It was in no way unexpected that the City of Brotherly Love would see its 100^th homicide of the year this week; the only question was on which day that would happen. For a numbers geek like me, it has led to some introspection, but first, the report from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Philadelphia reaches 100 homicides for 2022, outpacing last year

More people have been killed in Philadelphia so far this year than by this time last year, which ended with a record 562 homicides.

by Robert Moran | Friday, March 11, 2022 | 7:00 PM EST

Philadelphia has topped 100 homicides so far in 2022, outpacing the number of killings this time last year, which ended as the deadliest in the city’s recorded history.

The 100th victim was a 28-year-old man who was shot multiple times shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday on the 100 block of North 53rd Street in West Philadelphia. The man was rushed by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 12:32 a.m. Friday.

As of Friday evening, the city had not yet named the victim. Fox 29 reported that his family had identified him as Bryheem Barr.

The reporter, Robert Moran, followed the Inquirer’s practice of deleting the victim’s race from the story, even though the Philadelphia Police Department provide it. Of course, the tweet Mr Moran embedded in the story told readers that Mr Barr was black. I wonder if, by disclosing that kind of information, whether Mr Moran will get in trouble!

By March 10 last year, Philadelphia had 92 homicides. The city had a total of 562 homicides in 2021, breaking the previous record of 500 killings reported in 1990.

For comparison, New York City had 488 homicides for all of last year. As of last weekend, the city reported 67 killings so far in 2022.

Chicago this week also reached 100 homicides for the year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Mr Moran might have made a better comparison had he noted the populations of New York and Chicago, compared to Philly. The Big Apple had 8,804,190 residents, while the Windy City had a population of 2,746,388; the City of Brotherly Love had 1,603,797 souls in the 2020 census. Chicago is 71 percent larger than Philly, with the same number of killings, while New York City is 5¼ times Philly’s size, and has a third fewer total killings.

There had been ‘only’ 96 homicides on March 11, 2021, a jump from 92 the previous day, which means that Philly’s 100^th murder is ‘only’ a 4.17% increase over last year; had the homicide been counted on Thursday, when Mr Barr was shot, it would have been an 8.70% increase.

How does this work out? There are different ways to do the statistics, the simplest being the number of homicides divided by the number of days in the year, 70, to come up with a homicide pace of 1.4286 per day, multiplied by 365, projecting to 521.42 homicides for the year. A more complicated way is to take the number of homicides on the 70^th day of the year in 2021, and find that 17.08% of 2021 homicides had occurred by March 11, 2021, and, using that number, project that 2022 will see 585.48 killings.

I started this article Friday evening, but, as I was running the numbers through my head, I realized that I was doing what others have done: I had reduced Bryheem Barr to a number. Fox29 had a story on him:

‘He didn’t deserve this’: Man slain in Philadelphia’s 100th homicide was “hardworking” father, fiancé

Published March 11, 2022 | 6:30 PM EST

PHILADELPHIA – Authorities believe a Philadelphia father and soon-to-be husband was shot and killed during an attempted robbery Thursday night to become the city’s 100th homicide so far this year.

Family members say 28-year-old Bryheem Barr was walking to his car to go to work just before 11 p.m. near the intersection of North 53rd and Arch streets when the deadly shooting happened.

According to police, Barr was found shot multiple times and driven to Penn Presbyterian Hospital by officers where he died.

A police source told FOX 29’s Kelly Rule that they believe the deadly shooting happened during a robbery and the shooter took Barr’s legally-owned firearm.

One thing we know: if Mr Barr had a “legally-owned firearm,” he was not a convicted felon, and he had gone through the hassle of getting a permit in Philadelphia. This was not a case of one gang banger offing another, the way so many murders in the city happen.

Another is that he was going to work, obviously night shift somewhere.

Barr was a father of three and was soon to be married. His family said he was studying to become a nurse.

“Hardworking, bothers nobody, will give you the shirt off his back will do anything for his family, he wouldn’t hurt a soul,” Lorriane Barr, Bryheem’s aunt said.

There’s a bit more at the original, and that bit more is more than the Inquirer had on its website.

What did the Inquirer have? Yet another story on Thomas Siderio, Jr, the 12-year-old punk kid to took a shot at the Philadelphia Police, and paid the ultimate price for it. Even as sympathetic to young Mt Siderio as the Inquirer could be, the story couldn’t help but disclose that:

• In 2021, police “were searching a house where he was living after receiving a tip that he’d pulled a gun during a large fight at Second and Porter Streets in South Philadelphia. They found clothes matching a photo taken at the scene, but no gun.”
• “In recent Instagram posts, TJ could be seen in a ski mask, and there are several references to guns and drug use.”
• “’He had a tendency to follow the wrong kind of kids,’ said Terry Elnicki-Varela, who works in special education and started helping TJ at school three years ago. ‘He was no angel. Far from it.’”
• Young Mr Siderio had been failed by both parents. His father who is currently in prison, and “previously spent at least a year in prison in Philadelphia” on a prior conviction, while his mother, Desirae Frame, also has a criminal record, with two drug cases and other arrests for theft, forgery, contempt of court, and receiving stolen property. The son is noted, in the article, as primarily living with a grandmother, but also living with a great-aunt.

Yes, he had a rough life, and little chance of improving it, but he was still a punk.

Mr Barr? If the Inquirer is working on a story to humanize the victim of the city’s milestone homicide, at least as of 8:49 this morning, it hasn’t been published. Instead, the paper is trying their best to excoriate the Philadelphia Police Department, something which can only lead to more killings in the city.

Mr Barr, at least as far as we know — there’s always a risk in taking just the family’s word for things — was a working man, and a law-abiding Philadelphian. For the Inquirer, his story isn’t an important one, save that he hit a certain number in the liquidation lottery. No, the paper would rather spend time and money trying to make a martyr out of a young punk.