Congratulations for Philadelphia’s Mayor, Jim Kenney, District Attorney, Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw! As of 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, June 22, 2022, under their leadership the City of Brotherly Love has, with 246 homicides this year, tied the total number of murders for the entire year of 2013.

I will admit it: I hadn’t previously thought much of former Mayor Michael Nutter. He was a liberal Democrat in a line of liberal Democrats — Philadelphia’s last Republican mayor left office while Harry Truman was still President! — and, in following John Street, I didn’t really see reason to hope that he’d be any better than Mr Street. But, under Mr Nutter, District Attorney Seth Williams — who wound up with legal problems of his own, and served 2½ years in federal prison — and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, murders in the City of Brotherly Love steadily declined, from 391 in 2007, the year before Messrs Nutter and Ramsey took office — Mr Williams was elected in 2009, succeeding Lynne Abraham — down to 246 in 2013. There was an increase to 248 in 2014, and then 280 in 2015, Messrs Nutter’s and Ramsey’s final year in office.

But nothing like the increases under Mayor Kenney! 2016 saw 277 killings, but then they jumped to 315, then 353, 356, 499 and 562 last year. It was only by pure, dumb luck that 2020 finished below 500 homicides, given that there were two more on New Year’s Day of 2021, and the Philadelphia Police Department actually stated that there had been 502 homicides in 2020, before ‘correcting’ that down to 499. I fouled up and didn’t take a screen capture of that when it was up, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Were it not for the previous record of 500 homicides in 1990, under Mayor Wilson Goode, he of MOVE bombing fame, Mayor Kenney would have both first and second place in the homicide numbers.

But, not to worry: although this year’s homicide numbers are down slightly, 5.75%, the city is still on track for between 519 and 530 homicides, easily good for second place.^[1]Methodology: I divided the total homicides by June 22nd of this year by 261, the number of murders on the same date in 2021, yielding 0.9425287356321839, then multiplied that number by 562, the … Continue reading

The chart to the right? That includes only those years in which homicides were at least 400; Mayor Kenney ought to break into that chart again, for this year, sometime between and October 2^nd and 8^th.

Whatever Messrs Kenney and Krasner, and Miss Outlaw, are doing, doesn’t work!