Category Archives: Crime

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Killington Have Lexington's leadership been taking lessons from Philadelphia's mayor, chief prosecutor and top cop?

In 2019, Lexington set a new homicide record, with 30 for the year. In 2020, the city topped that with 34, and in 2021, set a new record with 37. Well, surprise, surprise, 2022 has already seen the 2019 and 2020 records topped, and is rapidly closing in on last year’s numbers.

1 person dies after shooting near downtown Lexington, according to coroner’s office

by Christopher Leach | Tuesday, September 13, 2022 | 8:37 AM EDT

Lexington police are investigating an overnight shooting that left one man dead, according to the Fayette County Coroner’s Office.

Police said the shooting happened shortly before 9:30 p.m. in the 500 block of West Sixth Street, which is near Coolavin Park. One victim suffered a gunshot wound and was transported to a hospital.

Police didn’t provide a description of the victim’s injuries. But shortly after 8 a.m., the coroner’s office announced the man died at the hospital. The victim was 22-year-old Doricky Harris, according to the coroner.

Further down:

This marks the 35th killing in Lexington of 2022, inching the city closer to the annual homicide record of 37 set last year. There have been six homicides in the last month.

In 2021, the 35th murder of the year didn’t occur until December 7th, 86 days later than this most recent killing. If the murder rate remains constant through the end of the year, one murder every 7.2857 days, Lexington is on schedule to see 50 — the math works out to 50.098 — homicides this year.

Boy, Mayor Linda Gorton, Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn, and Police Chief Lawrence Weathers sure are doing a bang-up job in protecting the people of Fayette County! Have they been taking lessons from Philadelphia’s mayor, chief prosecutor and top cop?

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Killadelphia: With “leadership” like this, no wonder Philadelphia is in crisis!

The George Soros-sponsored, police-hating defense lawyer who got elected as Philadelphia’s chief prosecutor, tells us just what is wrong with the City of Brotherly Love:

Larry Krasner’s tweets continued to say:

Our office will continue to hold juveniles appropriately accountable while ensuring that they receive the resources and attention necessary to steer them in the right direction.

and:

I also want to emphasize the importance of violence prevention funding, which is necessary to truly achieve justice & avoid incidents like this from occurring. @philadao is now accepting applications through @PhilaFound for community-based violence prevention group microgrants.

So, what was this “fair and just outcome” about which Mr Krasner spoke?

Juvenile Adjudicated for Attempted Murder on SEPTA Platform

September 12, 2022

PHILADELPHIA (September 12, 2022) — Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner announced on Monday the adjudication of a 14-year-old male in juvenile court who was charged with Attempted Murder, Aggravated Assault, and multiple firearm charges for a non-fatal shooting that occurred on the afternoon of July 12, 2022 on a crowded SEPTA platform located at 15th and Market Streets beneath City Hall.The incident began when the juvenile defendant engaged in a verbal altercation with the victim after the defendant exited a train car. The defendant alleged that the victim spoke expletives and asked him if he wanted to “take it upstairs.” The defendant subsequently shot the 19-year-old male three times at point blank range with a 9mm handgun less than 20 seconds later, claiming that the victim had started to pull a firearm from his waistband and that the shots were fired in self-defense. The victim sustained wounds in the hand, chest, and abdomen and was hospitalized for nearly two weeks. The crime gun was never recovered.

SEPTA surveillance cameras captured the entire incident on video and played a critical role in helping police identify and apprehend the shooter. Station footage also helped convince the judge that the defendant’s self-defense claim lacked merit, as the victim declined to cooperate with Philadelphia police and the District Attorney’s Office.“I’m grateful to Assistant District Attorney James Quinn of the DAO’s Juvenile Unit for achieving a fair and just outcome in this case,” said DA Krasner. “Our office will continue to hold juveniles appropriately accountable while ensuring that they receive the resources and attention necessary to steer them in the right direction. I also want to emphasize the importance of robust violence prevention funding, which is necessary to truly achieve justice and avoid dangerous incidents like this from ever occurring in the first place. My office is now accepting applications through the Philadelphia Foundation for community-based violence prevention group microgrants.”

“I’m proud to have prosecuted this case,” said ADA James Quinn. “I’m also grateful to all of the SEPTA police officers, particularly SEPTA Officer Aaron Kinchey, who responded immediately to secure the scene and in all likelihood saved the life of this 19-year-old victim. I also want to thank Philadelphia Police Department Detective Michael Rocks for his excellent work in this investigation.’The DAO has resumed our Violence Prevention Grant Program. Local, community-based nonprofits interested in applying must email GrantmakingServices@philafound.org.

That’s the entirety of the press release, but did you notice the one thing you don’t see in either Mr Krasner’s tweets or the District Attorney’s Office statement? Though both state that such juvenile criminals will be held “appropriately accountable,” there is exactly zero mention of what the young criminal’s actual punishment was.

Of course, we can read between the lines of the press release. That “the victim declined to cooperate with Philadelphia police and the District Attorney’s Office” tells all we need to know: this was a 14-year-old gang-banger who blasted away at a 19-year-old gang-banger, and the ‘victim,’ the 19-year-old wasn’t going to cooperate to get the 14-year-old locked up, because the ‘victim’s’ gang will mete out their own street justice to the 14-year-old.

“The crime gun was never recovered.” That means it’s still out on the street, most probably with the shooter’s gang, and now the 14-year-old has established his ‘street cred,’ that he’s a bad MF.

Attempted murder is a first-degree felony in the Keystone State, the sentence for which, under Chapter 11: §1103(1) a term fixed by the court for not more than twenty years in prison. If the crime is aggravated assault, which may be either a first- or second-degree, under the same section, the sentence can be 10 to 20 years if in the first-degree, or 5 to 10 years if second-degree.

While the ‘victim’ might not have cooperated, the entire crime was caught on tape! The District Attorney’s Office did not need the cooperation of the ‘victim’ to convict this ‘juvenile’ and send him to prison for twenty years, to get him off the streets for a long, long time.

So, what did happen to the 14-year-old wannabe gang-banger? Was he sentenced to a term in juvie? Was he released to his parents, possibly with an ankle bracelet? Did he perhaps get a really strong talking-to by Mr Krasner? Whatever it was, we know one thing: he’ll be out on the streets soon enough, doubtlessly with another, or perhaps even the same, 9mm in his waistband, and next time it might not be yet another banger he shoots, next time it might be an innocent bystander like Tiffany Fletcher, caught in the crossfire.

Of course, it’s also true that the ‘victim’ or his buddies will administer that street justice, and the 14-year-old never sees 18.

Then there was Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia)

The Mayor, who loves to blame everybody but himself, wants to blame the Republicans who control the state legislature. But what Pennsylvania law states is that no subordinate governmental unit may impose firearms control restrictions stronger than those under state law. Thus, while there might be a couple of tiny tweaks in there, the City of Brotherly Love is under the same firearms laws as the rest of the Commonwealth.

I lived in Jim Thorpe for 15 years, and during those 15 years we had two murders in Carbon County, one in 2004 and another in 2006. If there was another one, I never heard of it, and I did search through the data, which is, regrettably, by township and borough in the county, and found only the two mentioned. And, as I recall, neither involved a firearm!

So, if the problem is the Commonwealth’s firearms control laws, why are the homicide rates so very, very different in Philly?

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

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

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

And this year? Philadelphia is ahead of the pace of killings in 2021’s record-setting year. As of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, September 12th, 386 people have spilled out their life’s blood in the city’s mean streets, an average of 1.5137 per day, which works out to a projected 552.51 killings in Philly for the year, if that rate remains constant. Last year, it didn’t, with a real spike in murders after Labor Day, to a rate of 1.7155 for the rest of the year. Will that happen again in 2022?

Well, who can know? But we do know one thing: the city’s elected leadership will not take responsibility for what the city has become. Mayor Kenney is term-limited; he cannot run for re-election. Mr Krasner, on the other hand, can run for District Attorney as many times as he wants, and after two landslide victories, both promising and having a record of avoiding putting people in jail, it seems difficult to believe that that isn’t exactly what a substantial majority of the voters want. He’d rather let drug dealers and gang-bangers go free, and apparently so do his constituents.

Her Majesty the Queen died a few days ago, after more than 70 years on the throne, but she was still Princess Elizabeth, the heir apparent to His Majesty King George VI when Philadelphia’s last Republican mayor left office. Seventy years of unbroken Democratic policies have transformed the city on the Schuylkill into what it is today, our nation’s poorest and most internally segregated city of over a million people, as well as its deadliest.

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What happens when you leave dirty dishes in the sink for 70 years?

On August 17, 2020, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a long story about the open air drug markets clustered around the infamous Kensington and East Allegheny Streets intersection, and the SEPTA station there. The newspaper even published a photo, by staff photographer Tim Tai, showing what appears to be a junkie shooting up right in front of the Allegheny Street Station on the Market Street-Frankford line. I asked, What are Mayor Jim Kenney and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw doing about open air drug markets in Philly?

The answer, apparently, is nothing.

A triple shooting happened outside this Philly elementary school. But for Kensington families, the risk of violence is constant.

“We don’t play in the parks, ever,” said Jasmine Albury, a mother of five. “There are shootings everywhere.”

by Kristen A. Graham and Ellie Rushing

Jasmine Albury doesn’t like to linger on Philadelphia’s streets. She and her five kids are an “in-and-out family,” she says — they leave the house only for the things they need.

“We don’t play in the parks, ever,” said Albury, who lives in North Philadelphia. “There are shootings everywhere.”

When three people last week were shot outside Willard Elementary — the Kensington school where her son is a fourth grader — Albury felt despair, she said, but certainly not shock. For many Philadelphia families, the city’s gun violence crisis means constant risk and trauma exposure in daily tasks as simple as getting children to and from school.

No part of the city is as plagued by gun violence as Kensington, largely fueled by an open-air drug market and higher rates of poverty. Law enforcement officials have said that dealers sell heroin, crack, and other drugs on more than 80 blocks in the neighborhood.

Willard is just one-quarter of a mile from the intersection of Kensington and Allegheny, the longtime hub of the area’s drug trade. A previous Inquirer analysis found that within a five-minute walk of this intersection, more than 300 people have been shot since 2015, a rate that, per square mile, is 11 times higher than the city as a whole. At this intersection and into the surrounding blocks, there are sprawling homeless encampments. People in addiction openly use drugs, and fall over into the street. There is trash and suffering as far as the eye can see.

The Philadelphia Police Department know where all of this stuff is, and know what’s going on, but won’t actually do anything about it.

Mr Finberg replied:

Good question, they’re rentals and I’m a long term owner. The rent doesn’t have to be very high to cover the mortgage and I’m keeping costs as low as possible. It’s not the most profitable thing I’ve done in my life that’s for sure.

I suppose “the rent doesn’t have to be very high” is a relative thing: the rowhouse at 835 East Hilton Street is listed for rent at $1,100 a month, and, as you can see from the map, it’s just a couple of short blocks from the Allegheny Street SEPTA station.

Full disclosure: I do not know if the listed house is one of Mr Finburg’s rental units.

The inside looks decent: neat and clean, with everything freshly painted, a new, builders’ grade kitchen, and new, though (shudder!) laminate, floors. 🙂

The link for the exterior picture is from Google Maps, and Google Maps indicates that the photos of East Hilton Street were taken in August of 2021, more than a year ago. The interior photos do not show the window air conditioner hanging out of the living room window that we see in Google Maps.

I know nothing about Mr Finberg. He may be a really great guy, or he may be the way so many people view landlords, as Snidely Whiplash tying Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks. Most probably, he’s very much in the middle of those extremes, a man trying to make some money, but one who has also been willing to put his own money at risk to bring better housing to a sadly depressed area.

But until the city of Philadelphia does more, does a lot more, to clean up the entire area, there will be no real improvements for the people. Drug use is not just some victimless crime; drug use affects other people, and the decent people of Kensington are examples of just how much it does affect other people; the entire neighborhood has been destroyed, become part of the Philadelphia Badlands. That nickname did not arise out of nowhere; it came to be because Kensington and Fairhill and Strawberry Mansion and Hunting Park have been ravaged by criminal activity, criminal activity largely driven by drug dealers and junkies.

There’s the natural urge to say, well, heck, just legalize drugs and this won’t be a problem. But, as the Inquirer article cited noted:

People in addiction openly use drugs, and fall over into the street. There is trash and suffering as far as the eye can see.

One thing is obvious: Commissioner Danielle Outlaw’s Philadelphia Police, and Federal Marshals, need to make a huge sweep through Kensington, and arrest every last one of the bad guys, and the United States Attorney needs to prosecute all of those cases to the maximum extent of the law. Allowing those cases to become part of state law would mean that District Attorney Larry Krasner, who hates locking up people, or even putting them on a serious probation, would just let the arrested back on the streets.

Perhaps the Commissioner has done so little regarding the well-known open air drug markets because she understands that Mr Krasner wouldn’t prosecute seriously anyone her officers rounded up. Perhaps she figures that anyone arrested and actually taken off the streets would simply be replaced by the next ‘generation’ of bad guys, but so what? Arrest them, too! And the next ‘generation’, and the next.

If you allow dirty dishes to pile up in the kitchen around the sink, what happens? You get ants and roaches and mice and fruit flies crawling and flying around your kitchen, you get unpleasant odors wafting through the air, and eventually everything gets soiled around those dishes, around your kitchen. Well, the City of Brotherly Love, in its 70th consecutive year of one-party Democratic rule, has left the dirty dishes in the sink of Kensington, left them to rot and fester, and everybody is shocked, shocked! that the whole kitchen, and much of the house, have become dirty, smelly and dilapidated. It would have taken a lot less effort to just wash the dishes the day they were soiled, but no, now the problem is huge and nasty.

But if the city does not clean up now, then when?

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Killadelphia

It really wasn’t an unsafe prediction. I wrote, at 10:53 AM on Saturday morning, “There were nine total paragraphs about (Tiffany) Fletcher in (Robert) Moran’s story, and I would not be surprised if there’s another about her later today in the newspaper.” And here it is:

Two Philadelphians in two days were shot and killed just going about their routine

One of the dead was a mother of three, shot while sweeping outside the Mill Creek Recreation Center, where she worked. The other was believed to be a husband and father carrying home groceries.

by Kasturi Pananjady, Robert Moran, and Stephanie Farr | Saturday, September 10, 2022

Tiffany Fletcher (center, yellow tank top) was photographed with lifeguard Robin Borlandoe (left) and assistant recreation leader Charles McKnight (top) at the Mill Creek Recreation Center pool in West Philadelphia on Aug. 14.
Elizabeth Robertson | Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.

On the job at a recreation center. Out getting groceries. Everyday activities turned fatal for two Philadelphians who lost their lives in senseless shootings on back-to-back days this past week.

Tiffany Fletcher was killed by a stray bullet Friday afternoon while working for the city at the Mill Creek Recreation Center, in the 4700 block of Brown Street in West Philadelphia, police said. The 41-year-old mother of three was sweeping outside the center when a gun battle erupted and she was struck in the stomach, police said.

She was rushed by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead Friday evening.

When I opened the story, at around 10:10 PM EDT, all it said was that the story was “published an hour ago,” because The Philadelphia Inquirer somehow sees that as new wave, or cool, or edgy. Why not just tell us the time?

The Inky included a photo of Miss Fletcher, and some tributes to her, but there wasn’t actually a lot more information about her.

Rather, the story started to tell us about another Philadelphian gunned down for seemingly no reason:

On Thursday night in Overbrook, police said that a man identified on social media as Quenzell Bradley, or Quenzell Bradley Brown, described as being in his mid-30s, was shot in the head multiple times just before 9 p.m. on the 6200 block of Lebanon Avenue, where he was believed to have lived. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Those who knew him said in an Instagram post that he was carrying groceries home to his wife and kids at the time. Police provided no motive for the killing.

While police had not released the man’s name as of late Saturday, saying they had not yet notified his next of kin, relatives appear to be posting about his shooting on a Facebook page belonging to “Quenzell Bradleybrown.” A flier was posted on the page Saturday afternoon, identifying him as Quenzell Bradley Brown, aka “QQQQ.”

A Friday post on the Facebook page read: “… let it be known my brother was a innocent man was not n the streets was a family man married man with four kids just started his new job ln and was bringing in groceries unfortunately he was gunned down before he could even make it to the steps of his home died over senseless gun violence that had nothing to do with him mistaken identity I love you quenzell n we won’t rest until u get JUSTICE NO JUSTICE NO PEACE.”

A vigil will be held at 6 p.m. Sunday for the victim at 1101 N. 63rd St., according to a flier on the Facebook page. Attendees are encouraged to bring blue balloons in his honor.

Once again, we get to hear about the “innocents” who get killed in the City of Brotherly Love, but there are never any stories about the vast majority of people murdered in Philly. The police and the media tally up the numbers — at least 380 through mid-afternoon on Saturday — but, in the end, that’s all they are: numbers.

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Is justice a matter of color in Lexington? Part 2

We have previously noted the apparent discrepancies in the sentences that Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn has sought for felons, discrepancies obvious when you look at the race of the offenders. Nathaniel Harper, who is white, was sentenced to 36 years in prison for killing a man he hit as he wrecked the car in which he was fleeing police, even though his attorneys had been trying to plead down to a manslaughter or another lesser offense. Miss Red Corn and her office allowed George Boulder IV, who was part of a deliberate, broad-daylight shooting which killed members of another gang, or Xavier Hardin, who deliberately shot an enemy in Fayette Mall, or Jemel Barber, who was allowed to plead down for one of two fatal shootings, or Malachi Jackson, who killed a 15-year-old rival, or James Ragland, who killed a woman outside a Lexington strip club, every single one of them, along with others, to plead down to manslaughter, for deliberately killing other people.

Now comes this one:

Lexington man gets 35 years after pleading guilty to murder in 19-year-old’s death

by Taylor Six | Thursday, September 8, 2022 | 2:19 PM EDT

Morgan Johnson, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

A Lexington man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to murder for a teenager’s death in 2018.Morgan Johnson, 25, was sentenced on Thursday afternoon by Judge Lucy VanMeter for amended charges he pleaded guilty to as part of a deal in July. Johnson pleaded guilty to murder, second-degree burglary and first-degree unlawful imprisonment.

Johnson’s conviction comes after he was accused of killing 19-year-old Christopher Spencer at an apartment off Richmond Road Feb. 7, 2018. Spencer was found on the porch of the residence with multiple gunshot wounds.

Johnson, who was 21 at the time, is also accused of kidnapping a woman he knew and taking her to the Squires Woods Way home, where he sexually assaulted her, according to court records. Johnson, Spencer and the woman knew one another, former Lexington Police Sgt. Jervis Middleton said, according to court documents.

He was sentenced to 25 years for murder, five years for burglary and five years for unlawful imprisonment. Each sentence will run consecutively. He was also ordered to have a 10 year protection order against one of the victims in the case, and a restitution of $6,080.

There’s more here.

Mr Johnson’s attorney noted that there had been questions as to whether he was mentally fit to stand trial, and he had been examined at Eastern State Hospital, though Taylor Six’s article notes that the mental hospital does not release any information on individual patients. None of that, of course, excuses Mr Johnson’s crimes. But my question is: why was Mr Johnson, who did plead guilty, not given treatment as lenient as Miss Red Corn has been “mediating” out to black murderers?

Oh, wait, I’m sorry, black manslaughterers, the charges to which they were allowed to plead down.

I have no problem at all with Mr Johnson’s sentence, other than it is too short; he should get out of jail on the same day that Mr Spencer comes back to life. My point is that the thankfully outgoing Commonwealth’s Attorney has been allowing very lenient plea bargain arrangements to killers who aren’t white. If you deliberately kill someone, there should be no plea bargains: you should go to jail for the rest of your life.

But that’s not what happens in Lexington, not if you’re black:

  • On January 10, 2022, James Edward Ragland II, 31, was sentenced to ten years in the state penitentiary for shooting and killing Iesha Edwards, 27, outside what the Lexington Herald-Leader euphemistically called a “gentleman’s club.” Originally charged with murder, Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn allowed Mr Edwards to plead down to manslaughter.
  • On January 19, 2022, Malachi Jackson, now 20 but 16 at the time of his crime, charged with the murder of 15-year-old Kevin Olmeda, was allowed by Miss Red Corn to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter, second-degree assault, and first-degree criminal attempt to commit robbery. With a recommended sentence of 15 years by the prosecution, time already served taken into account, and the state minimum of 85% of sentence required, Mr Jackson could be out of jail by the age of 31.
  • On February 11, 2022, Jemel Barber, 23, was sentenced to twenty years for the killing of 40-year-old Tyrece Clark. Mr Barber was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter and second-degree robbery, down from murder, by Miss Red Corn, and if he serves his full sentence, including time already served, he could be out by age 39.
  • On March 11, 2022, Xavier Hardin, 21, was allowed by Miss Red Corn to plead guilty to manslaughter, assault and wanton endangerment charges in the killing of Kenneth Bottoms Jr., 17, and charges of murder were dropped. The shooting was caught on security tape in Fayette Mall, so it isn’t as though the prosecution would have a difficult time proving their case. Mr Hardin was eventually sentenced to 22 years in prison, but even if he serves the maximum sentence, he’ll be out when he’s just 41-years-old.

This is not justice, and this is not law enforcement. Thankfully, Miss Red Corn is leaving office in a few weeks, but we need to do what we can to push her successor to enforce the law, to the maximum extent of the law. Not doing so is why Lexington has already seen 34 homicides this year, one every 7.38 days, and is on pace for 49 or 50 murders for the year; the exact number works out to 49.44. The city’s record is ‘only’ 37 murders, set last year.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

Lexington is drawing ever nearer to it’s record number of homicides.

Lexington set a record with 30 homicides in 2019. Not to be outdone, the gang-bangers knocked off 34 people in 2020. Well, it seems like the bad guys took only 34 as a personal challenge, and slew 37 people last year. Now, with 3½ months left in the year, 2022 has seen 34 homicides as of September 9th. Last year, murder number 34 didn’t occur until Thanksgiving Day.

Steven Smith, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

1 man found dead after a Lexington shooting. Suspect arrested, charged with murder

by Christopher Leach | Friday, September 9, 2022 | 7:06 AM EDT

One man is dead and another has been arrested after a shooting on Devonia Avenue Thursday, Lexington police say.

The shooting took place just before 6 p.m. on the 100 block of Devonia Avenue, which is near North Broadway. Police said they were responding to a report of a disorder with a weapon and when they arrived, they found a 57-year-old man suffering from a gunshot wound. He was declared dead on scene.

The Fayette County Coroner’s Office later identified the victim as Clarence Adams.

Police arrested Steven Smith, 32, and charged him with murder, fourth degree assault (domestic violence), two counts of wanton endangerment and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon. He is being held at the Fayette County Detention Center without a bond.

During the investigation, detectives determined that Smith and Adams lived at the same residence. The assault charge stemmed from an assault of a third party, according to police.

The killing marks the 34th homicide in Lexington this year, putting the city closer to the annual homicide record of 37, which was set in 2021.

No, of course what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal didn’t publish the suspect’s mugshot; I looked it up on the Fayette County Detention Center’s website, where it is a public record. Also shown was a previous mugshot, dated May 6, 2015, so Mr Smith is not exactly unfamiliar with jail.

The jail website lists the charges Mr Smith is alleged to have committed. Two separate counts of possession of weapons by a convicted felon tells you that he has been a bad, bad boy.

Let’s look at those charges:

  • KRS §508.030 Assault 4th Degree is a Class A misdemeanor.
  • KRS §508.060 Wanton Endangerment, First Degree, a Class D felony
  • KRS §527.040 Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon is a Class D felony if it is not a handgun, and a Class C felony for a handgun.

Under KRS §532.060, the sentence for a Class B felony is not less than ten (10) years nor more than twenty (20) years imprisonment, and the sentence for a Class D felony is not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years imprisonment. Under KRS §532.090, the sentence for a Class A misdemeanor is imprisonment for a term not to exceed twelve (12) months.

Then there’s the big charge:

  • KRS §507.020, murder is a capital offense. Under KRS §532.030, the sentence for a capital offense is either:
    • death
    • imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole
    • imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole until he has served a minimum of twenty-five (25) years of his sentence
    • imprisonment for a term of not less than twenty (20) years nor more than fifty (50) years

As we have previously noted, Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn is retiring at the end of this month, so she won’t be able to “mediate” Mr Smith into a lenient plea deal, but if her hand-picked replacement is nominated by Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY), Mr Smith might well be the grateful recipient of leniency.

Mr Smith, if he is convicted, should get out of jail the same day that his victims comes back to life.

At 34 homicides in 251 days, Lexington is on pace for 49.44 murders for 2022.

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Hold them accountable! Cute white girl abducted, and the media are all over it; black woman shot in the face in Philly, oh, who cares about that?

Eliza Fletcher.

I have said it before: The Philadelphia Inquirer really isn’t all that concerned about murders unless the victim is an ‘innocent’, someone of some note, or a cute little white girl. This time it was five separate stories, albeit by the Associated Press, rather than Inky stories themselves, concerning the abduction and murder of Eliza Fletcher in Memphis, Tennessee.

A black woman was shot in the head at 4:11 AM on Saturday, September 3th in the Tacony section of the city, and all the Inquirer had was:

At 4:11 a.m., a 29-year-old woman was shot once in the face by someone she knew. No additional information was immediately available.

Police said the woman was in stable but critical condition at Jefferson Torresdale Hospital.

But, to be fair, the abduction of Mrs Fletcher was a national story; much of the credentialed media covered the story of the abduction of the pretty white woman.

Man charged in jogger abduction kidnapped attorney in 2000

The man charged with kidnapping a Tennessee woman jogging near the University of Memphis last week spent 20 years behind bars for a previous kidnapping

by Associated Press | Updated: Tuesday, September 6, 2022

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — The man charged with kidnapping a Tennessee woman jogging near the University of Memphis last week spent 20 years behind bars for a previous kidnapping.

U.S. Marshals arrested 38-year-old Cleotha Abston on Saturday after police detected his DNA on a pair of sandals found near to where Eliza Fletcher was last seen, according to an arrest affidavit. Police also linked the vehicle they believe was used in the kidnapping to a person at a residence where Abston was staying.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Memphis Police Charge Suspect With Kidnapping Billionaire Heiress

While Fletcher has not been found, Memphis police said in the affidavit they believe she was seriously injured in the abduction, which was caught on surveillance video. Authorities have said Fletcher, 34, was jogging around 4 a.m. on Friday when a man approached her and forced her into an SUV after a brief struggle. Fletcher was reported missing when she did not return home that morning.

Late Monday, police tweeted that a body had been found in a Memphis neighborhood but that the identity of that person and the cause of death was unconfirmed. The tweet made no reference to the Fletcher case, saying only that the investigation was ongoing. A large police presence was reported in the area where authorities reported finding the body just after 5 p.m., local news reports said.

It was later reported that the recovered body was indeed that of Mrs Fletcher.

Abston previously kidnapped a prominent Memphis attorney in 2000, the Commercial Appeal reported. When he was just 16 years old, Abston forced Kemper Durand into the trunk of his own car at gunpoint. After several hours, Abston took Durand out and forced him to drive to a Mapco gas station to withdraw money from an ATM. At the station, an armed Memphis Housing Authority guard walked in and Durand yelled for help. Abston ran away but was found and arrested. He pleaded guilty in 2001 to especially aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery, according to court records. He received a 24-year sentence. . . . .

Durand also detailed Abston’s lengthy history in the juvenile court system. In the years before the kidnapping, Abston had been charged with theft, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with a weapon, and rape, according to Durand’s statement.

Cleotha Abston

Mr Abston was sentenced to 24 years behind bars, but for some reason yet to be reported in the credentialed media, was released after just 20. We need to know: why was Mr Abston released early? Who took the decision to let him out, and did they have any choice under the law in the Volunteer State? And if there was a choice to keep him locked up, how can we hold the person or people who turned this guy loose early accountable for the consequences of their decision?

Remember: Mr Abston was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2001; had he been serving his full sentence, he would have still been in prison on the day he (allegedly) abducted Mrs Fletcher. If the parole officials in Tennessee had any discretion to keep him locked up, then they bear the responsibility for him being out on the streets and able to kidnap and murder Mrs Fletcher.

One of the major problems in our criminal justice system is that we have the state legislatures, the representatives of the people, passing laws which specify very punitive sentences for criminals, real criminals, and then we have lenient prosecutors offering sweetheart plea bargains, judges who too often sentence convicted criminals to light sentences, and state parole boards who, when they have the option, release hardened criminals back onto the streets before their maximum sentences have been completed. All of this ignores the will of the voters, the people who elect our representatives, and the people who want to see criminals locked up.

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Killadelphia A lot more blood flowing in Philly's mean streets than at the same time in record-smashing 2021.

Visit Philadelphia tells us:

No Philly experience is complete without snapping a photo in front of one of The City of Brotherly Love’s best-known landmarks: LOVE itself.

The famous Robert Indiana sculpture is in John F. Kennedy Plaza — better known as LOVE Park — just northwest of City Hall. Installed in 1976, LOVE was briefly removed in 1978, but popular demand brought it back where it belongs.

In conjunction with the renovation of John F. Kennedy Plaza, the sculpture was restored, repainted and reinstalled in its original location in 2018.

You can ignore that big 364 in the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page: while the past years’ numbers automatically update due to the software being used, as the page itself states, “statistics reflect the accurate count during normal business hours, Monday through Friday.” Thus, that 364 number is what was reported for Thursday, September the Oneth, and hasn’t been updated to reflect Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Given that this is Labor Day, the Police Department doesn’t have the person who does the admin work in the office today, either.

So, what do we really have in Killadelphia?

  1. A decomposed body was found Friday in Philly. This still has to be investigated, and may not be reported as a homicide.
  2. Three people were murdered in two separate incidents in the early hours of Saturday morning, and another early Sunday morning.
  3. Two dead & 3 wounded in a second Philadelphia mass shooting early Monday morning. Crime Scene Unit count 55 bullet shells. 7th & Russell Streets in North Philadelphia before 1am.
  4. Philadelphia homicide hour after mass shooting. Gun on grass found by ⁦@PhillyPolice next to man found shot in head after 2am at 56th & Lancaster Avenue continuing violent Labor Day weekend 10 blocks from road rage drive-thru killing 46th & Lancaster Sunday.

According to my first-grade arithmetic skills, I count eight murders in the City of Brotherly Love, and the Labor Day holiday weekend still isn’t over! Philly’s homicide record-setting year of 2021 saw five people murdered Friday through Monday of the Labor Day holiday weekend; in 2021, the holiday weekend began one day later than this year.

If Labor Day ends with just those already reported as having been killed, and not counting the first reported incident, which may not have been a homicide, that’s 372 murders in 248 days, an even 1.500 homicides per day, which works out to 547.50 murders for the year, if that rate is maintained through December 31st.

However, murders spiked in Philly after the Labor Day weekend, with 199 more people killed in just 116 days, a rate of 1.7155 per day. As we reported on September 7, 2021, the city was seeing ‘just’ 1.4578 murders a day, which would yield 532 murders for the entire year, if that average was maintained.

It wasn’t maintained, and Philly wound up with a record-shattering 562 murders for 2021. That ‘surge’ resulted in thirty more Philadelphians being sent untimely to their eternal rewards. And if I figure in that surge for the rest of the year, instead of 547 or 548 murders, Philly is on track to see 579 murders! That’s more than I projected just last night!

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A couple of very uncomfortable questions

As we have noted many times, Philadelphia has been seeing a huge surge in homicides, and Mayor Jim Kenney wants no part, no part at all, of accepting responsibility. District Attorney Larry Krasner is also famed for passing the buck, while Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the Mayor’s hand-picked stooge, is far more concerned about inclusion and diversity than enforcing the law. To be fair, with Let ’em Loose Larry not seriously prosecuting most crimes, Commissioner Outlaw is really kind of helpless.

First, the math. With at least five homicides reported on Saturday and Sunday, Philly is sitting at at least 369 homicides as of the 247th day of the year, for a killing rate of 1.4939 per day, which works out to a projected 545.28 killings for the year. However, an alternate way of projecting the numbers, using 2021’s record-setting pace, gives us 574.52 projected murders.

Let’s tell the truth here: the vast majority of homicides in the City of Brotherly Love are perpetrated on black victims by black killers. As bad as Philadelphia’s homicide problem is, it is very much a black problem, while white Philadelphians see themselves as much safer.

We have noted that the homicide rate in Philly came down under previous Mayor Michael Nutter, District Attorney Seth Williams, and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, and that, as of August 9th, Philly had seen more homicides this year than any full year under Mayor Nutter and his staff.

Mr Nutter, like Mayor Kenney, is a liberal Democrat. Mr Krasner is a hard-left Democrat, sponsored, to the tune of $1.45 million by George Soros, while the previously elected District Attorney, Seth Williams, was also a liberal Democrat, though maybe not quite as far left as Mr Krasner. Mr Williams had his own legal problems, and was forced to resign after a federal conviction, for which he spent 2½ years in federal prison.

Every elected official in the chart to the left is a Democrat; Democrats outnumber Republicans about 6 to 1 in registration in Philly, and the last Republican mayor left office while Harry Truman was still President.

But if they’re all Democrats, and mostly liberal ones in a chart which begins in 2007, there has been a clear and dramatic difference in how the city’s leadership has performed when it comes to homicides. Mr Nutter inherited 391 murders from his predecessor, John Street, and while the glide path was certainly uneven, the number of killings was reduced to under 300 in his last three years in office. There was a dip of three murders in Mr Kenney’s first year, but then the killings increased rapidly, over 300 in Mr Kenney’s second year, and by the third year were higher than in any of his predecessor’s eight years.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: The Symbolism of Philadelphia

While Mr Krasner specifically campaigned on reducing sentences, not pursuing convictions for certain minor’ offenses, and investigating the Police Department, there had been some sentence reductions in Mr Williams’ last few years as well.

While pondering all of this, an uncomfortable thought popped into my head, and I will admit to not knowing the least offensive way to put it, but here it is: when dealing with a murder problem that is very heavily skewed toward Philadelphia’s black population, is it possible that Messrs Nutter, Williams and Ramsey, who are all black men, were simply paid more attention to by the city’s black community than Messrs Kenney and Krasner, who are both white, while Commissioner Outlaw is black, but is also a woman? Is it possible that the previous city leadership were simply more respected by the black community than the people currently in office?

I do not know the answer to the questions I just posed, nor do I know how one would go about researching them, but they are really questions which should be asked.