According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, there have been 68 people murdered in the City of Brotherly Love as of 11:59 PM EST on Thursday, February 23^rd, four more than the previous day’s report.

The Twitter site Philly Crime Update reported on two of them, which was more than our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, did. The Inky did, however, have a big story on a multiple shooting in which no one was killed, because it was near a school:

7 people, including a 2-year-old girl and 5 teenagers, were shot in Strawberry Mansion

The gunfire erupted just after 5:50 p.m. at 31st and Norris Streets, police said. Three shooters remained at large, police said.

by Robert Moran, Ellie Rushing, and Kristen A. Graham | Thursday, February 23, 2023 | 10:48 PM EST

Seven people, including a 2-year-old girl and five teenagers, were wounded in a shooting Thursday evening near a school in the city’s Strawberry Mansion section, police said.

The gunfire erupted just after 5:50 p.m. on the northeast corner of 31st and Norris Streets in front of a beer distributor, said police, who provided the following information on the victims:

• 2-year-old black female who was shot in her left thigh, transported by private vehicle with a police escort to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, listed in stable condition.
• 15-year-old male, race not specified, shot twice in the chest and once in the right side of his body was transported to Temple University Hospital, listed in critical condition.
• 13-year-old black male shot in his left hand, transported to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, listed in stable condition.
• 16-year-old black male shot in his left arm, transported to Temple University Hospital, listed in stable condition.
• 16-year-old black male shot in his right arm and left leg was taken by medics to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, reported in stable condition.
• 17-year-old black male with a graze wound to his thigh was transported by Uber to Thomas Jefferson, reported in stable condition.
• 31-year-old black female, was shot twice in the left leg, transported to Temple, listed in stable condition.

Except that, nope, what I listed above was the information actually provided by the police. What the Inquirer published was:

A 2-year-old girl who was shot in her left thigh was transported by private vehicle with a police escort to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she was listed in stable condition.

A 15-year-old boy shot twice in the chest and once in the right side of his body was transported to Temple University Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition.

A 13-year-old boy shot in his left hand also was transported to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he was listed in stable condition.

A 16-year-old boy shot in his left arm also was taken to Temple and was reported in stable condition.

Another 16-year-old boy shot in his right arm and left leg was taken by medics to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. He was reported in stable condition.

A 17-year-old boy with a graze wound to his thigh was transported by Uber to Thomas Jefferson and was reported in stable condition.

The seventh victim, a 31-year-old woman, was shot twice in the left leg. She was listed in stable condition at Temple.

Note that the newspaper deliberately scrubbed all references to race from their story. It’s nice to have the direct confirmation of what I have been saying, that the Inky has been deliberately censoring the information they have received, in order to fulfill publisher Elizabeth Hughes’ dictate that the newspaper will be an “anti-racist news organization,” but at some point, I’ve got to ask: who do they think they’re fooling? It’s Strawberry Mansion, and anybody who knows anything about Philly will simply assume that the victims are black.

Of course, it wasn’t just the victims about whom the Inky censored information:

Late Thursday night, police said they were looking for three shooters and a gray 4-door Hyundai Elantra, possibly a model year from 2011 to 2016, with an unknown Pennsylvania license plate.

The Inquirer printed the same images that Philly Crime Update had received from the police, but the newspaper censored the fact that all three suspects are black males, another thing that almost all readers would suspect. “(N)early thirty” spent shell casings — and an Inquirer photo shows a #29 evidence marker at the shell casings — and three shooters, and everyone is going to know that this was a targeted hit intended for one or more of the victims, and this is Philly same old, same old. The police will interrogate the victims, to attempt to find out which one had been the real target, though it’s always possible that the intended victim will clam up, expecting street justice from other members of his crew.

One final point: at least 29 rounds fired, and the gang-bangers “clique of young men”^[1]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 … Continue reading didn’t actually kill anyone? Philly’s “cliques of young men” are some really rotten shots!