A week later, on April 12th, Judge Palumbo ordered Mr Adams released and his probationary period ended.
- On Sunday, April 24th a woman was raped on SEPTA’s Broad Street Line. The alleged attack happened between the Erie and Girard Avenue stations around 12:30 PM, a crime caught on surveillance tape.
- Mr Adams was arrested for that rape, for which he has been charged, along with indecent exposure at the probation office, and an indecent exposure incident at a hospital.
Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said the Department would investigate why the Special Victims Unit did not issue an arrest warrant for Adams over the obscene act on April 4th, to see if there is some action which needs to be taken.
Now, why was Mr Adams allowed to skate, when the Philadelphia Police Department had him in custody? He violated his probation, yet Judge Palumbo turned him loose and ended his period of supervision. The Special Victims Unit knew what he had done, and knew he was a previously convicted felon on probation. They had everything they needed to keep him behind bars.
Because he was not behind bars on April 24th, an innocent woman was raped.
So far, I haven’t found George Soros-funded District Attorney Larry Krasner’s grimy fingerprints on this directly, but he has created an atmosphere in which crime is not taken seriously, because everyone knows he doesn’t really like to send anyone to jail, at least anyone not a police officer who stepped over the line. Did the Special Victims Unit just wave it off as something harmless, because they figured that let’em loose Larry would never prosecute? We don’t know, but can hope that Chief Inspector Vanore gets to the bottom of it.
Did Judge Palumbo somehow figure that the public masturbation, and intoxication, was somehow a meaningless crime, so no harm, no foul? Did he think that Mr Adams was simply no longer worth spending the city’s money?
At some point, people holding a public trust need to be held accountable! Judge Palumbo, most certainly, and the officers on duty with the Special Victims Unit at the time, definitely. Right now, a woman is dealing with the trauma of having been raped due to their refusal to do their duty!
#Killadelphia
2537 North Colorado Street, from zillow.com sales listing. Click to enlarge.
When I read about yet another homicide in the City of Brotherly Love, I go to Google Maps to check the street, and to zillow to check the real estate prices.
Steve Keeley of Fox 29 reported via tweet:
Another Late Morning Homicide in North Philadelphia. @PhillyPolice do not yet know the identity or age of male shot in his head less than an hour ago at 10:27am @FOX29philly
The Police Department’s press release indicated that the murder occurred on the 2500 block of North Colorado Street. Zillow lists one home for sale on that block, 2537, for a listed price of $55,000 . . . which is overpriced by $54,999.96.
In a photo taken by Google Maps in July of 2019, the row house to the left of 2537, 2539, was still standing. In demolishing 2539, it appears that some structural damage was done, at least to the façade of 2537. However, someone has done some work on 2537, installing windows and a new front door on the unit. Still, without any interior photos of this place, I can’t imagine how anyone could put enough money into it to be even livable, and sell it for a profit in that neighborhood.
Following Google Maps down North Colorado Street shows a virtually bombed out area.
Someone put some money into 1710 West Huntington Street, and is trying to sell the rowhouse for $150,000. This unit is on the corner of West Huntington and the 2500 block of North Colorado Street.[1]There was another rowhouse actually on the corner, the lot facing West Huntington, but it has been demolished.
So, I have to ask: what was so important in this poverty stricken neighborhood that someone had to be killed over it? What was so important that someone thought it worth the risk of getting caught and spending the rest of his miserable life in SCI Phoenix?
The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer said that racial segregation in housing determines how safe people feel in the city. I have to ask: just how are the people who can only afford North Colorado Street going to be able to afford to live in Manayunk?
References
| ↑1 | There was another rowhouse actually on the corner, the lot facing West Huntington, but it has been demolished. |
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