Category Archives: Crime

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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.

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Killadelphia Do gun buyback programs work?

Tweet by Captain Joseph Busa, commanding officer, 39th Police District. Click to enlarge.

There is an episode of Blue Bloods, a television series about a fictional law enforcement family, “No Questions Asked,” about a gun buyback program, in which a very distinctive, pearl-handled pistol linked to a crime was turned in, in this case by the brother of the criminal. Detective Danny Reagan had to jump through all sorts of hoops to find the criminal, since the buyback program was not supposed to produce any evidence against anyone who sold the firearms. But, in a way, it showed that the only time such a buyback program produced a weapon actually used in a crime was when it was turned in by someone else.

Philly buyback events have yielded 1,000 guns in the last three years. None had been used in crimes.

“It’s political theater,” said Joe Giacalone, a former New York Police Department sergeant-turned-CUNY criminology professor.

by Ryan W. Briggs and Ellie Rushing | Saturday, August 13, 2022

As both shootings and gun sales in Philadelphia rose to unprecedented levels last year, a growing number of residents also turned their firearms over to the city’s Police Department, data show.

In 2021, during 16 gun-buyback events — in which people are typically offered $50 to $200 gift cards for each weapon — 558 handguns and 188 long guns were turned in. That’s a 532% increase over 2019, when just five such events were held, according to police data.

Yet of the more than 1,000 weapons turned in over the last three years, not a single one has been linked to a crime.

Ahhh, the journolism[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading of The Philadelphia Inquirer! The article headline states that none of the guns bought back “had been used in crimes,” but the article tells us that none have been linked to crimes. A gun could have been used in a crime, to threaten people, but never actually fired, in which case there would be no expended bullets recovered to test for ballistics which could link a particular weapon to a crime.

The number of buyback events — and media attention surrounding them — has grown in reaction to the city’s escalating gun violence crisis. But experts on the issue say the lackluster statistics show the events are not effective in reducing crime.

“It’s not reaching the area of the community that’s possessing illegal guns and using them,” said Joe Giacalone, a former New York Police Department sergeant-turned-CUNY criminology professor.

“It’s political theater.”

Philadelphia Police Capt. Frank Palumbo, who coordinates with community groups to staff buyback events, acknowledged that police generally do not expect crime guns to be turned in. But he said getting just one gun off the street could still potentially prevent a fatal shooting.

“It tends to be family people, mom-and-pop-type people” attending the events, he said. “It’s people that want to get a gun potentially out of the hands of a toddler that might frequent their homes, or get rid of a gun they don’t use or have the means to secure.”

And there you have it: even the Inky is admitting that these silly programs aren’t targeting the actual criminals. Captain Palumbo tells us that he knows that the bad guys, the ones who expect to use a firearm criminally, aren’t about to give up the tools of their trade.

‘Guns do not belong in the home’

Philadelphia is often credited with launching the first gun-buyback program. In 1968, amid a wave of interest in gun-control regulations nationally, City Council and the police commissioner-turned-mayor, Frank Rizzo, organized a “gun turn in” event, although initially no money was offered for the weapons.

Rizzo noted then that the program was not aimed at nabbing criminals but attracting “good citizens” interested in doing their civic duty to get guns out of circulation.

“Guns do not belong in the home,” Rizzo said. “Many homicides occur because a weapon was handy.”

Mr Rizzo presided over four straight years as mayor of over 400 murders per year, and an average of 349.5 for the four years of his second term.

Whatever the late Mr Rizzo’s views about firearms not belonging in people’s homes, it has become very apparent that Philadelphians have been buying weapons, and obtaining concealed carry permits, at a record pace because they have no confidence that the city and Philadelphia Police Department can or will protect them. The Police Department is seriously undermanned:

Shortages in the Police Department have been well-documented. The force, authorized to have 6,380 officers and nearly 1,000 more civilian staff, has 400 vacancies and hundreds more officers off-duty on injury claims. The department saw 195 uniformed officers retire last year, double from five years prior.

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has repeatedly said the department is at its lowest staffing levels in years, hampering its ability to fight crime because it can’t replicate the work of a force that was at least 10% larger several years ago.

That’s a problem in a city that has, over the past two years, seen its highest rates of gun violence in generations. Reports of other crimes, including carjackings and auto thefts, have skyrocketed since the spring of 2020. In the meantime, average police response times jumped 20% in 2021 compared to the year before, according to an Inquirer analysis of department records.

There’s an old saying, “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” Well, in short-staffed Philadelphia, the police are, on average, 22 minutes away.

Of course, there were a few guns not bought back in the City of Brotherly Love:

Pregnant woman shot in the head among 15 gun violence victims in Philly in less than 24 hours

The violence occurred over about 21 hours from noon on Friday through 9:30 a.m. Saturday, leaving at least three dead.

by Nick Vadala and Robert Moran | Saturday, August 13, 2022 | Updated: 8;25 PM EDT

A woman seven months pregnant who was shot in the head, a 6-year-old boy grazed by a stray bullet, and four people injured in a drive-by shooting were among at least 15 shooting victims in Philadelphia on Friday and Saturday, police said.

The violence occurred over about 21 hours, from noon on Friday through 9:30 a.m. Saturday, leaving at least three dead. Police reported no arrests.

Actually, it started earlier than that: a 64-year-old woman was stabbed to death, allegedly by a 16-year-old relative, in the early morning hours on Friday.

2626 North Bouvier Street. Click to enlarge.

The shootings happened as gun violence continues to surge in the city, with 338 homicides and 1,149 shooting victims as of Thursday — 3% more than on the same date last year, which ended in a record 562 homicides.

The pregnant woman, said to be in her 20s, remained in extremely critical condition Saturday at Temple University Hospital.

It was shortly after 10 p.m. Friday when at least two people — including one with a powerful rifle — started shooting at her and a 15-year-old boy while they sat in a white Honda on the 2600 block of North Bouvier Street in North Philadelphia, said Inspector D.F. Pace.

The teenager died a short time later, Pace said.

Police found 43 spent shell casings at the crime scene.

At least 43 rounds fired, in a very narrow street, and the woman is still alive?

The 2600 block of North Bouvier Street — really, one of the city’s very narrow, alley-like streets — isn’t exactly the greatest neighborhood in North Philly, adjacent to Strawberry Mansion. Zillow is telling me that 2626 North Bouvier Street sold for $133,000 on March 26, 2022.

The Inquirer article lists three dead from shootings. With the stabbing, I count four. That makes at least 342 murders in the city, and that’s only the early evening on Saturday night. Looks like the bad guys didn’t turn in their weapons for buyback.

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 Not all murders in Philly are in the combat zone neighborhoods

The Philadelphia Police Department updates its Current Crime Statistics Page only during “normal business hours,” Monday through Friday, so homicides on Friday, Saturday and Sunday are not reported until Monday morning. The City of Brotherly Love — and yes, while I like to use various nicknames for places, using Philly’s nickname is pretty much mocking it these days — had no reported murders on Thursday, leaving the city with 338 homicides, nine more, 2.74% more, than the same date in 2021.

But just because the numbers won’t be officially reported until Monday, we already have one for Friday on the books:

Woman fatally stabbed in South Philadelphia home; 16-year-old relative is person of interest

Police responded to the home on the 2300 block of South 20th Street shortly before 12:30 a.m. Friday.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Friday, August 12, 2022

A 64-year-old woman was stabbed to death early Friday morning and police said a 16-year-old relative is being treated as a person of interest.

Shortly before 12:30 a.m. Friday, police responded to a report of a stabbing in a home on the 2300 block of South 20th Street. When police arrived, they found the woman with multiple stab and cut wounds to her neck in the second floor hallway of the home, Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters at the scene.

A large kitchen knife with a 10-to-12 inch blade that had blood on it was found feet away from the woman’s head, he said. The woman, whose name has not been released, was pronounced dead by a medic, police said.

The 16-year-old was found with blood on him and cuts to his hands, said Small. He was taken to Jefferson Methodist Hospital and was being treated as a person of interest.

The Inquirer story said that an arrest has been made, but that the police did not say who was in custody. However, Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News tweeted that the 16-year-old family member had been taken into custody.

This was not a typical gang-banger shooting, and, for some reason, it appears that the 16-year-old was trying to kill the owner’s cat, and the elderly woman died trying to save her cat.

The 2300 block of South 20th Street is not a terrible neighborhood. Primarily working-class rowhomes, Google Maps, at least as of September of 2019, does not show any houses with front porches barred in to keep out the bad guys, or steel bars on first floor windows. Zillow shows a guesstimated value of the home in question — yes, I know exactly which home it is — of $183,300, and some homes nearby have recently sold for more than $200,000. An obviously flipped rowhome, just a block further up South 20th Street, sold for $290,000 in January of 2021.

Yeah, most of Philly’s violence is in the combat zones, but not all of it. This could have been a kid who was already nuts, or a delinquent treated leniently by the system, or one hopped on drugs, or even just someone who, for some unknown reason, snapped; the information released to the public doesn’t tell us. But life is cheap in Philadelphia, and being in a decent neighborhood is not perfect protection.

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Does Mark Bailey think that getting raped is really not all that bad?

Twitter is a social medium in which you can find all sorts of unexpected things, and the screen capture of a tweet from Mark Bailey pretty much fits the definition of ‘unexpected.’ I do screen captures just in case the author decides that oops, perhaps he shouldn’t have tweeted that. and deletes it. But with [insert plural slang term for the anus here] like me around, the internet is forever!

There were all sorts of responses, the vast majority of which were expressing incredulity that anyone, anyone! would tweet something which could be read as saying that a woman about to be assaulted or raped would be better off just surrendering and taking whatever happened to her, and I will confess to having added a couple of them myself.

But then I asked myself, what was Mr Bailey really trying to say, so I asked him

You know what? I’ll bite and ask intellectually: what do you believe a woman should do if she is about to be assaulted, sexually or otherwise? Do you believe that it is somehow better that she just accept being beaten or raped (rather) than shoot, and possibly kill, the assailant?

Mr Baily hadn’t responded immediately, which is perfectl;y fine: he might not even be on Twitter at after 10:00 PM on a Thursday night. But I did find this from him as I went to his Twitter bio:

Now this is the first response to my posts that seems to understand my meaning. In New York City, you are persecuted if you take the law into your own hands and defend yourself. Walking around with a gun, opens the door to questions about why are you walking around with a gun?

Well, one thing is clear: New York City, and New York State, do not want people to be able to defend themselves against armed criminal assault, as they tried, fortunately unsuccessfully, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, to defend the laws which mostly deny law-abiding citizens the right to carry concealed weapons. It should be noted that the Manhattan District Attorney, another George Soros funded ‘progressive’ stooge named Alvin Bragg, initially sought to try bodega owned José Alba, 61, for fatally stabbing Austin Simmons, 35, who attacked him after Mr Alba refused to accept short payment from Mr Simmons’ girlfriend for something. Eventually, the District Attorney’s office decided to dismiss the charge:

In the prosecution’s motion to dismiss, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sigall said the district attorney’s office would not present the case to a grand jury. “Following an investigation, the People have determined that we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not justified in his use of deadly physical force,” Sigall said in the court filing.

Translation: Mr Bragg wanted to lock up Mr Alba, but knew that no grand jury would indict him, and no petit jury would convict him; Mr Bragg knew that he was looking like a fool, and was trying to cut his losses.

Mr Alba didn’t defend himself by using a firearm, but it certainly brings up Mr Bailey’s second statement: if a New Yorker was carrying a firearm without a permit, and used that firearm to defend himself against an assault, sexual or otherwise, Mr Bragg and his minions might well try to charge him for using potentially deadly force to defend himself.

It was Thursday morning that The New York Times finally noticed the City of Brotherly Love, and published ‘Everybody Is Armed’: As Shootings Soar, Philadelphia Is Awash in Guns: More than 1,400 people have been shot this year in Philadelphia, hundreds of them fatally — a higher toll than in much larger New York or Los Angeles, the day after Mr Bailey’s unfortunate tweet. We have previously noted that Philadelphians are seeking concealed carry permits in record-setting numbers precisely because the bad guys have been on a rampage, killing people in the city at a record breaking pace.

Mr Bailey tweeted:

This all started out as a debate on having guns in public places, and you paranoid people have turned it into a referendum on rape. The premise of the argument originally was whether pulling a gun and trying to kill your rapist, is it worth losing your life if something goes wrong

and:

When all of a sudden, a gun is pulled, anything can happen to either party. The person who shoots could kill the so called rapist, or the rapist could somehow overpower her & use that same gun to kill her.Or she could be arrested & held for trial where she admits killing someone.

In one way, Mr Bailey is correct: if you have to pull out a firearm to defend yourself, it could still go very wrong for you. But Mr Bailey, in trying to make his point, has moved into silliness: while defending yourself against what he called “the so called rapist”, a phrase which certainly sets himself up for more criticism, could go badly for a potential victim, not being able to defend against an assault means getting assaulted. Perhaps he didn’t mean to make it sound that way, but many people, myself included, are reading this as him suggesting that getting assaulted or raped is just not so bad as to be worth risking whatever it is you are risking by defending yourself.

I will notify Mr Bailey, via Twitter, of this article, giving him a reasonable chance to respond.

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Several previously convicted sex offenders arrested in Lexington for parole violations.

We noted, on August 5th, the arrest of previously convicted sex offender William Wehking. It looks like Fayette County is working hard to enforce the laws under which convicted sex offenders must live:

Over a dozen sex offenders in Fayette County arrested for not complying with registry

by Christopher Leach | Wednesday, August 10, 2022 | 1:22 PM EDT | Updated: 3:31 PM EDT

A multi-day operation headed by local and federal law enforcement agencies resulted in the arrests of 13 registered sex offenders in Fayette County who weren’t compliant with the sex offender registry, the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday.

The sheriff’s office, along with the U.S. Marshals Service and Kentucky State Probation & Parole teamed up to carry out a Fayette County sex offender registration operation. The goal of the operation was to ensure supervised, registered sex offenders in Fayette County were compliant with the terms of their probation/parole and applicable laws.

The operation took place on July 26 and 27, according to the sheriff’s office. The coalition checked 78 sex offenders, 57 of which were deemed compliant, the sheriff’s office said. Of the remaining 21, eight were given sanctions and 13 were arrested for violating parole.

Martese Warner, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

One of the individuals arrested, Martese Warner, 31, was also charged with trafficking in marijuana, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of drug paraphernalia.

As of Wednesday morning, all of the 13 suspects arrested were still in custody, according to Fayette County Sheriff Kathy Witt.

“It is my hope that as we move forward that these 13 will have their parole and/or their probation, whichever one it is, rescinded or revoked, and it is my hope that they will have to serve out the rest of their sentence while incarcerated,” Witt said.

As always, the Lexington Herald-Leader chose not to include an offender’s mugshot, but the notion that doing so harms people who may, in the future, be acquitted, should not hold here: these people are all previously convicted sex offenders!

The U.S. marshals said that during the operation they seized 21 cell phones that were unreported or contained violations, three hard drives, two laptops, two “sexual devices/aids,” one knife, one hatchet, one loaded firearm, one box of 9 mm ammunition, 370.3 grams of marijuana, drug paraphernalia, two digital scales, and $700.

Jason Aldridge, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Unfortunately, the newspaper named only one of the offenders, and the information in the last quoted paragraph, while specific about what evidence was seized, tells us nothing about from how many of the arrested individuals it was taken. The WLEX-TV Channel 18 story showed some of the offenders listed: Jason Aldridge, George Cady, Likuan Clark, Justin Cook, and Kenneth Cook. All are charged with parole violation (technical violation), with no bond amount listed. Like Sheriff Witt stated, they should have their parole revoked and be kept behind bars until the very last day of their sentences.

George Cady, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Likuan Clark, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Justin Cook, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Kenneth Cook, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

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Congratulations to Jim Kenney!

Congratulations to Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney! He has just achieved more murders in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year than any full year in which his predecessor, Michael Nutter, held the office. George Soros-sponsored District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw certainly deserve credit as well!

Last night was a Monday night, not a weekend, but at a time in which you’d expect Philadelphia’s gang-bangers to slow down a bit, they haven’t. I’d point out that August 8th was a Sunday, end of the weekend, in 2021, the 32nd weekend of the year, and the same number of weekends have elapsed in 2022, so there’s no additional weekend bump in 2022.

Yes, math geeks like me notice things like that.

August 8th was the 220th day of the year. 337 ÷ 220 = 1.5318 homicides per day in Philly, which works out to a projected 559.107 killings in the city for the entire year. But wait: done another way, taking the percentage increase in homicides over last year, 4.0123, and multiplying that by last year’s 562 murders, we could also project 584.549 murders in Philly!

The difference? In 2021, the city actually saw a decrease in the rate of killings between July 9th and September 6th, the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend. That hasn’t happened so far this year, as July saw sixty homicides, while July of 2021 saw ‘only’ 48 murders.

The homicide rate picked up after the Labor Day weekend last year, from an average of 1.4578 per day — which projected out to 532 for the year — and the final 116 days of the year saw 199 homicides, an average of 1.7155 per day, which lifted the yearly average to 1.5397 per day for the year, and 562 murders. While last year’s mid- to late-summer lull hasn’t been seen so far this year, it has to be asked: will last year’s post Labor Day surge be repeated?

At least The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t ignore the most recent killings, or the surge:

Philly shootings leave 3 dead, including man slain in Popeye’s lot

No arrests have been made, and a motive remains under investigation.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Tuesday, August 9, 2022

One person was killed and two others were injured in a shooting late Monday night in the parking lot of a Popeye’s in Kensington.

Well, of course it was in Kensington!

Just after 11:15 p.m. Monday, officers responded to a call for a person with a gun on the 300 block of West Lehigh Avenue. When officers arrived, they found multiple people with gunshot wounds inside a red sedan. The victims had been shot in the parking lot of the nearby Popeye’s, 6ABC reported.

Police said that three suspects, all armed, came up to the sedan and fired 47 bullets into the car, 6ABC reported. After the shooting, the suspects took off on foot.

One victim, a man, had multiple gunshot wounds to his head and was pronounced dead shortly after at Temple University Hospital. Another victim, a woman, had several gunshot wounds to her body, and the third victim, a man, had multiple gunshot wounds to his back. They were taken to Temple University Hospital in stable condition.

North Orianna Street, via Google Maps, May 2022. Click to enlarge.

The Popeye’s Chicken restaurant is at the corner of West Lehigh Avenue and North Orianna Street. North Orianna Street in the blocks around West Lehigh Avenue is a neighborhood of older row homes, some with porches barred in to keep out the bad guys, vacant lots with concertina wire topping fences, and a generally poverty-stricken look.

One of the wounded, but not killed, victims, was an employee of the Popeye’s restaurant.

The Inquirer report stated that 47 shots had been fired, but that the police had no motive as of yet, but one thing is obvious: this was a targeted assassination. The newspaper also censored the fact, gleaned from the city’s shootings database, that all of the dead were black males.

Further down:

As of Sunday night, the city was ahead of last year’s pace for what ended in a record high number of 562 homicides for the year. By Sunday night, police reported that 333 people have been killed in Philadelphia so far this year.

There were 324 homicides by the same date last year.

Perhaps it’s a bit unfair for a math geek like me to point this out, but the Inky really needs to start looking at the numbers. I’d like to think that a former Pennsylvanian, now 635 miles away in eastern Kentucky, isn’t the only person actually running, and publicizing, the statistics.

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No sense letting this guy plead down; he obviously likes jail!

When a guy has ten separate mugshots listed in the Fayette County Detention Center, all since July 28, 2015, I think it’s fair to say that he just plain likes jail!

Lexington police find man dead while responding to a shooting call. Suspect later arrested

Sean Smith. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

by Christopher Leach | Friday, August 5, 2022 | 6:44 AM EDT | Updated: 11:02 AM EDTLexington police have arrested a suspect in connection to an overnight fatal shooting.

Police said Sean Smith, 53, has been charged with murder and wanton endangerment. Fayette County Detention Center records say Smith was booked in at 8:43 a.m. Friday and is being held without a bond.

The shooting happened around 1:50 a.m. Friday in the 1800 block of Augusta Drive, according to Lt. Joe Anderson with the Lexington Police Department. Officers were responding to a report of a subject down and found a dead male with a gunshot wound on scene, according to Anderson.

Anderson said Friday morning that police were still investigating the shooting and working to determine what led up to the incident.

It’s the city’s 28th homicide of 2022, which is nine short of the annual record set last year.

Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/crime/article264210241.html#storylink=cpy.

Sadly, this story is mostly unremarkable, except for the very last sentence. The article stated, “It’s the city’s 28th homicide of 2022, which is nine short of the annual record set last year.” What was not mentioned is the fact that the 28th homicide of 2021 occurred on October 5th, two full months later in the year. 28 murders as of 216th day of the year equals one homicide every 7.62 days, putting the city on track for 47 or 48 (47.31 actually) killings for 2022, in a city in which even the Herald-Leader has reported that Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn has been “mediating” pleas and sentences in 19 out of 25 murder cases, allowing killers to receive sentences as light as ten years.

KRS §507.020 Murder is a capital offense, which, under KRS §532.030 carries possible sentences of:

  • 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

KRS §508.060 Wanton endangerment in the first degree is a Class D felony, which, under KRS §532.060 carries a sentence of one (1) to five (5) years in the state penitentiary.

No need for Miss Red Corn to offer Mr Smith a sweetheart plea deal; since he obviously likes jail, might as well keep him in jail for the rest of his miserable life. At least that way he won’t be a menace to the innocent people in the city.

 

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How not to sell Philadelphia!

I almost ignored this one, but I just can’t: the photo is just too, too funny!

Philly transplants have over $150,000 more to spend on homes than locals — and it’s driving up home prices

The migration of home buyers from more expensive cities to Philadelphia helps drive up prices across the market.

by Michaelle Bond | Thursday, August 4, 2022

For-sale sign outside a home in the Frankford section of Philadelphia in December 2021. The average person moving into Philadelphia has more money to spend on a house than a Philadelphian does, according to a Redfin analysis. | Alejandro A Alverez, Philadelphia Inquirer staff photographer. Click to enlarge.

Philadelphia may be an affordable big city compared to others on the East Coast and across the country — a draw for new residents — but that’s little comfort to locals who have watched prices rise.In the first half of 2022, people looking to move into Philadelphia searched for houses with a maximum price of $588,000 on average, according to the online brokerage Redfin’s analysis of searches on its website. Locals capped their searches much lower at $422,000.

As home prices continue to climb, people moving largely from more expensive cities have an advantage with an average of 39% more to spend. That, in turn, helps push up prices across the market.

There’s much more at the original.

I do not normally reproduce photos from The Philadelphia Inquirer, but this one struck me as hysterically funny. A reasonably well-researched article about how prices in Philly are lower than in places like New York City and the left coast, the Inky illustrated it with a photo of a home for sale, in which the property owners had effectively put themselves in jail, installing metal bars and a door on the front porch of their rowhome in the Frankford neighborhood, to keep the bad guys out of their property. I have noted this in some bad Philadelphia areas several times.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 16, 2021. Click to enlarge.

In an article noting that there are 57 city blocks where 10 or more people have been shot since 2015, the Inquirer included a graph showing the Kensington area as the worst, Frankford is also included as a not-so-great place. I do not know if the article author, Michaelle Bond, “an urbanism writer covering how people live in their homes, how the market directs choices, and how policies shape communities,” is the one who selected the photo with the article, but whoever picked it could not have done a much better job of turning off people on the idea of moving to the City of Brotherly Love.

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There is no cure for pedophilia If convicted, this fine gentleman should never see the outside of prison again

There is no cure for pedophilia, and any sentence less than life imprisonment simply means that a convicted pedophile will offend again.

Previous offender charged with dozens of sex crime offenses in Lexington, records show

by Christopher Leach | Thursday, August 4, 2022 | 8:24 AM EDT

William Wehking, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

A registered sex offender in Lexington was booked into the Fayette County Detention Center Wednesday afternoon on dozens of charges related to sexual activity with a minor, according to court and jail records.William Wehking, 35, has been charged with 25 counts of possessing matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor and one count of distributing obscene matter to minors, use of a minor in a sexual performance and procuring or promoting the use of a minor in a sexual performance, according to jail records. He’s being held on a $50,000 bond.

Under the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal did not publish the suspect’s mugshot, but, at The First Street Journal we most certainly do. The suspect’s mugshot is a public record available from the Fayette County Detention Center, from which I obtained it.

According to his arrest citation, Wehking knowingly engaged in sexual conversations with a 12-year-old girl. The Lexington Police Department became aware of the activity after being tipped off by the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois, where the victim resides.

Wehking and the victim communicated over Snapchat and text messaging, according to court documents. Investigators got a search warrant for his cell phone and found 25 images and/or videos of minors under the age of 12 engaging in sexual activity. Wehking admitted to the illegal behavior as well as exposing his genitals to the victim in a video chat, according court documents.

Read more here.

Mr Wehking was already on the sex offender registry, non-compliantly due to an unverified address, for a conviction for sexual abuse in Illinois; that victim was 16 years old.

According to the suspect data from the Fayette County Detention Center, the 5’8″, 257 lb Mr Wehking is charged with

  • KRS §531.335 Possession or viewing of matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor under 12 years of age, 25 counts, a Class C felony
  • KRS §531.030 Distribution of obscene matter to minors, first offense, 1 count, a Class A misdemeanor
  • KRS §531.320 Promoting a sexual performance by a minor, 1 count, a Class B felony
  • KRS §531.310 Use of a minor in a sexual performance, 1 count, a Class B felony

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
  • the sentence for a Class C felony is not less than five (5) years nor more than ten (10) years imprisonment

Under KRS §532.090:

  • the sentence for a Class A misdemeanor is imprisonment for a term not to exceed twelve (12) months.

According to my precise calculations, the distinguished Mr Wehking is facing up to 291 years in the state penitentiary, and, if convicted on all counts, that’s exactly the sentence he should receive. Lock him up, and throw away the key!

Of course, that’s unlikely to happen, isn’t it? If convicted on all charges, Mr Wehking could get as little as 10 years in prison, the minimum of the Class B felonies, and be sentenced to have all sentences run concurrently rather than consecutively. The Herald-Leader noted how Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn has been using “mediation” to secure plea bargains:

From murder to manslaughter: How felony mediation works to reduce backlogged caseload

By Taylor Six | July 18, 2022 | 1:00 PM EDT

While the resolution of some recent Fayette County homicide cases has taken years, the new use of mediation in Fayette County has allowed some cases to move much quicker, including the case of a 27-year-old man who has admitted guilt in a deadly shooting that happened just over one year ago.

Danzell Cruse was originally charged with murder, possessing a handgun as a convicted felon and being a persistent felony offender following the shooting of 38-year-old Jocko Green in a parking lot outside of an apartment complex in July 2021.

After Cruse’s defense and prosecutors came together to mediate the case with a retired judge, Cruse pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter. He will be sentenced in August.

Felony mediations were only recently introduced and encouraged in Fayette County in April 2021 by Kentucky Supreme Court Judge John Minton, in efforts to reduce a backlog in criminal cases caused by COVID-19. The pandemic significantly slowed down the progress on the courts system.

Since that time, Fayette Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn said there have been 25 mediations, 19 of which involved murder charges.

Under 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

Simply put, the Commonwealth’s Attorney could have put those 19 killers away for the rest of their miserable lives, or until they were so elderly that they were little risk to society if they ever got out.

  • KRS §507.030 Manslaughter in the first degree is a Class B felony, which, as noted above, carries a sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison.
  • KRS §507.040 Manslaughter in the second degree is a Class C felony, the sentence for which is 5 to 10 years behind bars.

In other words, the Commonwealth’s Attorney negotiated plea bargains which sets the maximum sentence at what the absolute minimum sentence for murder would be. But those murderers manslaughterers weren’t usually getting that twenty year maximum sentence:

There are more such examples, but the point is obvious: if Miss Red Corn is willing to let murderers plead down to manslaughter, and have a chance to get out of prison while still relatively young, can we really expect her to treat Mr Wehking seriously? And if Mr Wehking is allowed to plead down and get a light sentence, can we hold Miss Red Corn accountable if he reoffends?