Category Archives: Crime

Posted on by

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.

Posted on by

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.

Posted on by

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!

Posted on by

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.

Posted on by

Is justice a matter of color in Lexington? Why does outgoing Commonwealth's Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn go after white killers more harshly?

We have previously noted how Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn has a history of “mediating” plea deals to let murderers plead down to manslaughter and get far more lenient sentences. These were crimes in which the murderers “manslaughterers” deliberately tried to kill someone, so you’d think that someone who killed another man in an accident after fleeing police would catch something of a break, right?

Driver in five-county car chase that ended in man’s death found guilty of murder

by Taylor Six | August 31, 2022 | 4:37 PM EDT

Nathaniel Harper, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

A jury delivered a guilty verdict in the murder trial of 42-year-old Nathaniel Harper, who was charged after he led police on a five-county car chase that resulted in the death of 57-year-old Anthony Moore of Lexington.Harper was convicted of wanton murder, fleeing or evading police and receiving stolen property following an incident on August 29, 2017. The defense team had hoped that Harper would receive a lesser homicide charge such as reckless homicide or second degree manslaughter.

The jury made a determination for his sentence on Wednesday afternoon for a total of 36 years with 30 years for the murder charge, one year for receiving stolen property, and five years for fleeing and evading police.

Was Mr Harper determined to go to trial, rather than take a plea bargain? Apparently not:

While the defense team – including Shannon Brooks and Chris Tracy – said there was no question of the truck being stolen and that Harper fled, they questioned whether he should be charged with murder.

“He is guilty of fleeing and receiving stolen property,” Brooks said in closing statements. “You can check those boxes as we stand here now. We concede those.”

They asked their client be charged with reckless homicide, as opposed to wanton murder, defined as the operation of a motor vehicle under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life.

In other words, his attorneys were trying to get Mr Harper a lesser conviction, but knew that conviction on something serious was a given.

Now, I have absolutely no problem with Mr Harper being convicted of murder in this case, and would have had no problem with him being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It is my position that deliberate murderers should get out of jail on the day that their victims come back to life.

As it is, born on October 1, 1978, and taken into custody on August 29, 2017, if the judge follows the jury’s recommendation, his sentence would not expire until August 29, 2053, when he would be 75 years old. Of course, under Kentucky law, Mr Harper would be eligible for parole after serving 85% of his sentence, or 20 years, whichever is less.

But it has to be asked: why did Commonwealth’s Attorney Red Corn and her subordinates not agree to some serious plea bargain arrangement, when they have so frequently done so in other cases? Is there any obvious difference between Mr Harper and, say, 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?

Yup, I’ve got the mugshots of all of those fine gentlemen embedded in the links under their names, and it will take only a glance to see what the obvious difference is.

Fortunately, Miss Red Corn is retiring at the end of this month. Less fortunately, it will be Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) who appoints her replacement, and Miss Red Corn suggested Kimberly Henderson Baird, her first assistant, to Mr Beshear, saying:

It goes without saying that appointing (Baird) would be historical — she would be the first African American woman to serve as Commonwealth’s Attorney in Kentucky. It is time!

Clearly, race is important to Miss Red Corn, who is an Osage Indian.

It is amusing that, in the Lexington Herald-Leader article on Miss Red Corn’s retirement, the newspaper said:

One of her more recent murder convictions was Robert Markham Taylor, (photo here) who was sentenced to 49 years in the brutal attack on University of Kentucky chef Alex Johnson, whose murder generated national headlines. Johnson, 32, was beaten to death, and his body was stuffed into a barrel and dropped into the Kentucky River, where it was found in January 2014.

She also successfully prosecuted Paris Charles, a handyman, (photo here) who killed and dismembered Goldia Massey, his girlfriend, in 2014. Charles was sentenced to 35 years in that case.

Yup, you guessed it: both men are white.

Miss Red Corn should not be feted; justice demands that she be gone, and, in reality, she should be prosecuted herself for her obviously discriminatory prosecutorial behavior.

Posted on by

Killadelphia The Labor Day holiday weekend has barely begun, but the blood is already flowing in Philly's mean streets.

Must be a slow news day at The Philadelphia Inquirer, because the newspaper has actually covered, albeit briefly, three homicides today:

3 people have died among 10 shot in less than 7 hours in Philly

The shootings in the first seven hours of Saturday morning included a double homicide as well as a separate killing, all within three hours. No arrests were reported.

by Diane Mastrull | Saturday, September 3, 2022

The Labor Day weekend got off to a violent start with 10 people shot, three fatally, within the first seven hours of Saturday morning, according to police.

The first shooting was reported shortly before 1 a.m. at Chew and Locust Avenues in East Germantown, where a 26-year-old male was shot once in the chest, police said. He was transported by private vehicle to Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, where he was reported in stable condition, police said

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: The Symbolism of Philadelphia

I accessed the story at 6:10 PM EDT. The Inky somehow thinks it’s edgy or new wave or something silly like that to not timestamp their articles, and it only states “Published 3 hours ago”, so it hit the newspaper’s website sometime between 2:00 PM and 3:10 PM. There has been plenty of daylight since then, and it’s still daylight as I type this, so there’s plenty of time left before the skies grow dark.

About two and a half hours later, just after 3:30 a.m., two men were killed at 52nd Street and Woodland Avenue in Kingsessing. Police said one, believed to be 20 to 30 years old, was shot once in the back of the head and was pronounced dead by medics at the scene. A 39-year-old man was shot multiple times throughout the body and was pronounced dead just before 4 a.m. at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, police said.

There’s more at the original, detailing shootings at 4:11 AM, 4:56 AM, and “an hour later,” before getting to this:

4400 North Franklin Street, at the intersection with 700 block of West Cayuga. Someone has already put himself in jail to keep the neighborhood bad guys out. Click to enlarge.

The morning’s third homicide came just after 6:30 a.m., when a 45-year-old man was shot multiple times in the 700 block of West Cayuga Street in Hunting Park, police said. He was pronounced dead at 6:47 a.m. at Temple.

I recall hearing about a body being found on Friday as well, but can’t document it. Just counting the three I have documented, that takes the city to 367 homicides, as of Saturday morning; who knows what Saturday evening will bring?

Monday, September 6, 2021, was the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend last year, and at that point the city had seen 363 homicides; city is already four above that total. The holiday weekend ends on Monday, August 5th, one day earlier this year.

The end of the Labor Day holiday saw the end of the ‘lull’ in city murders last year, but, starting after the holiday weekend was over, Philly saw 199 murders in 116 days, a rate of 1.7155 per day, driving the yearly rate higher, and ending with 562 bodies littering the city’s mean streets. It’s been end-of-summer warm in the City of Brotherly Love, with no rain forecast for either Sunday of Labor Day, so plenty of decent weather for the bad guys to be out on the streets shooting people.

Current homicide rate as of Saturday morning: 1.4919 per day, which works out to 544.53 by the end of the year. Calculated another way, 576.13 is the projected number, based on the increased killing rate last year. Philly will finish the year with a homicide total that is either first or second in all-time murders.

Posted on by

(Allegedly) murdering a 97-year-old man because you are frustrated is the epitome of stupidity A 52-year-old nurse just might spend the rest of her miserable life behind bars

Eyvette Hunter, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Not all murders are committed with a gun.

Meet Eyvette Hunter, 52, who has been charged with the murder of 97-year-old James Morris at Baptist Health Hospital.

Lexington nurse accused of killing patient makes first court appearance

by Christopher Leach | Friday, September 2, 2022 | 10:12 AM EDT

The Lexington nurse accused of killing a 97-year-old patient via intentional medical maltreatment made her first appearance in court Friday.

Eyvette Hunter, 52, was indicted on one charge of murder and arrested on Aug. 23, according to court records. Police say Hunter’s maltreatment caused the death of James Morris, who died at Baptist Health Lexington on May 5.

Hunter was arraigned in circuit court by Judge Thomas Travis on Friday. During her arraignment, the prosecution brought up a motion it filed earlier this week, which requests permission for the Lexington Police Department to conduct a forensic examination of Hunter’s cellphone. . . . .

Police said Morris’ death was “a direct result” of Hunter’s actions. According to a suspension order by the state Board of Nursing, Hunter allegedly withdrew a vial of lorazepam meant for another patient and injected it into Morris. Once Morris was asleep, Hunter force fed him, which caused him to go into respiratory distress and then to aspirate, according to court documents.

You can read more here.

The Lexington Herald-Leader did not, of course, publish Miss Hunter’s mugshot, which they had, in that reporter Christopher Leach noted in his story that he accessed Fayette County Detention Center records, from which I was able to obtain the mugshot I have used here.

The earlier story noted that Miss Hunter had been a Licensed Practical Nurse since 2007, when she would have been 36 or 37 years old, and then completed more education and became a Registered Nurse in 2018. This story speaks a bit more harshly to me in that my wife is an RN, and it astounds me that an RN would, allegedly I have to add, do something like this.

This was a crime of frustration, as Mr Morris was agitated and aggressive, and Miss Hunter requested medication to calm him down. When that request was not ordered, she allegedly took an order of Lorazepam meant for another patient, administered it to Mr Morris, and then, when he was asleep, and then, again, allegedly, force-fed him, causing aspiration and death by choking. It was also a crime of stupidity.

Think about that: after becoming a registered nurse at age 48, a long and hard climb, Miss Hunter was in a profession which would normally pay more than $40 an hour. She had also worked at the University of Kentucky Hospital as a ‘traveling nurse,’ placed there by Health Carousel Travel Network. Travel nurses can easily be paid more than $75 an hour!

If Miss Hunter administered that Lorazepam as alleged, her license was already toast if discovered. But if she proceeded to kill him via aspiration, she just put her 52-year-old self into jail for the rest of her miserable life.

James Morris, from his obituary.

According to his obituary, Mr Morris was a veteran of both World War II and the Korean War. He did not deserve this!

Fortunately, we do not have to worry about Fayette County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn “mediating” her conviction and sentence, as Miss Red Corn has announced that she will retire at the end of this month. We can only hope that Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) will appoint someone to the position who is actually tough on crime.

Posted on by

Killington The truth shall set you free . . . if you are free to tell the truth

After being graduated from high school in Mt Sterling, Kentucky, I was more than ready to leave the small town and head for Lexington, and the University of Kentucky. It wasn’t like I could afford Hahvahd, anyway. I lived in the Bluegrass State’s second-largest city from 1971 through the end of 1984, before moving to the Old Dominion for better job prospects. Yeah, I tend to concentrate on foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia when it comes to crime, but it seems that while Killadelphia sounds more closely like Philadelphia than Killington sounds like Lexington, they’re becoming a bit too much alike.

I was ready to write about Lexington’s 32nd homicide of the year, when I opened the Lexington Herald-Leader’s website and found that the story about the 32nd murder was already out-of-date:

Man fatally shot on Devonport Drive, Lexington police say. It’s the second homicide this week

by Christopher Leach | Friday, September 2, 2022 | 7:14 AM EDT | updated: 8:05 AM EDT

Lexington police are investigating the second reported homicide of the week after a man was fatally shot early Friday.

The shooting happened in the 2000 block of Devonport Drive, near the intersection of Alexandria Drive and Versailles Road, around 12:55 a.m. Lt. Joe Anderson with the Lexington Police Department said responding officers found a man with a gunshot wound when they arrived at the scene.

The man was sent to the hospital, where he later died, according to Anderson. His identity will be announced by the Fayette County coroner after next of kin is notified. . . . .

This is the 33rd killing of 2022, nearing the annual homicide record of 37 set last year. This is also the second homicide this week after Dietrich Murray, 29, was shot and killed on Wednesday.

There’s a little more at the original.

In 2019, Lexington set its all-time homicide record of 30. Then, in 2020, Lexington broke that with 34 murders, and, in 2021, set it again at 37 dead bodies littering the city’s streets.

The city is on the slow side when it comes to putting information up on its websites. The city’s homicide investigations page hasn’t, as of this writing at 8:34 AM EDT on Friday, September 2nd, even included the 32nd killing, which occurred before noon, two days ago. But it does include the homicide investigations from 2021 on the same page, and the 33rd killing last year occurred on November 20th, 79 days later in the year.

Unlike Philadelphia, which averages almost 1½ homicides per day, much smaller Lexington, 321,793 versus 1,576,251 residents, averages only 0.1346938775510204 per day, or one every 7.42 days. That means that statistical projections are a bit more iffy; with one homicide every week, just a couple of weeks in which no one bothers to kill someone else can really throw off projections. Something as simple as a rainy weekend can keep the bad guys indoors more, and out on the bad street corners less.

Nevertheless, the current numbers work out to a projected 49.16 murders for the year.

So, what’s changed? As we noted on Thursday, Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) was blaming Philly’s huge homicide record on Republicans, on everyone but himself. Just as in Philly, Lexington has been operating on the same firearms control laws for years, so it isn’t a change in Kentucky’s constitutional carry gun control laws. A lot of big city politicians tried to blame the 2020 surge in killings on COVID-19, or the reaction to the unfortunate death-during-arrest of methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled convicted felon George Floyd, but that was two years ago! COVID-19 restrictions mostly eased by the end of 2020, and certainly by mid 2021, so it’s difficult to blame them. In Philly, the homicide rate surged from 1.4578 per day at the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend, to 1.7155 for the period from September 7 through December 31, 2021, when the vast majority of COVID-19 restrictions had been lifted and the public schools had been opened, albeit with mask mandates.

Something else has happened, something cultural that legitimizes bad guys carrying guns and blowing away people for trivial reasons. Yes, Kentucky’s firearms laws are less strict than Pennsylvania’s but Lexington’s 2021 homicide rate of 11.498 per 100,000 population was far lower than Philly’s 35.654.[1]The math: 37 homicides in 2021 ÷ 3.21793 = Lexington’s 2021 homicide rate; 562 homicides in 2021 ÷ 15.76251 = Philly’s homicide rate, expressed in homicides per 100,000 population.

Lexington’s homicide investigations page does not specify the race or ethnicity of murder victims, and the murder victims are specifically excluded from the city’s non-fatal shootings investigations page. But of the 87 non-fatal shootings listed as of August 27, 2022, 16, 18.39%, of the victims are listed as white, 5, 5.75%, are listed as Hispanic, which can be of any race, and 66, 75.86%, are listed as black.

Lexington’s population are not 75.86% black.

At some point, we have to look at the numbers, because numbers don’t lie. Pointing out these numbers, as I have previously, will be denounced as raaaaacist, but, unlike a lot of bloggers, I am retired, and have no job from which I can worry about being ‘canceled’. I can tell the unvarnished truth, the way so many others cannot.

And the truth is important: you cannot solve a problem if you are unwilling to identify the problem correctly, and it is wholly politically incorrect to identify the problem correctly these days.

Well, here’s another truth: everybody does know the problem, but as is obvious in Philly, most would rather ignore the fact that the homicide problem in our cities is primarily a black problem. So many would rather simply accept a ‘disproportionate’ number of murders among black city dwellers than admit that the problem exists within our black communities.

 

There is, however, another problem which jumps out at me, and it’s a problem that today’s left really don’t want to admit. The left believe that one change necessary to combat global warming climate change is greater population density, more people living closer to their jobs, not having as long commutes, and a greater ability for more people to take subways, trains and buses to work than their evil personal cars. But if there’s one real physical difference between Philadelphia and Lexington, it’s that the poorer areas in Lexington are not the rowhouse type of neighborhoods that dominate much of Philly. Even in the poorer neighborhoods in Lexington, housing is far more likely to be physically separate dwellings, far more likely to have a bit of yard between houses. This is not to say that there are no rowhouses in Lexington; there are, though interestingly enough many of them are in the gentrified areas north of the University of Kentucky campus, on South and North Limestone Street, along parts of Upper Street. And if you are really, really angry at someone, if you live further apart, it will take you longer to go home and get your gun — assuming that you aren’t carrying it — than in Philly, and those few extra seconds may be the ones which give you the time to realize, hey, if I blow that rat bastard away, I might just spend the rest of my life in Eddyville.

Row houses on Broadway in Jim Thorpe, during 2012 St Patrick’s Day Parade. Click to enlarge.

Could that be part of the reason that heavily rural Carbon County, population 64,749, where I lived in Pennsylvania, under the same gun control laws as Philly, went many years straight with zero homicides, even though it’s an area with a lot of hunters and most people own firearms? As nearly as I could find — the data are scattered, not consolidated, and it’s possible I missed something — there was one murder in Lehighton in 2004 and another in 2006, and those were the only murders in Carbon County from 2001 through 2019. Other than going up Broadway in Jim Thorpe, there are very few rowhouses. When the murder rate in Philadelphia was 22.197 per 100,000 population, in 2019 — boy, how low that seems compared to now! — and zero in Carbon County, with both under the same firearms laws, perhaps, just perhaps, it might be considered that the firearms laws aren’t really the problem.

Those two murders? One was a strangulation and beating of a mother by her son, and the other a stabbing following an argument.

But, at some point, we have to look at race and population density, both things the left are horrified to contemplate as being contributing factors, when it comes to crime in general, and murder specifically.

References

References
↑1 The math: 37 homicides in 2021 ÷ 3.21793 = Lexington’s 2021 homicide rate; 562 homicides in 2021 ÷ 15.76251 = Philly’s homicide rate, expressed in homicides per 100,000 population.
Posted on by

Jim Kenney: The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here! 'It's not my fault!' whines the Mayor of Philadelphia!

Bernard Samuel was the last Republican Mayor of Philadelphia, leaving office on January 7, 1952, when George VI was still King of England, Josef Stalin dictator of the Soviet Union, and Harry Truman President of the United States. Since then, there have been ten popularly elected Mayor of the City of Brotherly Love, all of them Democrats. That’s 70 years, 7 months, and 25 days of unbroken Democratic rule in Philly.

His Honor the Mayor is upset, very upset, at the number of shootings in his city, but, of course, it’s not really his fault, is it?

Pa. ‘a Backward State’, Philly Mayor Says in Criticism of State Gun Laws

Kenney’s latest comments came after a triple shooting on the grounds of an elementary school in the Kensington neighborhood left three young men wounded, including a 17-year-old, shortly before 1 a.m. Wednesday

By Rudy Chinchilla • Published August 31, 2022 • Updated on August 31, 2022 at 8:12 PM

Criticizing the state’s gun laws, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney on Wednesday called Pennsylvania a “backward state” and said its Legislature for the most part doesn’t care about its citizens.

Kenney made the comments in response to an NBC10/Telemundo 62 question about his support of stricter gun laws and a shooting that happened at a school in the predawn hours of Wednesday morning.

“We’re not gonna get gun control in Pennsylvania. This is a backward state whose Legislature for the most part doesn’t care about the health and welfare of its citizens,” Kenney said.

In the Pennsylvania, the state government sets the gun control laws, and the pre-emption law prohibits smaller jurisdictions from setting stricter restrictions or penalties on residents than the Commonwealth has in place. With one exception, a state law which allows felony rather than misdemeanor charges for illegal handgun possession, in Philadelphia alone, all of Pennsylvania is under the same firearms laws.

So, if the gun control laws are the pretty much uniform across the Commonwealth, and it is a lack of stricter firearms restrictions which has led to the homicide rate, shouldn’t the homicide rate be fairly similar across the Keystone State? As we noted just a few days ago, they aren’t:

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

Here’s how the actual numbers work out: there were 510 homicides among 11,398,903 Pennsylvanians not living in Philadelphia, for a homicide rate of 4.474 per 100,000 population, while there were 499 murders among 1,603,797 Philadelphians, which works out to a homicide rate of 31.114 per 100,000. If the gun laws are the problem, why aren’t the homicide rates for Philly and the rest of the Commonwealth fairly similar?[1]Even as late as the end of August, I have been unable to find the ‘official’ statistics for the number of homicides statewide for 2021. With 562 murders in Philly in 2021, I’m sure … Continue reading

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, there were 364 homicides in Philly as of 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, August 31st. That’s a 1.96% increase over the 357 on the same date last year, and 2021 not only set the city’s homicide record, but utterly destroyed the old record of an even 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990. Under His Honor the Mayor, Philly has seen two of the three highest murder totals since statistics were being kept. Yet, oddly enough, the gun control laws never changed! Oddly enough, under Mr Kenney’s immediate predecessor, Michael Nutter, murders decreased in the city, and as we noted on August 9th, Philly had surpassed the entire year’s homicide total for every single year under Mr Nutter’s eight years in office.

The current homicide rate in Philadelphia is 1.4979 per day. During Mr Nutter’s eight years in office, the city never averaged as high as 1.00 killings per day.

And in all of that time, the firearms laws in the Keystone State were the same.

Depending on how you do the math, the city is on target for 546.75 and 573.02 murders in 2022.[2]The 546.75 number is obtained by taking the current number of homicides per day, and multiplying by 365 days in the year. The 573.02 number is obtained by taking the percentage increase in homicides … Continue reading While we can’t know the final numbers yet, one thing seems certain: under Mayor Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, 2022 will ‘win’ either the gold or the silver medal for murders this year, and they’ll have three of the top four homicide numbers. Mr Kenney’s term doesn’t end until January of 2024, so, unless he resigns early, he’ll have yet another full year to lead the city to more than 500 murders.[3]Mr Krasner was re-elected in 2021, and his term doesn’t expire until January of 2026. Miss Outlaw has no fixed term, but serves at the pleasure of the Mayor.

The outgoing mayor has for some time been outspoken about gun control and critical of what he characterizes as Republican inaction on the issue, both at the state and federal level. He has also been blunt when asked about gun violence in the city, and at times seemingly overwhelmed when discussing the growing problem.

In July, he had to apologize after saying he would “be happy” when he is no longer mayor. Those comments came after gunfire during the city’s annual July 4th fireworks show on the Ben Franklin Parkway sent crowds running and left two police officers shot.

Yeah, well the entire city will be happy when Mr Kenney is no longer Mayor, but it really doesn’t matter: whomever is elected to replace him will be another Democrat, and will be just as frustrated and just as bad.

Most of those killings have come by way of gunfire. The city controller’s office lists at least 332 fatal shootings as of Aug. 30. It also shows at least 1,266 nonfatal shootings.

The city’s shooting victims database shows 1610 shooting victims as of August 31th of this year, but ‘only’ 1555 through August 31, 2021. There have been 55 more shootings, a 3.537% increase, and let’s face it: every shooting is an attempted murder.

There are, of course, no records of how many times people were shot at, but escaped without injury, or were so slightly wounded that they were able to flee the scene and treat their wounds without going to the hospital.

There’s actually a lot of blame to go around. The reaction to the unfortunate death-during-arrest of methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled convicted felon George Floyd turned loose the anger of the left, but that was two years ago, and killings in the City of Brotherly love have skyrocketed in the subsequent years. The election of a George Soros-sponsored defense attorney as the city’s top prosecutor has enabled a lot of bad guys to get away with slaps on the wrist . . . if even that much is also at fault. A stooge Police Commissioner with more interest in ‘diversity and inclusion’ than law enforcement, and who cannot attract new recruits to the police department only makes things worse.

But Mayor is the top job, the ultimate responsibility, and Jim Kenney, who served on the Philadelphia City Council for 23 years before running for Mayor — at 64 years of age, he has been running for or serving in city government for 32 years, half of his life, now — ought to know that. He asked for that job, and that responsibility. Yet he is shirking all responsibility, blaming everyone, or at least every Republican, but himself, for the downward slide of our nation’s sixth most populous city, a city with a proud and storied history that predates the founding of our nation, the city in which our Declaration of Independence was approved and signed, a city founded in 1682 by William Penn. Mr Kenney can throw shade at anyone and everyone he wishes, but in the end, he has been an utter failure, and everyone knows it.

References

References
↑1 Even as late as the end of August, I have been unable to find the ‘official’ statistics for the number of homicides statewide for 2021. With 562 murders in Philly in 2021, I’m sure the statistical disparities would be even worse, but I cannot work with numbers I do not have available.
↑2 The 546.75 number is obtained by taking the current number of homicides per day, and multiplying by 365 days in the year. The 573.02 number is obtained by taking the percentage increase in homicides as of August 31st and multiplying that by 562, the number of total homicides in 2021. As we reported on September 7, 2021, there was a significant decrease in the daily homicide rate in the city between July 9th and September 6th, the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend. Subsequent to that, the homicide rate surged, to a whopping 1.7155 per day.
↑3 Mr Krasner was re-elected in 2021, and his term doesn’t expire until January of 2026. Miss Outlaw has no fixed term, but serves at the pleasure of the Mayor.