Author Archives: Dana Pico

Posted on by

The blood keeps flowing in the City of Brotherly Love

The blood keeps flowing in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page listed, as of 9:45 AM EDT on Monday, October 4, 2021, 418 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, as of 11:59 PM EDT on October 3rd. 418 ÷ 276 days of the year = 1.5145 per day, x 365 = 552.79 murders projected for the entire year.

Trouble is, since the end of the Labor Day weekend, there have been 55 homicides in the past 27 days, 2.037 per day. If that rate continued over the remaining 89 days of the year, that would be another 181 murders, for a total of 599 for the year!

With 89 days left in the year, the city has moved up from its 16th deadliest year to 14th.

    Nursing assistant killed by coworker at Jefferson University Hospital, two Philadelphia police officers shot

    The victim was a 43-year-old man who worked as a certified nursing assistant. The suspect, 55, fled the scene in a U-Haul van and ended up in a shootout with Philadelphia police officers in Parkside.

    by Rob Tornoe and Anna Orso | Monday, October 4, 2021

    A certified nursing assistant at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Center City was shot and killed by a coworker early Monday morning, according to police.

    The suspect — a 55-year-old man, also a nursing assistant — then fled the scene in a U-Haul van and ended up in a shootout with Philadelphia police officers in the city’s Parkside section. Two officers were shot, and the suspect — who police said was wearing body armor and carrying multiple weapons — was shot and apprehended by police.

    The victim, 43, was pronounced dead shortly after he was shot at the hospital.

    Police are investigating a connection between the two coworkers. They did not identify either man Monday morning.

There’s more at the original, but Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw stated that her department and she believe it was an intentional, targeted killing, though the reason for it was not yet known. Given that the shooter had multiple weapons and body armor, it was clearly planned.

    One of the police officers was shot in the elbow and is in critical but stable condition. The other was shot in the nose and is in stable condition. Outlaw said the two officers that were shot have been on the police force less than six years.

For having shot two police officers, even though not fatally, District Attorney will probably offer the suspect a lenient plea bargain arrangement.

Posted on by

The internet is forever . . . and so is stupidity. Journolists attempt to control the language to influence people's thinking

As regular readers — both of them — of The First Street Journal know, I have a tendency to do screen captures of things I suspect might be deleted. As Travis Lyles, “the first official Instagram Editor at The Washington Post,” now knows, the internet is forever.

    Washington Post adds ‘pregnant individuals’ to style guide

    by Luke Gentile, Social Media Producer | October 1, 2021 | 4:51 PM

    When referring to pregnancy, the Washington Post will strive to be more inclusive and use the term “pregnant individuals,” according to a Twitter post that has since been made private by the publication’s Instagram editor.

    “While biology dictates who can become pregnant, it does not always reflect gender identity,” the style manual reads. “If we say pregnant women, we exclude those who are transgender and nonbinary.”

    However, writers can’t use “pregnant individual” as a blanket term, as that would be at the expense of women who are already a marginalized group, according to the style guide.

    “If you are dealing with a situation in which you know the people identify as women , then you can appropriately use the phrase pregnant woman or pregnant women,” the directive stated. “In other situations, to be more inclusive, use pregnant women and other pregnant individuals.”

The Washington Examiner then included the screenshot of Mr Lyles Instagram post:

Washington Examiner screen capture of Travis Lyles’ Instagram post. Click to enlarge.

There’s more at the original.

So, what is the Washington Examiner? Originally a tabloid-sized daily in the nation’s capital, now a weekly publication and conservative website, it has been around for sixteen years now. Like The Washington Times, it originally hoped to supplant the post, but never did. Wikipedia has questioned its journalism, but at least here, Luke Gentile, the site’s social media producer, had the documentation.

Also see: Abigail Shrier, via Bari Weiss: Top Trans Doctors Blow the Whistle on ‘Sloppy’ Care

Conservatives routinely mock what journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading have been using as politically correct terminology, but it’s more than just political correctness at work here. It is a leftist attempt to normalize transgenderism, to normalize the cockamamie notion that, in the words of the Kinks, girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

We have previously noted how the left have been trying this, even altering a quote from liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the ACLU having to apologize for such obvious stupidity.

Even Mr Lyles recognized the biology, saying, “While biology dictates who can become pregnant, it does not always reflect gender identity,” a statement which attempts to decouple the as-long-as-we-have-had-language associations between man and male, woman and female. The control of language is the control of ideas, something the left well know, and something we must resist to preserve the common sense of millennia of known human language and history. The left are attempting to prey on conservatives’ sense of courtesy against us, to get conservatives, and everyone else, used to the idea of transgenderism as somehow being normal and acceptable, as a way to undermine our thinking and our ideology.

It’s simple: it is better to be discourteous than suborned.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
Posted on by

Killadelphia

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page reported that the City of Brotherly Love — and yes, I have been using that title sarcastically for a long time — has suffered through 412 homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, September 30th. 412 murders ÷ 273 days = 1.509157509157509 killings per day x 365 days = 550.8425 homicides projected for the year.

The 2020 census reported that 1,603,797 live in Philly. With 499 homicides in 2020, that gives the city a homicide rate of 31.11 per 100,000 population. With a guesstimated 2021 population of 1,607,667, and the city on track for 551 murders, the city’s homicide rate has jumped to 34.27 per 100,000 population.

Former Mayor Michael Nutter produced a chart of Philadelphia homicides per year from 1960 through 2020. It was rather self-serving, as he added the name of the Mayor of Philadelphia, given that it showed there were fewer homicides per year under his regime than under other recent mayors, but, in fact, there was no year in which murders reached the 400 mark under Mr Nutter and his Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey. I have reproduced the chart for all of the years with 400 or more homicides, and sorted it by the number of killings. Note that with 412 killings, 2021 is 16th out of 18 years with more than 400 homicides, having passed 1994 and 2006, and there are still three full months left in the year!

Since the end of the Labor Day weekend, 24 days ago, there have been 49 murders reported in Philadelphia, or 2.0417 per day. If that rate continues for just one more week, the total would jump to 426, jumping up five more spots.

Then there’s this:

    Philly’s top cop says she and DA Krasner ‘just don’t agree’ on how to reduce shootings

    “Fundamentally, there are very key disconnects there,” Outlaw said, “as far as which crimes we prioritize, and who believes what are the main drivers of the violent crime that we’re seeing.”

    by Anna Orso | September 30, 2021

    Philadelphia’s top law enforcement officials don’t agree on which crimes they should prioritize while seeking to address the city’s record-setting gun violence crisis, a notable disconnect made public yet again this week.

    The Philadelphia Police Department is focused on arresting people for dealing drugs and illegally carrying guns, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said this week, but top brass don’t see the District Attorney’s Office prioritizing the prosecution of those crimes.

    During a biweekly news conference with Mayor Jim Kenney on Wednesday, the city’s top cop said she and reform-minded District Attorney Larry Krasner “just don’t agree” on whether illegal gun and narcotics charges can reduce violent crime, making it hard to progress in slowing the bloodshed.

    ”Fundamentally, there are very key disconnects there, as far as which crimes we prioritize, and who believes what are the main drivers of the violent crime that we’re seeing,” Outlaw said.

    Jane Roh, a spokesperson for Krasner’s office, said violent crimes “have always been the top priorities” and said all law enforcement should be squarely focused on shooting and homicide investigations. She pointed to low clearance rates, saying that so far this year, police have made arrests in just 29% of homicides and 15% of nonfatal shootings.

    “No public official should be defending that, much less spinning it,” she said in a statement. “Our communities and our neighbors who have been wounded or killed by gun violence deserve real leadership and action.”

There’s more at the original, but both are right: the Commissioner should not be throwing shade at the District Attorney when their clearance rates are so low, but the DA’s office should not be minimizing arrests for dealing drugs and illegally carrying firearms, because drug dealers and gang bangers are the number one perpetrators of shootings. Mr Krasner, whom The Philadelphia Inquirer actually endorsed for renomination, has more of a history of letting thugs go free so that they can then go out and murder people:

    In June 2018, Maalik Jackson-Wallace was arrested on a Frankford street and charged with carrying a concealed gun without a license and a gram of marijuana. It was his first arrest.

    The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office recommended the Frankford man for a court diversionary program called Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) that put him on two years’ probation. His record could have been expunged if he had successfully completed the program.

    But Jackson-Wallace, 24, was arrested again on gun-possession charges in March in Bridesburg. He was released from jail after a judge granted a defense motion for unsecured bail. And on June 13, he was arrested a third time — charged with murder in a shooting two days earlier in Frankford that killed a 26-year-old man.

It seems that in his eagerness to keep Mr Jackson-Wallace out of jail, the District Attorney did him no favors. Instead of a potential sentence from 2½ to 7 years in the clink, Mr Jackson-Wallace faced the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

It’s true enough that the city’s police are not closing homicide cases at a satisfactory rate, but there are homicide cases which would not have occurred at all if Mr Krasner were more interested in locking up the bad guys than he is at attacking the police.

The left have, for years, decried “mass incarceration,” but lenient law enforcement has proven to be a bad idea even for the criminals. We have previously noted how John Lewis, AKA Lewis Jordan, who slew Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, and Nikolas Cruz, accused of the mass murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were given every possible break. Had they been in jail at the time they committed their murders, yeah, they might have served a year or three, but Mr Jordan wouldn’t be on death row today, looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in prison, and Mr Cruz wouldn’t have the same kind of sentence looking him dead in the eye.

Are Messrs Jordan and Cruz somehow better off today because lenient law enforcement kept them out of jail? Is Andrew Brown, with his 180-page-long rap sheet, better off today because, despite many criminal convictions, he was out of jail the day he decided to start a gunfight with several Pasquotank County, North Carolina, deputies trying to serve a couple of warrants? Was 21-year-old Hasan Elliot better off on that Friday the 13th when he should have been in jail, and would have been in jail had not Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office declined to have him locked up on a serious parole violation, and he had a shootout with police?

Treating the petty criminals seriously is better for everyone in the long run. It’s better for society, as it gets the bad guys off the street, and lowers the overall crime rate, and it’s better for the criminals themselves, because when they are locked up for crimes that leave them with hope of eventually getting out of prison, they don’t have as much time on the streets, usually in their prime crime committing ages, they are likely to commit the big crimes which will have them locked up for the rest of their miserable lives.

And so, after finishing 2020 in second place all time for homicides, the thugs of Philadelphia have basically said, “Hold my beer,” and are looking to not just break, but completely shatter the record number of murders.

There are three more months in 2021, and at the current annual rate, the gang bangers are poised to break the city’s murder record on Thanksgiving day. Lenience in law enforcement has not worked, and the price that has been paid is measured in the blood on Philly’s streets.

Posted on by

Murder in Lexington

We have expended considerable bandwidth reporting on the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love, which has seen 408 homicides in 272 days, an even 1.500 homicides per say, for a projected total for the year, assuming the current rate remains constant, of 548 souls sent untimely to their eternal rewards.

But what about Lexington, Kentucky, the closest large city to me, and where I lived from 1971 through 1984. According to the Lexington Police Department, there have been 28 murders in the city thus far in 2021, 28 in nine months of the year. If the rate continues, the city would be projected to see 37 homicides for the entire year. Compared to Philadelphia’s current 408, that doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider that 2019 set a city record with 30, which was then topped by 34 killings in 2020, it’s a lot.

Of course, like so many other places, the bad guys are lousy shots. All 28 homicides so far were committed by firearms, which makes the relationship with the city’s reported shootings a tight one. Thus far, the police have reported 101 non-fatal shootings. Looks like the bad guys manage to actually kill their intended targets 21.71% of the time![1]With the last reported shooting being on September 19th, the LPD is a bit behind on keeping the data up to date. The Herald-Leader reported a shooting as having occurred “just be fore … Continue reading

The Lexington Police Department keeps statistics strangely. The shootings data include the race of the victims while the homicide chart does not. Of the 101 shootings reported as of September 19th, 77 of the victims were black, 16 were white, and 8 were listed as Hispanic. According to the 2020 Census, the city’s population was 323,152, and was 74.9% white, 14.6% black, 7.2% Hispanic and 3.8% bi- or multi-racial; the white, black and multi-racial percentages include Hispanics, and while the figures note that 71.0% are non-Hispanic white, the figures do not report the non-Hispanic black percentage.

So, with black Lexingtonians being 14.6% of the population, why have they been the victims in 76.24% of the shootings? And why does the city not show the information on how many murder victims were black? I suspect that it is, in the words of the Sacramento Bee, such would be “perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.”

Sadly, the Lexington Police Department hasn’t been doing too well in solving the homicides. In only 11 of the 28 killings has a suspect been identified. That’s a clearance rate of 39.29%. They did better in 2020, with arrests in 28 out of 34 murders, one of which only resulted in arrests this week.

Lexington’s homicide rate in 2020 was 10.52 per 100,000 population, which doesn’t in any way compare to Philadelphia’s but it’s still way too high. With a guesstimated 2021 population of 324,604, if the city does see that projected 37 homicides, it would mean that the homicide ticked up to 11.40 per 100,000. That’s not a good thing.

References

References
↑1 With the last reported shooting being on September 19th, the LPD is a bit behind on keeping the data up to date. The Herald-Leader reported a shooting as having occurred “just be fore midnight” on Tuesday, September 21st.
Posted on by

Another priestly problem

I’m betting that The Philadelphia Inquirer slipped up!

In 2018, the Inquirer reported on Monsignor Joseph McLoone and his resignation following revelations of “inappropriate” relationships with adults:

    Downingtown pastor resigns after ‘inappropriate’ expenses, relationships

    Monsignor Joseph McLoone, the pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Downingtown, allegedly spent $1,500 from a secret parish bank account on “inappropriate” relationships with adults.

    by David Gambacorta and John Smith | April 15, 2018

    Seven years ago, Msgr. Joseph McLoone was dispatched to Downingtown with a tall task: to try to stabilize St. Joseph Parish, a Catholic community left shell-shocked after its pastor was charged with protecting priests who preyed on children across the region.

    In time, McLoone, a Philadelphia native, proved to be a popular figure at the church, which, with about 4,700 families, is among the largest in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

    But this weekend, St. Joseph parishioners learned that his tenure had come to a shocking end. The archdiocese announced that McLoone, 55, had resigned – less than two months after he went on an indefinite leave of absence – amid an investigation into financial improprieties and inappropriate “relationships with adults” that violated archdiocesan standards. . . . .

    McLoone told archdiocesan officials that he spent approximately $1,500 on “personal expenses of an inappropriate nature,” according to Gavin. “Those expenses were related to relationships with adults that represent a violation of the Standards of Ministerial Behavior and Boundaries established by the archdiocese.”

There’s more at the original, but it never specified what “inappropriate relationships with adults” was carefully worded to not let readers know with which adults the Monsignor had his inappropriate relationships.

    A former Chester County pastor was spared prison time after admitting to stealing from a Catholic church

    Msgr. Joseph McLoone was sentenced to five years of probation for the theft.

    by Vinny Vella | October 1, 2021

    A former Downingtown pastor pleaded guilty this week to stealing $30,000 from his parish to pad his salary, fund vacations to the Jersey Shore and finance his secret romances.

    Msgr. Joseph McLoone, 58, entered the plea to misdemeanor theft charges during a hearing Thursday before Chester County Court Judge Jacqueline C. Cody. He was sentenced to five years of probation, the first nine months of which he will complete under house arrest.

    McLoone, who has been on administrative leave since his resignation from St. Joseph Parish in 2018, must also perform community service and write letters of apology to both the parishioners of St. Joseph and administrators at the Philadelphia archdiocese. . . . .

    He withdrew $4,000 in cash in Ocean City, N.J., authorities said, and spent about $3,000 on men with whom he had sexual relationships. None of them were parishioners, the archdiocese said.

There’s more at the original, but I have included a screen capture from the article, which I accessed at 1:25 PM EDT today, because I do not trust the Inquirer not to edit out the fact that Msgr McLoone’s ‘inappropriate relationships’ were homosexual encounters. You can click on the image to enlarge it. With the #woke leadership of the newspaper, I have to wonder if Vinny Vella, the reporter, won’t get the back of his hand slapped for not only pointing out that the Monsignor was homosexual, but that his article associated Monsignor’s pursuit of homosexual relationships with crime.

    Ken Gavin, a spokesperson for the archdiocese, said in a statement Friday that its leaders “are grateful for the resolution in this matter along with the closure and healing it brings.”

    “Consistent with Archdiocesan policy, the required canonical investigation regarding Monsignor McLoone’s behavior was stayed until law enforcement had completed its work,” Gavin said. “Now that civil authorities have reached a conclusion in this matter, that work will begin.”

I have long said that the problem of rampant homosexuality among Catholic priests means that the Church needs to move to a heterosexual, married priesthood.

The Roman Catholic Church has required perpetual celibacy, and prohibited marriage, for its priests since the Second Lateran Council in 1139; this was reaffirmed at the Council of Trent in 1563.

While that part is common knowledge, less well known is that there are married Catholic priests. In 1980, Pope John Paul II opened a path by which married Episcopal/Anglican priests who converted to Catholicism could serve in the Catholic priesthood. Estimates are that there are about 120 such priests in the United States.

And there are more: the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches have allowed married priests for several centuries, and in 2014, Pope Francis ended the restriction that married Eastern Catholic could serve only in their home countries.

There were, of course, many married priests in the Roman Catholic Church prior to the Second Lateran Council, including many popes. St Peter, regarded as the first Pope, at least had been married at one point: Matthew 8:14-15 refers to his mother-in-law.

How can there be married Catholic priests, either in the Eastern Rite churches, or in the Latin Rite, converts from Anglicanism and its off-shoot churches? It’s simple: priestly celibacy is a discipline, not a dogma, and disciplines can be changed. The advantages of a celibate priesthood are clear:

  • Celibate priests can give more of their time an attention to their parishes and parishioners, while married men have to devote more of their time and attention to their wives and children.
  • Celibate priests can be more easily transferred to different parishes. Priests are reassigned every five to seven years, on average. Wives frequently have jobs, even careers, while children have friends and school, and transferring a married priest could be much more difficult and disruptive to his family.
  • Celibate priests are easier to house and support. Priests normally live in the rectory, a house for priests normally on church grounds. These buildings are not normally set up to house wives and children. Accommodating married priests would mean a larger home for his family. Considering that Catholic dogma opposes artificial contraception, a married priest could have a very large family to support and house.
  • A celibate priest will normally live on parish grounds, while a married priest might have to live in a house away from the church. This means that the married priest might not be a security guard for his parish.

But, if there are clear advantages to having a celibate priesthood, there is one huge disadvantage: with humans being naturally inclined to mate, the Church is expecting the priest to live an unnatural lifestyle. Human beings need to mate, they need to be married, and the celibacy discipline denies to Catholic priests that most basic normalcy in human life. Even St Paul, who stated that he was celibate, noted that marriage was the natural condition of life. And St Paul also set down the conditions that a man must meet to be a deacon, priest or bishop:

The saying is sure: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way— for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church?

The conditions for priests and deacon are similar. But clearly, St Paul expected those in Holy Orders to mostly be married.

Not every Catholic priest who has broken the law or seriously offended is homosexual, but it sure seems like a lot of them have been. I’m certain that heterosexual priests struggle with celibacy, too. But opening the priesthood to married heterosexual men (mostly) solves the problems: not only will priests not have to struggle with celibacy, but it will open a huge new potential pool of Catholic men as candidates for the priesthood who would not consider it under celibacy rules.

Posted on by

The Lexington Herald-Leader on mugshots again!

As we noted previously, the Lexington Herald-Leader does not like publishing mugshots of accused criminals. Nevertheless, they did print the picture of Randolph Morris, a former University of Kentucky basketball player, in the story reporting that he had just been acquitted of three counts of wire fraud and eight counts of making false statements in his income tax returns.

Now, there’s this:

    Two charged with murder in 2020 killing of Lexington teenager

    By Christopher Leach | September 28, 2021 | 11:19 AM EDT

    Tayte Patton, Fayette County Detention Center.

    Two suspects have been charged with murder in the 2020 killing of teenager Mykel Waide, court documents show.

    Tayte Patton, 22, and Antonio Turner, 19, were both booked into the Fayette County jail as of Monday evening and charged with murder, according to the jail’s website. Both are being held with a $750,000 bond.

    According to court records, Waide was shot and killed after an altercation at the Residence Inn on Newtown Court in August 2020. During the investigation, a witness spoke to police and said they observed Patton and Turner shooting into the crowd of people out of the back of a vehicle.

Antonio Turner, Fayette County Detention Center.

There’s a little more at the original. While what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal does not print mugshots, The First Street Journal does. They are public records, freely available through the jail website. The reporter, Christopher Leach, noted that he accessed the jail’s website, and opened the booking records there, so he had their mugshots available. That, after all, is where I got them!

This was not Mr Patton’s first time at the Fayette County Detention Center; his ‘page’ included a previous mugshot, from November 11, 2020.

The paper did not have much information on the death of Mr Waide. The internally referenced story stated that officers were called to the Newtown Pike area at about 1:30 AM on Sunday, August 16, 2020, on a report of a large disorder with shots fired. Mr Waide died at the scene, while three others were wounded with non-life threatening injuries. A subsequent story on uncooperative witnesses mentioned Mr Waide’s killing, but offered no further details on why he was shot.

Messrs Patton and Turner were fingered by a witness, information which the Lexington Police Department corroborated with other evidence prior to their arrests. Mr Leach’s report, however, that “The witness account matched evidence compiled by the police, such as surveillance tapes and electronic evidence in reference to Patton and Turner, according to court records,” is just terribly written. “(S)uch as” is not an accurate description of anything; was the evidence compiled “surveillance tapes and electronic evidence,” or was it something else?

The Herald-Leader needs to do better. I get it: the McClatchy Mugshot Policy is opposed to printing the photos of those accused of crimes, but not yet convicted, but the paper thought nothing of splashing Mr Morris’ photos all over its website[1]I am a digital only subscriber to the Herald-Leader, in part because they don’t deliver the dead trees edition out in the sticks where I live! when he was accused of crimes, and even in the story in which it was noted that he was acquitted of the charges.

References

References
↑1 I am a digital only subscriber to the Herald-Leader, in part because they don’t deliver the dead trees edition out in the sticks where I live!
Posted on by

Feminista Jones calls out The Philadelphia Inquirer Somehow, though, I doubt that they'll be able to see it

This site has been hard on The Philadelphia Inquirer and how that august newspaper[1]The Inquirer is the third oldest surviving daily newspaper in the United States in its own right. pretty much ignores the homicides in its hometown unless the victim is an innocent, someone already of note, or a cute little white girl. In a city in which the vast majority of murder victims are black, you wouldn’t expect that “anti-racist news organization” to have that kind of skewed coverage, would you?

So, it was with some surprise that I saw this article from Feminista Jones on the Inquirer’s website:

    When Gabby Petito disappeared, the world watched. Destini Smothers was ignored.

    If a greater percentage of African American and Indigenous women go missing and they experience higher rates of fatal domestic violence, why does the media continue to ignore their plight?

    by Feminista Jones,[2]Feminista Jones is an author and doctoral student at Temple University. She is the cohost of Black Girl Missing podcast and a fierce advocate for Black women and girls. Her website is here. For The Inquirer | September 29, 2021

    After taking a trip with her boyfriend, a beautiful young woman went missing, never to be heard from again. The last person to see her alive is believed to be her boyfriend, though he has denied any involvement in her death and has since gone missing himself. Her family desperately searched for her, traveling far and wide, pleading with local police and the media for help, hoping someone, anyone would have a clue into her disappearance. When her body was discovered, all hopes of finding her safe and alive were dashed — she was gone forever, and her loved ones would never hold her in their arms or see her brilliant smile again. They want answers and there are several questions about her boyfriend’s connection to her death since he was the last person to see her alive, according to all accounts.

    Destini Smothers had been missing since Nov. 3. (Obtained by New York Daily News)

    You may be thinking about Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old woman whose body was recently discovered near the campsite she and her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, visited in Utah in August 2021.

    But I was writing about Destini Smothers, a 26-year-old woman from New York who, in November 2020, traveled with Kareem Flake, her boyfriend and father of her two children, from their home in Troy, N.Y., to Queens to both attend a funeral and to celebrate her birthday. When her mother didn’t hear from her, she contacted her boyfriend, who only said that she left their car after an argument, upset because she wanted to go spend time with her friends after they attended a bowling party. He said she left without taking her keys, wallet, or phone. Her mother didn’t believe him and became frantic. She contacted local authorities in November, but she didn’t receive much information about the investigation until March when she was notified that her daughter’s body was found.

    In the days after she went missing, Smothers’ disappearance did not appear on national news outlets, every hour or with breaking news segments on 24-hour cable news shows. Smothers was African American and like so many African American girls and women, her disappearance barely made a blip in local media, much less national coverage.

    When Black girls and women go missing, the country doesn’t come to a standstill the way it does when a white girl or woman goes missing.

There’s more at the original, but I would have expected, even if Miss Jones wrote this article for wider publication than just in the Inquirer, she would have tailored this one far more specifically to the Inquirer. After all, Miss Jones lives in the City of Brotherly Love, and someone who writes frequently for newspapers[3]Her biography page states, “Feminista’s passion and talent for writing have led to her being featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Essence, XOJane, Complex, Vox, Salon, and … Continue reading should have paid a bit more attention to her hometown newspaper, and noticed how the Inquirer was just as much of an offender as any other.

Miss Jones goes on, further down, to blame racism:

    There is also a lack of empathy for marginalized people living in a society where whiteness is universal and to be anything other than white is to be generally regarded as inferior. Part of the issue is in the media’s commitment to upholding white supremacy by shaping narratives that place white people at the top of a racial hierarchy, thereby prioritizing their wants, needs, and experiences above others. There is no push to regard nonwhite people as equally deserving of empathy, care, and consideration, so when they are victims of violent crimes, their stories are minimized or completely erased to keep white innocence and fragility centered. And due to journalism’s gatekeeping, people of color remain severely underrepresented in the newsrooms to even raise awareness about what’s happening in marginalized communities and amplify their stories.

Upon reading that paragraph, a couple of things struck me. First, Miss Jones was simply whining about “whiteness” and lamenting that non-whites are seen more negatively. Yes, there will be people who will claim that I’m just an [insert slang term for the rectum here], a claim I do not dispute, but let’s tell the very blatant truth here: by American cultural standards, Gabby Petito was a lot better looking than Destini Smothers, and pretty girls sell newspapers.

But when Miss Jones stated that the credentialed media have a “commitment to upholding white supremacy”, perhaps she doesn’t realize that Gabriel Escobar, the Editor and Senior Vice President of the Inquirer, is “one of the highest-ranking Latinos at a U.S. news organization.” Publisher Elizabeth Hughes wrote, four months ago, that the Inquirer was taking many steps to become that “anti-racist news organization” she wanted it to be, including:

  • Producing an antiracism workflow guide for the newsroom that provides specific questions that reporters and editors should ask themselves at various stages of producing our journalism.
  • Establishing a Community News Desk to address long-standing shortcomings in how our journalism portrays Philadelphia communities, which have often been stigmatized by coverage that over-emphasizes crime.
  • Creating an internal forum for journalists to seek guidance on potentially sensitive content and to ensure that antiracism is central to the journalism.
  • Commissioning an independent audit of our journalism that resulted in a critical assessment. Many of the recommendations are being addressed, and a process for tracking progress is being developed.
  • Training our staff and managers on how to recognize and avoid cultural bias.
  • Examining our crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media.

The last thing the Inquirer is consciously trying to do is “(uphold) white supremacy by shaping narratives that place white people at the top of a racial hierarchy.” Either Miss Jones was criticizing her hometown newspaper specifically, or she doesn’t really know much about it. But if Miss Jones was trying to say that the Inquirer is unconsciously “upholding white supremacy by shaping narratives that place white people at the top of a racial hierarchy,” then she has a better case.

“When Black girls and women go missing, the country doesn’t come to a standstill the way it does when a white girl or woman goes missing,” Miss Jones wrote, but let’s be honest here: the credentialed media exist to make money[4]The Inquirer is owned by a non-profit company, but it still has to make enough money to stay in business., and money is made by people paying attention to them, leading to more advertising revenue. Which is the chicken, and which is the egg:

  1. A public which respond more intensely to pretty white women; or
  2. A media which recognizes that to which the public respond?

If Miss Hughes’ goals are to be met, the Inquirer has to lead the coverage. Yet the newspaper deliberately shies away from crime reporting, something Miss Hughes specifically said she wanted, for ‘racial justice’ reasons. These two things are mutually exclusive. I was never a professional reporter, just a Kentucky Kernel staffer while in grad school, but it seems to me that maybe, just maybe, the Inquirer would be better served to simply cover the news, and leave the mission and biases outside 801 8th Street.

Will Editor Escobar, will Publisher Hughes, pay attention to Miss Jones’ OpEd piece? It might have been more effective, at least in the Inquirer, had she called them out more specifically, but both are intelligent and educated people; they ought to be able to see that they really have been called out. Somehow, though, I doubt that they will.

References

References
↑1 The Inquirer is the third oldest surviving daily newspaper in the United States in its own right.
↑2 Feminista Jones is an author and doctoral student at Temple University. She is the cohost of Black Girl Missing podcast and a fierce advocate for Black women and girls. Her website is here.
↑3 Her biography page states, “Feminista’s passion and talent for writing have led to her being featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Essence, XOJane, Complex, Vox, Salon, and EBONY magazine to name a few publications.”
↑4 The Inquirer is owned by a non-profit company, but it still has to make enough money to stay in business.
Posted on by

The Lexington Herald-Leader and photos of accused criminals They withhold mugshots of convicted felons, but publish those of men acquitted of crimes.

We have previously reported on the Lexington Herald-Leader and its adherence to the McClatchy Mugshot Policy of not publishing photos of criminals booked, because it might harm them unfairly at some future point if they are acquitted. Thus, there were no mugshots accompanying this article:

    Officer saw two cars shooting at each other near Versailles Road. Pursuit ends in arrests.

    By Christopher Leach | September 27, 2021 | 11:56 AM EDT

    William Rutherford, Fayette County Detention Center, September 27, 2021, 2:17:09 AM

    Two adult males, one of which is an 18-year-old, are behind bars after allegedly getting into a shootout with another vehicle near Versailles Road and Alexandria Drive, police say.

    William Rutherford, 18, and Bryan Anicasio-Miranda, 20, were occupants of one of the vehicles involved according to police. They have both been charged with possession of a stolen firearm and possession of marijuana, per jail records.

    Police also said there were three juveniles in Rutherford’s vehicle that have been charged as well.

    According to police, an officer witnessed two cars that appeared to be shooting at one another near Versailles Road and Alexandria Drive late Sunday night. The officer was able to get behind Rutherford’s vehicle but Rutherford fled, according to the arrest citation.

    Lexington police Sgt. Daniel Burnett was unsure how long the ensuing pursuit lasted but said it ended with Rutherford pulling over. Court documents show that the officer recovered a stolen firearm, 35 grams of marijuana and beer inside Rutherford’s vehicle.

    Along with the stolen firearm and marijuana charges, Rutherford has also been charged with first degree fleeing or evading police, possession of an open alcohol beverage container in a motor vehicle and having no operator’s license and registration plates, per jail records.

There’s more at the original. The article did not, of course, include young Mr Rutherford’s mugshot, to which the reporter, Christopher Leach,[1]Chris Leach is a breaking news reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He joined the newspaper in September 2021 after previously working with the Anderson News and the Cats Pause. Chris graduated … Continue reading had access, given that he noted that he checked Fayette County Detention Center records. Interestingly, the jail website had two mugshots of Mr Rutherford, a previous one dated April 6, 2021. Looks like he might not be the nicest guy around.

Bryan Anicasio-Miranda, Fayette County Detention Center, September 27, 2021, 3:08:22 AM.

That, of course, is second to Mr Anicasio-Miranda, who had three mugshots, one each in June and August of 2020 as well as the current one. One of his charges is possession of firearm by a convicted felon, so he’s definitely a bad guy. What my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal didn’t publish his mugshot either, despite him being a previously convicted felon.

However, despite the McClatchy Mugshot Policy stating that “The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever,” the paper has been willing to publish the photo of a former University of Kentucky basketball player in a story noting that he was just acquitted of the charges against him:

    Federal jury acquits former Kentucky basketball star of tax crime charges

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | Updated: September 24, 2021 | 2:26 PM

    A federal jury on Thursday acquitted former University of Kentucky and NBA basketball player Randolph Morris of several tax crimes.

    Morris was charged with three counts of wire fraud and eight counts of making false statements after he failed to report millions of dollars of foreign income while he played professional basketball in China from 2010 to 2017. Morris didn’t deny that he left the income off his taxes, but a jury ultimately ruled he didn’t intentionally defraud the United States.

    “This is a huge relief for his family,” said Whitney True Lawson, one of Morris’ attorneys. “We’re happy with this outcome. We think it was the right outcome.”

    Morris said he left the income off his taxes because he didn’t understand his tax responsibilities. The team Morris played for at the time, the Beijing Ducks, had a provision in Morris’ contract that stated his income was “net of tax.” The team was responsible for paying taxes on Morris’ behalf to the Chinese government, according to the contract.

    But the team was not paying taxes to the U.S. government.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Morris, being a former UK player, has had his photo in the Herald-Leader dozens, if not hundreds, of times. UK basketball is wildly popular in the Bluegrass State, and, let’s be honest about things, the only reason for some people to pay for subscriptions to the paper. But the very reason that the McClatchy policy stated for not having mugshots published, a person charged with a crime but not convicted, would absolutely apply to Mr Morris.

The Herald-Leader also had a story about charges being dropped against six UK football players, and if the paper didn’t print their photos, the article linked to all of the players individual biography pages, which did have photos. The article noting that a grand jury had declined to indict the players included a description of the events which led up to prosecutors wanting to file charges in the first place, to taint the players’ reputations. Kind of a far cry from the policy designed to protect the reputations of those accused of crimes but not convicted.

Of course, the story of a federal trial over “three counts of wire fraud and eight counts of making false statements” would probably not have made the paper at all were the accused not a UK basketball player or some other person of local note. The paper has very limited resources, and limited staffing as well.

The Herald-Leader is wracked with hypocrisy when following the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, but I’ve grown to expect nothing else from them.

References

References
↑1 Chris Leach is a breaking news reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He joined the newspaper in September 2021 after previously working with the Anderson News and the Cats Pause. Chris graduated from UK in December 2018.
Posted on by

Judge Emmet G Sullivan needs to recuse himself from all cases involving the Capitol kerfuffle He has just, in open court, shown himself to be thoroughly biased against the defendants

As we noted Monday, Dawn Bancroft, 59, of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was going to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building, the penalty for which is a maximum of six months in jail and a fine of $5,000.[1]40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G).

    A Doylestown woman who said she wanted to shoot Pelosi ‘in the friggin’ brain’ pleaded guilty to Capitol riot charges

    Dawn Bancroft said she didn’t mean to threaten the House Speaker and called her remark a “stupid comment.” A federal judge questioned whether she was getting off too lightly with a misdemeanor plea.

    by Jeremy Roebuck | Tuesday, September 28, 2021

    A Bucks County gym owner who recorded herself during the storming of the Capitol saying she was looking for Nancy Pelosi “to shoot her in the friggin’ brain” pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor Tuesday, making her the latest Pennsylvanian to admit her role in the Jan. 6 riot.

    Dawn Bancroft, 59, of Doylestown, told a federal judge she didn’t mean to threaten the House speaker and described her remark in hindsight as a “stupid, juvenile comment” made in the heat of the moment.

    Yet, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan expressed concern about Bancroft’s statements and questioned why prosecutors had agreed to let her plead to a misdemeanor count of illegally demonstrating, picketing, or parading inside the Capitol — which carries a maximum sentence of six months in prison — instead of pursuing more serious charges of threatening a member of Congress.

    “It’s very troubling to hear that the reason [she] was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was essentially to murder the speaker of the House,” the judge said.

How can that be considered the statement of an unbiased judge? Would any of the Capitol kerfufflers who appeared in his court for an actual trial get a fair shake?

    His remarks came on a day that saw two other Pennsylvania residents admit that they took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Also pleading guilty Tuesday was Diana Santo-Smith, 32, of Bucks County, who traveled by train with Bancroft to Washington and who appeared in the background of her incriminating selfie video.

    Sullivan ultimately accepted the misdemeanor pleas from both women despite his reservations. But he warned them he would have much more to say about their conduct when it came time for sentencing in January.

    He marveled at just how many otherwise law-abiding citizens had “morphed into terrorists” that day and said he agreed with recent comments from former President George W. Bush alluding to the Capitol riot as an act of domestic terrorism on par with the Sept. 11 attacks.

Former President Bush, for whom I twice voted, was being stupid when he said that. Comparing what was, in effect, an out of control college keg party in which the only people who died were the partiers, one of whom was shot in the head by a Capitol policeman, with four hijacked airliners, used as weapons, to kill thousands of people. The Inquirer reported that:

    (Mrs Bancroft and Mrs Santos-Smith) broke into the building through an already shattered window and spent less than a minute inside, prosecutors said, before making their way back out again.

    It was while they were trying to push their way back out through the crowd that Bancroft filmed herself and Santos-Smith.

    “We broke into the Capitol. We got inside. We did our part,” she said. “We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain. We didn’t find her, but all is good.”

They spent less than a minute, according to prosecutors, but Judge Sullivan wanted Mrs Bancroft charged much more harshly. The prosecution noted that Mrs Bancroft’s remark was made as they were leaving the building, and there is no evidence that either of them was armed.

Every defense attorney for any of the kerfufflers assigned to Judge Sullivan’s court should be ready with a demand that Judge Sullivan recuse himself in the event of anything more than a guilty plea under 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G), because His Honor has proven himself not to be honorable, proven himself to be thoroughly biased against the defendants.

References