Category Archives: Crime

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The problem isn’t mass incarceration; the problem is that not enough criminals are incarcerated, for not a long enough time.

All of my good friends in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, wracked by crime — despite the fact that reported crime is down — would love to hear news like I’m going to report below. Crime in Philly isn’t so down that it prevented Ramon Rodriguez Vazquez, 36, from — allegedly, of course! — shooting a 31-year-old Philadelphia Police officer following a traffic stop. While Mr Rodriguez-Vazquez has no rap sheet in the Keystone State, he was arrested in his native Puerto Rico in 2011 after he and another man, José M. Serrano Ares, 24, stole an SUV at gunpoint, and then shot at responding officers.

If he had been in jail in Puerto Rico last weekend, he could not have shot a Philly police officer. Continue reading →

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Bad causes attract bad people * Updated! *

As we predicted on June 22nd, Joel Searby has scrubbed his internet profile. His Twitter account has been deleted, and his personal website has been reset to “Private”. This “Husband, Father, Friend. Renewer, Reformer, Dreamer,” is in some seriously deep doo-doo.

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As we noted three years ago, The Lincoln Project, an organization of anti-Trump “Republicans” which had been doing everything they could to hamper our 45th President, was then distancing itself from and denying any real knowledge about co-founder John Weaver. Many publicly mused about how co-founders George Conway, Steve Schmidt, Reed Galen, Jennifer Horn and Rick Wilson could not have known about Mr Weaver’s activities. Twenty-one young men, including one who claims that things began when he was just 14, have accused Mr Weaver of sending unwanted sexually provocative messages, sometimes including solicitations for sex, often in exchange for the promise of career help, to which Mr Weaver admitted once caught.

And yes, of course Mr Weaver was married to a woman at the time. Bad causes attract bad people. Continue reading →

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Philly advocates for prostitutes want the johns arrested, but not the hookers

It has always struck me as odd that something which is completely legal to do for free can be illegal to do for money, but such is prostitution and the buying of sex. But an OpEd in Tuesday’s Philadelphia Inquirer raised a point that I suspect the authors didn’t realize:

Want to eradicate the sex trade in Kensington, Mayor Parker? Arrest the people buying sex.

Traffickers and sex buyers perpetuate sexual exploitation and keep the commercial sex trade alive. Philadelphia police should arrest them instead of those who are already exploited. 

by Shea Rhodes, Mary DeFusco, and Ann Marie Jones | Tuesday, June 18, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

As experts in sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, and systems of prostitution, we disagree with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s recent decision to empower the Philadelphia police to make arrests for prostitution in Kensington.

People in prostitution should not be arrested or charged with prostitution offenses. The practice of prosecuting people in prostitution perpetuates a harmful ideology that they are criminals, rather than people who are being exploited.

Traffickers and sex buyers perpetuate sexual exploitation and keep the commercial sex trade alive. Police should arrest them instead.

Parker’s decision will also create additional barriers for victims attempting to exit “the life” of sexual exploitation. Criminal convictions serve as an additional hurdle for survivors to seek meaningful employment, housing opportunities, immigration opportunities, federal student loans, and more.

Continue reading →

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If it looks like a coverup, and smells like a coverup, . . . .

As we have previously reported, Robert Davis, 20, the killer of Josh Kruger, was expected to plead guilty in exchange for a 15-to-30-year prison sentence. Yesterday, he did just that:

Man sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison for murder of Josh Kruger

Robert Davis, 20, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and related offenses, and was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison.

by Robert Moran | Monday, June 10, 2024 | 8:55 PM EDT

A 20-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday and was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison for the October fatal shooting of local journalist and advocate Josh Kruger, court records show.

The negotiated guilty plea for third-degree murder and related offenses was expected from Robert Davis, who killed the 39-year-old Kruger on Oct. 2. Continue reading →

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The inclusion of bias in news articles is subtle, but you have to be aware of it

This site has expressed some amusement at The Philadelphia Inquirer referring to gangs as “street groups.” It began when we were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups“. Continue reading →

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Maybe not that much of a heap o’ trouble for five Philly ‘teens’

The WordPress software that this site uses has an interesting feature when it comes to generating the url code for the headlines, one that enables a sequential series. And thus the working headline for this article is “You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!”, which I have used several times in the past. The screen is showing me that this would be the 22nd article using that title. Due to the way the software works, as long as I post it under that headline, the url remains the same, even if I change the headline subsequently, which is why there are some headlines “You in a heap o’ trouble, girl!” that have the boy in the url. 🙂

And so it is with this one, because I wonder just how big that heap o’ trouble is for five juvenile delinquents in the City of Brotherly Love. Continue reading →