Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Seth Williams missed the point

In 2009, Rufus Seth Williams was elected to become District Attorney of Philadelphia, succeeding long-time prosecutor Lynne Abraham, a position he held from January 4, 2010 to July 24, 2017. Mr Williams was a decent prosecutor, but he wound up in legal trouble of his own, and spent 2½ years in federal prison.

Why do I begin with that? The answer is that, despite Mr Williams being a convicted felon and former drug addict, he has been turning his life around, and at least appears to be doing so successfully. Because he is doing that, and because he does not seem to minimize the personal failures he has had — Mr Williams states plainly in his Twitter biography that he was “Federally Incarcerated” — I can respect him.

On October 14, 2022, Mr Williams tweeted:

Tragically, yesterday 3 homicides were added to Philadelphia’s official year to date total. Sadly, we are now 0.7% off the all time record high. This should be unacceptable to everyone that truly values life. The violence, lack of accountability and lawlessness need not continue.

“This should be unacceptable to everyone that truly values life”? It has to be asked: how many people in heavily Democratic Philadelphia truly value life? In November of 2020, the good people gave 603,790 (81.44%) of their votes to the (purportedly) Catholic Joe Biden, who publicly supported, and still supports, an unlimited abortion license, to just 132,740 (17.90%) for Donald Trump, who at least claimed to oppose abortion, and appointed three pro-life Justices to the United States Supreme Court.

In 2016, the margin was even higher, percentagewise, as Philadelphians gave 584,025 (82.53%) of their votes to the odious Hillary Clinton, versus 108,748 (15.37%) to Mr Trump. Democrats outnumber Republicans in Philadelphia by huge margins, and the city’s last Republican mayor left office while Harry Truman was still President of the United States.

It is the stated position of the Democratic Party to always and everywhere support abortion, in every case, for any reason. The elected political leadership of the city support an unlimited abortion license, and The Philadelphia Inquirer wholly supports unlimited abortion.

So, I ask the question again, how many people in heavily Democratic Philadelphia truly value life? A Google search for abortion clinics in Philadelphia indicates that the city itself supports six abortion clinics, with two more nearby, in Bensalem, Pennsylvania and Cherry Hill New Jersey. While the political and media leadership of the city support abortion, it’s pretty clear that enough of the population do as well, if they can support that many abortuaries.

Is it any wonder, then, that a city which so heavily supports getting rid of inconvenient life when it comes to abortion would not be all that upset about other people getting rid of inconvenient life when it comes to the gang-bangers?

Because, let’s be brutally honest about this: getting rid of inconvenient life, whether we are talking about a pregnant woman who does not want to be ‘burdened’ with a baby, or a gang-banger or wannabe who does not want a member of a rival gang clique of young men[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading to burden his life are taking exactly the same decision, based on exactly the same reasons.

This lesson is not lost on the teenaged and twenty-something young men males of the City of Brotherly Love. They can see that ‘inconvenient’ life is cheap in Philly, cheap enough that the Philadelphia Police have a difficult time finding cooperating witnesses to solve homicides, and cheap enough that most people just don’t care! A wannabe gangsta gets offed in Strawberry Mansion? BFD, nobody other than his family cares, and a whole lot of people think that, hey, the neighborhood is better off with the victim no longer around. Even the very #woke[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Inquirer only seriously covers the victims of the city’s murders when the victim is an ‘innocent‘, someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl.

I have noticed that the (apparent) gang-land killing of 13-year-old Jeremiah Wilcox generated just one sympathetic story about the victim, and since then, the Inky has gone radio-silent; a site search for Jeremiah Wilcox, conducted at 10:18 AM EDT on Friday, October 14th, four days after young Mr Wilcox was murdered, returned no new stories. I suspect, given that, and the apparently deliberately-targeted nature of his killing, Inquirer journolists[3]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 found nothing new that they want to publish.

It’s clear: life is just plain cheap in Philadelphia, and no one other than the immediate family and friends of a particular murder victim care about the victims. Because the Philadelphia media don’t cover the deaths of the not-so-innocent victims, all that those of us who do care, who do “truly value life,” are left with are the numbers, the statistics.

Abortion is like that. No one knows who was not born because his ‘mother,’ and some ‘doctors’ and ‘nurses’, saw to his unnamed death. Children killed by abortion are not names, just numbers, statistics often poorly kept.

And everybody who pays attention sees that, everybody who pays attention can tell that, to mangle the quote allegedly attributed to Josef Stalin, the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of 429 is a statistic.

My apologies to Mr Williams, but he has it entirely wrong: few people in the City of Brotherly Love actually do care about human life. That’s how they can support six abortion clinics, and that’s how they can choose not to help the police catch killers. In the end, there really is no difference.

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups“
↑2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑3 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.
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He had a second chance, and he blew it

If you robbed a bank, got caught, and sentenced to five year in the big house, and somehow managed to get a university professorship, you’d have to think that you had gotten a huge, lucky break, and you need to straighten up and fly right, wouldn’t you? If you had an annual salary of $173,422 as a university department head, you’d think that you’d really turned your life around and pretty much had it made, right?

UK professor arrested for sexual abuse of a minor was ‘model teacher,’ personnel file says

by Monica Kast | Thursday, October 13, 2022 | 1:47 PM EDT | Updated 1:57 PM EDT

Kevin Real, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

The University of Kentucky professor who was arrested last month for sexual abuse of a minor and incest was convicted of robbing a bank in the 1980s and was sentenced to five years in jail, according to court documents.

When asked if the university was aware that Kevin Real, the chair of the UK Department of Communication, had been convicted of bank robbery before his employment at UK, the university declined to comment. Real remains on paid leave from the university, UK spokesperson Jay Blanton told the Herald-Leader.

Real appeared to be well-liked among colleagues and students, according to his UK personnel records the Herald-Leader obtained through an open records act request. In a letter of recommendation for Real to receive the Outstanding Teacher Award in 2015, one colleague called him “a model teacher.”

There’s more at the original.

You know, that’s actually a common feature in stories about sexual predators: they are always well-liked by the people who know them.

Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Monica Kast did a better job than Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Vinny Vella in concealing whether Dr Real’s (alleged) victim was a boy or a girl:

Real was arrested on Sept. 8 by the Lexington Police Department on charges of incest, first degree sexual abuse of a person under the age of 12 and first degree sodomy. According to his arrest citation, Real allegedly abused the victim when they were 6 years old, and again in July 2022.

His bond hearing took place Thursday morning, where Real was permitted to leave house arrest as long as he stays in Fayette County and avoids certain locations. He will continued to be electronically monitored and must stay 1,000 feet away from a local high school and the residence of his victim. In court documents, Real denied the allegations against him.

At the time of his arrest, Dr Real was assigned a $30,000 bail, which was reduced to $15,000 the following day. He was ordered into home confinement with electronic monitoring, though allowed to make limited released, and have no contact with children other than his own. Following a court hearing on Thursday, the conditions of his release were lightened: he’s still under electronic monitoring, but he is allowed to travel throughout Fayette County, as long as he avoids certain locations. Under Kentucky law, any suspect not charged with murder is entitled to have a reasonable bail set, which begs the question of whether $15,000 is reasonable.

  • Under KRS §510.110, first degree sexual abuse of a child under 12 years old is a Class C Felony.
  • Under KRS §510.070, first degree sodomy of a child under 12 is a Class A Felony.
  • Under KRS §530.20, incest with a child under 12 is a Class A Felony.
  • Under KRS §532.060, the penalty for a Class A felony is not less than 20 years, nor more than 50 years, or life imprisonment; for a Class C felony, the term is not less than 5 years nor more than 10 years in prison.

Only Dr Real and the (alleged) victim absolutely know whether he is guilty, but if he did commit those crimes and is convicted of a Class A felony, he’ll never get out of jail; he’s already 65 years old. And that means he has every reason to make a run for the border.

$15,000 bail, for a man who had been receiving — and is still receiving; he’s on paid suspension — a salary of $173,422, $15,000 is really nothing, not for a bail amount. He has the money, and the freedom to move around Fayette County, to get a stolen car with a bogus license plate, cut off his ankle bracelet, and get the heck out of town! If he can get as far west as Kansas, he’d be entering the mostly empty states, and could turn either north or south, and head to Canada or Mexico, borders which are not really well defended.

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Is this why Central Bucks schools have been pushing back against LGBTQ+ agenda?

We have previously noted how the Central Bucks school district has drawn all sorts of fire from the left as the district pursues a path of excluding sexually-charged materials in school libraries and stated that teachers and staff should not use ‘transgendered’ students’ preferred names and pronouns without the consent of their parents. I have to wonder: did this case help push the school district in its decisions?

A former Central Bucks teacher entered a no-contest plea to molesting and secretly recording his students

Joseph Ohrt, a longtime fixture at schools in the district, touched two of the victims inappropriately during incidents in the 1990s, according to prosecutors.

Joseph Ohrt, via the Bucks County Herald. Click to enlarge.

by Vinny Vella | Thursday, October 13, 2022 | 2:15 PM EDT

A once-prominent teacher in the Central Bucks School District entered a no-contest plea Thursday to molesting two of his former students and secretly recording another one.

Joseph Ohrt, 57, entered the plea to indecent assault, corruption of minors, invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence before Bucks County Court Judge Jeffrey Finley on what was initially scheduled to be the first day in his criminal trial.

Ohrt’s attorney, Matthew Sedacca, declined to comment after the hearing.

For nearly 40 years, Ohrt was a fixture in the Central Bucks district, serving as a music teacher and choral director at various middle, elementary and high schools. He gained recognition beyond the region in 2021, when the pop singer P!nk, who attended Central Bucks West High in her youth, praised him on Twitter and in one of her music videos as an early mentor of hers.

There’s more at the original, including a statement that parents of students had claimed in court filings that Mr Ohrt’s behavior was an “open secret” in the schools, though the Inquirer article did not specify whether the claim was that this was an open secret among students only, or if any teachers or staff were also aware.

Vinny Vella, the article author, was very careful to conceal the sex of the students molested by Mr Ohrt, because that’s just so politically incorrect, but he revealed it in the eighth paragraph:

County prosecutors first began investigating Ohrt in May 2021, when a former student reported that Ohrt had touched him and told him he loved him while he was a senior at Central Bucks West in 2016. After the student graduated, during a choir trip to Kansas City, Ohrt shared a bed with him and put his hand down the teen’s pants, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Ohrt’s arrest.

So, the molestation, the “grooming,” was homosexual in nature. Naturally, I took a screen capture of that paragraph, because I strongly suspect that the story will be subsequently edited to hide that fact. Surely, surely! one of Mr Vella’s editors will notice this, but now that it’s out there, and an [insert slang term for the rectum here] both noticed and documented it, the Inky might have no real choice but to leave it up, because they might figure that, having been noticed and documented, the Inquirer’s bias would be publicly noted . . . again.

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Danielle Outlaw is disgusted, and Larry Krasner is disgusting.

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw released a statement after three SWAT Team officers were shot and wounded, though none fatally, while attempting to serve a warrant in the Richard Allen housing projects on North 10th Street Wednesday morning:

Today, shortly after 6 AM, while serving a warrant on a murder suspect, members of our SWAT unit were fired upon. As the officers were knocking and announcing the warrant, without warning, this suspect fired through a window and door. Three of our brave officers were shout by the assailant, but were still able to return gunfire.  By the grace of God, it appears our officers will physically recover from their wounds.

The suspect was killed in the exchange.

Although I am currently in Dallas, Texas, for the Major Cities Chiefs’ Conference, I was grateful to be able to speak with the officers involved, and thank them for their remarkable service to our city.

While our SWAT officers are highly-trained professionals, this is yet again another cold reminder of the dangers involved in the work they do. Warrant service is always a high-risk assignment; particularly when the suspect is wanted in connection to violent crime.

That, of course, is why the SWAT Team officers were wearing body armor and helmets; they knew that the “suspect,” Raheem Lee, was armed and willing to kill people.

But let me make sure something is perfectly clear: it is NOT the job of our officers to be shot at.

Well, it shouldn’t be, but apparently a fairly sizable segment of the city’s population do believe that it is the job of police officers to be shot at. The Philadelphia Inquirer tried to make a hero out of young Thomas Siderio, who shot at police. And District Attorney Larry Krasner wants to try for murder officers who shoot back and kill offenders.

The Commissioner then, without naming his name, begins her criticism of Mr Krasner, the anti-police defense attorney who, thanks to $1.45 million from George Soros, was elected District Attorney.

It is not their job to be stabbed, spat upon, accosted or attacked in any way. And this type of violence towards our police — towards anyone — cannot continue to be normalized.

We are tired of arresting the same suspects over and over again, only to see them right back out on the street to continue and sometimes escalate their criminal ways.

We are tired of having to send our officers into harm’s way to serve warrants on suspects who have no business being on the street in the first place.

No — not everyone needs to be in jail. But when we repeatedly see the extensive criminal histories of those we arrest for violent crime, the question has to be asked as to why they were yet again back out on the street and terrorizing our communities.

A whole lot more people do need to be in jail, but the voters of the City of Brotherly Love first elected, and then, by a landslide margin, re-elected Mr Krasner, who not only made the promise to drastically reduce the number of criminals locked up, but kept his promise.

I am beyond disgusted by this violence. Our entire department is sickened by what is happening to the people that live, work, and visit our city.

Residents are tired of it.

Business owners are tired of it.

Our children are tired of it.

We are long past “enough is enough.”

As your Police Commissioner, I can promise you this: Our officers will not be intimidated, and we will continue to do everything we can to make Philadelphia a safer place to live.

Philadelphians keep saying that they want the violence to stop, but at the same time, they keep voting for the public officials who let the bad guys go, who won’t take responsibility for the results of their policies,

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The Philadelphia Inquirer really, really hates cops!

I suppose that I shouldn’t have been surprised. On Tuesday, October 11th, the day that the Philadelphia Police Department reported that 423 people had been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love, the website home page of The Philadelphia Inquirer had, in their “Philly Tips” section, “How to file a complaint against a Philly police officer”.

No, I am not including the link, and yes, perhaps I should have taken a larger screenshot of the main page to document its location better, but it’s really not surprising that the very #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Inquirer would have something like that.

Of course, the Inky was doubtlessly distraught because the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating defense lawyer who became District Attorney, Larry Krasner — whom the Inky endorsed for re-election — and his minions had totally bungled a murder case against a city police officer:

A Philly judge threw out all charges in the murder case against former police officer Ryan Pownall

Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott ruled that prosecutors years ago had failed to provide sufficient legal instructions to a grand jury as it weighed whether or not to charge Pownall.

by Chris Palmer | Tuesday, October 11, 2022

A Philadelphia judge dismissed all charges Tuesday against former city police officer Ryan Pownall, ruling that prosecutors had failed years ago to provide proper legal instructions to a grand jury as it weighed whether to charge him with murder in a 2017 on-duty shooting.

Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott said there were “so many things wrong” with how the District Attorney’s Office instructed grand jurors before they approved a presentment recommending murder charges in the landmark case.

In particular, McDermott said during a pretrial hearing, prosecutors had failed to provide the panel with information on how and when officers are legally justified in firing their weapons. “How could the grand jury do [its] job without knowing that?” she asked.

She chastised prosecutors for what she viewed as a series of other errors, saying that if a defense attorney had behaved in a similar fashion before her, “I would declare them incompetent.”

There’s more at the link, but Big Trial Blog has the story in more detail, by a writer who actually knows what he’s doing:

Clown Show: Judge Tosses D.A.’s Faulty Murder Case Against Cop

by Ralph Cipriano | Tuesday, October 11, 2022

The clown show that is the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office was fully exposed this afternoon in the courtroom of Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara McDermott.

At the end of a more than two-hour hearing, McDermott ruled that the D.A.’s Aug. 23, 2018 grand jury indictment of former police officer Ryan Pownall for murder was riddled with so many legal errors that she was quashing the grand jury’s report, known as a presentment because it was “no good” and it’s “conclusions cannot be relied on.”

What was so wrong with the grand jury presentment that charged Pownall for murder in the racially-charged 2017 shooting death of dirt biker David Jones?

Well for starters, the grand jury was run by former Assistant District Attorney Tracy Tripp, who, depending upon your viewpoint, was either [a] totally incompetent or [b] corrupt, or [c], the correct answer, both totally incompetent and corrupt.

In the Pownall case, Krasner, who had just taken office in January 2018, was looking for the first cop he could publicly hang for murder. And that happened to be Ryan Pownall, who fatally shot Jones, who was armed and on the run, while attempting to escape arrest.

For Krasner, the scheming arsonist, it was a perfect case for making headlines because Pownall was white and Jones was black. But the problem was that Krasner’s office is so lame and inept that Krasner relied on Tripp to do the job. And operating behind the closed doors of the grand jury, the rookie prosecutor completely botched the hit.

For Tripp, a former public defender who joined Krasner’s office in February, 2018, running the Pownall grand jury was [a] her first grand jury investigation and [b] her first murder case.

The only qualification that Tripp the novice prosecutor had to be a running a grand jury investigation of a former cop for murder was that she was a true believer like Krasner, the progressive reformer who hates cops, and wanted to nail one of them for murder.

There’s a lot more at the original, and I’d really like to quote it all, but that would be a copyright violation. But, not to worry, unlike what I have often called The Philadelphia Enquirer[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt., the Big Trial blog is not behind a paywall.

Mr Cipriano continues on to list not one, but several errors, not only by ADA Tripp, but the current Assistant District Attorneys at the hearing, Vince Corrigan and Lyandra Retacco, performed poorly in trying to salvage the case. Of course, when you are trying to defend and salvage incompetence, it’s difficult to look coherent yourself.

It was so bad that not even Chris Palmer, one of Krasner’s dedicated apologists at The Philadelphia Inquirer, could fully clean up the mess in a late developing story that the Inky promptly ushered off the front page of its newly designed website.

ADAs Corrigan and Retacco let it be known that Mr Krasner’s office would attempt to recharge Mr Pownell, at which point the judge warned them that they had better give him a preliminary hearing, another step they’d skipped the first time around.

I checked the Inky’s website Wednesday morning, and at least as of this writing, neither the Editorial Board nor any of the newspaper’s columnists had weighed in on the case.

The District Attorney wants the use of force statutes changed, because he loves going after policemen, far more than he likes going after the killers who have sent 424 Philadelphians to their deaths, but things haven’t worked out well for him:

The Philly DA’s Office will not appeal a recent ruling on police shootings to the U.S. Supreme Court

The decision potentially clears the way for former officer Ryan Pownall to be tried for murder this fall.

by Chris Palmer | Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Philadelphia prosecutors said Wednesday they do not plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the state’s use-of-force law for police — potentially clearing the way for former city officer Ryan Pownall to be tried for murder this fall.

The decision, announced in court Wednesday, came several weeks after Pennsylvania’s high court rejected a challenge by District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office to the state statute governing how and when on-duty officers are permitted to use their weapons.

Prosecutors said they believed Pennsylvania’s law violates the state constitution and the Fourth Amendment because it permits officers to shoot fleeing suspects even if there is no threat of imminent death or serious injury.

But in a 4-2 decision last month, the high court said it believed Krasner’s office had chosen the wrong venue — Pownall’s trial — to try to upend a portion of the state criminal code, which is written by the legislature.

There’s more at the original, and yes, if you aren’t a subscriber to the Inquirer, there’s a paywall which restricts you to just a few free stories a month. I subscribe so that you needn’t. But, simply put, Mr Krasner does not want the police to be able to use deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect, even if that fleeing suspect is known to be armed and to have used his weapon. This is important, because the District Attorney wants to try former Officer Edsaul Mendoza, who shot fleeing Thomas Siderio, after young Mr Siderio had fired a shot at police, which caused a flying glass injury to another officer. Commissioner Danielle Outlaw discharged the officer, yet declined to name him, for his safety, but the Inquirer, hating cops the way they do, published his name, with Chris Palmer being one of the article authors. I saw that as the Inky trying to get Officer Mendoza killed.

Because Mr Mendoza has been charged with first degree murder, he is being held without bail.

So far, the Inky has not opined that the SWAT officers, three of whom were shot and wounded by a murder suspect Wednesday morning, should be charged with a crime for returning fire and killing the suspect, and the case is so obvious that even the editors of the Inquirer might just keep their keyboards quiet, but I wouldn’t be that surprised if they didn’t.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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Killadelphia: another 13-year-old (probable) gang-banger wannabe bites the dust * Updated! * If the Philadelphia media don't step up, don't start telling the unvarnished truth, they will not have done everything they can to reduce the carnage

That the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page showed that seven people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards over the four days since the last report — the PPD does not issue updated reports on the weekend or holidays — wasn’t exactly a surprise: not only had I heard of five killings via Philly Crime Update, but seven killings over a weekend is simply not uncommon in the City of Brotherly Love.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

13-year-old boy killed in West Oak Lane shooting

The boy was outside on the corner of 65th Avenue and North Smedley Street when he was shot just before 6:50 p.m.

by Robert Moran | Monday, October 10, 2022

A 13-year-old boy was fatally wounded in a shooting Monday evening in the city’s West Oak Lane section, police said.

The story was originally entitled 13-year-old boy critically wounded in Philadelphia shooting, so reporter Robert Moran began it before he was notified that the victim had died.

Just before 6:50 p.m., the boy was outside on the corner of 65th Avenue and North Smedley Street when he was shot at least one time in the face, said Chief Inspector Scott Small.

The boy was rushed by police to Einstein Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 9:12 p.m., Small said.

The boy, who lived about four blocks away, was believed to have been visiting friends in the area when he was shot by possibly two assailants who then ran from the scene, Small said.

There’s your first red flag: if the young victim was shot “by possibly two assailants” who then fled, you’re getting the first clue that this wasn’t a tragic accident, but a gang killing, though the Inky would apparently prefer a term like “cliques of young men.”[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading Nevertheless, Mr Moran continued with a bit more, setting the stage for another heart-wrenching story:

Jerry T. Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, issued a statement identifying the boy as a student at Wagner Middle School.

“Our city is once again reeling from the murder of a child — a thirteen-year-old boy in West Oak Lane whose life was stolen from him, robbed of his future dreams and aspirations, never to even graduate eighth grade. My heart breaks for all who knew and loved him: his family, his friends, his neighbors, the entire Wagner Middle School community; the impact of such a tragedy is measureless,” Jordan said.

While the Inquirer hadn’t identified the victim as of 5:35 PM EDT, Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News did, via a tweet. Sure seems like the beginning of a new story telling us what a great kid he was, and how his life was ended before he ever lived it.

That, however, might be jumping the gun. People knew who this victim was, and knew enough to check his social media accounts. Will B Late tweeted:

These photos are from what appears to be his tiktok account. If it is indeed him, he can be seen in the video with a gun, drugs and making signs. Horror at a 13 year old being murdered is founded. The question becomes, how is a 13 year old being enabled to live and die like this?

Mr Late added three photos as evidence. Mr Late stated that he blurred the faces, because many of the boys pictured are probably minors.

The Philadelphia media, other than Fox 29 News, really don’t cover most of the murders, because most of the killings in the city involve members of one “rival street group” shooting members of another “rival street group,” and a whole lot of people see these things as public service homicides. If some gang-bangers are wiping out other gang-bangers, well, that’s the risk you take when you become a member of a “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families“.

But while the boys who are susceptible to joining such “groups”, who see a glamorized “gangsta life“, probably hear that it’s dangerous, the media need to put out the facts, the brutal, uncensored, tell-it-like-it-is truth, a truth which might make some of them think twice, and more than twice, and strengthen the parents to keep a much closer eye on their kids.

For the family of young Jeremiah Wilcox, assuming that the identification of his name and social media are accurate, it’s too late. There are, I assume, parents and grandparents and siblings and neighbors who are saddened, are crying, that Mr Wilcox is dead. But if the Philadelphia media, especially the Inquirer, which has the space to really delve into and publish the facts, something television news doesn’t really do that well, don’t step up, don’t tell the unvarnished truth, they will not have done all that they can to reduce the number of Jeremiah Wilcoxes bleeding out their life’s blood in Philly’s mean streets.
___________________________________
Update! Tuesday, October 11, 2022 | 7:53 PM EDT

The previous was published at 5:47 PM EDT. I hadn’t expected it quite so soon, but yup, the Inquirer is here to tell us what a wonderful boy young Mr Wilcox was:

‘He was just a baby’: The family of a 13-year-old who was fatally shot remember him as a loving, protective boy

Jeremiah Wilcox, 13, was fatally shot Monday evening in West Oak Lane, just a block from his middle school. “He was just a baby,” cried his aunt Jamillah Patterson. “He didn’t deserve this.”

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, October 11, 2022 | 6:26 PM EDT

It was 6:36 p.m. Monday when Jasmine Wilcox spoke on the phone with her 13-year-old son, Jeremiah, for what she did not know would be the last time.

“Jeremiah, you OK?” she asked.

“Yes, Mom, I’m outside talking to my friends,” Wilcox recalled her son saying. “And I said, ‘OK it’s a school night. Be home by 8.”

Twelve minutes later, Jeremiah was shot twice, struck in the head and body, police said, as he stood outside his friend’s house in West Oak Lane.

Sure sounds like a good kid, huh?

Jeremiah Wilcox, aka “Jay” or “Jerry,” was a sweet, funny boy, who was protective of his family and loved his mama, (Jasmine Wilcox, his mother) said. He had a bright smile and loved to make his family laugh, they said, but wasn’t afraid to speak his mind if something was bothering him. He liked football and basketball, and played casually with friends. In his free time, he watched anime and played video games like Fortnite and Call of Duty with his cousins.

Cheesesteaks were his favorite food, and he got his sweet tooth from his mom, she said.

He kept the waves in his hair fresh, his family said, and he knew he was handsome, always talking to and flirting with girls.

Jeremiah was an eighth grader at Wagner Middle School, just a block from where he was shot. He and his mom had started looking at high schools for next year, she said, and he was interested in attending Roxborough High for its engineering program and football team.

There’s a lot more at the original, all of it letting us know what a fine, upstanding young man he was. What was not in the story was any mention at all of the allegations in social media that young Mr Wilcox might have been a wannabe gang-banger, including no refutation of those claims.

So, are the claims true? We don’t know yet, but those allegations are definitely out there. It’s going to be an interesting development, to see whether the Inky rushed forward with one of their “innocents” killed, without checking it out, or whether the claims that young Mr Wilcox was a gang-banger wannabe flashing guns and gang signs are the false ones. If, as Chief Inspector Scott Small stated, the police believe that he was shot “by possibly two assailants who then ran from the scene,” turns out to be true, then this was a targeted killing.

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups“.
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No surprise: fuel prices are beginning to rise again

We noted, on Wednesday, October 5th, that very much contrary to President Joe Biden’s wishes, Russia and Saudi Arabia pushed OPEC+ to set a reduction in petroleum production of 2,000,000 barrels per day:

Saudi Arabia and Russia, acting as leaders of the OPEC Plus energy cartel, agreed on Wednesday to their biggest production cuts in more than two years in a bid to raise prices, countering efforts by the United States and Europe to choke off the enormous revenue that Moscow reaps from the sale of crude.

President Biden and European leaders have urged more oil production to ease gasoline prices and punish Moscow for its aggression in Ukraine. Russia has been accused of using energy as a weapon against countries opposing its invasion of Ukraine, and the optics of the decision could not be missed.

“This is completely not what the White House wants, and it is exactly what Russia wants,” said Bill Farren-Price, the head of macro oil and gas analysis at Enverus, a research firm. It also puts Saudi Arabia on a diplomatic “collision course” with the United States, he said.

The cut of two million barrels a day represents about 2 percent of global oil production.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the decision was a “mistake and misguided. “It’s clear that OPEC Plus is aligning with Russia with today’s announcement,” she said.

The United States is hardly a nation President Vladimir Putin wants to please: the US continues to send money and war materiel to Ukraine, which is directly at war with Russia, so the US is, in effect, engaged in a proxy war with Russia. Maybe, just maybe, Vladimir Vladimirovich isn’t in any mood to do favors for Mr Biden.

And, of course, Mr Biden directly accused Saudi Crown Prince of ordering the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and called teh Crown Prince a liar for denying it. Could it possibly be that the de facto ruler of the world’s largest petroleum exporter is not really inclined to be nice to our President?

Well, now the effects of the OPEC+ decision are becoming known:

Why gas prices are going back up after nearly 100 days of declines

by Rob Wile | Monday, October 10, 2022

It was the longest losing streak for gasoline prices since the early months of the pandemic: For 98-consecutive days this summer, American drivers experienced declining gas prices thanks in part to a slower worldwide demand for oil.

Now, a cut in oil production signaled by the OPEC+ group last week has sent global crude prices higher, bringing upward pressure back to prices at the pump.

According to AAA, the national average gas price climbed to $3.92 a gallon Monday.

Prices are likely to keep going higher from here as oil prices continue to climb, according to Patrick De Haan, chief petroleum analyst at gas price tracking group GasBuddy.com.

“With OPEC+ deciding to cut oil production by two million barrels a day, we’ve seen oil prices surge 20%, which is the primary factor in the national average rising for the third straight week,” he said in a blog post Monday.

For the rest of the country, De Haan said he expects prices to rise as much as $0.30 from their September lows, which would put them at around $4 a gallon.

It’s not all peaches and cream in OPEC+: as The Wall Street Journal reported, Iraq is concerned that it cannot afford the mandated production cuts, but that’s somewhat counterbalanced by a strike among Iranian oil workers. That does mean that projections that gasoline will reach into the $4.00+ per gallon range a bit more guesswork than straight statistical modeling.

The most important point? The election is in 29 days.

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Some common sense from the county sheriffs

On November 8th, I will be voting for one Democrat, Estill County Sheriff Chris Flynn. He’s a Marine Corps veteran, and I personally know him to be honest. And, in his auto repair business — which he inherited from his father, and was once again being run by his father once Sheriff Flynn took office following the 2018 election — there are a couple of signs posted showing support for the Second Amendment.

Sheriff Flynn is serious, and has said, publicly, that if given an order to confiscate law abiding citizens’ guns, he would resign before obeying such an order. It seems that he is not alone; from The New York Times:

Another Challenge to New York’s Gun Law: Sheriffs Who Won’t Enforce It

Some say the measure, which was passed after a Supreme Court opinion, ignores common sense, the Second Amendment and the way people live outside big cities.

By Jesse McKinley and Cole Louison | Sunday, October 9, 2022

LYONS, N.Y. — Robert Milby, Wayne County’s new sheriff, has been in law enforcement most of his adult life, earning praise and promotions for conscientious service. But recently, Sheriff Milby has attracted attention for a different approach to the law: ignoring it.

Sheriff Milby is among at least a half-dozen sheriffs in upstate New York who have said they have no intention of aggressively enforcing gun regulations that state lawmakers passed last summer, forbidding concealed weapons in so-called sensitive areas — a long list of public spaces including, but not limited to, government buildings and religious centers, health facilities and homeless shelters, schools and subways, stadiums and state parks, and, of course, Times Square.

Also see: William Teach, Bummer: New York State Sheriffs Refuse To Enforce Highly Restrictive NY Gun Law

“It’s basically everywhere,” said Sheriff Milby, in a recent interview in his office in Wayne County, east of Rochester. “If anyone thinks we’re going to go out and take a proactive stance against this, that’s not going to happen.”

On Thursday, a U.S. District Court judge blocked large portions of the law, dealing a major blow to lawmakers in Albany who had sought to blaze a trail for other states after the Supreme Court in June struck down a century-old New York law that had strictly limited the carrying of weapons in public. Between the court challenge and the hostility of many law enforcement officers, New York’s ambitious effort could be teetering.

The article subtitle really gives the demarcation point, the difference between city and country life. When I lived in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, the county was under the same gun regulation laws as Philadelphia, yet somehow, some way, Carbon County went years between homicides, and the Commonwealth, outside of the City of Brotherly Love, doesn’t have the murder rate as Philly.

In 2020, there were 1,009 murders in the Keystone State, 499, or 49.45%, of which occurred in Philadelphia. According to the 2020 Census, Pennsylvania’s population was 13,002,700 while Philadelphia’s alone was 1,603,797, just 12.33% of Pennsylvania’s totals.

Here’s how the actual numbers work out: there were 510 homicides among 11,398,903 Pennsylvanians not living in Philadelphia, for a homicide rate of 4.474 per 100,000 population, while there were 499 murders among 1,603,797 Philadelphians, which works out to a homicide rate of 31.114 per 100,000. If the gun laws are the problem, why aren’t the homicide rates for Philly and the rest of the Commonwealth fairly similar?

It got worse last year: with 562 homicides in Philly, out of 1027 total for Pennsylvania, 54.72% of all homicides in the Keystone State occurred in Philadelphia. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, was second, with 123 killings, 11.98% of the state’s total, but only 9.52% of Pennsylvania’s population.

The other 65 counties, with 78.11% of the state’s total population, had 33.30% of total murders.

So, why are the county sheriffs in upstate New York not giving priority enforcement to the ridiculous gun control laws?  Other than in the five counties making up New York City, sheriffs in the Empire State are elected officials, and they are, therefore, concerned with the opinions of the voters, and most voters in less urbanized counties understand that gun control really doesn’t reduce crime; it simply makes it more difficult for law-abiding citizens from defending themselves.

“We will take the complaint, but it will go to the bottom of my stack,” said Mike Filicetti, the Niagara County sheriff, who appends a Ronald Reagan quote to his emails. “There will be no arrests made without my authorization and it’s a very, very low priority for me.”

The law took effect on Sept. 1, and, at least anecdotally, has been used only sparingly since. Jeff Smith, the sheriff in mostly rural Montgomery County, west of Albany, said his office has had no calls for enforcement of the new law, noting that “almost every household” in his jurisdiction had some sort of gun.

Sheriff Smith, a Republican, said he understands the motives of lawmakers to quell violence and mass shootings, but that the gun law inadvertently targeted lawful gun owners.

“The pendulum swung way too far,” he said.

The left are, of course, aghast. A Twitter user styling herself Silent Spring wasn’t silent at all in giving her opinion: she wants all of those sheriffs fired.

But all law enforcement officials have some discretion, and New York City has been especially aggressive in ordering its employees not to enforce federal immigration laws. The left seem remarkably unconcerned about law enforcement not enforcing the laws the left don’t like.

The dispute evinces a larger rift between Democratic lawmakers in Albany — heavily represented by downstate liberals — and more conservative law enforcement and elected officials upstate. The schism was intensified by the pandemic, with some sheriffs defying Covid occupancy rules for Thanksgiving dinners in 2020, while other Republican county officials refused to abide by mask mandates in schools.

Hey, we defied Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) COVID-19 restrictions for Thanksgiving in 2020, and while our gathering for Thanksgiving dinner did not exceed ten people, they were from more than two separate households. The authoritarian state governors, of course, couldn’t send the gendarmerie to every home to check for compliance, but were depending on officious little pricks and Karens to enforce their illegal orders.

It would not make a difference even if widespread gun control laws actually made a difference in the crime rate; they’d still be mostly unconstitutional. But gun control laws really don’t make a difference, because the actual criminals don’t obey those laws.

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The silliness of political correctness

In the stupidity known as political correctness, the plural pronouns have been used to refer to a single individual who requests them. because such person is “non-binary” or makes some other idiotic claim. For anyone with an understanding of the English language, such can be jarring to read.

Fayette County inmate says they were sexually assaulted in jail. Officials investigating

by Christopher Leach | Friday, October 7, 2022 | 9:03 AM EDT | Updated” 4:56 PM EDT

An investigation is underway after an inmate reported being sexually assaulted by another inmate at the Fayette County Detention Center, a jail spokesperson confirmed Friday.

The victim reported the incident to a corrections officer Wednesday afternoon, said Maj. Matt LeMonds from Lexington’s Department of Community Corrections. The inmate told the corrections officer they were the victim of a sexual assault committed by another inmate.

“The Division of Community Corrections and the Lexington Police Department are actively investigating this incident and criminal charges have been filed,” LeMonds said in an email to the Herald-Leader.

LeMonds didn’t give specific information on how jail staff responded to the incident but said the jail does have protocol in place for when a sexual assault occurs.

“I can’t speak to specifics as far as the individuals involved in this incident, but in the event of an alleged sexual assault we do transport the victim to a local area hospital for a proper examination,” LeMonds said. “The alleged offender would also be subject to internal disciplinary sanctions in addition to criminal charges.”

You can read more of the story here.

Like so many other municipalities, Lexington is experience staffing shortages, and the alleged incident occurred while one of the corrections officers was on break.

This is really laughable. Prisoners are segregated by sex, so the use of the plural pronoun “they” to refer to the allegedly assaulted inmate is a silly way for the Herald-Leader to try to conceal what we all know anyway: the alleged sexual assault was a homosexual sexual assault.

It could, I suppose, be a reference to a victim who claimed to be “non-binary,” but the victim would still have been placed in custody in the prison which matched his biological status, and the article made no reference to the victim being non-binary.

In English, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine, and in a situation in which the specific individual to whom a pronoun refers is unknow, the masculine pronouns are properly used, and do not imply that the person is male. For weaker minds, the writer, Christopher Leach, could have reconfigured his sentences to avoid the use of pronouns, but he did not do so. It is possible that the Fayette County Detention Center did not specify the sex of the inmates involved, but that is no excuse for the rotten grammar in the article.