Killadelphia

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I suspect that Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Stephanie Farr doesn’t normally write the crime reports, but simply drew the weekend assignment. But the City of Brotherly Love had a bloody, bloody weekend, and Miss Farr wound up being the reporter who had to write about it. Then, when I saw her Inky bio at the bottom of the article, in which she wrote, “I write about what makes Philly weird, wild, and wonderfully unique,” I found the irony inescapable. But, I must at the very least, give her props for using the Oxford comma!

Five people were killed in seven shootings across Philly in an eight-hour span this weekend

A 14-year-old is among the weekend’s homicide victims. At least 76 people have been killed in the city this year in just 64 days.

by Stephanie Farr | Sunday, March 5, 2023

A 14-year-old walking with his friends in Overbrook and a mother whose young child brought a gun he found on the street into their home were among seven people shot in an eight-hour period between Saturday night and Sunday morning in Philadelphia, according to police.

Five of the victims died, including the teen. The mother, whose shooting appears accidental, remains in stable condition, police said.

The shootings come less than a week after activists held a march against gun violence in Strawberry Mansion, following the shooting of seven people, including five teens and a 2-year-old, on Feb. 23 near the James G. Blaine School.

As the Inquirer also reported, parents of students at Building 21, West Oak Lane High School, are incensed that those students have been reassigned to Strawberry Mansion High School due to an asbestos problem at Building 21. Nobody wants anything to do with Strawberry Mansion if they can help it, because it’s just plain unsafe. Another story Monday afternoon reported that only 28 out of 390 Building 21 students showed up at Strawberry Mansion.

As of Sunday afternoon, at least 76 people have been killed in Philadelphia this year in a span of just 64 days, according to police statistics.

Sadly enough, Miss Farr’s report is already out-of-date: the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page now has 79 homicides as of 11:59 PM EST on March 5th, 79 homicides in 64 days, or 1.2344 per day.

As a daily average, 1.2344 homicides per day yields ‘just’ 451 for the year, but in Philly’s deadliest year, 2021, the 83 homicides as of the 64th day worked out to ‘only’ 473 murders . . . and the city saw 562 killings that year. Warmer weather brings out more gunfire, and Philly is on a clear path to another year of more than 500 people being sent untimely to their eternal rewards.

Yeah, Philly’s law enforcement trio of Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw are sure doing, to use a Kentucky expression from the 1960s, a fine, fine, super fine job!

“I also fight for Philly’s honor against all of its haters,” Miss Farr included in her bio. Well, Philadelphia’s haters are the ones roaming the city’s mean streets, killing other Philadelphians.

One of the comments was from someone styling himself only as T, who wrote:

Let me get this straight. The city got tore up for a career violent criminal, Walter Wallace. Got tore up for a career violent criminal, George Floyd. But when a 14 y/o presumably innocent kid gets murdered, the residents don’t even talk about it. Can someone make it make sense?

“(P)resumably innocent kid”? If the “residents don’t even talk about it,” perhaps they didn’t see him as all that innocent. With 27 rounds fired, this was clearly a targeted hit, and people get targeted for killing for real reasons. Those reasons may not make any real sense, but who knows what they are?

This, Miss Farr, is what leads people to trash Philadelphia. Philly is a wonderful and historic city, founded in 1682 by William Penn.

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