Would anyone have expected anything different from Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong? She knows that she has to condemn the riots, but she tries to understand the rioters and looters, and wants to say that she can’t really blame them.

Philly looting, riots are wrong. But so is ignoring what is driving the behavior.

According to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “A riot is the language of the unheard.” The city isn’t listening hard enough.

by Jenice Armstrong | Thursday, September 28, 2023 | 11:56 AM EDT

Jenice Armstrong

I know a lot of Philadelphians are mad about looters breaking into the Apple and Foot Locker stores and making off with armfuls of iPhones and athletic shoes. They’re sharing videos of police rough-handling rioters as they place them under arrest. They cluck their tongues as they ask, “Where are the parents?” and say, “These kids today are out of control.”There’s a part of me that’s right there with them.

But I also need those same Philadelphians to show similar disgust with the Municipal Court judge’s boneheaded decision to dismiss all charges against former Police Officer Mark Dial in the killing of Eddie Irizarry. That was a total miscarriage of justice.

“(B)oneheaded decision,” huh?

AS it happens, the Inquirer also assigned reporter Chris Palmer to do a story on Judge Wendy Pew:

Who is Wendy Pew, the judge who dismissed charges against ex-Philly police officer Mark Dial?

Lawyers who have appeared before Pew describe the 56-year-old as even-keeled and straightforward, but her decision in Dial’s case has sparked protests and led to criticism by lawmakers.

by Chris Palmer | Friday, September 29, 2023 | 5:42 PM EDT

The Philadelphia judge who dismissed all charges this week against Mark Dial — the now-former police officer who fatally shot Eddie Irizarry during a traffic stop in Kensington — sparked outrage with her decision, with protests erupting in Center City and lawmakers lobbing criticism from City Hall.

But lawyers who have appeared before Municipal Court Judge Wendy L. Pew say the 56-year-old is a generally even-keeled, straightforward judge who has spent more than 20 years on the bench.

After several biographical paragraphs, we get this:

Some lawyers who have appeared before her say she seems inclined to accept testimony by police officers as true. But that’s not unusual at preliminary hearings, where judges are supposed to accept testimony as truthful and not make assessments of credibility.

“If police say ‘X,’ she’ll go with police,” said Samuel Stretton, a veteran criminal defense attorney. “She’s not a pushover. She’s usually a pretty fair judge. She treats everyone with respect, moves her cases [efficiently].”

While it could be argued that Judge Pew’s decision was wrong, which the police-hating, George Soros-sponsored defense lawyer serving as Philly’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, claims it was, she certainly doesn’t seem to take “boneheaded” ones.

Back to Miss Armstrong’s column:

Let me be clear: I don’t condone looting. Not one bit.

But I also don’t agree with the judge’s decision on Tuesday to claim there wasn’t enough evidence against a cop who was caught on video shooting Irizarry as he sat in his car with the windows rolled up.

Let’s be clear here: Miss Armstrong is making a political argument, not a legal one. Judge Pew ruled that the District Attorney’s Office failed to present sufficient evidence that Officer Dial had committed an actual crime, and Miss Amstrong is not an attorney; she wouldn’t know if the assistant district attorney who blew the presentation to Judge Pew did well or poorly, or how he presented the evidence. Even the Inky’s own Editorial Board wrote, on the same day Miss Armstrong’s column was published, that the DA’s office “was saddled with low morale and personnel churn.”

Acting Police Commissioner John Stanford said he didn’t believe the looting stemmed directly from that verdict or the demonstration that followed. “This had nothing to do with the protests,” Stanford said Tuesday. “What we had tonight was a bunch of criminal opportunists take advantage of a situation and try to destroy our city.”

Let me repeat myself: I don’t condone looting. However, I think I understand the feelings behind this atrocious behavior, which continued early Thursday morning. And until our city officials come out of their ivory tower and get more informed about what could drive people to rob stores en masse, Philly won’t make any progress — and this will keep happening.

When she repeats herself, to tell us she does not “condone looting,” twice directly and once indirectly so far in her column, I am starting to think that she doth protest too much.

But Commissioner Stanford already told Miss Armstrong, and all of the rest of us, “what could drive people to rob stores en masse“: criminal opportunism.

Rioters didn’t break into those businesses just because they wanted the latest iPad or a pair of overpriced yoga pants. Sure, some vandals saw it as a chance to create mayhem, but some were out there that night because they are angry.

Really? As even Miss Armstrong admitted, much further down, “some of (the rioters and looters) likely didn’t even know (Eddie) Irizarry’s name”, so just how angry could they be? They sure don’t seem to get all that angry about the vast majority of the 327 other people murdered in the city as of Thursday at midnight, most of whom were black. Where were the riots and looting when 12-year-old Hezekiah Bernard, allegedly a drug dealer even at that early age, was shot in the back of the head and his body stuffed in a dumpster? Where was the citywide outrage over the street justice given to 16-year-old Tysheer Hankinson, himself an (alleged) drug dealer and (alleged) gang-banger, widely believed in the neighborhood to have killed young Mr Bernard?

Has Miss Armstrong seen the video? Has she asked herself what the rioters and looters who though ahead enough to wear hoodies and masks and gloves, and carry sledgehammers to break through shop windows and doors were really doing, protesting Mr Irizarry’s killing, or just going out to get $200 sneakers and iPhones and, as she said, overpriced yoga pants?

Has she asked herself why these thugs broke in and destroyed Nat’s Beauty Supply in Mayfair, a small business owned and run by a black woman?

Like many people on social media, I was disgusted. I thought, Here we go again. As an African American, I couldn’t help but be embarrassed at the fact that most of the people I saw creating the carnage were Black. When police roughhoused them as they took them under arrest, I thought: “That’s what you get. Your parents should be ashamed of you.”

But here’s the thing: It’s possible to condemn the looters’ behavior while also understanding where their rage comes from. They are fed up — with the city, with its politics as usual, with its soul-crushing poverty. Even if many of the looters weren’t aware of Irizarry, they feel the effects of police brutality, they see that the promises made in 2020 have gone unfulfilled. They’re fed up with watching a company like Apple make $400 billion in 2022, while they work all day but can’t afford a new iPhone.

You know who doesn’t “feel the effects of police brutality”? That would be the people who don’t commit crimes! Mr Irizarry had been driving erratically, being slow-pursued by the police, was non-compliant when he was finally stopped, and then began to raise a knife, which the officers thought, in the split second that they had to take their decisions, thought might have been a gun. George Floyd, whom Miss Armstrong mentioned, was a methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled previously convicted felon, apprehended for passing counterfeit money, who began resisting arrest before his unfortunate death.

Do not misconstrue my words: The people who wreaked havoc and tore up stores in West Philly, Center City, and elsewhere were wrong, wrong, wrong. But so was the judge who threw Dial’s case out. So was Dial. So were all the cops who tried to cover for him by lying.

And so was the city for not listening hard enough to people back in 2020.

Really? Philadelphia is run completely by Democrats. The last Republican mayor left office when Harry Truman was still President, and the couple of Republicans on the City Council have almost no power. Voter registration is something like seven-to-one Democratic over Republican, and Philadelphians gave 81.44% of their votes to Joe Biden in 2020; without Philly, President Trump would have carried the Keystone State easily. If “the city was not listening hard enough” to the rioters and looters of 2020, it would be the liberal Democrats who haven’t been listening!

But let’s tell the truth here: the vast majority of the liberal Democrats are still civilized people; while I wholeheartedly disagree with their policies, I have no doubt that they want a civilized society in which to live. What Miss Armstrong is protesting is that the civilized people aren’t listening to the barbarians.