Category Archives: Crime

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Now the Biden Administration wants people to take a completely untested-in-humans vaccine!

Image by ronstik from Pixabay

I am by no means an anti-vaxxer. Vaccines have seriously mitigated many diseases, and almost eliminated a couple. Who would want to go back to the days of paralysis and iron lungs of polio? Why would we want a return of smallpox, which has killed millions? And yes, as I have stated previously, I have taken the COVID-19 vaccines, and the boosters.

But until the COVID-19 panicdemic — and no, that’s not a typographical error; panic was really the disease — we had serious clinical trials. In the late 18th century, Edward Jenner, having heard how dairy workers seemed immune to smallpox, devised a clinical trial.

In May 1796, Edward Jenner found a young dairymaid, Sarah Nelms, who had fresh cowpox lesions on her hands and arms. On May 14, 1796, using matter from Nelms’ lesions, he inoculated an 8-year-old boy, James Phipps. Subsequently, the boy developed mild fever and discomfort in the axillae. Nine days after the procedure he felt cold and had lost his appetite, but on the next day he was much better. In July 1796, Jenner inoculated the boy again, this time with matter from a fresh smallpox lesion. No disease developed, and Jenner concluded that protection was complete.

That was a clinical trial with one subject, but, thanks to the politicization of COVID-19, it might be a larger clinical trial than one today:

FDA expected to authorize new Covid boosters without data from tests in people

The lack of human data means officials likely won’t know how much better the new shots are — if at all — until the fall booster campaign is well underway.

By Berkeley Lovelace Jr. | Tuesday, August 30, 2022 | 4:09 PM EDT

The updated Covid vaccine boosters, a reformulated version targeting the BA.5 omicron subvariant, could be available around Labor Day. They’ll be the first Covid shots distributed without results from human trials. Does that matter?

Because the Biden administration has pushed for a fall booster campaign to begin in September, the mRNA vaccine-makers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have only had time to test the reformulated shots in mice, not people. That means the Food and Drug Administration is relying on the mice trial data — plus human trial results from a similar vaccine that targets the original omicron strain, called BA.1 — to evaluate the new shots, according to a recent tweet from the FDA commissioner, Dr. Robert Califf.

That could be a potentially risky bet, experts say, if the shots don’t work as well as hoped.

Note that my source was NBC News, not some evil reich-wing blog!

Of course, the Biden Administration wants to get this in people’s bodies almost immediately:

Biden Team Aims for Omicron-Targeted Shots in Arms by Labor Day

  • Reformulated vaccines due to ship next week if cleared
  • US will have between 10 and 15 million doses initially

By Josh Wingrove | August 26, 2022 | 11:33 AM EDT

The Biden administration plans to begin offering next-generation Covid-19 booster shots as soon as the Labor Day weekend, according to people familiar with the matter, aiming to stave off a fall surge in cases of the disease.

Food and Drug Administration regulators are expected to clear the use of Covid-19 vaccines reformulated for omicron variants next week, the people said. They asked not to be identified ahead of an official announcement.

The so-called bivalent vaccines are designed to better protect against subvariants of the virus that are now dominant in the US, BA.4 and BA.5. The shots are poised to begin shipping next week and can be administered after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention clearance.

A CDC advisory panel hearing is set for Sept. 1 to 2 to discuss the issue, the people said. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has the final say and could sign off as soon as next week.

That timeline sets up the potential for a smattering of shots as soon as the Labor Day weekend beginning Sept. 3, with broader availability in the following week or two, the people said. The US will have between 10 and 15 million doses initially available, one of the people said, out of a total order of 171 million doses.

So, President Biden and his minions want people to start taking a vaccine which has never been tested on humans starting this coming weekend. And while there’s no word, at least yet, of an attempted federal mandate, we have previously noted how Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) — who wouldn’t wear the mask his city’s public schools have mandated for students while visiting a school — is finally getting his wish and firing the 68 remaining unionized city employees who have refused to take the existing COVID-19 vaccines. Will the Mayor, along with other big city mayors who have done the same things he has, try to force people to take the newest vaccine, the one not tested on humans?

Also see: The New York Times: California Approves Bill to Punish Doctors Who Spread False Information About COVID Vaccines

We already know that the existing vaccines neither prevent people from contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus, nor prevent those who have contracted it from spreading it to others. At best, the vaccines may lessen the severity of symptoms in those who do contract the disease.

But even that is becoming questionable. As we have previously noted, there is strong evidence that a lot more people have had the virus at some point, in line with acting Food and Drug Administration head Commissioner Janet Woodcock having told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, last January, that she expected that, eventually, almost everyone would contract the virus. Celebrity doctor Anthony Fauci said that COVID-19 would infect “just about everybody.” This was during the BA.1 variant’s primacy, and two months later, the American Medical Association warned that the then-new BA.2 subvariant could be “30% to 60% more transmissible” than BA.1. While playing Blondie’s One Way of Another, we noted that BA.4 and BA.5 are gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya! Yale Medicine also said that BA.4 and BA.5 appear to be more transmissible.

With the advent of at-home testing for COVID-19, we do not know how many people have tested positive for the virus and never reported it. After all, if reporting that you have contracted the virus would subject you to restrictions, there would doubtlessly be those who did not feel sick enough to stay home and subject themselves to self-quarantine. We also do not know how many people felt slightly ill, but didn’t bother to get tested, either at a clinic or at home, and we don’t know how many have contracted the virus at some point but were completely asymptomatic.

What we do know is that BA.5, while serious for a relatively small percentage of people, isn’t much more than a typical cold or perhaps the flu for most people.

Why, then, would we want to introduce an untested vaccine into millions of people, for a disease that is simply not that serious for most of the public?

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If the gun laws are the problem, why aren’t the homicide rates for Philly and the rest of the Commonwealth fairly similar?

It was no surprise that six more murders occurred in the City of Brotherly Love over the weekend, including Friday. Since the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is not updated on Saturday or Sunday, we don’t get Friday’s ‘official’ numbers until Monday morning, though this tweet let me know earlier that the carnage was on.

Well, it was 10:45 AM EDT on Monday morning as I began, and as always, I checked our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, the 17th largest in terms of circulation, The Philadelphia Inquirer, to check their coverage.

4-year-old shot in Olney barbershop

The child was struck by a single round following an argument. He is currently hospitalized and in stable condition.

by Ryan W Briggs | Sunday, August 28, 2022

A 4-year-old was wounded by gunfire following an altercation at a barbershop in the city’s Olney section — the latest of nearly 150 minors shot in Philadelphia this year.

The boy — whom police are not identifying because of his age — was with his father getting a haircut at a barbershop on the 5000 block of Rising Sun Avenue on Sunday afternoon. About 5:15 p.m., police say, they believe another patron got involved in an unrelated argument, pulled a gun, and opened fire inside the tiny salon.

Police say the boy was struck once in the right shoulder. Medics took the boy to nearby Einstein Medical Center, and he was then transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and placed in stable condition.

No weapon was recovered and no arrests had been made. Police are now reviewing surveillance footage.

There’s more at the original, but it’s a story about a young boy shot, but not killed. It was also the only story on either the Inquirer’s website main page or specific crime page I could find on any of the weekend shootings. Oh, there was a week-old story about 2 killed, 1 shot in Midtown neighborhood, from Atlanta, Georgia, and Oklahoma sheriff deputy serving eviction papers shot, killed, along with several other, older stories, but not one single word about the six Philadelphians who spilled out their life’s blood on the city’s mean streets.

I’ll be blunt here: none of the six slain could have been non-Hispanic whites, because, as we noted on Saturday, the newspaper which publisher Elizabeth Hughes vowed to make “an antiracist news organization” provides plenty of coverage when white guys get killed, but mostly ignores homicides when the victims are black, because to cover that would reinforce stereotypes that blacks are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime.

Of course, readers already know that, and mostly assume that both victims and perpetrators of murder in Philly are black, unless told otherwise. There really are no secrets being kept here.

However, while the Philadelphia Police Department report six killed, the city’s shooting victims database tells me that nine people were shot to death over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, August 26th through 28th. The nine fatal shootings,[1]The embedded link will take you to the city’s original. However, the city’s chart is formatted horribly, so I downloaded it and pasted it into a Microsoft Excel file, hid some columns and … Continue reading highlighted in yellow, include seven black males and two Hispanic white males.

It is possible that three of those killed were shot in self-defense, or some other justifiable situation, which could explain the discrepancy between the database and the Police Department’s numbers.

The Editorial Board of the Inquirer likes to blame a lack of gun control laws for the increased killings:

Lawmakers in Philadelphia have long tried to pass gun safety measures, only to get rebuffed by state courts and the recalcitrant Republican-controlled legislature in Harrisburg. Just last week, a majority-Republican panel of the Pennsylvania appeals court rejected Philadelphia’s latest attempt to overturn the state law that prevents the city from enacting its own gun regulations.

Mayor Jim Kenney rightly said the city would appeal the wrongheaded decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

There we have the Editorial Board telling us that Philadelphia is under the same gun control laws as the rest of Pennsylvania.

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?[2]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

Yeah, I know: math has now been deemed racist by some on the left, but numbers are numbers, and the math is really pretty simple. The problem is not the gun laws; the problem is something specific to Philadelphia and our other large, urban areas.

References

References
↑1 The embedded link will take you to the city’s original. However, the city’s chart is formatted horribly, so I downloaded it and pasted it into a Microsoft Excel file, hid some columns and moved others, so the reader could see the data in an easier to read format.
↑2 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.
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If “Black Lives Matter,” why do black killers of white victims get more severe sentences than black killers of black victims even in very liberal cities?

Josephus Davis, photo via WPVI-TV, Click to enlarge.

“It’s a shame that another Black male, young male, is losing his life to the system,” Josephus Davis said. “It’s another white judge, white family, white DA, and another Black male.”

‘You will die in prison’: Philadelphia man is sentenced to life in prison for murder of Brewerytown man walking his dog

Josephus Davis, 21, was convicted in the murder of Milan Loncar, who was fatally shot while walking his dog in Brewerytown last year.

by Ellie Rushing | Friday, August 26, 2022

After an emotional two-hour hearing that brought even a seasoned homicide prosecutor to tears, a Philadelphia man on Friday was ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison for fatally shooting a man as he walked his dog in Brewerytown last year.

Josephus Davis, 21, was convicted of second-degree murder, robbery, and related offenses in June for the killing of Milan Loncar, 25, a Wayne native and Temple University graduate. Loncar was walking his dog after work in January 2021 when Davis and another man held him at gunpoint in an attempted robbery. After rifling through his pockets, Davis shot Loncar in the chest, then ran away as Loncar lay bleeding on the street.

Think about that: after robbing Mr Loncar, when there was absolutely no need to do so, Mr Davis shot and killed his victim anyway, but, “It’s a shame that another black male, young male, is losing his life to the system.” Perhaps, just perhaps, it was Mr Davis who took the decision to spend the rest of his miserable life in jail, not that “white judge, white family, (and) white DA.”

During Friday’s sentencing hearing, Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott read segments of the approximately 25 letters submitted by family and friends detailing how Loncar’s death has affected their lives. All described him as caring and loving, “the best person [they’d] ever met.”

Jelena Loncar, 28, said she has not been able to work more than 20 hours per week since her brother’s death. She sold her house in Brewerytown after the shooting and, along with other family and friends, moved out of Philadelphia, the pain and fear of the ongoing violence crisis too much to bear.

Ellie Rushing, The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, went through some time and effort to tell us how loved Mr Loncar was by his family and friends, but there’s a certain point which arose in my mind: yes, Mr Loncar may have been a wonderful guy, but does that mean his life was somehow worth more than the lives of many of the thugs who’ve also been killed in the City of Brotherly Love? We have previously noted how Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn “mediated” crimes and allowed lenient plea deals and sentences for murderers — I suppose “manslaughterers” would be a more mocking term for their crimes now — and if that happened in the Bluegrass State rather than Philadelphia, the same things are happening all around the country in our cities. Of course, in those Lexington cases, the murdered manslaughtered men were black gang members as well, while Mr Loncar was white.

And even as Davis maintained his innocence, and his mother testified of his traumatic childhood filled with abuse and instability, Judge McDermott was firm in meting out his punishment.

“You will die in prison,” she said.

McDermott sentenced Davis to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the mandatory sentence in Pennsylvania for second-degree murder.

Jelena Loncar, left, with her brother Milan Loncar, in December 2020 outside of Tinsel bar in Center City.
Courtesy of Jelena Loncar, via The Philadelphia Inquirer. Click to enlarge.

Of course, Mr Davis chose to fight the charges in a jury trial, and was convicted. Had that not happened, District Attorney Larry Krasner would probably given him a nice, soft plea bargain. Ahhh, but then again, the very black Mr Davis killed a white victim, generating the kind of sympathy that the murder of Samuel Collington,  a Temple University student approaching graduation. Mr Collington was a white victim, allegedly murdered by a black juvenile in a botched robbery. Then the Inquirer published 14 photographs from a vigil for Mr Collington, along with another story about him. Five separate stories about the case of a murdered white guy.

The Inquirer even broke precedent when it came to Mr Collington’s murder by including the name of the juvenile suspect in the case, and delving into his previous record.

The Inquirer, a newspaper which publisher Elizabeth Hughes vowed to make “an antiracist news organization”? I see that the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s five separate stories, a whole lot more than the two or three paragraphs most victims get.

Let me be clear here: I absolutely support the sentence Mr Davis received, and it’s a good thing that state law sets life in prison without the possibility of parole as being mandatory for second-degree murder; no judge should have any leeway in that. What I oppose is the lenient plea bargain deals which let murders off with manslaughter convictions, meaning that they can see a time at which they will be released, and, all too frequently, are eligible for early parole. Murders should not get out of prison until the day that their victims come back to life!

It seems that this was not Mr Davis first brush with the law:

Prosecutors, though, said the evidence was clear: As Loncar walked his dog, Roo, near 31st and Jefferson Street that January evening — two blocks from his residence, and a half-block from Davis’ — Davis and an accomplice attacked him.

So, both murderer and his victim were neighbors, living in an integrated area. Zillow shows me an area of mixed housing, some older and in not the greatest repair, while other residences have been fixed up and selling well into the $300,000 range.

Later that night, Davis was stopped by police in Kensington after officers recognized the car he was in as having been reported stolen in a carjacking the day before. Davis and a few other men hopped out and ran, Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore said.

When police caught and questioned Davis, he wore a distinctive belt and shoes — evidence prosecutors used to match him to surveillance video of Loncar’s murder. Police later tested Davis’ clothes for ballistics evidence and found a small amount of gunshot residue on one of his jackets. The accomplice has not been identified.

Davis, one of 14 children, spent most of his life in the system, family testified. His mother said he was taken from her, along with his siblings, when he was 8, and forced to live with his father, who struggled with addiction and homelessness. Davis was arrested for the first time at 14 for assault, and bounced between numerous behavioral health facilities through his childhood. When he was 12 years old, his mother said, Davis witnessed a facility staffer fatally beat another child.

“You all think he is a monster,” she said. “But the streets turned him that way.”

Well, perhaps his mother being such a rotten parent that the Commonwealth took her children away from her might have had something to do with it, and not just “the streets.”

Davis’ crimes continued into adulthood. He was arrested four times for robbery and aggravated assault, the judge said. He was on probation for robbery at the time of the murder, and was awaiting trial on charges of carjacking and assaulting a jail guard. He had been released from jail two weeks before killing Loncar.

Mr Davis has two brothers also locked up, so it’s a criminal family, which makes me wonder: was he treated leniently by the District Attorney in a manner which allowed him out of jail two weeks before he killed Mr Loncar? Could Mr Davis have been behind bars on January 13, 2021, the day he robbed and killed Mr Loncar? If he could have been behind bars on that date, did the legal system, did the District Attorney, do him any favors by letting him out early? The 21-year-old Mr Davis might have been looking at several more years behind bars, but at least be able to see, into the future, when he would get out. But because he was out, and able to kill someone, he will only be freed when he has been freed from this mortal life.

I can have some sympathy for Mr Davis, in that he grew up without much of a chance. Saying that he was “forced to live with his father” is the same thing as saying that his father did not live with his mother. Somehow, some way, Western culture has decided that the primary organizational structure of every human society of which we have any knowledge, for as far back into history as we can determine social structure, normal, heterosexual marriage, with both fathers and mothers living together and rearing their children together, is just so much junk, and can be blithely discarded, leaving people like Mr Davis’ mother alone to bring up 14 kids. We have allowed our own selfishness to ruin things for everyone.

But having some sympathy for Mr Davis does not mean that I think his crimes should be excused or minimized: he killed another man, and were he somehow freed, he’d wind up killing someone else. I can hope that he finds God in prison, and that his life after this one will be better.

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The problem is not mass incarceration; the problem is that not enough people have been incarcerated, for not enough time

We noted, on April 6th, that John George Boulder IV, De’Shaun Quantrell Armor, Sevion Mitchell and Kenneth Jakobe Jackson, who murdered two 18-year-olds, Dwayne Slaughter and Darrian Webb because Messrs Slaughter and Webb allegedly made “disparaging remarks” about a dead member of Messrs Boulder’s, Mitchell’s and Jackson’s drug gang.

Suspects accused of killing 2 men in a Lexington gang retaliation take plea deals

by Jeremy Chisenhall | Wednesday, April 6, 2022 | 6:00 AM EDT

John George Boulder IV, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record. Click to enlarge.

Four men have pleaded guilty to reduced charges for their involvement in a deadly daylight shooting that Lexington prosecutors say was a gang retaliation.A Lexington gang planned to retaliate against two 18-year-olds because members of the group believed those two made “disparaging remarks” about a dead gang member, according to court records. Dwayne Slaughter and Darrian Webb, both 18 years old, died in the shooting on Oct. 19, 2019. All four suspects entered guilty pleas in Fayette Circuit Court Friday.

Three of the men who pleaded guilty in the deadly shooting are among the 14 people who have been indicted in a related organized crime case, according to court records. The fourth suspect hasn’t been criminally connected to the gang but was accused by a witness of being part of the same group.

The shooting happened on Oct. 19, 2019, at the intersection of Winchester Road and Seventh Street. De’Shaun Quantrell Armor, Sevion Mitchell and Kenneth Jakobe Jackson were in a vehicle driven by John George Boulder IV when they pulled up behind a vehicle with the two victims inside, according to court records.

Armor, Mitchell and Jackson were all armed, according to court records. The suspects opened fire and dozens of shots rang out in the middle of the intersection, leaving Slaughter and Webb dead, according to court records. A third person in the victims’ vehicle was injured but didn’t die.

There’s much more at the linked original; the mugshots were not included in the Lexington Herald-Leader original, but at The First Street Journal, we look up the information and publish it.

Sevion Mitchell, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record. Click to enlarge.

These are some bad dudes! The Fayette County Detention Center had not one but six mugshots of Mr Boulder, from six separate arrests, the first dated September 9, 2017, not quite four months after his 18th birthday. Mr Armor had two previous mug shots shown.

Messrs Armor, Mitchell and Jackson were each charged with two counts of murder when they were first indicted, while Mr Boulder, who was not armed at the time of the killings, was charged with facilitating murder. Following ‘mediation’ to work out a plea deal, Mr Armor pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter as well as to charges of evidence tampering and evading police; other charges were dismissed. Prosecutors recommended that he be sentenced to seven years in prison for each manslaughter count and one year for each of his tampering and evading convictions. No recommendation was made as to whether the sentences should run consecutively or concurrently.

De’Shaun Quantrell Armor, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Mr Armor pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter, as well as one count each of tampering with evidence and evading capture. Prosecutors recommended seven years in prison for each manslaughter count and one year for each of his tampering and evading convictions.

Messrs Mitchell and Jackson, who were juveniles, 17, when the killings occurred, each pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter, with other charges against them dismissed, and the prosecution recommended that both be sentenced to seven years for each of their manslaughter convictions; again, no recommendation was made concerning whether the sentences run consecutively or concurrently.

According to reporter Jeremy Chisenhall’s story, the shooting in the middle of an intersection, at busy Winchester Road and Seventh Street, by a Speedway gasoline station and mini-mart, left 37 shell casings recovered by investigators; these guys were firing and endangering more than just the two 18-year-old rival gang members, but bullets could have struck innocent bystanders as well.

Well, now these four fine gentlemen have been sentenced, though two months later than their originally reported sentencing date.

4 men sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to shooting that left 18-year-olds dead

by Taylor Six | Thursday, August 25, 2022 | 3:50 PM EDT

Kenneth Jackson, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record. Click to enlarge.

Armor was sentenced to 14 years after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree manslaughter, with the other charges of assault, criminal mischief, tampering with physical evidence and wanton endangerment being dismissed. He was sentenced to seven years for each manslaughter charge and his sentences will run consecutively. He was credited for more than two and a half years of time already served.Jackson was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced for seven years on one conviction, and five years on the other conviction, which also carries a concurrent sentence of two years.

Jackson entered an “Alford Plea,” meaning he doesn’t admit guilt, but agrees there is enough evidence that a jury could find him guilty. The remaining charges he faced were dismissed. Jackson was credited for just over two years of time already served Armor and Jackson were originally charged with two counts of murder, first-degree assault, first-degree criminal mischief, tampering with physical evidence, and first-degree wanton endangerment.

Mitchell was sentenced to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to seven years on each conviction, and his sentences were set to run consecutively. He was credited for more than two and a half years of time already spent in jail.

At least the sentences were mostly set to run consecutively, but these fine gentlemen, three of whom were members of a drug gang, will all complete their sentences while in their early thirties, easily still young enough to return back to a life of violent crime, this time with some serious prison cred, and the only thing better than street cred is prison cred. Messrs Slaughter and Webb will still be stone-cold graveyard dead.

The Lexington Herald-Leader previously reported that Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn has been using “mediation” to reduce case backlogs. Now the newspsper is reporting that this is upsetting a lot of victims’ families:

Mediation leads to more plea deals in Lexington felonies. Victims’ families are concerned

by Taylor Six | Friday, August 26, 2022 | 6:50 AM EDT

When James Terry was fatally shot inside a Lexington bar in 2019, his family was left with grief and the hope that the man who shot him would face justice in the Kentucky courts system.

But after more than three years of court dates, the conclusion of the case did not bring Terry’s family a sense of justice. Larry Walters, 73, admitted that he opened fire in the bar and killed Terry. But after originally being charged with murder, he accepted a plea deal from prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, giving him less time in prison and making him eligible for parole more quickly.

Terry’s family said in court that they wanted a harsher punishment, and they took issue with the Fayette Commonwealth Attorney’s office giving Walters a chance to plead to lesser charges.

Other victims’ families have expressed similar frustrations as they’ve watched someone responsible for killing a loved one accept a reduced conviction, or get acquitted altogether in a jury trial.

And as Lexington has begun taking part in felony mediation, a court process which brings prosecutors together with defense teams to negotiate more plea deals, some victims’ families have grown more frustrated.

A handful of Terry’s family members gave testimony in court during the sentencing of Walters, saying they were unhappy with Walters’ reduced prison time.

Walters, who’s now 73, faced a life sentence when he was originally charged. However, his sentence was reduced to 20 years when he agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter. Walters will be eligible for parole after serving 20% of his sentence, according to state law. Because he has been credited for time served while waiting for his case to be resolved, he will be eligible for parole next year.

There’s a lot more at the original.

I’m not that annoyed that a 73-year-old man might get out of prison when he’s 74; he’s probably beyond his crime-committing years, where Messrs Boulder, Armor, Mitchell and Jackson will still be young men. I am upset that Kentucky state law allows parole as early as having served 20% of one’s sentence. Remember Cody Allen Arnett, whom we have previously mentioned. Mr Arnett was convicted for two robberies in Lexington, on August 7, 2015, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. As early as June 26, 2018 he was recommended for parole, and was scheduled to be released on August 1, 2018. This would mean that he served a week less than three years for his fifteen year sentence. Within 76 days of his release, Mr Arnett was arrested for the forcible rape at knifepoint of a Georgetown College coed, at a time in which he could have and should have still been in prison. Mr Arnett had five violent felony offenses on his record. Mr Arnett was only able to rape his victim because the Parole Board let him out early.

We are letting bad guys, bad guys who have been caught and convicted and sent to prison, out too early! Just 20% of sentence served before eligibility for parole, for manslaughter? A lot of the fault for this is on state Parole Boards, but the Parole Boards are only able to make such mistakes because the state legislature has allowed them to do so. Did releasing Mr Arnett really relieve prison overcrowding? Yeah, it did . . . for 76 whole days. And now he’s going to be taking up cell space for twenty more years, and a young woman has to go through the rest of her life remembering being raped at knifepoint, to empty that cell for those 76 days. All of normal society loses because a clear and present danger was turned loose early.

Even Mr Arnett is the loser in all of this. He could have served his entire previous sentence, not raped his victim, and be out much earlier than his earliest possible parole date now. Mr Boulder, now staring at seven years in prison, if he had just been kept locked up on some of his five previous arrests, would not have been part of the murder of Messrs Slaughter and Webb, and might be getting out sooner. Mr Armor is looking at 14 years behind bars, but if he had been in jail for the two previous arrests, both of which were barely a year prior to the murders, he wouldn’t have been part of the crew that killed the two 18-year-olds over their “disparaging remarks.”

We aren’t doing anyone any favors by letting these guys off leniently! The state legislature needs to tighten up parole laws, the Parole Board needs to tighten up on letting bad guys loose early, and prosecutors need to pursue maximum charges.

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In Philadelphia, Black Lives Don’t Matter!

The mission of journalism is to report the news, the truth, to the public, even if it means digging deeply into things that some people, particularly people in positions of power, do not want disclosed. Journalists must have an open mind, to see the truth, even if the truth is not what they wanted or expected, and report it accurately. 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, on the other hand, only see what they want to see.

Philly’s gun violence epidemic reaches a perilous new low as a 7-year-old is shot while playing video games | Editorial

The only thing more disturbing than the relentless pace of shootings in the city is the lack of action and outrage from those sworn to protect residents.

by the Editorial Board | Tuesday, August 23, 2022

In case city leaders have yet to realize that gun violence has reached epidemic proportions, consider the following: A 7-year-old boy was sitting in his bedroom playing video games Saturday night when he was shot in the thigh by a stray bullet from outside his home.

The shooting of a boy innocently playing in his bedroom should shake city leaders to their core and spark a full-throated call to action. So should the latest tally of weekend gun violence in Philadelphia: 21 people were shot between Saturday and Sunday.

At one point, the shootings were occurring minutes apart. An unidentified male was shot in the head at 12:21 a.m. on Sunday. Five minutes later, a 23-year-old man was shot in the back. Just 24 minutes later, a 59-year-old man was shot in the buttocks and left thigh.

The only thing more disturbing than the relentless pace of shootings that continues unabated across the city is the lack of action and outrage from those sworn to protect residents. What will it take for Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, and City Council to do something — anything — to try to stem the flow of blood?

On May 9, 2021, the same Editorial Board which expressed such outrage, endorsed Larry Krasner for re-election. It wasn’t that the Editorial Board did not know what the city had in Mr Krasner; on that same May 9, 2021, the City of Brotherly Love suffered its 183rd murder of the year, an average of 1.4186 per day, a whopping 46 more than on the same date in 2020.

In 2020, the city saw 499 murders, just one short of the record set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990.

On May 9, 2021, the Editorial Board knew that it was Mr Krasner and his office which let Hasan Elliot out on the streets, when they could have locked him up for a parole violation, and that Mr Elliot then killed Philadelphia Police Corporal James O’Connor. The Editorial Board know that under Mr Krasner prosecution of arrests for illegal firearms possession have dropped dramatically. Yet now that are asking, “What will it take,” for Mr Krasner “to do something — anything — to try to stem the flow of blood?”

“Something” and “anything” apparently does not include something really radical like locking up criminals. In their endorsement of Mr Krasner, the Board wrote:

A complex, relatively recent spike in gun violence isn’t a reason to return to the mass incarceration regime of yesteryear, but a challenge to do better.

Oddly enough, the “mass incarceration regime of yesteryear” was coincident with a significant reduction in murders in Philly. As we noted on August 9th, under Philadelphia under Mayor Jim Kenney and District Attorney Larry Krasner have led the city into more homicides so far in 2022 than any entire year under previous Mayor Michael Nutter, District Attorney Seth Williams, and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey.

Are the Editorial Board now willing to try “mass incarceration” again? That would certainly fall under trying “anything” “to try to stem the flow of blood,” wouldn’t it?

How about “stop and frisk”? With the ever-mounting toll of shootings and death, City Council President Darrell Clarke floated the idea of a return to the “stop and frisk” policies. The Editorial Board didn’t like that idea, either:

The rise in gun violence has prompted some City Council members to call for the Police Department to reexamine its stop-and-frisk policy. While the idea is well intended, it should be a nonstarter.

The Philadelphia Police Department has a long history of racial discrimination and brutality aimed at the Black and Latino communities.

In 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city, alleging police used racial profiling to illegally stop, search, and detain thousands of people. To settle the lawsuit, the Police Department agreed to collect data on all stop-and-frisks and train officers in the use of the tactic.

In the years since, the practice has continued with significant modifications — chief among them: Officers must have sound legal suspicions to make stops. As a result, the number of stops has fallen precipitously: In 2015, police made nearly 400,000 pedestrian stops; this year, officers are on track for about 10,000 stops.

Also in 2015: Philadelphia saw 280 homicides. Since then, the city has seen 277, followed by 315, 353, 356, 499 and 562 murders each subsequent year, and 352 so far this year. We can’t know that the reduction from 400,000 to about 10,000 pedestrian stops has contributed the huge rise in murders, but the numbers do seem rather stark.

That’s another “something,” “anything” the Editorial Board don’t want the city to try.

The problem is that the Editorial Board are too blind to see the problem! The police do not stop crimes; the police respond to crimes, clean up the mess left behind by crimes, and try to arrest the perpetrators of crimes. Yes, the very short-staffed Philadelphia Police Department are not solving enough crimes, and yes, the George Soros-sponsored District Attorney is not prosecuting crimes seriously enough, both of which reduce the deterrent to the bad guys when it comes to committing crimes, but the actual prevention of crime is not something the city government can do.

The prevention of crime comes from children being reared right, in stable, two-parent homes, but it’s far, far, far too politically incorrect to say that. And when the city government, and The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Editorial Board, and all of its opinion columnists, and all of the media coverage support the killing of children who are simply too inconvenient to be allowed to live, can it really be a surprise that that message is getting through to the teenagers and twenty-somethings on the street?

The left look for the problem everywhere but where it is. Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong wrote, on July 20th, Philly needs new solutions to prevent gun violence. Not conversations. And not parties. In it, she wrote:

After putting it off for years, I finally got around to participating in the Beer Summit put on by Global Citizen, the nonprofit group that organizes the Martin Luther King Day of Service.

Billed as a “conversation on race, class, and power,” the annual gathering — which began in 2009 when President Barack Obama convened a “beer summit” at the White House with Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley, after Gates’ arrest — was virtual this year, so I could watch the recording at my leisure.

There was lots of good commentary. As Temple University’s David Brown pointed out, “The whole notion of the Beer Summit is to bring different people from different perspectives along and [focus] on a common challenge in a community.”

This year’s theme was gun violence sparked by white supremacy.

She has got to be kidding. Yes, there have been a few mass shootings by supposed “white supremacists,” but the number of their victims pales in comparison to the numbers of black Philadelphians being killed by other black Philadelphians. Unlike Philadelphia, St Louis, our most murderous city, breaks down its homicide cases on race. In a city in which slightly less than half the population are black, 121 out of 130 homicides as of August 24th had black victims, and out of 84 known suspects, 83 are black.

It isn’t “white supremacy” killing all of those black victims in the Gateway City, and it hasn’t been “white supremacy” killing all of those victims in Philly. But Jenice Armstrong, the Editorial Board, and almost everyone else can’t bring themselves to tell the truth: the blood being spilled by the mostly black victims of shootings has been spilled by black assailants.

Me? I can say it, because I’m retired, and I can’t be ‘canceled,’ can’t lose my job for doing something really radical like telling the truth. As horrible as the homicide rates have been in Philly, in St Louis, in Baltimore and Chicago, they really aren’t that bad for white people.

In Philly, black lives don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter as much as the left keeping their mouths shut as far as telling the truth is concerned. The key to reducing the carnage is to stop supporting the social policies and tolerances which have produced it.

References

References
↑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 objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Killadelphia

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain noted the drive-by shootings at the Shepard Recreation Center in West Philadelphia, complete with a link back to our story on the gunfire. 🙂

Mr McCain posited his story Sunday evening, concluding:

Like so much else in the “progressive” agenda, the soft-on-crime policies of Soros-backed District Attorney Larry Krasner are hurting the people whom Democrats imagine to be the beneficiaries. All this talk about “civil rights” and “social justice” won’t help you if you’re dead, and 346 people have already been murdered this year in Philadelphia, which is on pace to break the homicide record the city set last year.

Alas! The Philadelphia Police Department only updates their Current Crime Statistics Page during ‘normal business hours’ Monday through Friday, so Mr McCain’s statistics are behind the times; the weekend’s toll pushed it up to an even 350 dead bodies.

350 murders ÷ 233 days elapsed in the year = 1.5021 homicides per day, x 365 = 548 projected killings for the year. While the city is six murders ahead of the same date last year, last year saw a bit of a ‘lull’ in the killings between July 9th and the end of the Labor Day holiday, at which point the murder rate really picked up from 1.4578 to 1.7715 per day.

Many on the left, following the unfortunate death of methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled convicted felon George Floyd as he resisted arrest in Minneapolis demanded that cities “defund the police,” something Philadelphia’s city government made noises about but, in the end, did not do; the police department’s budget grew by $30 million this year. Trouble is, the Philadelphia Police Department has been defunded, not by government action, but by officers leaving the force:

The Philly Police Department is short 1,300 officers. Here’s why the situation is about to get worse.

Police leaders have blamed both the city’s uniquely stringent hiring requirements and a national shortage of people who want to become police officers.

by Anna Orso and Ryan W. Briggs | Friday, August 19, 2022

The Philadelphia Police Department has faced a critical shortage of officers for months — one that’s all but certain to get worse as hundreds more cops plan to leave.

With the police force already operating about 20% below its target staffing level, more than 800 officers and civilian employees have set retirement dates within the next four years by enrolling in the city’s deferred pension program.

The decades-old program helps officials prepare for the departure of longtime employees by allowing city workers to begin collecting on pension benefits four years before they retire. Fresh pension records analyzed by The Inquirer show the number of Police Department enrollees doubled in four years.

The figures mean officers are leaving faster than the department can recruit them. The force is virtually guaranteed to see about 200 retirements for each of the next four years. But this year, just 120 cadets will be eligible to graduate from the police academy.

Part of the reason I didn’t note this story previously was that it was subscribers’ only content, and linking back to it still meant that readers of The First Street Journal still couldn’t see it, and could not check to see that I had quoted the story accurately. However, WPVI-TV, Channel 6, the ABC owned-and-operated station in the City of Brotherly Love, had at least a brief story on the same subject.

While cities across the nation are experiencing a loss of municipal workers, possibly due to mayors imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates — as we noted earlier this month, Mayor Jim Kenney has already fired 15, and there are 68 more set to be terminated — Philadelphia being no exception, the PPD under Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is hemorrhaging personnel faster than other city departments. In a city in which the Police Commissioner does not stand behind her officers, and the District Attorney takes far more delight in prosecuting police officers than actual criminals, who would want to be a cop in Philly? In a city in which Larry Krasner could get not just elected on an anti-police and refusing to prosecute some offenses platform, but re-elected, by landslide margins in both the primary and general elections after the city’s homicide rate soared, what incentive can there really be to strap on your equipment only to be shot at from all sides, from the criminals to the District Attorney’s office to The Philadelphia Inquirer and its constant attacks on officers?

Simply put, the Philadelphia Police Department has been defunded, not by the city, but by the actions of the people of Philadelphia. Fewer crimes get solved, police presence is diminished, and many criminals actually arrested don’t get prosecuted, and thus we come back to the city’s crime rate. With fewer crimes solved, deterrence of crime decreases. With fewer police officers on the streets, fewer potential incidents of bad guys just opening fire on other bad guys — the majority of city homicides — are prevented.

All of this is exactly what the people of Philadelphia want, as indicated by how they actually vote.

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You in a heap o’ trouble!

Meet J’Lynn Hersey! Just four weeks after his 18th birthday, young Mr Hersey managed to rack up an impressive list of criminal charges:

  • KRS §508.010 Assault, First Degree, a Class B felony, 1 count
  • KRS §512.020 Criminal Mischief, First Degree, a Class D felony, 3 counts
  • KRS §512.030 Criminal Mischief, Second Degree, a Class A misdemeanor, 2 counts
  • KRS 512.040 Criminal Mischief, Third Degree, a Class B misdemeanor, 2 counts
  • KRS §508.060 Wanton Endangerment, First Degree, a Class D felony, 5 counts
  • KRS §520.095 Fleeing or Evading Police via Motor Vehicle, First Degree, a Class D felony, 1 count
  • KRS §520.095Fleeing or Evading Police on Foot, First Degree, a Class D felony, 1 count
  • Leaving the Scene of an Accident, Failure to Render Aid or Assistance, 1 count
  • No Operator’s License, Moped, 1 count
  • Failure to Appear, Citation for Misdemeanor
    • KRS §508.010 Assault, First Degree, a Class B felony, 1 count
    • KRS §508.060 Wanton Endangerment, First Degree, a Class D felony, 2 counts
    • KRS §527.100 Possession of a Handgun by a Minor, a Class A misdemeanor for a first offense, Class D felony for a subsequent offense, 2 counts
    • KRS 512.040 Criminal Mischief, Third Degree, a Class B misdemeanor, 2 counts

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.

Young Mr Hersey could be spending a good, long time as a guest of the Commonwealth, at least if Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn doesn’t use ‘mediation’ to let him off lightly. It would seem that young Mr Hersey, if he is guilty of the charges against him — and he is innocent until proven guilty — has a serious lack of respect for the law:

18-year-old faces charges for two recent shootings in Lexington, police say

by Alex Acquisto | Friday, August 19, 2022 | 7:47 AM EDT

J’Lynn Hersey, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

A young man arrested earlier this month for a shooting on East Short Street has been charged with crimes related to another shooting.J’Lynn Hersey, 18, has been charged in a shooting that occurred on Aug. 11 in the 800 block of Nickwood Trail and left one man injured, the Lexington Police Department announced Thursday.

Hersey was previously taken into custody and charged in a shooting on East Short Street near Elm Tree Lane on Aug. 12. In that incident, he allegedly fired multiple shots from his car at another vehicle and then fled from police on foot.

Around 9:10 p.m. on Aug. 11, officers responded to a shots fired call on Nickwood Trail. Police arrived to find a 27-year-old man suffering from a gunshot wound. He was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries, police said.

In addition to the charges stemming from the shooting on East Short Street, Hersey has been charged with first-degree assault, two counts of wanton endangerment, three counts of first-degree criminal mischief, two counts of second-degree criminal mischief, and two counts of third-degree criminal mischief.

What my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal chose not to publish Mr Hersey’s mugshot, but WKYT-TV, Channel 27, showed it, as did WTVQ-TV, Channel 36, WLEX-TV, Channel 18, and the city’s press release. Despite the McClatchy Mugshot Policy’s[1]McClatchy Mugshot Policy: Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean … Continue reading concern about ‘disproportionate harm to people of color,’ the people of Lexington knew what Mr Hersey looked like. The newspaper claims a daily readership — not circulation — of 159,826, which assumes that three people read each copy, while the total number of households of the three television stations which showed Mr Hersey’s mugshot was for the 6:00 PM newscast is 95,000.[2]Calculated as an 18.7% ‘share,’ where one rating point equals 5,082 homes. The Herald-Leader did not keep readers from knowing that the suspect is black. And let’s tell the very politically incorrect truth here: anyone who read the suspect’s first name, J’Lynn, simply assumed that he is black.

I asked, just yesterday, if The Philadelphia Inquirer’s policy of concealing race from news stories doesn’t actually contribute to the stereotype that most criminals are black. In Philly, it seems like they are! But as I showed here and here and here and here, just over the last month, a lot of criminal suspects in Lexington are white. By concealing mugshots, the Herald-Leader just might be strengthening the stereotype that they are trying to kill.

Back to Mr Hersey: does anyone really believe that this guy — assuming that the charges against him are valid — is really a candidate to be reformed? Or is he more likely to commit other violent crimes after he gets out of prison? We can’t know that, in advance, but we do know one thing: as long as he’s behind bars, he won’t be shooting up Lexington’s streets. And the next time he does shoot up the city’s streets, someone could wind up stone cold graveyard dead.

References

References
↑1 McClatchy Mugshot Policy: Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness. In fact, some police departments have started moving away from taking/releasing mugshots as a routine part of their procedures.

To address these concerns, McClatchy will not publish crime mugshots — online, or in print, from any newsroom or content-producing team — unless approved by an editor. To be clear, this means that in addition to photos accompanying text stories, McClatchy will not publish “Most wanted” or “Mugshot galleries” in slide-show, video or print.

  • Is there an urgent threat to the community?
  • Is this person a public official or the suspect in a hate crime?
  • Is this a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?

If an exception is made, editors will need to take an additional step with the Pub Center to confirm publication by making a note in the ‘package notes‘ field in Sluglife.

↑2 Calculated as an 18.7% ‘share,’ where one rating point equals 5,082 homes.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer conceals a truth that everyone already knows Is the Inky actually perpetuating a stereotype it wishes to avoid?

We have noted, many times before, that The Philadelphia Inquirer censors the news because publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes demands it. But it has to be asked: does their deliberate censorship actually reinforce the stereotype they are trying to avoid?

‘I’m grateful to be alive.’ Victim of West Philly rec center shooting heals as three accused gunmen face charges.

Tahmir Pinckney, Azyear Sutton-Walker, and Marlon Spurell, who are all 22 years old, were arraigned overnight Thursday on charges including attempted murder and jailed on $3 million bail each.

by Chris Palmer and Mensah M. Dean | Thursday, August 18, 2022 | 1:15 PM EDT

Photo via 6ABC News Click to enlarge.

Three of the men accused of opening fire during a drive-by shooting outside a West Philadelphia rec center this week — an incident that left five people wounded, two of them critically — have been charged with crimes including attempted murder, aggravated assault, and conspiracy, court records show.Tahmir Pinckney, Azyear Sutton-Walker, and Marlon Spurell, who are all 22 years old, were arraigned overnight Thursday and jailed on $3 million bail each, court records show. All were being represented by the Defender Association, which declined to comment Thursday morning.

Police said the men were among six people who began shooting out of a white Dodge Durango around 7 p.m. Tuesday on the 300 block of North 57th Street, just steps from the Shepard Recreation Center, where dozens of people were outside playing basketball, football, or otherwise enjoying a summer evening.

The Inquirer doesn’t print mugshots, because Miss Hughes believes that being an anti-racist news organization just won’t allow that.

But the Inky isn’t the only news source in town, and the television stations did show the mugshots. Television news is, of course, is a medium much more dependent upon the visual, so it’s understandable that, regardless of how #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading the management are, pictures have to be published. The Inquirer, which has a far smaller circulation than the television stations have viewers, certainly didn’t keep the public from seeing the mugshots, and noting what Miss Hughes desperately wants not noted, that the suspects were all black — something most people would have inferred anyway, given the names of the suspects — but at a certain point, one has to ask: is the Inky, by censoring all mugshots, contributing not only to the stereotype that most criminals are black, but actually pushing a message, that all criminals are black?

I’m sure that’s not the intention of the journolists[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading who work for what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[3]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt., but it has to be considered a possibility. The stereotype that most criminals are black certainly exists, and by censoring the news where race is concerned, isn’t the Inky contributing to that stereotype? When the newspaper declines to publish something like this, won’t most of the readers simply assume what the Inky refuses to tell them? I’m guessing that there are at least some criminals in the City of Brotherly Love who are white, but the newspaper doesn’t tell us that.

The original article title in the Inquirer was “Tahmir Pinckney, Azyear Sutton-Walker, Marlon Spurell charged over West Philly shooting near Shepard rec center,” which you can see if you hold your cursor over the tab of the Inky article. An editor changed that, which wasn’t a terrible idea, since part of the article focused on the victims, but at least it wasn’t front-and-center on the newspaper’s website main page. Their names, however, were prominently featured in the subtitle.

The Enquirer Inquirer did tell us, in a sort of offhand way, that both the shooters and the victims were gang-bangers, without using the word “gang”:

an ongoing feud between groups of young men — with the shooters in the car on one side of the dispute, and the victims on the other. One of the victims shot Thursday had also been shot several weeks ago,

At least some of the targeted victims were armed themselves, and returned fire.

Mr Spurell was awaiting trial — or, more probably, having the charges dropped by Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner — on a drug trafficking charge from four months ago, while Mr “Pinkney pleaded no contest to a drug charge in 2019 and was sentenced to a year of probation.” I’m actually surprised that the newspaper told us that, because it will lead more readers to assume that the arrested men are actually guilty; these are some bad dudes!

The Inquirer includes short, first person, biographies of its writers at the bottom of its articles. I have to wonder: how does Mr Palmer focus on how criminal justice and law enforcement are “evolving and impacting communities during a moment of reform”? How does Mr Dean “report on law breakers, those they impact, and how the criminal justice system interacts with both” when he is required to censor part of the news? Both reporters are actually contributing to the stereotypes that Miss Hughes wants to avoid, though I’ve no doubt that such is required by editorial guidelines, regardless of what their personal inclinations might be.

Wouldn’t actually telling the whole truth serve better?

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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The problem is not mass incarceration; the problem is that not enough people are incarcerated, for not a long enough time

Larry Krasner, the police-hating defense attorney sponsored by George Soros to become District Attorney in Philadelphia, really, really doesn’t like putting criminals in jail. He is a strong believer in “restorative justice,” and his office issued, on May 26, 2022, a paper claiming that their “restorative justice” programs have worked just spectacularly well.

So it is no surprise that Mr Krasner doesn’t like it when independent studies show that his policies have led to increases in crime!

New study by former DA links Philadelphia’s high homicide rate to a drop in criminal sentencings

Deprosecution practices started well before DA Larry Krasner’s time in office, research shows

by Kristen Johnson | Monday, August 15, 2022 | 7:25 AM EDT

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia’s high homicide rate may be linked to a rise in deprosecution practices, according to a recent study by the former district attorney of Chester County.

For the third year in a row, homicides in Philadelphia are at an all-time high, and fewer criminal acts are being charged or sought in the city.

According to prosecution research — specifically, sentencing data — former Chester County DA Tom Hogan found prosecutions had dropped 70% over the course of about five to six years in Philadelphia.

“The results that we come up with is that there was an increase of roughly 74 homicides per year from 2015 to 2019 in Philadelphia associated with deprosecution,” he explained.

Hogan, who is also a former criminal defense attorney, served as DA of Chester County from 2012 to 2020. He now works in private practice and is seeking a Ph.D. in criminology next year at the University of Cambridge.

He partnered with the University of Pennsylvania for this study and spent months researching deprosecution. The study found the spike started well before Philly’s current top prosecutor, Larry Krasner — who has faced criticism for his progressive practices — and actually began during DA Seth Williams’ time in office.

“The sentencings decrease by 35% in 2015 over prior trends,” said Hogan. “Then what you see by 2019 is sentencings in Philadelphia are down almost 70%, so that is a huge drop.”

The report makes it clear that the trends in reduced prosecutions and sentencing began under District Attorney Seth Williams, who was himself convicted in federal court. Faced with 29 counts, Mr Williams pleaded guilty to one count of bribery and was sentenced to five years in prison. Due to the completion of a drug rehabilitation program and time off for good behavior while in prison, he was released in just under three years.

Mr Krasner, who campaigned on reducing prosecutions for drug arrests, reviewing old cases to look for prosecutorial misconduct, and holding the police accountable, was elected in 2017, and took office on New Year’s Day of 2018.

So, what happened? While Mr Williams was District Attorney, homicides showed a slight increase from Lynne Abraham’s previous tenure, going from 302 to 306 in 2010, Mr Williams’ first year, then to 326 and 331, before dropping to 246, 248, 280, 277, and a final jump to 315 in Mr Williams last year. Michael Nutter began his two terms as Mayor in 2008, bringing Charles Ramsey along with him as Police Commissioner.

Under Mr Krasner, and Mayor Jim Kenney, homicides immediately jumped to 353 in 2018 and 356 in 2019. But here’s the kicker:

The study does not include 2020 or 2021 data due to anomalies caused by the pandemic and civil unrest.

Thud!

Homicides soared to 499, one short of the record of 500, in 2020, and then not only broke that record, but completely shattered it, rising to 562 in 2021. The study doesn’t include the worst of Mr Krasner’s term!

It’s August 17th, noy quite 2/3 through the year, so we don’t know what 2022’s final numbers will be, but as of 11:59 PM EDT on Tuesday, August 16th, the city is six murders ahead of the same date last year, 345 to 339, a 1.770% increase.

There are a couple of different ways to do the numbers. 345 ÷ 228, the number of days elapsed in the year, = 1.513 murders per day, multiplied by 365 = 552 projected killings. However, if you multiply 562, last year’s total murders, by the current 1.770% increase, the total jumps to 572.

Mr Krasner, of course, does not want to accept any responsibility for the huge surge in homicides:

Hogan said making fewer sentencings was a “policy choice” that started with Williams but “increased dramatically” under Krasner.

When asked, Krasner criticized the study.

“[Hogan] is a traditional prosecutor. He is not a scientist in his field,” said Krasner. “He does not deserve to be a scientist and we respectfully disagree.”

Uh huh, right:

Tom Hogan is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He writes on the issues of the criminal justice system, public safety, terrorism, quantitative analysis, and politics. Hogan has been published in numerous academic journals. In addition, he has been published in and/or quoted by media outlets including City Journal, RealClearPolitics, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Prior to becoming affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, Hogan has served in multiple roles. He practiced law at a major international law firm and litigation boutique, representing Fortune 500 companies and individuals in complex civil litigation and criminal investigations. He served as a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice. He was elected twice as the Chester County District Attorney in Pennsylvania, a county with over 500,000 citizens. He was the chair of the Liberty Mid-Atlantic HIDTA group, coordinating drug law enforcement for state and local organizations across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. He has worked with elected officials at the federal, state, and local level on drafting legislation and addressing critical policy issues.

Hogan received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and his legal degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. While practicing law, he also received a Master of Science degree in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania, concentrating on statistical issues and data science in the criminal justice system. He has taught lawyers, law students, and graduate students from multiple disciplines on issues including criminal procedure, trial advocacy, ethics, officer-involved shootings, and statistical problems.

In other words, Mr Hogan actually is an expert in his field. But, because Mr Krasner doesn’t like the numbers, he has decided that “He is not a scientist in his field,” and “He does not deserve to be a scientist.”

What Mr Hogan found was a strong statistical correlation between reduced prosecution and sentencing, with the greatly increased homicide rate. It’s an old, old truth: correlation does not prove causation, and the correlation Mr Hogan found does not prove that Mr Krasner’s soft-on-criminals policies have caused the homicide rate to increase. However, we have long accepted strong correlations as almost certain causes when it comes to things like smoking causing lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, even though not all smokers develop lung cancer or COPD.

But we already know that Mr Krasner’s lenient policies have caused the death of one Philadelphia Police Officer.

One of the people treated leniently by Mr Krasner and his office, and who wasn’t in jail on Friday, March 13, 2020, was Hasan Elliot, 21. How did the District Attorney’s office treat Mr Elliot, a known gang-banger?

  • Mr Elliott, then 18 years old, was arrested in June 2017 on gun- and drug-possession charges stemming after threatening a neighbor with a firearm. The District Attorney’s office granted him a plea bargain arrangement on January 24, 2018, and he was sentenced to 9 to 23 months in jail, followed by three years’ probation. However, he was paroled earlier than that, after seven months in jail.
  • Mr Elliot soon violated parole by failing drug tests and failing to make his meetings with his parole officer.
  • Mr Elliott was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine on January 29, 2019. This was another parole violation, but Mr Krasner’s office did not attempt to have Mr Elliot returned to jail to finish his sentence, nor make any attempts to get serious bail on the new charges; he was released on his own recognizance.
  • After Mr Elliot failed to appear for his scheduled drug-possession trial on March 27, 2019, prosecutors dropped those charges against him.

On that Friday the 13th, Police Corporal James O’Connor IV, 46, was part of a Philadelphia police SWAT team trying to serve a predawn arrest warrant on Mr Elliott, from a March 2019 killing. Mr Elliot greeted the SWAT team with a hail of bullets, and Corporal O’Connor was killed. Had Mr Elliot been in jail, as he could have been due to parole violations, had Mr Krasner’s office treated him seriously, Corporal O’Connor would have gone home safely to his wife that day. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

Philadelphia Police Officers and FOP members block District Attorney Larry Krasner from entering the hospital to meet with slain Police Corporal James O’Connor’s family.


Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 president John McNesby also has criticized Krasner, saying his policies led to the killing of O’Connor. “Unfortunately, he’s murdered by somebody that should have never been on the street,” McNesby said. McNesby also said FOP members and police officers formed a human barricade to block Krasner from entering the hospital Friday to see O’Connor’s family.

James O’Connor is stone-cold graveyard dead because District Attorney Krasner and his minions, in their abhorrence of mass incarceration, let a repeat offender, one with a record of carrying firearms, using and selling drugs, and flouting his required probation meetings, off the hook. He was a guy who needed to be incarcerated, and who didn’t even need to be tried again to get him locked up, but Mr Krasner and his office left him out on the streets, even though the police had him in physical custody on January 29, 2019.

Did the lenient treatment do Mr Elliot any good? Had Mr Krasner and his minions treated Mr Elliot seriously, he’d have been in jail on that fateful Friday the 13th, but he’d also be looking at getting out of prison eventually. Now, Mr Elliot, and four of his goons, are looking at spending the rest of their miserable lives in prison.

Amazingly enough, the Editorial Board of the Inquirer actually endorsed Mr Krasner for re-election in 2021, saying:

A complex, relatively recent spike in gun violence isn’t a reason to return to the mass incarceration regime of yesteryear, but a challenge to do better.

Yes, it actually is a reason to return to mass incarcerations! Despite Mr Krasner’s, and the Editorial Board’s, assertions, we know one thing with 100% certainty: a criminal locked up in SCI Phoenix can’t shoot someone in Strawberry Mansion or Kensington.

I have said it before: mass incarceration isn’t the problem. The problem is that not enough people are incarcerated, for not a long enough time. Tom Hogan has just proved that.