The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Ellie Rushing, Jessica Griffin, Ximena Conde, and Chris Palmer wrote, on September 19^th:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

(William Fritze, an assistant district attorney who heads the Gun Violence Task Force in the DA’s Office), though, said it’s time to call them what they are: “I think we are now at a point where we can comfortably say there are gangs.”

Beef between rival crews sometimes goes back years. But increasingly, he said, the feuds are fueled by — and chronicled on — social media, particularly Instagram. Members of one group often make posts or livestreams mocking and claiming the shootings of people in rival crews as a way to build street cred.

So, since the learned journolists^[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading of the Inquirer tell me there are no real gangs in the City of Brotherly Love, I guess that this wasn’t a gang hit, but simply a beef between a couple of “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families.”

A 14-year-old boy was killed and 4 other teens wounded in a shooting after a football scrimmage at Roxborough High School

Just after 4:40 p.m., players participating in a football scrimmage were walking off the field and heading to a school bus when gunfire erupted.

by Ellie Rushing, Kristen A. Graham, and Robert Moran | Tuesday, September 27, 2022 | 8:32 PM EDT

A 14-year-old boy was killed and four other teens wounded in a shooting after a football scrimmage outside Roxborough High School late Tuesday afternoon, police said, marking the 23rd shooting death of a child this year as Philadelphia continues to face a surge in gun violence.

Just after 4:40 p.m., players participating in a football scrimmage were walking off the field and heading to a school bus on Pechin Street when shooters opened fire from a car and unleashed a volley of bullets on the team, police said.

A 14-year-old boy who suffered a gunshot wound to the left side of his chest was rushed by police to Einstein Medical Center and was pronounced dead at 5:09 p.m.

The boy was a football player on the Roxborough team, but he attended Saul High School, a nearby magnet school that focuses on agriculture, Philadelphia School District spokesperson Christina Clark said.

Further down:

The three-way scrimmage between Roxborough, Northeast, and Boys Latin High Schools’ junior varsity football teams had just finished around 4:30 p.m. and players were grabbing their gear and walking towards the bus.

Suddenly, four shooters ambushed members of the Roxborough team and shot five of them, police said.

Four shooters, huh? Were we not reliably informed by the Inky that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” I would have said that, yeah, this was a gang hit, but apparently it was just a beef of some sort between cliques. I suppose that I’ll have to stop using the term “gang-bangers” and replace it with a more politically correct “clique beefers.”

As we have noted many times before, The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl. So, while a 14-year-old boy being killed would normally be seen as the death of an “innocent,” a planned “hit” on a group of junior varsity football players certainly sounds like there was something to have generated bad blood between at least one of the players and a “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families.” The dead player might not have been involved in whatever dispute the “clique beefers” had, but the obvious assumption is that at least someone among the departing players might not have been quite the “innocent” the Inky would like to make him out to be.

When the Inky stops telling us what a good and noble fellow the dead boy was, we’ll know a lot more.
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Updated: Wednesday, September 28, 2022 |  8:59 AM EDT

Shooters remain unidentified, and their motive remains unclear

By Ellie Rushing, Kristen A. Graham, and Robert Moran | 7:20 AM EDT

It remains unclear what led to the shooting outside Roxborough High School, said Capt. John Walker, head of the Police Department’s nonfatal shooting unit, adding that there have been no other recent incidents involving players on these teams.

It was also unclear just how many shots were fired, but there were more than 70 evidence markers throughout the street, noting both shell casings and bullet fragments.

The photo in the Inquirer shows an investigator carrying an evidence marker numbered 74.

Let’s tell the truth here: the surviving victims almost certainly know which “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families” shot them, and their wounds were primarily in their legs:

During Tuesday’s shooting, another 14-year-old boy was shot once in his left thigh, and a 15-year-old was shot in the leg. A 17-year-old was also shot in the right arm and three times in his left leg. All were rushed to Einstein and Temple Hospital, and were in stable condition Tuesday night, police said.

A fifth player suffered a graze wound, but did not require medical treatment, police said.

Translation: their wounds, though doubtlessly painful, are not serious enough that none of them would have been able to be questioned by the police. If the police do not know the identities of the shooters and at least the players’ version of the dispute which led to the attack, then the players simply aren’t talking. They’re following the street code, and expecting that street ‘justice’ will avenge their shootings.

We have previously noted, several times, that, at the end of the Labor Day weekend in 2021, the homicide rate in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia had dropped to ‘just’ 1.4578 murders a day, which would yield 532 murders for the entire year, if that average was maintained.

It wasn’t maintained, as the drug dealers and gang-bangers somehow took that as a personal challenge, and in the period after Labor Day, the City of Brotherly Love saw a murder rate of 1.7155 per day.

As of September 5^th, the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend this year, 373 people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards, yielding a homicide rate of 1.5040 killings per day, or a projected 549 murders for 2022; the mid-summer ‘lull’ that had happened in 2021 didn’t occur this year.

But there may be some hope that the post-Labor Day surge that happened in 2021 might not happen, or not be as bad, in 2022. While this wouldn’t seem to be a cause for celebration in more civilized places, there has been only one recorded homicide in Philadelphia since Wednesday, September 14^th, and the homicide rate has dropped below 1.50, down to 1.4809 per day, which projects out to 540.53 murders for the entire year.

That’s hardly a great number, but at least it’s better than last year’s record-smashing 562.

At the end of the Labor Day holiday this year, there had been 3.324% more homicides than the previous year; as of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, September 19^th, the increase is down to 1.042%, as the killing rate last year was higher.

Yes, I am a numbers geek to some extent, and yes, it has been only two weeks since the end of the Labor Day holiday, so it’s really too soon to note a real trend here, but at least it’s a reason for hope.