Category Archives: Crime

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In trying to avoid calling street gangs gangs, The Philadelphia Inquirer has again beclowned itself.

We have frequently mocked, as have others, when we were reliably informed by what I have frequently referred to as The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]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. 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.” Somehow, some way, the #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 publisher and editors and 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 at our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper just can’t bring themselves to say the word “gang.”

And here they go again!

West Philly street group members charged with three shootings, including two homicides

The investigation follows a December bust by the District Attorney’s Office’s Gun Violence Task Force

by Jesse Bunch and Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Philadelphia law enforcement officials on Tuesday announced the arrests of four people affiliated with West Philadelphia street groups who they say are responsible for committing multiple shootings in 2021 that left two people dead.

The District Attorney’s Office, following an investigation that took longer than a year, said it has charged four people connected with the street groups known as “56st” and “524″ for their roles in the shooting deaths of two people in Southwest Philadelphia, as well as shootings that injured three others.

Roderick Williams, 23, faces charges of murder, attempted murder, and firearms violations in the shooting death of 21-year-old Michael Mines in April 2021, said Jeffrey Palmer, assistant supervisor of the District Attorney’s Office’s Gun Violence Task Force.

Williams is affiliated with “56st,” Palmer said, a group based in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood that also goes by “Christy Rec,” a reference to the nearby recreation center.

There’s more at the original.

The Inky’s original was 693 words long, in which I counted 11 uses of the word ‘group’ or ‘groups,’ and no use at all of the words ‘gang’ or ‘gangs.’ The previous Inquirer article linked in the blurb also used the words ‘group’ and ‘groups,’ but, in the sixth paragraph down, did use the description “rival gang”, almost certainly for prosaic reasons, since reporters Rodrigo Torrejón and Ellie Rushing used the word group earlier in the same sentence.

One wonders if they got the backs of their hands smacked by Inquirer Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar. 🙂

Of course, the Inky, which publisher Elizabeth Hughes promised to make an “anti-racist news organization,” is very, very worried about anything which could cast doubt on that:

A group of Black community advocates criticized a recent Inquirer investigation as racist and harmful

Advocates said the story perpetuated unfair stereotypes. The Inquirer’s editor said “the goal here was to bring a serious issue to light, and the story has done that.”

by Chris Palmer | Monday, May 1, 2023

A group of prominent Black community advocates gathered Monday to criticize a recent Inquirer investigation into how the city awarded millions in anti-violence grants as racist and harmful, calling it an unfair portrayal of the difficult work advocates have long been performing in communities suffering from high rates of gunfire.

Speaking at a news conference in North Philadelphia, Reuben Jones, executive director of the nonprofit Frontline Dads, said the story — which found that a city-run grant program had invested in some community nonprofits without budgets, employees, or directors — perpetuated racist stereotypes, including the notion that Black people from poor neighborhoods can’t be trusted to responsibly manage taxpayer money.

Standing before a group of about two dozen other advocates, Jones said: “These are the community members that represent healing … in the community that you don’t respect, that you don’t value, that you don’t trust.”

There’s more at the original, but the Inky’s story was basically pointing out that several — not all — of the organizations granted the funds did not have the kind of internal organizational structure which allowed either efficient spending or responsible reporting of expenditures.

But the city’s grant program (with administrative costs it totaled $22 million) was also marked by a politicized selection process that flushed millions of dollars into nascent nonprofits unprepared to manage the money — resulting in millions of dollars left unspent and tens of thousands unaccounted for, an Inquirer investigation has found.

Is that racist?

Speakers at Monday’s news conference defended the work that many grassroots organizations do, saying many have provided services for years without any outside funding or recognition. They said advocates frequently have to adjust tactics or spending to respond to the needs of participants, many of whom are difficult to reach — and that their groups should not be criticized for having to change course.

Holston was among the speakers who said the city needs to distribute more funding to grassroots organizations led by Black men and women. He added that critical reporting could make that more difficult to achieve.

“Do not bash the city for actually doing what we asked: To be creative and take a risk in the middle of an emergency. That’s what they’re supposed to do,” Holston said. “When you bash them like that, we can’t get them to do that again.”

You know what wasn’t in the article? There were no claims that the investigative article by the Inquirer actually got anything wrong, just that it was harmful for the newspaper to actually investigate the subject. But the Inky was worried enough that the top editor, Mr Escobar, felt the need to respond, something he rarely does.

So, if simply questioning what a civic organization does with government money is racist, I have to ask the next question: is referring to gangs, the word most people would use, racist, so racist that the Inky has to use the awkward formulation “street groups”? It’s not as though readers don’t know that the newspaper is referring to gangs.

Do the editors and journolists of the Inquirer simply assume that all readers will see the word ‘gang’ and read ‘black’? It’s not like all gangs are black gangs, but perhaps the denizens of the newsroom believe that they are.

In striving to become an “anti-racist news organization,” the Inquirer has beclowned itself. The vast majority of readers would have seen nothing special about the words ‘gang’ or ‘gangs,’ but the newspaper went through the blatantly obvious verbal contortions in a way which makes readers pay attention to the awkward phraseology, something which can only lead readers to do the opposite of what the Inky is trying to do, downplay the notions of gangs.

References

References
↑1 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.
↑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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Killadelphia Dear Philadelphia Inquirer: Don't tell us a story, just tell us the truth!

We previously noted the killing of three Philadelphia teenagers in a quadruple shooting in the 5900 block of Palmetto Street, and how The Philadelphia Inquirer gave us several paragraphs telling us what good kids the victims were. I expressed some doubt about that, given an odd line noting the belief of the Philadelphia Police Department that the alleged shooters then took the surviving victim to the hospital.

We then pointed out, the following day, the seeming editorial slant of the Inquirer to tell us that some juvenile victims of homicide are as pure as the wind-driven snow, even if the early evidence seems to cast doubt on that.

Well, here we go!

‘Transaction’ gone wrong led to the shooting of four teens in Northeast Philly on Friday, police say

The victims’ families, meanwhile, are grieving and preparing to bury their children.

by Ellie Rushing | Monday, May 1, 2023

Police say they have identified two people who are wanted in connection with a quadruple shooting in Northeast Philadelphia on Friday that left three juveniles dead and another seriously injured, and investigators believe the violence was the result of a “transaction” gone wrong.

Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, head of the Homicide Unit, said that around 2:15 p.m., two groups of young men arrived in separate cars on the 5900 block of Palmetto Street, and went inside a rowhouse “for some sort of transaction.”

But at some point during the meeting, shortly after 3:15 p.m., something went wrong and gunfire erupted, Ransom said.

“Some sort of transaction,” huh? Just what sort of “transaction” in a private residence can result in gunfire?

Ransom declined to say what the transaction involved, citing the ongoing investigation.

Drugs? Perhaps selling guns? The police haven’t told us, but my imagination isn’t quite good enough to guess what sorts of legal “transaction” could have been involved, despite the characterization in the previous Inky story telling us what great kids the victims were.

Ransom said two cousins are wanted in connection with the shooting: Tyree Lennon, 22, and Taj Lennon, 15.

No, of course the Inquirer didn’t provide us with Tyree Lennon’s mugshot; that came from Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News. Mr Keeley continued, in the series of tweets, to tell us something about the older Mr Lennon:

22yr old WANTED by @PhillyPolice in TRIPLE MURDER of 14, 17 & 18 yr olds on Palmetto St. had just been released by a judge & put on house arrest just 15 days before the three teens shot & killed at the home. He had already (violated) the house arrest in the days before murders.

2/3 Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office requested $1 Million bail. Judge then reduced that to 10% of $400k & put him on house arrest. He had three bench warrants. One for violent attack on 11 month old baby in the SAME Palmetto Street house where murders happened Friday.

3/3 Law Enforcement sources say on October 24, 2020, Tyree Lennon bit 11 month old baby on face, leg & arm drawing blood. Sources say he then beat & strangled baby’s mother. @phillypolice had “violent struggle with Lennon” when they arrested him that day & he had ghost gun on him.”

4/ on April 13th, just 15 days before the triple murder, @philadao (Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office — DRP) asked for over $1 Million bail on all of (Lennon’s) prior gun & aggravated assault charges. Bench warrant court Judge reduced it & permitted house arrest release.

5/ He had already violated the house arrest before the murders in Palmetto Street house. Another bench warrant for that house arrest violation was issued the day after the triple murder April 29th.

Tweets slightly edited by The First Street Journal for spacing and clarity.

As we have previously noted, the rest of the professional media in Philly don’t much like Mr Keeley reporting the facts when it comes to crime, but the Inquirer story had no details on Tyree Lennon other than his name, and a site search of inquirer.com for “Tyree Lennon”, at 12:42 on Tuesday, May 2nd, returned no other stories mentioning him.

Some have stated on Twitter that it was Judge Jacki Lyde-Frazier who reduced Mr Lennon’s bail. If this is true, how do we hole Judge Frazier-Lyde accountable for reducing the bail to a level that Mr Lennon could manage, to let him out of jail, to (allegedly) shoot four people? When even the notoriously police-hating, soft-on-crime District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office are requesting a million-dollar bail amount, you know that they believed that Mr Lennon was a real threat and flight risk.

Back to the Inky:

Two others, ages 15 and 16, have also been charged with illegal gun possession in connection with the incident. Police believe the teens dropped off a 16-year-old, who had been shot in the stomach at the Palmetto Street shooting, at Jefferson Frankford Hospital on Friday afternoon. Police recovered their vehicle, a Ford Edge, crashed nearby shortly after and arrested the teens.

There’s a lot of information we haven’t been given. Were the two teens arrested with the Lennons, or were they with the victims? Whichever it was, they were carrying firearms illegally.

“My son was a good kid,” said Khalif Frezghi’s mother, who asked not to be named for privacy reasons. “He was caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

We really can’t expect a murder victim’s mother to say anything other than something good about him, but if he was at the Lennons’ for an unspecified but very probably illegal “transaction,” he was more than at “the wrong place, at the wrong time,” but also there for the wrong thing, with the wrong people, as well.

After the previous quoted paragraph were more, telling us what good kids the deceased were, and the Inquirer published them uncritically. The Inky is still trying to push the image that the deceased were just innocent little angels, trying to tell us a story rather than simply telling us the truth.

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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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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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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.
_______________________________
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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Solomon Jones and his very bad timing

Solomon Jones is a columnist for The Phila-delphia Inquirer, and, according to his biography blurb at the bottom of his column, “is the author of ‘Ten Lives Ten Demands: Life and Death Stories and a Black Activistʼs Blueprint for Racial Justice.’ Listen to him weekdays from 7 to 10 a.m. on WURD 900 AM.” Amusingly enough, the amazon.com blurb for his book calls it a “manifesto,” with these demands to “rectify racial injustice.” Copyrighted in 2021, I do wonder if, given the current Democratic candidates for Mayor of Philadelphia, whether he still adheres to his demand to “Defund the police and move funds to trained social workers, mental health professionals, and conflict resolution specialists.” Even Helen Gym Flaherty no longer says that, though I would not be surprised if she didn’t move in that direction if she wins.

Unfortunately for Mr Jones, his latest column is a masterpiece of lousy timing. Continue reading →

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People are investing in nice housing in parts of Philly, but if the city doesn’t address rampant crime, such will eventually cease.

Sometimes the real news is found in sections of the newspaper — and yes, I’m a newspaper reader, even if it’s just the digital editions! — in which you don’t expect it. From the Real Estate section of The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Apartment building proposed under the El adds even more transit-accessible housing in Fishtown

The 114-apartment building with a restaurant is planned for Front Street.

by Jale Blumgart | Thursday, April 20, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

A 114-unit apartment project is planned immediately adjacent to the Market-Frankford Line at 1440 N. Front St. on the border between Fishtown and South Kensington.

This is the latest, and largest, project from Archive Development, a new real estate company that’s been building in the Fishtown area since 2020. The project will contain 2,000 square feet of retail space, which the company wants to go to a restaurant.

“Front is one of the only streets in Fishtown where you can truly build with high density,” said Henry Siebert, cofounder of Archive. “We’ve seen it transition from a former industrial street with warehouses to a true, viable commercial corridor. That’s what attracted us.”

Amenities include a seventh floor “sky lounge,” with a kitchenette and a roof deck. It will also include a gym, coworking spaces, a dedicated conference room, and a ground floor garden. There will be five studios, 93 one-bedroom units, and 16 two-bedroom units.

There’s more at the original, but that apartment building better have some outrageous soundproofing. Who would want the sound of the El outside their windows?

Fishtown has been gentrifying for years, enough to have attracted the attention of Forbes:

How Fishtown, Philadelphia Became America’s Hottest New Neighborhood

Peter Lane Taylor[1]I cover luxury real estate, travel, hospitality, and entrepreneurs | May 2, 2018,09:52pm EDT

Every Friday afternoon at 5:30 pm the doors of “the El­”—one of America’s oldest elevated subways—swoosh open at Girard and Berks Street stations, unleashing a stampede of Millennials, yuppies, hipsters, entrepreneurs, and empty nesters onto Front Street.

As fast as the doors close, they scatter east down a maze of narrow streets swirling with trash, bumping shoulders with the occasional heroin addict and scrappers pushing shopping carts piled high with salvaged sheet metal. Nobody blinks.

A half dozen blocks away from their newly-built, half-million dollar townhomes, the lines twist out the doors at Pizzeria Beddia and Frankford Hall, two of Philadelphia’s hottest foodie spots. Across the street, Johnny Brenda’s is already packed—hosting as they have for over a decade one of America’s hottest indie rock bands. Mothers pushing strollers window shop past Lululemon along Frankford Avenue’s buzzing retail corridor fronted with wine bars, coffee shops, couture boutiques, yoga studios, a vintage motorcycle joint, and an Argentinian tango dance school.

Visually the dichotomies are jarring. Culturally the contradictions are even more confusing. Yet when the El disgorges its “New Fish” every afternoon it epitomizes the driving forces behind Fishtown’s warp-speed transformation, and the demographics fueling America’s new urban revolution.

There’s more at the original, including this photo, which I found interesting. Captioned as “An average night at Frankford Hall,” it shows the stereotypical young urban professionals at the Frankford Hall Hofbräu München German biergarten, a full courtyard of exclusively white — from what I could see — twenty-and-thirty-somethings. Philly is, overall, a very racially and ethnically diverse — and I’ve come to hate the word ‘diverse’ — cities, but, as the Inquirer previously reported, “Among the 30 biggest cities, Philadelphia is second only to Chicago in its level of residential segregation between Black and white residents, according to data from Brown University. Between Hispanic and white residents, it’s the sixth-most segregated.” And it’s only going to get worse.

But if Fishtown is gentrifying, an up-and-coming neighborhood, it’s right up against Kensington, Philly’s worst, or at least the one with the worst reputation, one so bad that the Mexican government used video of Kensington in an anti-drug ad campaign. And the 1440 North Front Street project is just 2.1 miles from the SEPTA elevated train station at Kensington and Allegheny Avenues.

Inquirer reporter Jake Blumgart spent a fair amount of space telling readers about the mass transit opportunities in the area, with this paragraph standing out:

Archive Development’s project on Front Street comes amid a construction boom directly adjacent to the Market Frankford elevated tracks. The El has struggled with low ridership, remote work trends, and a surge in antisocial behavior following the pandemic.

LOL! A “surge in antisocial behavior”? That’s a rather mild euphemism for shootings, assaults, and rampant drug use in SEPTA stations, with stations and transit cars filled with discarded needles.

There’s a choice that Philadelphia has to take, one which will determine the path our nation’s sixth largest city will follow. Will the city opt for actual law enforcement, and clean up Kensington and the Philadelphia Badlands, to enable further gentrification, wealth, and potential integration, or will it persist in non-enforcement, in excusing crime and leniently treating criminals, further depressing the depressed neighborhoods?

References

References
↑1 I cover luxury real estate, travel, hospitality, and entrepreneurs