Category Archives: Crime

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I missed one Two murders in Lexington in the first week of the year

On Saturday, I reported on Lexington’s first homicide of the year. The mistake I made was that it wasn’t the first!

    Lexington police investigating city’s first homicide of 2022, coroner confirms identity

    by Christopher Leach | Tuesday, January 4, 2022 | 7:23 AM EST | Updated: 1:49 PM EST

    Lexington police are investigating its first homicide of 2022 after a shooting near Deep Springs Elementary School left one person dead, according to police.

    Police said they responded to the area of Anniston Drive at 8:51 p.m. Monday. A 24-year-old male was found shot inside his residence.

    The Lexington Fire Department responded and advised the victim had died, per police. The Fayette County Coroner confirmed the victim’s identity as D’Andre Green.

There are a couple more paragraphs, but they basically say that the police have released no other information about the crime or suspects, and give contact information for the police for anyone who has information for them.

In an update to yesterday’s story, the Fayette County Coroner identified the victim in Friday’s homicide as Kobby Lee Martin, a 26-year-old man living in Lexington.

In a surprise to absolutely no one, the Lexington Police have not kept their homicide investigations page up to date, and neither killing has been listed. But the 2021 homicide investigation page shows that the first two murders in the city occurred on January 9th and January 21st, so 2022 has seen two killings earlier in the year than the first one in Lexington’s record-setting 2021.

Out of last year’s 37 homicides, the investigations page lists 13 as having been solved. That’s 35.14%.

Only nine days into the New Year, with ‘just’ two homicides, there is not enough information on which to justify any conclusions, but I will point out here that January of last year saw six murders, although one victim lingered on until early February and another late February before he expired.

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Happy New Year! Lexington picks up where the city left off last year!

On December 30, 2021, Lexington recorded its 37th murder of the year, as 14-year-old Larry Perez-Morales was gunned down on Betsy Lane near the Lexington Cemetery. The 37 killings set a new annual record, topping the old number of 34 in 2020, which was, itself, a then-new record, topping the old record of 30 in 2019.

With 37 homicides in 365 days, Lexington was seeing one killing every ten days.

    Shooting victim found in Lexington street dies at scene Friday night

    by Karla Ward | Saturday, January 8, 2022 | 12:25 AM EST

    Lexington police were investigating after a person with a gunshot wound died after being found lying in the street Friday night.

    Police and the Lexington Fire Department were dispatched to a report of a person down on the 1700 block of Cantrill Drive, off Eastland Parkway, at 9:09 p.m., said Lexington police Lt. Brian Martin.

    When they arrived, (they) found the victim, who was suffering from a gunshot wound, in the street.

    The person, whose identity has not been released, was pronounced dead at the scene, Martin said. He said the shooting happened within “a short time frame” of when police were called.

The city’s first murder of 2021 was on January 9th, so a killing on January 7th of this year is pretty much right on schedule.

Friday was bitterly cold in the area, and temperatures Friday night in the city were around 10º and 15º Fahrenheit. Following Thursday’s 9.9 inches of snow,[1]My younger daughter measured 6½ inches on the backyard table, and claims that is the Official Snow Measurement Station for Lexington. the streets and sidewalks had snow and ice on them, but such did not keep the victim, and his killer, off the streets.

We have to realize something: we treat crime as an event, but it really isn’t. Rather, crime is a culture, one we measure, grossly, through events. Whether it’s Philadelphia, and its 562 homicides last year, or Chicago and the 797 murders there in 2021, or much smaller Lexington, and its 37, crime exists because the culture which accepts it and enables it exists.

References

References
↑1 My younger daughter measured 6½ inches on the backyard table, and claims that is the Official Snow Measurement Station for Lexington.
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Dear Helen Ubiñas: if you want to see the reason why, look to your own newspaper

I have previously noted Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas, several times, based primarily on column from December of 2020, “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.” She wrote:

    The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

    By the end of 2020, that number more than doubled: 447 people gunned down.

    Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

    At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

      “A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

    That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

That was thirteen months ago. What brings it to my attention again? Her column on Friday, and its subtitle:

    For two mothers touched by gun violence: ‘Pray, pray, and pray some more.’

    Numbers tend to attract attention around here; the people behind them, not always so much.

    by Helen Ubiñas | Friday, January 7, 2022

    At 12:55 p.m., on the eve of the new year, a 17-year-old died from a gunshot wound he suffered a day earlier.

    He was the 562nd person to be killed in Philadelphia in 2021.

    And, as it would turn out, the last homicide victim of the year.

    His name was Nasheem Choice, and three days later, on Jan. 3, he would have celebrated his 18th birthday.

There’s much more at the original, a good column which you should read.

But it’s that subtitle, noting that “around here” it’s the numbers which get attention, not the individuals who were killed. What do I see in 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.

Then there was the murder of Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student approaching graduation. Mr Collington was a white victim, allegedly murdered by a black juvenile in a botched robbery. The Inquirer then 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.

Compared to the coverage the Inquirer gives concerning black victims, that’s some real white privilege there!

Oh, it’s not as though the Inquirer doesn’t publish stories about black victims, at least when it comes to black victims who are ‘innocents’. The murder of Samir Jefferson merited two stories, and four stories about the killing of 13-year-old Marcus Stokes.[1]I did note my suspicion that young Mr Stokes might not have been quite the innocent the Inquirer, and writer Anna Orso, made him out to be. A story is merited if the victim was a local high school basketball star, and cute little white girls killed get tremendous coverage: a search of the newspaper’s website for Rian Thal returned 4855 results! But for the vast majority of black victims, Inquirer coverage is a couple paragraphs, mostly in the late evening, and which have disappeared from the main page of the newspaper’s website by morning.

Did the newspaper’s editors think that no one would notice this? Or is it that the editors have so internalized their own biases that they didn’t realize it themselves?

I’ve said it dozens of times: black lives don’t matter to the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer, regardless of what they say, because their actions, their editorial decisions, speak far more loudly, and clearly, than their words.

Can Miss Ubiñas change that? Can she bring it to the editors’ attention? I have tried, but I’m just a nobody, and the editors seem to need a Somebody to point out what the readership can clearly see.

References

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Will James White come back to life in 8½ years?

Even in a conservative state like Kentucky, we have some soft-on-crime prosecutors!

    ‘Remorseful about what happened.’ Lexington man facing murder charge takes plea deal

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Thursday, January 6, 2022 | 10:04 AM EST

    Dontate Burruss, photo by Fayette County Detention Center.

    A Lexington man has accepted a plea deal in a 2020 deadly shooting which will see him serve 10 years behind bars.

    Dontate Lamont Burruss, 48, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after previously being charged with the murder of James White outside the Motel 6 on Newtown Court in June 2020. Burruss was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison without the possibility of probation.

    “Mr. Burruss has been from the very beginning, day one, remorseful about what happened,” Burruss’ attorney, Bonnie Potter, said in court Thursday. “ … He has accepted responsibility.”

There’s more at the original, though the photo of this convicted killer was not part of it.

Mr Burruss had been locked up for 527 days since his arrest on August 28, 2020. With credit for time already served, Mr Burruss will be back out on the streets in a shade more than 8½ years, just before his 56th birthday.

According to the Fayette County Detention Center records, Mr Burruss was charged with first degree manslaughter, first degree robbery, and a probation violation, which means he had been convicted in the past. The jail record on Mr Burruss shows six previous mugshots, dated January 10, 2020, August 21, 2019, January 4, 2019, November 9, 2017, February 8, 2017, and July 7, 2015. This is not a guy who simply made a very bad mistake; this is a man who has been a career criminal! Yet Fayette Circuit Judge Thomas L. Travis requested ‘mediation’ in this case due to ‘complex issues.’

What’s ‘complex’ about it? He shot a man, and the man died! Yet this career criminal is going to see daylight, as a free man, sometime around July 29, 2029, while James White will still be stone-cold graveyard dead. Mr Burruss made a self-defense claim at some point, but his self-defense occurred as he was robbing his victim. That’s murder during the commission of a felony!

There is no reason to have any confidence that someone with Mr Burruss’ record will ever be not a criminal upon his release; why would anyone, Judge Travis included, want to give him a lenient sentence?

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Has the Lexington Herald-Leader abandoned the McClatchy Mugshot Policy?

We have noted, dozens of times, how the Lexington Herald-Leader, in going along with the McClatchy mugshot policy, has declined to print mugshots of accused defendants, even when those defendants are already convicted felons, and even when the subjects are accused of murder and are still on the loose.

But now, the Herald-Leader is doing the community a service, with an accused murderer on the loose. Can you spot the difference?

Kenneth Strange, photo via Nicholasville Police Department. Click to enlarge.

Police: Central KY murder suspect on the run, ‘considered armed and dangerous’

by Jeremy Chisenhall | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 | 4:48 PM EST | Updated: Thursday, January 6, 2022 | 7:58 AM EST

Nicholasville police were looking for a local man who they believe killed a woman, the police department announced Wednesday.

Kenneth Strange, 54, was wanted for the alleged murder of a woman who was found shot dead at Strange’s residence on Lauren Drive in Nicholasville in the early-morning hours Wednesday, police said. Police have obtained warrants for Strange’s arrest, they said.

“Strange is currently on the run and should be considered armed and dangerous,” Nicholasville police said in a Facebook post. “We are currently working with several jurisdictions across the commonwealth in an attempt to locate him. If anyone knows where Strange might be please contact your local law enforcement agency.”

There’s more here.

Can you think of anything, anything at all, which makes publishing Mr Strange’s photo different from say, that of Jo’Quon Anthony Edwards Jackson, or Juanyah J Clay?

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How new District Attorney Alvin Bragg will reduce crime in Manhattan

In January of 2023, The New York Times will publish a major article noting how crime has dropped in Manhattan under new District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Manhattan DA to stop seeking prison sentences in slew of criminal cases

By Larry Celona, Tamar Lapin, Tina Moore, Reuven Fenton and Bruce Golding | January 4, 2022 | 11:32 AM EST

Who needs soft-on-crime judges when the district attorney doesn’t even want to lock up the bad guys?

Manhattan’s new DA has ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for hordes of criminals and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies and drug dealing, according to a set of progressive policies made public Tuesday.

In his first memo to staff on Monday, Alvin Bragg said his office “will not seek a carceral sentence” except with homicides and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence felonies, some sex crimes and public corruption.

“This rule may be excepted only in extraordinary circumstances based on a holistic analysis of the facts, criminal history, victim’s input (particularly in cases of violence or trauma), and any other information available,” the memo reads.

Assistant district attorneys must also now keep in mind the “impacts of incarceration,” including whether it really does increase public safety, potential future barriers to convicts involving housing and employment, the financial cost of prison and the racial disparities over who gets time, Bragg instructed.

In cases where prosecutors do seek to put a convict behind bars, the request can be for no more than 20 years for a determinate sentence, meaning one that can’t be reviewed or changed by a parole board.

There’s more at the original.

The cited article is from not The New York Times, our nation’s newspaper of record, not the one with All the News That’s Fit to Print proudly emblazoned on its masthead, but the New York Post. Site searches of the Times website failed to turn up any stories on this. New York magazine, the Gothamist, amny and Fox News covered it, but it simply wasn’t news that the Times saw as fit to print, at least not if their site search engine works. Fox noted:

In a stunning reversal of traditional law enforcement procedures, Bragg sent a memo stressing “diversion and alternatives to incarceration,” in pursuing prosecutions … by not sending criminals to jail. The no-jail time exceptions are murder, a crime that involves someone’s death, or a felony. And several serious crimes, like armed robbery, are being reduced to misdemeanors, which could mean dangerous thugs will end up back on the streets without seeing the inside of a jail cell.

And even if you murder someone, Bragg says his office will limit sentences to 20 years. He is refusing to seek the state-mandated “life without parole” for murderers, which would include terrorists, cop killers and even serial killers.

It’s easy to see what will happen: people who are victims of crime will be far less likely to report those crimes, because Mr Bragg has just told everyone that he’s not going to prosecute crimes seriously. After all, why bother, if you know that your assailant will end up right back on the street, with zero punishment, and just might be in a position to seek retribution for reporting the crime in the first place?

Philadelphia voted in a “social justice”, George Soros-supported prosecutor in Larry Krasner, and the result has been 499 homicides in 2020, just one short of the record set in 1990, during the crack cocaine wars, and then blew past that with 562 killings in 2021. Mr Krasner claims that crime is down, overall, statistically speaking, but the probability is that fewer crimes that actually occur are being reported. After all, why bother?

So, Mr Bragg, like Mr Krasner, will report that his policies have reduced crime in Manhattan, when, in reality, they will have reduced the reporting of crime. That’ll make the numbers look better, but for the victims, perhaps not so much.

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Morbid math

The flood waters are finally starting to drop. The crest was 30.15 feet, which did not bring it close to our house, so we’re fine, if still stranded; the only road out is still underwater.

The highest water ever recorded, the 41.00 feet (guesstimated, since the river gauge failed), got into the crawlspace of our home last March, and into the garage, but did not get into our house itself.

As of 9:10 AM EST, the Philadelphia Police Department has not updated its Current Crime Statistics page; the image to the left, on which you can click to enlarge, is a screen capture. Since the page is supposed to be updated “during normal business hours, Monday through Friday,” I have to wonder what has happened. Perhaps the responsible person is taking his New Year’s Day holiday today?

The homicide number for 2021 is still stuck on 559, even though The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that “at least 560 people in Philadelphia were murdered, a bigger tally than in more heavily populated cities including New York and Los Angeles”. If the homicide total is 560, using Philly’s 2020 census figure of 1,603,797, the homicide rate works out to 34.92 per 100,000 population, and a couple more increase it only marginally.

The Philadelphia Shooting Victims Dashboard, which claims to be accurate through the end of the year, stated that there had been 2,327 recorded shootings in the City of Brotherly Love, 486 of which were fatal, and 1,841 in which the victim survived. That means that the gang bangers are pretty poor shots, given that only 20.89% of attempted murders by gunfire were successful, but that’s an ‘improvement’ on the 18.44% success rate in 2020.[1]414 homicides by shooting, out of 2,245 total shootings. Yeah, I know: my math is kind of morbid sometimes.

We have previously reported that KSDK, Channel 5, the NBC affiliate station in St Louis, crowed about the Gateway City having reduced its homicide numbers back to “pre-pandemic levels.”

Experts said the 2020 spike in violence was driven largely by the pandemic and high tensions following civil unrest. More lock downs, people losing jobs and strained relationships between communities and law enforcement all led to more murders University of Missouri – St. Louis Criminology Professor Richard Rosenfeld said.

Yet, if it was the COVID-19 pandemic — and I hate the word pandemic — and the killing of George Floyd, then why did shootings increase in Philadelphia by 3.65%, and total homicides by 12.22%?

We noted that the homicide numbers in Philly had increased by 15.61% since it became apparent that Joe Biden had defeated President Trump in the election. Why, it’s almost as though the evil reich wing Mr Trump had nothing to do with the homicide rates!

Philadelphia is still plagued by the same government, of Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, District Attorney Larry Krasner, a George Soros-funded stooge more interested in slapping down the police than prosecuting criminals, and the appropriately-named Police Commissioner, Danielle Outlaw, a bureaucrat appointee of Mr Kenney’s, who couldn’t lead a two-car parade. Philadelphia’s last Republican mayor left office on January 7, 1952, when Harry Truman was President, and George VI was still King of England. It has been three generations since Philly was led by a Republican!

George Floyd died a year and a half ago, and Donald Trump left the White House 348 days ago. The city leadership surrendered to the mob, and the coronavirus panic and shutdowns did not slow down the rate of violent crime in the city.

That was almost two years ago, and since then we’ve had vaccines, no cost vaccines, against the virus, and many — certainly not all in Philly — of the pandemic restrictions lifted, yet the rate of killing in Philly has only increased. At some point, maybe even leftists ought to be asking why the policies of an unbroken for generations Democratic leadership in Philadelphia haven’t worked.
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Updated: 11:55 AM EST

It looks like someone has been trying to update the Current Crime Statistics page, but just isn’t very good at it. It now shows 562 homicides for 2021, which puts the homicide rate above 35, at 35.04 per 100,000 population.

References

References
↑1 414 homicides by shooting, out of 2,245 total shootings.
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A Killadelphia murder update!

Robert Stacy McCain updated a story on which we had previously reported. He let me know about his update via Twitter!

‘A Philadelphia Gentleman’s Club’

by Robert Stacy McCain | January 1, 2022

These two Philadelphia gentlemen are suspects.

Euphemism alert:

Authorities have identified two suspects wanted in a double homicide that happened outside a Philadelphia gentlemen’s club on Tuesday.

Investigators say a 32-year-old man and a 42-year-old man suffered fatal gunshot wounds when an argument turned deadly in the parking lot of Club Risqué on Tacony Street around 2:30 a.m.

(Because where else would a Philadelphia gentleman be at 2:30 a.m.?)

At least The Philadelphia Inquirer was direct enough to call it a “strip club”.

Surveillance footage shared by the Philadelphia Police Department shows the suspected shooter and a female person of interest arriving at the club in a black Nissan about an hour before the shooting.

(A “female person of interest” is what they call a “lady” in Philadelphia.)

The suspect, who police say walks with a distinct limp, was wearing a blue coat and denim pants with dark-colored boots at the time of the shooting. The woman passenger labeled by police as a person of interest was wearing a white shirt with tan pants and white shoes.

Security footage from inside the vestibule of the club shows a second suspect also wearing a blue winter coat over a blue hooded sweatshirt.

There’s more at Mr McCain’s original.

Weather records for Tuesday, December 28th, indicate that it was 45º F, with light winds, and no precipitation at the time, as recorded at the Philadelphia International Airport. Why would a hooded sweatshirt and a winter coat be needed in those conditions?

Mr McCain congratulated me on the new record, but I have to be honest: I started getting morbidly interested in this in 2020, as the city kept ever closer to the record of 500 set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, and at one point, which I noted here, the police reported 502 for 2020, setting a new record.

Then it was ‘adjusted,’ to 499. It could have been that the killings happened after midnight on December 31, 2020, and were properly assigned to 2021, but that seemed pretty ‘convenient’ to me, as a way for Mayor Jim Kenney, George Soros-stooge District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw to say, well, it wasn’t the worst year. Since the appropriately named Miss Outlaw’s Police Department is the one which releases the official figures, she would have direct authority over that report, if she chose to exercise it. I have no evidence of that, and it’s pure speculation on my part, but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable guess. I just regret that I didn’t do a screen capture of the 502 report when it came out. That was my mistake, and I won’t make it again.

Maybe they hoped that the killing would decrease, and three murders from 2020 would get lost in a 2021 with a decrease in homicide.

Good plan, huh?

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Update: 450 PM EST

I said that I wouldn’t make the mistake again. The Philadelphia Police Department are claiming 559 homicides, the same number as they listed on Friday morning, but before their ‘normal business hours’ update. The Philadelphia Inquirer stated that the 2021 homicide number is “at least 560“.

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Killadelphia starts out the New Year with a bang!

While the Philadelphia Police Department does not normally update its Current Crime Statistics page until ‘normal business hours’ Monday through Friday, we already know that the City of Brotherly Love is picking up where it (never) left off as the new year has turned:

    Deadly gun violence carries on as New Year begins

    It took less than two hours for eight people to get shot, three of them killed in two separate violent outbursts.

    by Barbara Laker | Saturday, January 1, 2022 | 11:00 AM EST

    On the streets of Philadelphia, 2022 began where 2021 left off. It took less than two hours for eight people to get shot, three of them killed in two separate violent outbursts.

    Police responded to calls for a person shot on Cecil B. Moore Avenue between Wellington and 17th Streets near Temple University at about 1:50 a.m. Saturday. Police found two people who had been shot multiple times. Both were rushed to Temple University Hospital where they died shortly after arrival. Police did not identify the victims.

    In addition, three women, also shot at the scene, either walked into Temple Hospital or were taken by car. All three were listed in stable condition, said Police Inspector D F Pace.

    All victims were part of a large group gathered to celebrate the new year.

Moore Avenue in that block, the 1600 block, is a commercial street, not residential.

Further down:

    Shortly before that shooting, at around 1:30 a.m., 25th District officers received multiple calls about gunshots in the 100 block of East Luray Street near North Front Street in Feltonville. Police found a 33-year-old man who had been shot multiple times in the chest. He was rushed to Temple Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The article noted that, in 2021, “at least 560 people in Philadelphia were murdered, a bigger tally than in more heavily populated cities including New York and Los Angeles.” I will work out the exact homicide rate when I get the final numbers.