Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Why should we spend money keeping junkies alive?

In January of 2021, I asked the hard question:

I’m enough of an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to ask: why do we want to keep junkies alive?

They have to steal from innocent people to support their habits, they cannot keep jobs to support themselves, and are nothing but a burden on society. And, heaven forfend! they probably don’t even wear their facemasks properly! Trying to get them off of drugs, so that they can become responsible members of society might make sense, but Safehouse simply enables them to keep shooting up.

The topic was the proposed “Safehouse,” a the nonprofit that, in an attempt to stem the city’s tide of opioid-related deaths, has proposed the site to provide medical supervision to people using drugs. The Usual Suspects in Philadelphia have supported Safehouse: Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner and former Mayor, and Pennsylvania Governor, Ed Rendell, all Democrats. Mayoral candidate Helen Gym Flaherty, while somewhat coy in her current answers to the question of supervised drug injection centers, has more openly supported the idea in the past.

The idea has been tied up in court, and no such facility currently exists in the City of Brotherly Love. Now, it looks like the state is going to step in and put the kibosh on any such plans:

State Senate approves ban of supervised injection sites in Pa.

Pennsylvania’s GOP-controlled state Senate passed a bipartisan bill to ban supervised injection sites anywhere in the state by a 41-9 vote. The legislation now moves to the House.

by Gillian McGoldrick and Aubrey Whelan | Monday, March 1, 2023 | 6:09 PM EDT

HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania Senate voted Monday to stop any supervised injection sites from opening in the state, potentially creating a new hurdle for a nonprofit hoping to open one in Philadelphia.

The GOP-controlled state Senate passed a bipartisan bill, sponsored by state Sen. Christine Tartaglione (D., Philadelphia), to ban supervised injection sites anywhere in Pennsylvania by a 41-9 vote. The bill must pass the state House before reaching the desk of Gov. Josh Shapiro, who said he’d support banning supervised injection sites.

Governor Shapiro, the previous state Attorney General, is a Democrat, albeit not a hard-left one. Democrats control the state House of Representatives, by a bare one-vote margin, and Senator Tartaglione, who wrote the bill, is a Democrat; the bill enjoyed bipartisan support in the state Senate, and should pass the state House fairly easily . . . if Speaker of the House, Rep Joanna McClinton, who is from Philadelphia doesn’t somehow prevent it from coming to a vote.

More Democrats in the state Senate, 13, voted for the bill than against it.

The legislation is the latest attempt by a state or federal government to intervene on a nonprofit’s attempt to open a supervised injection site in Philadelphia, which is widely seen as the epicenter of the opioid epidemic.

Tartaglione, who introduced Senate Bill 165 and represents parts of Kensington, said Monday on the Senate floor that her proposal will bring state law up-to-date with current federal laws. Furthermore, her constituents don’t want a supervised injection site opened in their community, she said.

Kensington is Philly’s most drug-infested area, and parts of it are so bad that the Mexican government used street scenes in Kensington in ads warning Mexican citizens of the dangers of drug use.

The bill now goes to the House, which has a one-seat Democratic majority. Beth Rementer, a spokesperson for House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) did not commit to vote on the bill, and said the Democratic caucus will review it once the legislation moves to the House.

I guess we’ll see: the Democrats could block it, even though a majority of Senate Democrats supported it, as does the Governor.

Safe injection sites simply enable drug use, and are a bad idea. Yes, they apparently reduce overdose deaths, but let me be brutally frank here: do we really want to reduce overdose deaths? Junkies are criminals, not just in using drugs and supporting drug dealers, but in the crimes they commit to support their habits. The life of so many of them on the streets creates hazards to the health of other people, and they are making our nation’s sixth largest city an absolute [insert slang term for feces here]hole.

Philly’s huge murder rate? Most of it boils down to gang activity, and most of those gangs are involved in the drug trade.

Safe injection centers are things no city needs. You cannot fight drug abuse by making it safer to abuse drugs.

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World War III Watch: Warmongers gotta warmonger!

We have previously reported on Bill Kristol, the neoconservative founder and later destroyer of The Weekly Standard, because as a dedicated #NeverTrumper he couldn’t stand to allow any support of Donald Trump in a magazine marketed to conservatives and Republicans. Mr Kristol and the other neocons, such as Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin, all love wars and want the United States to participate in them. Today’s left have managed to become so seduced by President Biden’s support for Ukraine in its war against Russia than even the very much not-a-neocon Amanda Marcotte was supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, albeit for different reasons.

I’ll admit the shameful truth: I follow Mr Kristol in Twitter, not because I like or even respect his views, but because he does clue me into some of his silliness. I’m not a subscriber to The Atlantic, and wouldn’t have seen this article, had Mr Kristol not retweeted Adrienne LaFrance’s promotion of it.

The Case for the Total Liberation of Ukraine

Russia must be expelled from all of Ukraine’s territory—including Crimea.

By Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg | Monday, May 1, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

In March 1774, Prince Grigory Potemkin, the favorite general and sometime lover of Catherine the Great, took control of the anarchic southern frontier of her empire, a region previously ruled by the Mongol Khans, the Cossack hosts, and the Ottoman Turks, among others. As viceroy, Potemkin waged war and founded cities, among them Kherson, the first home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. In 1783, he annexed Crimea and became an avatar of imperial glory. To Vladimir Putin in particular, Potemkin is the Russian nationalist who subdued territory now impudently and illegitimately claimed by Ukraine, a nation that Putin believes does not exist.

Oh, I’m pretty sure that Vladimir Vladimirovich believes that Ukraine exists now, and that he’s not particularly happy about it.

There follows several paragraphs — the magazine is given to longer articles — on the history of Prince Potemkin and the fight over Kherson, before we get to the meat of the authors’ advocacy.

When we visited again a few weeks ago, the lights were on, the restaurants were open, and the trains ran on predictable schedules. A coffee shop in the station was serving oat-milk lattes. Bucha is a construction site, with a brand-new hardware store for anyone repairing war damage themselves. A conversation with Zelensky is now a more formal affair, with simultaneous translation, a videographer, and an array of English-speaking aides in attendance. Zelensky himself spoke English much of the time—he has had, he said, a lot more practice. But behind the more polished presentation, the tension and uncertainty persist, fueled by the sense that we are once again at a turning point, once again at a moment when key decisions will be made, in Kyiv, of course, but especially in Washington.

“Especially in Washington.” Not in Warsaw, or Berlin, not in nations much closer to Ukraine, but across all of Europe and the broad Atlantic Ocean.

For although the war is not lost, it is also not won. Kherson is free, but it is under constant attack. Kyiv’s restaurants are open, but refugees have not yet returned home. Russia’s winter offensive has petered out, but as of this writing, in mid-April, it is unclear when Ukraine’s summer offensive will begin. Until it begins, or rather, until it ends, negotiations—about the future of Ukraine and its borders, Ukraine’s relationship to Russia and to Europe, the final status of the Crimean Peninsula—cannot begin either. Right now Putin still seems to believe that a long, drawn-out war of attrition will eventually bring him back his empire: Ukraine’s feckless Western allies will grow tired and give up; maybe Donald Trump will win reelection and align with the Kremlin; Ukraine will retreat; Ukrainians will be overwhelmed by the sheer number of Russian soldiers, however poorly armed and trained they may be.

Uniquely, the United States has the power to determine how, and how quickly, the war of attrition turns into something quite different. The Ukrainian defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, spoke with us about the “Ramstein Club,” named after the American air base in Germany where the group, which consists of the defense officials of 54 countries, first convened. Still, his most important relationship is with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (“we communicate very, very often”), and everyone knows that this club is organized by Americans, led by Americans, galvanized by Americans. Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, told us that Ukrainians now feel they are “strategic partners and friends” with America, something that might not have felt so true a few years ago, when Donald Trump was impeached on charges of seeking to extort Zelensky.

That’s two slams against former President Trump in two paragraphs; no wonder Mr Kristol liked the article. Unmentioned is the fact that Russia invaded and annexed part of Ukraine while Barack Hussein Obama was President, made no moves against Ukraine while Mr Trump was in office, and invaded the rest of that nation once Joe Biden was in the White House.

In our interview with Zelensky, which we conducted with the chair of The Atlantic’s board of directors, Laurene Powell Jobs, we asked him how he would justify this unusual relationship to a skeptical American: Why should Americans donate weapons to a distant war? He was clear in stating that the outcome of the war will determine the future of Europe. “If we will not have enough weapons,” he said, “that means we will be weak. If we will be weak, they will occupy us. If they occupy us, they will be on the borders of Moldova, and they will occupy Moldova. When they have occupied Moldova, they will [travel through] Belarus, and they will occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. That’s three Baltic countries which are members of NATO. They will occupy them. Of course, [the Balts] are brave people, and they will fight. But they are small. And they don’t have nuclear weapons. So they will be attacked by Russians because that is the policy of Russia, to take back all the countries which have been previously part of the Soviet Union.” The fate of NATO, of America’s position in Europe, indeed of America’s position in the world are all at stake.

And now we get to it: the old “domino theory.” But it ignores Russia’s experience in Ukraine, an experience that tells Russia that, even if it wins, conquers, and annexes all of Ukraine, that their army has to be rebuilt, their industries have to modernize, and their resources have to be better channeled. Even if Russia wins, the nation will not be in any shape to invade another of its neighbors for a long time. And President Putin is 70½ years old.

There follows many paragraphs about the necessity for a Ukrainian victory to validate freedom and democracy, to show that such can prevail against an authoritarian nation bent on conquest. That’s all very nice, but at some point it has to be asked: how can Ukraine win? President Zelensky keeps asking for more and more weapons, telling its allies that if we can just give them enough weapons, they can defeat a nation with thrice its manpower, in a war that is being fought not in Russia, but in Ukraine, a country in which its infrastructure is being slowly demolished. As we have previously noted, some have said that the only way Ukraine could win, in the way that President Zelensky and the authors of the Atlantic article want, “Russia must be expelled from all of Ukraine’s territory—including Crimea,” necessarily involves more than just NATO shipping weapons to Ukraine, but “direct NATO involvement in the war. Only the full, Desert Storm style of deployment of NATO and U.S. troops and weaponry could bring about a comprehensive Ukrainian victory in a short period of time.”

Really? Our “full, Desert Storm style of deployment of NATO and U.S. troops” involved 697,000 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. That would require calling up thousands and thousands of reservists, and we need to remember: it took the elder President Bush six months of diplomacy and work after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait to assemble and put in place the forces which drove Iraq out of Kuwait. We used staging areas Iraq could not touch to assemble the forces required, but staging areas which Russia could attack.

There is, of course, the small matter of engaging in a direct war with a nation which has a strategic nuclear arsenal, something just blithely waved aside as a serious consideration by the neoconservatives and warmongers. Yes, it would be absolutely great if Vladimir Putin was deposed and Russian forces driven completely out of Ukraine, but I have to ask: how many American cities are we willing to see burned in nuclear fire to see that accomplished? If the answer is greater than zero, I’d like to know what number Mr Kristol believes would be acceptable.

Because that is the risk here, and no one should doubt it. There are all sorts of rational reasons why Russia should not resort to nuclear weapons, even the ‘smallest’ ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons it has, to stave off defeat, but if defeat becomes eminent, who can promise that President Putin or Russian military commanders would base their actions solely on those rational reasons?

The number of American cities I’d be willing to see burned in nuclear fire to save Ukraine? Zero!

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Is The Philadelphia Inquirer shading stories to fit Teh Narrative? Are victims painted by the Inky perhaps not quite as innocent as the newspaper portrays them?

I have said it many times before: city homicides, individually, are not of much interest to The Philadelphia Inquirer unless the victim is an “innocent,” someone already of some note, or a cute white girl. But has the Inky been making innocents of victims who might not fit into that category quite so well.

As we reported on Sunday, the murder of three teenaged boys in a quadruple shooting led to a story in The Philadelphia Inquirer that gave readers several paragraphs telling us what good kids the victims were. Unexplained in that story was why at least two other teenagers apparently targeted the victims.

Then there was this:

Neighbors are shaken after a 16-year-old was shot multiple times in Southwest Philadelphia

“He’s quiet and respectful. I can’t believe this happened,” said a neighborhood store owner.

by Ellie Rushing | Friday, April 28, 2023

A 16-year-old boy was in critical condition Friday after police say he was shot multiple times while walking to catch a trolley in Southwest Philadelphia on Thursday evening.

Neighbors and loved ones were holding onto hope that the teen, whom police did not identify, would pull through, describing him as a polite young man, dedicated Muslim, and loving older brother.

Longtime neighborhood business owner Guillermo Herrera, of Woodland Grocery on the corner of 67th Street and Woodland Avenue, said he had just seen the teen, a frequent customer, 30 minutes before he was shot, when he stopped in to buy a pair of socks.

He said he spoke with the boy’s mother on Friday morning and she told him between sobs that her son had returned home briefly after making the purchase, then left again and was walking to catch a trolley down the street when he was shot.

“He’s a good boy, a nice kid,” said Herrera, 51. “He’s quiet and respectful. I can’t believe this happened.”

There was another paragraph further down in which a friend of the family described the victim as “a sweet boy who loves going to school each day.”

But there’s the money line:

Video of the incident captured by Herrera’s store and reviewed by The Inquirer showed that the teen was walking alone on the sidewalk along Woodland Avenue when a man stepped out of a black SUV that was double-parked across the street. The man, gun in hand, walked to the teen and shot him multiple times, including in the head, before returning to the car and fleeing north.

In other words, this 16-year-old was deliberately targeted for execution. Why does such a “sweet,” “quiet and respectful” teenaged boy get targeted for a deliberate, broad daylight assassination?

(Capt. James Kearney, head of the Philadelphia Police Department’s nonfatal shootings unit) said police recovered six spent shell casings at the scene, and recovered a gun that the teen had been carrying. No arrest has been made, and the motive remains unclear, he said, adding that the teen had never been charged with a crime and there were no incidents in his past to indicate why someone might target him.

So, even though Captain Kearney said the victim had no record and the police knew of no suspect past incidents, he was still carrying a gun himself. At just 16 years of age, he could not have carried a concealed weapon legally.

At any rate, that’s two stories, Friday and Saturday, in which we were told about such very nice boys, gunned down for no apparent reason.

But murder always has a reason. It’s almost never a good reason, and usually a very stupid one, often completely insane, but someone waiting for a victim, getting out of his car, walking up and putting six bullets into a victim, had a reason. It’s just that the Inquirer isn’t asking questions about what that reason was, even though the fact that the victim was also carrying a gun ought to be a fairly significant clue.

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Killadelphia: Another three bite the dust!

We’ve known for a while now that District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) does not like charging juveniles with adult crimes. Really, he doesn’t like charging adults with adult crimes. Nevertheless, he hasn’t completely ruled out charging the worst of Philly’s teens as adults:

The changes do not apply to juveniles who are repeat offenders or who are charged with serious crimes including gun possession, aggravated assault resulting in serious injury, sexual assault, and other felonies involving weapons.

Now comes a big test of Mr Krasner’s resolve:

2 teens arrested in quadruple shooting that killed 3 teens in Philly

“Just a travesty,” said Veronica J. Joyner, founder and chief administrative officer of Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School of Philadelphia Inc., attended by two of the shooting victims.

by Diane Mastrull | Saturday, April 29, 2023 | 3:35 PM EDT

Two teenagers have been arrested in connection with a quadruple shooting that left three teens dead and one hospitalized Friday afternoon in Philadelphia’s Crescentville section, police said.

Police identified the dead Saturday as Malik Ballard, 17, of the city’s Frankford section; Khalif Frezghi, 18, of East Mount Airy; and Salah Fleming, 14, of North Philadelphia.

The shooting occurred about 3:30 p.m. Friday on the 5900 block of Palmetto Street, where, police said, Ballard was found shot on the sidewalk, Frezghi on a front porch, and Fleming just inside the front doorway of a home. All were pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

A fourth victim, a 16-year-old male who has not been identified, arrived at Jefferson Frankford Hospital with a gunshot wound to the stomach, police said.

Following that are several paragraphs telling us what good guys the victims were, we get this:

A short time after the shootings, police said Friday night, they found a black Ford Edge believed to have been involved in the shootings. It had crashed on the 500 block of East Wyoming Street. Police took two juveniles into custody and said they believed they had dropped off the injured 16-year-old at the hospital.

Police identified them only as 15- and 16-year-old males and said they have been charged with violation of the Uniform Firearms Act and related offenses.

Huh? If reporter Diane Mastrull’s story is accurate, we are expected to believe that the alleged killers then rescued one of their intended victims, and took him to the hospital. Does this make sense to anyone? My first impression is that the surviving victim was actually shot by one of the three dead boys, possibly in a gun battle, and the killers scooped the victims’ weapons before fleeing. Other scenarios could be constructed, such as the killers accidentally wounded one of their own.

There is, of course, the possibility that the police got the situation wrong.

A 15-year-old can be charged as an adult in the Keystone State for certain violent crimes

5900 block of Palmetto Street, image from Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

The 5900 block of Palmetto Street is a rowhouse neighborhood, not the worst in Philly, built around 1925, and looking as though there was a mid-1980s remodeling project oing on down the entire, short street. 5915 Palmetto Street, a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom, 1,064 ft² rowhouse which looks like a recent flip, is currently for sale for $225,000, following a $20,000 price reduction on April 24th, which suggests that it’s been on the market for awhile with little interest, while 5946 Palmetto Street, same statistics, and also looking like a flip, is listed for $185,000.

Amusingly enough, all of the homes zillow.com lists for sale in the neighborhood show as having natural gas heat via hot water or steam radiators, so if Helen Gym Flaherty wins the Democratic nomination for Mayor, she’ll want all the residents in that poor, though not totally devastated, neighborhood to convert to electric heat pumps! 🙂

This is the last day of April, and the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page tells us that, through April 29th, there were 124, 169, and 154 murders on that date in 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively. Those years finished with 499, 562, and 516 homicides, though that 499 number for 2020 is suspect, at least. Currently, with at least 137 homicides as of Friday, April 28th, the City of Brotherly Love is doing better than 2021 and 2022, but is ahead of the 2020 homicide rate.

The important date is May 25th, the date in 2020 in which the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled previously convicted felon George Floyd died while resisting arrest in Minneapolis. That led to a whole summer of riots civil unrest in the #BlackLivesMatter protests. If the current year is ahead of 2020’s pace, the real numbers will tell us something if the pace stays ahead of 2020 post May 25th.

The homicide rate in Philly has been very much up-and-down in recent years, and I’m hesitant to start making projections based on current statistics. With the daily rate being higher than 2020, I could say that the city is on a path to more than 500 again, but being significantly below 2022, perhaps not. But one thing seems certain: teenagers in Philly are continuing to carry firearms, illegally, and show little restraint in using them.

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It was never about tolerance; it was always about forced acceptance

We first mentioned Dylan Mulvaney a month ago, when, as Robert Stacy McCain put it, “satire is rapidly becoming impossible because reality has gotten so weird.” Since then, two well-paid executives accepting his ‘reality’ have managed to get themselves fired “leaves of absence“.

Mr Mulvaney managed to keep his mouth shut for a while, as someone told him he realized that opening it would not help his cause.

Well, he’s talking again, but it isn’t helping his case. According to Mr Mulvaney, I should be in jail!

What did he say?

The articles written about me using ‘he’ pronouns and calling me a man over and over again, and I feel like that should be illegal, I, I don’t know, that’s just bad journalism.

He may rest assured, while I always referred to him as male and use the masculine pronouns, I have never called him a man. Nevertheless, Mr Mulvaney believes that “should be illegal.” I’m not certain under what existing laws he believes that it “should be illegal,” or whether he believes that a new law should be passed to make it so, but I’m pretty solidly in favor of this one:

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

You’ve heard of the First Amendment, right? That pesky part of the Constitution of the United States which states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What Mr Mulvaney doesn’t seem to understand is that the First Amendment protects his right to claim that he’s actually a girl, or to say that he believes it should be illegal for [insert plural slang term for the anus here] like me to refer to him in ways which do not accept his claim that he’s really a woman. I absolutely support his right to say what he wishes, but I also have the right to say that I believe anyone who accepts what he has said as somehow truthful is dumb as a box of rocks.

Naturally, the vast majority of the professional media have been using Mr Mulvaney’s preferred terms, and, as we have previously reported, The Philadelphia Inquirer decided to double down with a fluff piece on Will Thomas, the male former University of Pennsylvania swimmer who decided that he was really a woman, and was calling himself “Lia.” The credentialed media have been quite diligent in their attempts to ‘normalize’ the cockamamie idea that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

That wasn’t all Mr Mulvaney had to say. This is from the HuffPost, so naturally it’s all favorable to him!

Dylan Mulvaney Breaks Silence In Wake Of Bud Light Partnership Backlash

Story by Ben Blanchet • Friday, April 28, 2023

Dylan Mulvaney said she (sic) has struggled to understand “the need to dehumanize and be cruel” following right-wing outrage over her partnership with Bud Light earlier this month. . . . .

Mulvaney, in her (sic) first TikTok in roughly three weeks, said some of what’s “been said” about her (sic) has been far from the truth and revealed that she’s been “having crazy deja vu” after facing criticism.

“I’m an adult, I’m 26 and throughout childhood I was called too feminine and over-the-top and here I am now being called all those same things but this time it’s from other adults,” said Mulvaney, who later quipped that she (sic) should be accused of being a theater person who is camp.

Well, that last is true enough: he is a “theater person who is ‘camp’.” His schtick is over-the-top campiness, and a total parody of how real girls act, yet he doesn’t seem to see how the whole thing makes him wholly unbelievable, and actually hurts people who are ‘transgender’ and are simply trying to fit in to society as they see themselves. Making a spectacle of yourself hardly seems to be trying to fit in.

If that’s all it was, no one would really care. But the left are pushing laws which require other people to go along with a ‘transgendered’ person’s faux name and requested pronouns and honorifics, some of which have passed, subjecting employers to hostile workplace violations if an employee refuses to lie about another employee’s sex, and can even fine businesses if an employee ‘misgenders’ or ‘deadnames’ a customer.

Translation: at least in New York City, the truth will set you free . . . from your job.

As Erick Erickson put it, “You will be made to care.”

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The Philadelphia Police Department: does sloppiness in the little things lead to sloppiness in the bigger issues?

We reported on Wednesday about the terrible job that Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has done, not on the crime numbers, though those are certainly important, but on managing and leading the Department.

But while leaders are normally called into account for the big things, it’s the little things that frequently don’t get noticed, but are indicative of a general attitude of sloppiness in an organization. While I, and others, have frequently taken screen captures of the Current Crime Statistics page, both others and I have normally taken only a restricted image, because by the time they get tweeted out or put in a website article, the entire page gets reduced to a size too small for people to read or appreciate the numbers; an example would be this image I posted previously.

I open the Current Crime Statistics page almost every morning, and yes, I’m gratified to see that homicides are down this year, on a daily basis, to 2021 and 2022, though they are ahead of 2020, the last year the city was under 500 homicides, though 499 isn’t under by very much, and we have noted, several times, the change in the Philadelphia Police Department’s statistics, down from the 502 homicides initially reported for 2020, down to 499, one short of the then-all-time record of 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, under the ‘leadership’ of then-Mayor Wilson Goode, he of MOVE bombing fame. I made a totally rookie mistake, and failed to get a screen capture of that, but a Twitter fellow styling himself NDJinPhilly was apparently smarter than me that particular time, took the screen shot, and then tweeted it to me.

But I noticed, just this morning, something that I’ve completely cut off from most of my screen captures, the statement, “Annual percentage change compared to same day in 2021.” Uhhh, it’s now 2023, almost a third of a way into the year, and no one has changed it to “Annual percentage change compared to same day in 2022”? 2021 being the record, 562 murders, I wanted to do the math, and yes, the annual percentage change, obviously done byy the computer, is from the previous year, 2022, and not 2021.

That might seem to be a little thing, but it indicates a sloppiness in the Philadelphia Police Department.

Then there’s this:

That’s difficult to read, but you can click on it to enlarge it to full size. What it states is pretty simple:

The homicide statistics represent the daily count (statistics reflect the accurate count during normal business hours, Monday through Friday) and year-to-date total for victims of homicide and are subject to reclassification according to the rules and regulations of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) guidelines. The homicide statistics for years 2007 – 2018 have been submitted to the FBI as the final UCR numbers for the City of Philadelphia.

Is the Department really telling us that the last year in which they have submitted the final Uniform Crime Reports to the FBI was 2018, five years ago? The Current Crime Statistics page tells us that the last annual homicide report available is the one for 2016, though the weekly reports are available through last year.

These errors are easy things to fix; a high school kid could fix the Current Crime Statistics page — it’s very obviously a standard format, which need only to be fixed once a year — but somehow, some way, the Philadelphia Police Department have not done so yet.

The clearance rate on homicides in Philly was a pathetic 42% in 2020, the Commissioner’s first year. The clearance rate was just 36.7% for fatal shootings.[1]This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will … Continue reading

2022’s homicide clearance rate was up to almost 47%, but that is still below the national clearance rate.

In major organizations, sloppiness in the little things both leads to, and reflects, sloppiness in the big things. Yesterday’s story about homicide detectives missing appointments and not returning phone calls had the commander of the Homicide unit, Inspector Ernest Ransom, blaming in part the “crushing workload” on the failures, but if they are sloppy on the little things, how can we expect that they won’t be sloppy on bigger stuff? Inspector Ransom, who got that job just a couple of months ago, has a lot of work ahead of him, and certainly deserves some time to get things straight. But getting the little things straightened out is a good way to start getting the bigger problems fixed.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

References

References
↑1 This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will suspect political motives behind her report.
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Danielle Outlaw and the Peter Principle

The First Street Journal has, including this article, 28 articles tagged #Danielle Outlaw, the Police Commissioner of foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia. A site search for Danielle Outlaw returns 13 pages of articles mentioning her. We have mentioned that, under her leadership, the Philadelphia Police Department is in complete disarray, and, concerning her future as Commissioner, she’s not just toast, but toast which has fallen on the floor, buttered side down.

In some ways, it’s not her fault. She was hired by Mayor Jim Kenney, chosen for her reputation for trying to hire more women and minorities and that “she has been trying to change the perception of policing nationwide.” Things like being an actually good chief of police? Not so much. She was essentially Peter Principled, promoted to the level of her incompetence.

And now there’s this, from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

When homicide victims’ families can’t get ahold of police, some investigate the cases themselves

In Philly, homicide detectives can be difficult to reach, causing families anguish and leading someone to take matters into their own hands.

by Ellie Rushing and Jessica Griffin | Wednesday, April 26, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Kathi Camp called the Philadelphia Police Department’s homicide unit almost every day for four months before the detective assigned to investigate her son’s murder finally called her back.

Camp was desperate to know whether police were any closer to locating Marcus Whitehead, the man wanted for killing her 26-year-old son, Diniar, in August. She felt as if her persistence had paid off when the detective said he would visit her South Philadelphia home with an update.

So on that Monday in February, Camp stayed home from work. She moved all calls and appointments, and waited for him.

But the detective never showed. Camp hasn’t heard from anyone in the unit since, she said, and her calls continue to go unreturned.

There’s a lot more at the original, telling readers whose responsibility it is to communicate with victims’ families, and how meetings and phone calls are promised, but rarely fulfilled. It’s not a new problem, as columnist Helen Ubiñas noted in October of 2018, before Miss Outlaw arrived in the City of Brotherly Love, but it is one that the Commissioner has failed to address.

The clearance rate on homicides in Philly was a pathetic 42% in 2020, the Commissioner’s first year. The clearance rate was just 36.7% for fatal shootings.[1]This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will … Continue reading

2022’s homicide clearance rate was up to almost 47%, but that is still below the national clearance rate.

Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, commanding officer of the Homicide Unit, acknowledged that many families haven’t gotten the communication they deserve. He said he is working to finally address it, and is in the early stages of setting communication standards for detectives and their supervisors.

In just his first few months in this role, Ransom said he received numerous emails from families complaining about the issue, and realized “this has to stop.” A concrete procedure will ensure greater accountability, he said.

It’s a “work in progress,” he said, and although families’ frustrations may never be fully resolved, “if we can minimize it, that’s a start.”

But he also said that amid the ongoing homicide crisis, detectives are shouldering a crushing workload that often leaves them little time to speak with families, and that loved ones often don’t understand how much work is being done behind the scenes on their case.

Chart from The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 5, 2023.

Inspector Ransom took command of the Homicide unit just a couple of months ago, and he’s now in charge of addressing the problem, but the Commissioner has been in her position since February of 2020; why is this just now being addressed? If the detectives are too busy, and have a “crushing workload,” couldn’t the Department hire a couple of civilians to handle something as simple as calling and updating victims’ families?

Philadelphia has a very high homicide rate, and is short several hundred officers; the Commissioner hasn’t done a very good job in retaining existing personnel or attracting new recruits. However, there are some real misuses of officers in jobs which could be handled by civilians[2]The referenced source citation, another Inquirer article dated October 4, 2022, is restricted to subscribers only.:

Nearly 900 positions within the Philadelphia Police Department that are currently held by sworn police officers could be filled by civilians, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania who last year studied the department’s makeup.

The review, which the city authorized in 2020, found that these officers perform duties that in other cities are done by civilians, who typically earn less, have no arrest power, and don’t carry firearms.

Researchers found that hundreds of sworn officers primarily work at front desks, perform data entry, or issue permits. Dozens are court liaisons, office managers, or human-resources officials. Six transport mail between police districts. Eight manage graphic design work, and a handful are grant writers.

In total, about 11% of Philadelphia’s 7,000-employee department are civilians, the researchers found. That’s fewer than in most large departments — civilians make up nearly a quarter of total staff among agencies nationwide that serve jurisdictions with more than 1 million people.

If the Philadelphia Police Department are using police officers in jobs which could be handled by civilians, is that not the Commissioner’s responsibility to address? As the former Chief of Police in Portland, Oregon, didn’t Miss Outlaw see some jobs which were held by civilians there which are handled by officers in Philly? There were union issues involved in this, but the Commissioner seems to have taken no real action to address the problem until last year.

There will always be headwinds in dealing with an organization as large as the Philadelphia Police Department, and the union environment in a union town only makes things more difficult, but Commissioner Outlaw has proven herself remarkably unable to deal with those issues. Mayor Kenney, in his zeal to be all progressive and inclusive, hired someone for the job who has been unable to handle the job.

References

References
↑1 This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will suspect political motives behind her report.
↑2 The referenced source citation, another Inquirer article dated October 4, 2022, is restricted to subscribers only.
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Even The Philadelphia Inquirer are calling out Helen Gym Flaherty! Serious question: if she wins the Democratic nomination, and as badly as the Editorial Board have trashed her, would they endorse Republican David Oh in November?

I will admit to being stunned, and I’m sure that columnist Will Bunch must be grinding his teeth in anger, but the Editorial Board of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who previously endorsed former Controller Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff for the Democratic nomination for Mayor are calling “progressive” candidate Helen Gym Flaherty to account:

Helen Gym’s plans for Philly are long on ambition, short on specifics | Editorial

Questions about how to fund billions in new spending have apparently irked Gym, but voters deserve answers.

by The Editorial Board | Tuesday, April 25, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

If elected mayor, Helen Gym has an ambitious agenda for Philadelphia. In fact, she said she wants “to change the way people live in this city.”

Gym’s long list of proposals includes guaranteed jobs for people under 30 and spending $10 billion to modernize public school buildings. But as with much of Gym’s campaign, her grandiose ideas are long on rhetoric but short on details.

When she was asked about the cost of the guaranteed jobs program, she said: “I think there are significant dollars that are currently available, but we don’t have a commitment or a plan right now.”

So, Gym’s guaranteed jobs may not be guaranteed.

None of that will matter to the ‘progressives,’ of course. The Working Families Party, which is quite frankly socialist though they don’t use the word, and which supports Mrs Flaherty, upon hearing of far-left, police-hating Brandon Johnson winning the Mayoral race in Chicago, immediately posted the tweet shown on the right, knowing that Mrs Flaherty is just as supportive of the Philadelphia Police Department as Mr Johnson is of Chicago’s.

Her answer also lacked clarity when asked how the perennially underfunded Philadelphia School District — with its $4 billion annual budget — would pay for the $10 billion for building renovations.

She told Inquirer reporter Anna Orso the city could borrow to finance some of the capital costs and steer a higher percentage of property taxes to the School District, leaving less money for other city services. A campaign spokesperson told this board that “much of the funding is not expected to require borrowing.”

So, maybe Gym will borrow the money, or maybe not.

Gym’s spokesperson added the city’s final cost depends on additional state and federal funding. In other words, how to pay for her signature education program is still to be determined.

There’s much, much more at the original, and the Editorial Board are pretty good at calling out the fact that Mrs Flaherty has been just throwing proposals on the wall, to see what will stick, to grab just another few voters into her column, without any flaming idea how to pay for all of it.

Gym should be honest about her big spending agenda before voters go to the polls on May 16. Philadelphia does not have unlimited funds. Under Mayor Jim Kenney, the city’s budget increased 50% to $6 billion with little to show for the spending spree.

The city tried to tax and spend its way to prosperity in the 1970s and ‘80s and nearly went bankrupt. Despite 25 years of fiscal sanity before Kenney was elected, Philadelphia remains one of the most heavily taxed cities in the country. The city’s tax burden continues to contribute to its slow job growth, which, in turn, is linked to its high poverty rate.

Heaven forfend! Has a Republican sneaked into the Inky’s offices and tried to say things that actually make some sense?

Then again, even the #woke inhabiting the Inquirer’s offices have to realize that the money has to come from somewhere, and that despite a series of begging letters to subscribers, the newspaper still had to make some layoffs last January. Reality bites.

The Board continued for several more paragraphs, telling readers how Mrs Flaherty is, to put it more bluntly than they did, more a bomb-thrower than a builder.

Gym is an effective hell-raiser. But Philadelphia needs a mayor who is a troubleshooter, not a troublemaker. Leading and building consensus in a diverse city doesn’t work with a bullhorn. And rule one for any big spending plans is to show your work.

But that’s the problem: so many people are so disgusted with the city, and with law enforcement — to judge by the landslide election victories of George Soros-sponsored, police-hating District Attorney Larry Krasner — that a bomb thrower who makes socialist promises for which there is no reasonable way to pay stands a very good chance of winning the Democratic primary, which means, in the City of Brotherly Love, almost certainly victory in the November general election as well.

It’s a reasonable question to ask: would the Editorial Board endorse Republican David Oh in the general election if Mrs Flaherty wins the Democratic nomination?

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The Philadelphia Inquirer gives us another fluff article about “Lia” Thomas

Leave it to the #woke editors and writers of The Philadelphia Inquirer when, in the wake of the boycott of Bud Light beer and the “leaves of absence” of two of Budweiser’s and Bud Light’s marketing supervisors, they decided to spend 867 words, exclusive of the headlines and byline, telling us how strong and brave and noble former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Will Thomas, a male who claims to be a woman and goes by the name “Lia”, is for beating out real women on the swim team:

Lia Thomas speaks on podcast about trans issues and her (sic) experience at Penn

Thomas spoke candidly to a fellow trans athlete about her (sic) experience swimming for Penn in the 2022 NCAA championships.

by Andrea Canales | Monday, April 24, 2023 | 6:44 PM EDT

Former Penn swimmer Lia Thomas spoke about her (sic) experience as a lightning rod in the topic of trans athletes on a podcast hosted by another trans athlete, Schuyler Bailar, a former swimmer at Harvard.

Regarding when 16 Penn teammates sent a letter to the school written by Nancy Hogshead-Makar that opposed her (sic) participation in championship meets, a former Olympian now campaigning for legislation to limit trans athletes, Thomas said it was hard to feel opposition coming from some teammates who she (sic) thought had her back. She (sic) pointed out the contradiction in the support they were expressing. “They’re like, ‘Oh, we respect Lia as a woman, as a trans woman, or whatever, we respect her (sic) identity; we just don’t think it’s fair.’ I think you can’t really have that sort of half support,” Thomas said on the Dear Schuyler podcast released Monday.

The adverb ‘sic’ indicates accuracy in transcription, despite errors in the original. With five such references using the incorrect pronouns in the first two paragraphs, plus two more in the headline and sub-heading, I’m tired of adding the notification. But readers may simply assume that they belong after each example of using the feminine references to Mr Thomas.

Thomas said that if she were being supported as a trans woman, then her right to compete in sport would count as much as those of any woman athlete. “You can’t sort of break me down as a person into little pieces and you’re like, ‘OK, this is OK, this is OK, that’s not.’ It’s pretending to be supportive on some level but in reality it just sort of falls flat.”

But that’s just it: that he claims to be a “trans woman” does not mean that people will accept him as a real woman. There really are differences between males and females, physical differences which make a difference in physical activities and sports.

As I predicted, by 8:48 PM EDT the Inquirer had closed all comments and deleted the existing ones. Click to enlarge.

Thomas also expressed concern over a trend of legislation around controlling bodily autonomy.“[There are] broader systems of trying to control people and control people’s bodies and exclude anybody who doesn’t fit a certain mold,” Thomas said. “A true feminist is everybody trying to come together to sort of break down these patriarchal ideals of what a woman is and who can be a woman.”

At a certain point in the discourse, it weighed on Thomas that she had become a flashpoint in the debate.

“I definitely struggled with at first, sort of like a year ago following the season, following NCAAs, of feeling almost a responsibility or maybe even a blame for some of the new rulings or rules or legislation,” Thomas said. She realized, however, “It wasn’t me personally that sparked it; it was just [trans-exclusionists] were waiting for a trans woman to be successful to go on a whole tirade against trans people and pass all sorts of legislation. So that’s helped me move past that a little bit.”

Translation: when a male, a mature, adult male, started beating real women. I’ve asked the question before: if someone was setting out to destroy acceptance of transgenderism, what would he be doing differently from what Mr Thomas has done?

Note the pullquote to the left, screen captured from the Inky original, complete with its embedded link; it references Penn swimmer Anna Kalandadze, and how she’s heading for records. We noted Miss Kalandadze previously, and how she finished second to Mr Thomas in the 1650 meter freestyle in the Zippy Invitational Event in Akron, Ohio in December of 2021. On Sunday, December 5, 2021, Mr Thomas, won the 1,650 meter freestyle with a time of 15:59:71; the second-place finisher was Miss Kalandadze, who touched at 16:37:44 in the Zippy Invitational Event in Akron, Ohio. The difference between Mr Thomas’ and Miss Kalandadze’s times is 37.73 seconds.

Now?

Kalandadze, a senior distance swimmer for Penn, won Ivy League titles in the 500-yard freestyle and the 1650 free this past February. Kalandadze’s time of 4 minutes, 38.86 seconds in the 500 free was 13th-best in the nation this year, while her 15:53.88 in the 1650 free was the sixth-fastest. Kalandadze will represent the Quakers in both events at the NCAA championships from March 15-18 in Knoxville, Tenn.

She has significantly improved her time, but she’s still almost six seconds slower than Mr Thomas time, when he was so far ahead of the field that he didn’t really need to push at the end. No one will say it, but it’s obvious that once Mr Thomas won his first NCAA championship, he deliberately backed off, so as to not totally demolish the field, and create even more anger at his unfair presence in the women’s competition. No, I can’t prove that, because he’ll never admit it, but he was so much faster than all of the real women in the Zippy Invitational that it’s extremely difficult to believe that he lost that much of his advantage in the couple of months before the Ivy League and NCAA championships.

No one would care if Will Thomas wanted to identify as “Lia,” and tell everybody that he’s a woman now, if he were not using his male athletic advantages unfairly. If he wants to be seen as a real woman, why is he doing things which so obviously set himself apart from real women?

Naturally, the Inky’s article was, supposedly, a straight sports article, but it was an obvious fluff piece, to support Mr Thomas’ claim that he’s a she now. Sports articles in the Inquirer do allow reader comments, unlike other stories in the newspaper, but once the editors saw what they were getting, they quickly deleted all comments and closed the comments section.  🙂

I knew that would happen, which is why I got the quick screen capture.

The newspaper very much supports transgenderism, using the faked names and imagined pronouns the transgendered want, and, as closing the comments section proves, the editors will brook no dissent. But the Bud Light/Dylan Mulvaney controversy pointed out the obvious: there are a whole lot of people who don’t accept that stupidity.