Category Archives: Crime

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Killadelphia’s Democratic mayoral candidates do not want the killing to stop They must want the killings to continue, because they keep advocating the policies which have enabled more crime

When #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 journolists[2]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 write the news, it tends to fall into the category of GI/GO: garbage in, garbage out. It was the subtitle of this article from what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[3]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 told us that the leftward bias of the newspaper was going to force it into irrelevance.

Philly’s next mayor will inherit an unprecedented gun violence crisis. Here’s how it’s defining the race.

The Democrats running today must strike a balance that many of their predecessors did not: they must show they can fight crime while maintaining the criminal-justice reforms most of them supported.

by Anna Orso | Wednesday, January 11, 2022

Crime has been a top political issue in Philadelphia for as long as anyone can remember, but few recall a time when it was quite this salient.

The subtitle, the Democratic candidates “must show they can fight crime while maintaining the criminal-justice reforms most of them supported” tells us everything: it takes on the assumption that Philly’s terrible crime rate can be fought while continuing with those “criminal justice reforms” left in place. More, it assumes that those ‘progressive’ “criminal justice reforms” did not contribute to the increase in crime.

While I have previously criticized Anna Orso’s reporting, article headlines are traditionally written not by the reporter, but by an editor. In this case, the original headline was “Philadelphia mayor’s race: how gun violence crisis is defining campaigns”, as you can see if you hover your cursor over the tab in your browser. I cannot assign the responsibility for that subtitle to her, even though she could have been the one who wrote it.

Homicides climbed to all-time highs over the last two years, and thousands more people survived shootings. Carjackings and vehicle thefts have skyrocketed, and the Police Department has hundreds of vacancies. Residents of long-neglected neighborhoods report often feeling unsafe, and many say the city feels as if it’s at a crossroads.

And nine Democrats are vying to run it.

I’ll point out the history here: Philadelphia’s last Republican mayor left office while President Harry Truman was still in office. Those city mayors in the chart above? All Democrats! The chance that a Republican will be elected in November is almost vanishingly small.

As the Philadelphia mayor’s race takes shape ahead of the May primary election, all the candidates agree: Public safety is the No. 1 issue. What they’ll debate now is how to lead Philadelphia out of the shootings crisis — and they’ll do so in a city that just two years ago saw a mass protest movement challenge the role of law enforcement.

It means Democrats running for the nomination must strike a balance many of their predecessors did not. They must show they can fight the urgent gun violence problem, and also tackle the long-standing societal factors that drive it. They must set the agenda for the Police Department and also the city’s antiviolence programs.

That last embedded link? It’s not just a throwaway, but leads to a previous story, one in which Miss Orso is listed as a co-author, in which the Inquirer blames the existing problems not on the rotten behavior of the current residents and gang members cliques of young men,[4]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 but on real-estate “redlining”, community disinvestment, and poverty. There’s not a single word about children born to single mothers, about absent and frequently unknown fathers, or empty churches. Nothing was said about parents rearing children with no values or morals or ethics. In a Lord of the Flies culture among those “cliques of young men”, there isn’t a single word about children growing up with little or no parental supervision, the overarching theme of Lord of the Flies in the first place.

Former Councilmember Helen Gym, seen as the most progressive candidate in the race, centered her campaign announcement speech on public safety, saying violence is “destroying our city and our people.” She’s focused largely on expanding social programs and tailoring them to young people.

Mrs Flaherty,[5]Although Helen Gym Flaherty doesn’t have enough respect for her husband to have taken his name, at The First Street Journal we do not show similar disrespect. as Miss Orso told us, is the furthest left of the Democratic candidates, a supporter of the leftist defense attorney who is Philadelphia’s District Attorney “Let ’em Loose” Larry Krasner, and has supported both significant ‘decarceration,’ turning more criminals loose, and ‘defunding the police.’ That the ‘social programs’ she favors have done no good in the literally decades that Philadelphia individually, and the country as a whole, have been applying them, is not a question Miss Orso raised.

Joseph P. McLaughlin, an adviser to two former mayors, said he’d recommend a mayoral candidate running in 2023 avoid being dismissive of law enforcement and work to separate themselves from the “defund the police” movement. The slogan that refers to diverting law enforcement funding to social services was adopted by racial justice protesters in 2020, and local officials across the country — mostly Democrats — backed versions of the idea.

“Whatever you think of the particular policy,” McLaughlin said, “the headline on it was a disaster for Democrats.”

It has arguably been a ‘disaster for Democrats’ in competitive elections, but once a Democratic nominee is selected, it no longer matters, not in Philadelphia; if the Republicans nominated Jesus, and Satan was running as the Democrat, Satan would win in the City of Brotherly Love, and it wouldn’t even be close.

Still, tough-on-crime rhetoric or strategies that call for increasing funding to the Police Department may not sit well with the city’s growing and well-organized progressive movement, which has notched notable electoral wins over the last five years, including elevating District Attorney Larry Krasner to office.

“The message of ‘more police are going to solve this, more prisons will solve this’ is out of touch,” said Robert Saleem Holbrook, executive director of the Abolitionist Law Center. “Philadelphia has a very strong movement that is opposed to that and is not going to accept any kind of talk like that from these candidates.”

The Abolitionist Law Center, huh? They very honestly tell you what they are about, which is “abolishing class and race based mass incarceration”. As many criminals as Mr Krasner has sprung from prison — and shooting and homicides have both risen dramatically as the incarcerated population have dropped — many of whom have wound up committing new crimes, you would think that if ‘decarceration’ worked to reduce crime, crime would have come down.

I began this article by slamming Miss Orso, but in a way, it really wasn’t fair: she was reporting on the political positioning of the candidates for the Democratic nomination for Mayor, and it wasn’t really her job to point out that their common problem would be that their proposed policies are all terrible.

In the meantime, there was this:

16-year-old boy killed in North Philadelphia shooting

The killing on West Erie Avenue in North Philadelphia on Wednesday could have connections to a non-fatal shooting of another 16-year-old boy two days earlier, police said.

by Jason Laughlin | Wednesday, January 11, 2023 | 7:32 PM EST

A 16-year-old boy was shot to death in North Philadelphia Wednesday night, and police said the shooting could have ties to another shooting of a teenager in the neighborhood just two days earlier.

The 16-year-old, whom the Philadelphia Police Department did not identify, was found shot multiple times in an empty lot on the 1400 block of West Erie Avenue about 5:25 p.m. Wednesday. He was taken to Temple University Hospital and pronounced dead there about a half hour later.

Shell casings gathered at the scene suggested at least 11 shots were fired just half a block from Broad Street and Erie Avenue, a bustling commercial intersection in North Philadelphia. When the shots fired people scattered, said Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small, and the teenager, already shot, ran to the vacant lot where he collapsed. It was unclear how many shooters were involved, Scott said.

Police are investigating whether the killing Wednesday is related to a shooting nearby Monday night, Small said. In that shooting, another 16-year-old male was shot in the leg at 15th Street and Erie Avenue. He survived. That victim and the teenager killed Wednesday appeared to have known each other, Small said. Both lived in that neighborhood, he said.

There’s more at the original, but one thing is clear: decarceration, anti-violence initiatives, and social programs won’t do anything, not as long as 16-year-olds are out running in gangs “street groups”, and won’t mean a thing if parents aren’t rearing their children properly. It takes two parents to bring up children properly, a mother and a father, and it takes parents with a strong moral, ethical, and yes, religious foundation.

And there is one more thing. All of the Democrat politicians in Philly are fully supportive of abortion. But what is abortion other than teaching children that other children are disposable? Was the probably teenaged shooter who slew the 16-year-old really doing anything different from the pregnant women ‘terminating’ their pregnancies in the city’s abortion clinics? The shooter was just engaged in a sixteen-years-late abortion. As we see the supporters of prenatal infanticide telling us that abortion is a good thing, helping women to avoid a disruption in their lives, helping them to maintain their chosen career paths, don’t think that the children in Philly don’t see that as well, don’t get the message that a child can be simply gotten rid of because he might happen to be inconvenient.

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 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.
↑3 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.
↑4 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“. Even after the widespread mockery the Inquirer has received over this, they were still avoiding the word “gang” in preference for “street groups” and “groups.”
↑5 Although Helen Gym Flaherty doesn’t have enough respect for her husband to have taken his name, at The First Street Journal we do not show similar disrespect.
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Killadelphia: Lies, damned lies, and statistics! Even The Philadelphia Inquirer couldn't ignore these killings!

We have previously mentioned the questionable nature of Philadelphia’s homicide statistics. Following Ben Mannes report, the website Broad + Liberty has now undertaken to keep and report the numbers themselves, using data from several sources, including inside information:

With Philadelphia’s homicide total surpassing the 500 mark for two consecutive years, and with questions swirling about how the city tracks and tabulates that statistic, Broad + Liberty has launched an independent tracker to list homicides (what the city police call M-jobs) as well as special case/suspicious deaths (S-Jobs) in the city.

On any given day, the number of items (rows) entered in the tracker may not correlate precisely to the number of homicides in the city, which is, in part, why our outlet has embarked on this project.

In order to hold the city accountable for accurately reporting criminal deaths in the city, Broad + Liberty is also tracking cases that have traditionally been excluded from the Philadelphia Police website, which includes vehicular and suspicious deaths, in an effort to ensure that they are regularly and properly reconciled to Philadelphia’s own published homicide tally in the year that they occurred.

By carefully tracking each homicide, found body, and suspicious death, we hope to either provide greater confidence in Philadelphia’s published tally, or we hope to expose and correct flaws and to help give a voice to concerned citizens, victims, and survivors throughout our city.

One of the most important columns in the tracker is “Source of Information” which will transparently show you if the information was received directly from Philadelphia Police, or from some other source.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Broad + Liberty’s homicide tracker is higher than the city’s. The very first homicide listed, of a 31-year-old black male in the 3000 block of Clifford Street is not listed in the city’s shooting victims database, even though the wounding of a second person in the incident is listed. We reported on this earlier.

Triple homicide leaves three dead, one injured in Northeast Philadelphia

Officials said they believed the shooting was a targeted attack.

by Rob Tornoe and Rodrigo Torrejón | Tuesday, January 10, 2023 | 11:13 AM EST

Three young people are dead and a fourth is in critical condition after a shooting Monday night in Northeast Philadelphia, police said.

The shooting occurred near the intersection of Rowland Avenue and Guilford Street in the Mayfair Monday night around 10 p.m., Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters.

Actually, Rowland Avenue and Guilford Street do not intersect; Guilford Street has a roughly 45º intersection with Crabtree Street, which intersects with Rowland Avenue a short way down.

Two of the bodies were found near 50 spent shell casings at the intersection, Small said. A third victim was rushed to Jefferson Torresdale Hospital but later died, and a fourth person who was shot was hospitalized in critical condition.

The three men who died were ages 18, 19, and 24, police said. The fourth man, who was listed in critical condition as of Tuesday morning, is 28 years old, they said.

According to the city’s shooting victims database, which records only three victims, not four, and only two fatally shot, not three, as of 12:22 PM EST on Tuesday, January 10th, the victims were all Hispanic white males; what I have often called 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. doesn’t want to tell you that part. As of this writing, the 18-year-old victim does not appear on the database.

As of the Inky’s report, the police believe that the four males were deliberately targeted, all knew each other, and were physically together. “Near” fifty spent shell casings makes it sound like a targeted drive-by, or perhaps a hidden ambush, but the police have no motive as of yet.

This is not a dilapidated rowhouse area, but one of neat and spacious duplexes. While Zillow does not show any homes currently for sale on Guilford Street, nearby properties such as this one are listed above $250,000. The Mayfair area is not considered part of the Philadelphia Badlands.

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.
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Not enforcing the law has not made Kensington wealthier

I will admit it: I’m pretty surprised that the we-hate-the-police Philadelphia Inquirer ran this story. It seems as though the poor people in Kensington, one of Philly’s worst neighborhoods, aren’t that opposed to law enforcement, not if it makes their lives better.

Announcement of how opioid settlement money will be spent in Kensington elicits mixed responses from community members

“We’re known as the Disney World for users. If you give free food and a free shower and free needles, why should you ever leave and return home?” asked Patrice Rogers, a resident and the director of Stop the Risk.

by Lynette Hazelton and Aubrey Whelan | Saturday, January 7, 2023

Kensington is in the midst of two crises.

One is the opioid addiction epidemic that resulted in a growing number of drug-related deaths in Philadelphia over the past years, including a record 1,276 fatalities in 2021, the latest statistics available.

When Mayor Jim Kenney unveiled the city’s plan Thursday to spend the first $20 million of the $200 million opioid settlement payment, much of it was directed to prevention services and reducing the harm of addiction.

The plan includes $7.5 million for Kensington Wellness Corridors Investments, a planning effort that will fund home repairs, help residents battle foreclosures, and improve parks and schools in the neighborhood. Bill McKinney, executive director of New Kensington CDC, and Casey O’Donnell, CEO of Impact Services Corporation, both advocates of participatory decision-making, are leading this effort and are committed to centering the views and needs of Kensington community.

“While it is often good for business to position ourselves as lone wolves in opposition to everything,” said McKinney, a longtime Kensington resident, “it is not good for actual solutions. Those of us who actually live here are aware that we are all interconnected and a comprehensive solution is necessary.”

It’s a long article, 1,027 words, and I really wish I could just reproduce the entire thing, for the benefit of those who would otherwise be stymied by the Inquirer’s paywall.

“The $7.5 million helps,” said O’Donnell, “but what is as important is people coming to the table.”

The plan calls for $3.1 million for overdose prevention and $400,000 to support the Kensington Community Resilience Fund, a public-private-community partnership addressing quality-of-life impacts of the opioid crisis in the Kensington, Harrowgate and Fairhill neighborhoods.

Meaning: the Philadelphia Badlands, a name for the area which led the Inky to wax wroth.

Kensington’s reputation is so bad that the government of Mexico used scenes from the area in a national anti-drug campaign.

There is also money set aside for outreach and engagement, housing, treatment initiatives, juvenile justice, and alternatives to incarceration.

But for community residents there is another more pressing crisis: public safety.

Kensington is home to one of the nation’s largest open-air narcotic markets, turning some blocks into shooting galleries — for both needles and guns. The first child shot this year was a 7-year-old Kensington girl hit by a stray bullet while resting in her great-grandmother’s house.

Guillermo García , 53, who has lived in Kensington since he was 4 years old and serves as the de facto block captain for his Swanson Street and Indiana Avenue community, believes the only way to improve the quality of life in Kensington is to eliminate drug sales, which he says are the source of all other issues — chronic homelessness, overdose fatalities, gun violence, and the lack of economic alternatives for juvenile drug dealers.

“The main thing is the drug sales, and that’s where all the homelessness comes in with addicts sleeping on your steps. It’s from the drugs,” said García.

And the only way to eliminate drug sales, he said, is to have a robust police presence in the neighborhoods.

There’s a lot more at the original, but it’s mostly the same thing: Kensington residents asking for, practically begging for, more police protection, and for the Philadelphia Police Department to clean up the open-air drug markets.

This shouldn’t be a surprise: in the 2021 Democratic primary for District Attorney, incumbent District Attorney Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner received 708 votes in the 45th ward in Kensington, while Carlos Vega, who wanted to do something really radical like actually prosecute criminals, got more than twice that, 1,511 votes. In one of the areas most seriously afflicted with crime, the residents were voting for law enforcement.

But the Philadelphia Police tolerate crime. The Inquirer actually endorsed Mr Krasner for re-election, because the well-heeled Editorial Board members don’t live in Kensington or the Badlands.

One of two bullet holes in the door of Helen Figeroa, whose 7-year-old great granddaughter was shot in the ankle after a bullet came through the door from outside. Photo by Jessica Griffin, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.

And now, the Inky is reporting that the residents want law enforcement. It’s easy for the liberals in Society Hill to vote for ‘progressive’ politicians, because leniency in law enforcement doesn’t really affect them.

I don’t normally publish photos from the Inky, but this one really tells a tale. On the 2900 block of Rutledge Street, a couple of guys shooting it out sent a bullet which hit a 7-year-old inside her great-grandmother’s home. The open-air drug markets haven’t enriched the vast majority of Kensington residents, and the horrible condition of Helen Figeroa’s front door is a testament to that. A crack in the 88-year-old dried wood. There was, sometime in the past, some duct tape over part of the crack, I assume to keep the cold winter air from whistling through, though that mail slot would let wind through as well. It needs a good cleaning, and the interior paint touched up.

This is not a door that you’ll find in Chestnut Hill or Rittenhouse Square. Zillow doesn’t have much information on Rutledge Street, with houses similar to Mrs Figeroa’s guesstimated to be worth about $23,000.

But somehow, some way, the oh-so-sympathetic ‘progressives’ just can’t see what their policies, their leniency on crime, have done. Kensington used to be a working-class neighborhood, not wealthy but at least solid and responsible. Now it’s one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in one of America’s oldest cities, and the use of drugs and the open selling of them have only contributed to the area’s downward spiral. The city government may not be able to do much about the poverty in the area, but it does have the power to enforce the law, and that, by itself, will help the neighborhood.

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Lies, damned lies, and statistics Did a Philly shooting victim recover from death?

We noted, earlier this morning, a tweet from Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News, telling us of the first homicide of 2023. Mr Keeley included a photo of the press release from the Philadelphia Police Department, 22nd, reporting it. The Philadelphia Inquirer also reported on it, albeit briefly:

11 shootings, 1 homicide mark New Year’s Day in Philadelphia

Jan. 1 saw 10 shootings before 5 p.m., one of which resulted in a grim milestone: Philadelphia’s first homicide of the year.

by Jenn Ladd | Sunday, January 1, 2023

Philadelphians bid good riddance on Saturday to 2022, which saw the city’s deadliest summer on record, more than 500 homicides, and nearly 1,800 shootings. But 2023 started off on a similar foot, with eight nonfatal shootings occurring in the first six hours of the new year. Only one of those resulted in an arrest as of the afternoon.

Shootings continued later in the day on Sunday, with two more reported before 5 p.m., including a double shooting in North Philadelphia, which resulted in one death. An 11th shooting was reported in the evening.

The paragraph on the fatal shooting was further down.

At 2:10 p.m., a 31-year-old man was outside on the 3000 block of Clifford Street in North Philadelphia when he was shot in the chest. He was taken by police to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 2:40 p.m. A second victim, a 34-year-old man, was shot in the left leg and was in stable condition at Temple.

It seems kind of obvious that Jenn Ladd, the reporter who “cover(s) the food community,” “want(s) to know how the sausage gets made and, when possible, (wants) to learn to make the sausage,” who obviously got the Inky’s New Year’s Day news desk duty was reporting from the same police press release as Mr Keeley, but I think that’s plenty of documentation that yes, the Philadelphia Police Department did report that homicide, and that it was a homicide by gunfire.

We also noted that, despite that reported homicide, the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page reported zero homicides through 11:59 PM EST on January 2nd. That page has been updated since this morning to tally 516 homicides in 2022, rather than the 514 in the earlier report.

I then went to the city’s shooting victims database, and guess what I didn’t find? I didn’t find the victim reported as shot and killed in it! The database did include the 34-year-old black male who was shot in the leg at the same time, on the 3100 block of Clifford Street, at 2:09 PM EST, but the fatal shooting was not included.

So, did the fatal victim recover from death? Did the bullet somehow spring from his chest, and the wound close? Was his death recorded as ‘suspicious’ rather than a homicide, and did that cause him to not be recorded as a shooting victim?

The city uses a .csv data format, and whether deliberate or otherwise, can be difficult to read. The city would do better to simplify the format — at least if they want people other than computer geeks and nerds to easily read it, which is not necessarily the case — and produce complete data. The homicide report does not include suspicious deaths, but the shooting victims database does not qualify fatal shootings as homicides; the far right data column simply has fatal or not.

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Killadelphia: What’s going on with the statistics?

What is happening with the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page? The report, pictured here as of 9:19 AM EST, claims that the 2022 total was 514 homicides, and that, as of 11:59 PM EST on Monday, January 2nd, there had been zero homicides in the City of Brotherly Love this year.

However, Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News tweeted that a homicide had occurred at 2:10 PM, and the victim pronounced dead at 2:40 PM at Temple University Hospital.

More than Mr Keeley just reporting it: he included the image of the Philadelphia Police Department’s press release on it. The Philadelphia Inquirer also reported on it.

At 11:14 PM EST on Saturday, December 31, 2022, Sergeant Mark Fusetti, now retired from the PPD’s Warrant Squad, but who has a source on the inside, tweeted that the final numbers for 2022 were 516 murders, 116 deaths classified as ‘suspicious,’ and 76 ‘other’ cases for the homicide unit.

I’ll tell the truth here: I would trust Sgt Fusetti’s numbers far more than anything, anything! that comes from the Philadelphia city government. As of 9:05 AM EST, the city’s shooting victims database has not been updated to account for any incidents after Thursday, December 29, 2022.

Perhaps I should be charitable here, and assume that whoever does the statistics for the Philly Police is on vacation today, and his replacement isn’t experienced and just made an error or two. But somehow, some way, I’m just not feeling it this morning.

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Killington: Lexington sets a new homicide record

Yeah, it’s true, I concentrate more on homicides in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia than Lexington, the closest large city to me, the city in which I lived from 1971 through 1984, and the city in which my daughters live, but the City of Brotherly Love didn’t set a new homicide record in 2022, while Lexington did.

Coroner releases name of man killed in Bradley Court shooting that left 2 others injured

by Karla Ward | Friday, December 30, 2022 | 9:47 PM EST | Updated: Saturday, December 31, 2022 | 12:23 PM EST

The Fayette County coroner has identified a man who died after being shot in Lexington late Friday.

Bradley Court, from Google Streetscapes September 2022. This is not the murder scene. Click to enlarge.

Tyron Shaw, 21, of Lexington, was pronounced dead at 7:54 p.m. as a result of the shooting on the 400 block of Bradley Court, the coroner said in a news release Saturday.

Lexington police who were dispatched to a call about an assault on Bradley Court, off Georgetown Street near Price Road, Friday night said they found one person dead and two injured.

Police said the three male victims were on the sidewalk suffering from gunshot wounds when they arrived at about 7:20 p.m.

Shaw was pronounced dead at the scene, while the other two people who were shot were taken to a local hospital. One had life-threatening injuries. The other victim’s injuries were not thought to be life-threatening, police said in a news release.

There’s more at the original, but Mr Shaw was the 44th person murdered in Lexington in 2022. The previous record, 37 homicides, was set in 2021. That’s an 18.92% increase.

Population guesstimates for Lexington-Fayette County — and the entire county is under the unified Lexington-Fayette Urban-County Government — range pretty widely, from the Census Bureau’s 321,793 in 2021, to as high as 346,663 in 2022 by the World Population Review. Using the extremes of those numbers, 44 murders works out to a homicide rate of between 12.69 per 100,000 population and 13.67. That’s nowhere near as bad as St Louis, with 198 homicides in 2022, according to the St Louis Metropolitan Police Department. With a guesstimated population of 293,310, that works out to a homicide rate of 67.51, while Philly’s 516 murders and population guesstimate of 1,576,251 works out to 32.74 per 100,000.

But with ‘just’ 34 homicides in 2020, and a population of 322,570, the homicide rate was a significantly lower 10.54. Something ain’t right in Lexington!

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Killadelphia: Well, isn’t this interesting?

As we noted on Friday, the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is only updated during normal business hours, Monday through Friday, as far as the current year’s numbers are concerned, but the computer program does update previous years’ daily numbers. For example, the report on Saturday, New Year’s Eve, updated the numbers for December 30th from the 557 in 2021 and 494 homicides through 11:59 PM EST on December 29th to 559 and 498 on December 30th.

With the odd nature of the change from the initially reported 502 total for 2020 down to 499, which led some people to speculate that the numbers were fudged.

I had lamented taht I had made a rookie error in failing to get a screen capture of the 502 number, but, fortunately, a fellow styling himself NDJ in Philly did take the screenshot, which he forwarded on Twitter. Yup, that’s the evidence needed!

It occurred to me, as I was showering this morning — many of my best ideas occur as hot water is pouring down my back, so don’t judge me! — that while there’d be no update on December 31, 2022 this morning, the computer’s automatic update would give us the numbers for 2021 and 2020, and perhaps we’d see how things had been fudged.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Another Bloody Year in ‘Killadelphia’

Well, guess what: the December 31st numbers for every past year were reset to zero, with the exception of 2013, which had a number 1 recorded. More, the percentage increase from the previous day last year showed 0%, which means that the computer calculation function had somehow gotten fouled up.

So, how did this happen? Are we supposed to believe that it was the gremlins, or, more nefariously, did someone at the Police Department contemplate the same thing I did, and want to hide the 2020 numbers?

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Killadelphia: It’s the last update of 2022 But The Philadelphia Inquirer is still trying to obscure the truth.

The Philadelphia Police Department have released their last ‘official’ homicide report for the year, showing that 514 people have spilled out their life’s blood in the city’s mean streets. Oh, there’ll be another report tomorrow, generated by computer to update past year’s daily numbers, but the current year’s numbers are updated only Monday through Friday, meaning that Friday’s numbers won’t be included on Saturday’s report, now will New Year’s Eve’s numbers on the Sunday report.

We might not even get the yearly total on Monday, because New Year’s Day, a government holiday, occurs on Sunday, and whomever in the Philadelphia Police Department updates the statistics will be allowed to take his holiday on Monday; that’s what happened on December 26th, the Monday after Christmas Day.

In 2021, there were five total murders on December 30th and 31st.

Of course, with a final number which will fit within the range I projected three days ago, 514 to 521, there’s no particular reason to fudge the numbers the way that some have alleged happened at the end of 2020, where an initial report of 502 was downgraded to 499. With the second-place number being an even 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, and the record of 562 set last year, this year’s 514 to 521 will be securely in between those two, so there’d no advantage to any downgrade.

If anything, a homicide or two committed early enough on New Year’s Day might as well be added to 2022’s statistics, in the hope that 2023 can come in under 500; that’s something I can easily see happening.

But, regardless of what the final number is, there’s no escaping one simple fact: under Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the City of Brotherly Love have averaged 525 homicides per year, assuming that the current 514 is the final number for this year. Assuming that 514 is the end number for 2022, for the Kenney-Krasner-Outlaw triumvirate to average under 500, the city would have to see a homicide number for 2023 down to 421. Of course, for every homicide added to the 2022 total, that 421 number decreases by one.

It’s so bad that even The Philadelphia Inquirer noted this year’s numbers, though, of course, they never did the real math to note the average that the law enforcement triumvirate have racked up.

Philly’s gun violence remained at record levels for the third straight year

Philadelphia had recorded 512 homicides this year through Tuesday, police said, and nearly 1,800 people were shot and survived.

by Ellie Rushing and Chris Palmer | Thursday, December 29, 2022

When Taneesha Brodie’s eldest son turned 8, she moved her family out of North Philadelphia to Upper Darby, seeking a safer community away from the city’s gun violence.

She was proud of the people her children became, especially her eldest, Quenzell Bradley-Brown. A married father of four, the 28-year-old spent four years in the National Guard reserves, then worked two jobs and often performed hip-hop, poetry, and comedy at open mic nights.

In February, Bradley-Brown and his family moved back into the city, to Overbrook Park, for more affordable housing and to be closer to his elderly grandmother.

Brodie worried at first, but considered the area to be relatively safe.

Seven months later, her son was dead.

Quenzell Bradley-Brown was apparently a victim of a mistaken identity killing, and remains unsolved, as are hundreds more. With a mostly uncooperative public who hate the police, a police department around 600 officers undermanned, and a probable next mayor who hates cops, who can reasonably expect that number to get better?

Many subsequent paragraphs give us some of the statistics and references, before article authors Ellie Rushing and Chris Palmer go off the reservation:

Arguments and drug-related feuds remained the predominant motives in homicides, according to police statistics. But authorities also pointed to ongoing gang conflicts, social media posts, retaliation or revenge, and domestic violence.

We have several times mocked the Inquirer for recently claiming that there were no real gangs in the city. We were reliably informed by the 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.” But, the embedded link led to another article, from just 11 days ago, in which Miss Rushing was one of the authors, along with Rodrigo Torrejón, telling of the violence not of gangs, but “West Philadelphia street groups.” They did use the word “gang” one time, but it appears to simply have been a matter of prose, because they’d already used “street group” in the sentence:

Lacey-Woodson and Mickens, affiliated with the street group “02da4,” were targeting a member of the rival gang “524″ and opened fire on the party, said Jeffrey Palmer, an assistant district attorney with the Gun Violence Task Force, which headed the investigation.

Unless I missed it, which is always possible, that was the only use of the word “gang” in the article. There were plenty of subsequent references to “street groups” and “groups” in the article.

Obviously, there was some editorial ‘guidance’ in this. While the article headline and subheading are “West Philly street group members charged for their roles in five different shootings: The rash of violence was part of ongoing feuds between feuding West Philadelphia street groups, authorities said,” the original article title, visible by hovering your cursor over the article tab, was “West Philadelphia gang members arrested in Sircarr Johnson Jr., Salahaldin Mahmoud fatal shooting”, and the article url is https://www.inquirer.com/news/sircarr-johnson-west-philadelphia-gang-arrests-july-4-shooting-20221219.html.

Translation: what I have often 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. is, I assume to follow Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes directives to be an “antiracist news organization“, the word “gang” is apparently racist. Perhaps, for Miss Hughes, the word “gang” draws into the minds of readers an image of black gangs, or perhaps it’s simply that, for her, the truth is racist.

The Enquirer, oops, sorry, Inquirer really doesn’t like investigating the truth. The paper will never report the numbers I use, all from documented sources, to note how the current law enforcement triumvirate have failed, nor have they, at least as far as I could find, mentioned what Ben Mannes reported on Broad + Liberty, that the homicide numbers are obvious fudges, given the high number of obvious homicides that remain classified as ‘suspicious,’ and not counted in the official homicide statistics.  When the Lenfest Institute, which owns the Inky, sends out begging letters which state that “It is impossible to have a democratic society without a free press that informs citizens,” and “Reporters at The Inquirer are dedicated to speaking truth to power and delivering you news that makes Philadelphia a better place,” one ought to expect that the reporters who are dedicated to speaking truth to power would do something really radical and investigate what that truth really is.

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.
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Helen Gym Flaherty and Broken Windows

I had started on this story ten days ago, but had dropped it. It sat in my ‘drafts’ queue for a bit, until I say this tweet from Helen Gym Flaherty,[1]Even though Mrs Flaherty does not respect her husband, attorney Bret Flaherty, enough to have taken his name, The First Street Journal will not show him a similar disrespect. formerly a Philadelphia city councilwoman, and now a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Mayor:

But while the longtime activist who is typically aligned with the Democratic Party’s left wing said violence is “destroying our city and our people,” she was far from taking a tough-on-crime tone.

“I will not use this crisis to roll back the clock on civil rights,” she said. “While many people in this race will talk about public safety, let me be clear: Decades of systemic racism and disinvestment brought us to this place.”

Mrs Flaherty’s campaign website is full of the usual ‘progressive’ bromides, but, at least as of this writing, there’s no actual issues page, telling the city’s voters — of which I am not one — what she would actually do in office if elected.

But then, this self-described social justice warrior — or so I take it from this campaign website blurb — cites an article from The Philadelphia Inquirer. I’m sure that The Inquirer’s #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 columnists and staffers will be aghast that this was even published! Why, it absolutely reeks of Rudy Guiliani and “broken windows policing“.

Renovating abandoned houses reduces the rate of gun violence, Penn study finds

Gun crimes went up during the study, but they went up less near houses that got new doors and windows, at a cost of $5,900.

by Tom Avril | Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Hammers and screwdrivers might be effective tools in preventing gun violence.

That’s the conclusion of a new study by University of Pennsylvania researchers, who measured crime rates near clusters of abandoned Philadelphia homes that were outfitted with new doors, windows, and other improvements.

Previous research has found that crime goes down when vacant houses are fixed up, but it was unclear whether the connection between those two things was more than a coincidence. To nail down whether home repairs actually prevent crimes, the Penn team tackled the question with the same rigorous approach doctors use to study a new drug: with a randomized, controlled trial.

The results left little doubt, said lead author Eugenia C. South, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.

Gun crimes increased everywhere in the city during the study period, but there was less of an increase in the neighborhood blocks surrounding renovated homes, compared to those where abandoned homes were left alone, South and her coauthors reported in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The repairs likely helped in two ways, she said: by healing the social fabric of the neighborhood and by eliminating possible hiding places for guns.

There’s a lot more at the original, and while the original, and the study behind it, are more concerned with new windows, doors and façades on abandoned houses, it’s obvious that upgrading occupied units would be even better: fewer places to become drug shooting galleries, fewer places to stash weapons and stolen goods, and more responsible neighbors.

The left really didn’t like broken windows policing, because it involves more than just fixing up neighborhoods; it also involves seriously prosecuting ‘minor’ crimes, and giving the ‘entry-level’ criminals a small taste of life behind bars, giving them an early opportunity to decide that, hey, this life isn’t for me.

And Mrs Flaherty, a strong supporter of the police-hating defense attorney who, aided by George Soros’ money, became District Attorney in Philadelphia, certainly won’t like that part.

Cleaning up the city’s streets is certainly important, but cleaning up crime has to be part of it. Philadelphia has tolerated the open-air drug market around the Allegheny Street SEPTA train station, and discarded drug needles just wherever, and it’s little wonder that there’s no respect for the law when the law shows little indication of being actually enforced.

Mrs Flaherty won’t support something like that, and that means that, even with her (apparent) support of spending city money to redo windows and doors on abandoned rowhouses, there won’t be much of a positive impact on reducing crime. One fact is just too simple and too obvious to penetrate the progressive mindset: the criminal who is already behind bars isn’t out on the streets committing other crimes.

References

References
↑1 Even though Mrs Flaherty does not respect her husband, attorney Bret Flaherty, enough to have taken his name, The First Street Journal will not show him a similar disrespect.
↑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.