We have not been particularly charitable toward Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), nor any of the rest of the political leadership of the City of Brotherly Love, but this story from The Philadelphia Inquirer just thoroughly amused me:

Mayor Kenney said his budget wouldn’t increase police spending. It’s not that simple.

His proposal does include new investments for police. They’re just included in the budgets for other departments.

by Anna Orso and Laura McCrystal | April 15, 2021 | Updated: 6:25 PM EDT

Mayor Jim Kenney avoided taking a side in the political battle over law enforcement funding on Thursday when he said he’s proposing flat funding for the Philadelphia Police Department in the coming year.

But his proposal does include new investments for police. Some fund reforms. Others are tucked into budgets for different departments.

In addition to the $727 million police allocation that’s roughly equivalent to last year’s, the administration proposed funneling additional money for police-related reforms and programs through the Managing Director’s Office. And it set aside funding for expected raises as a result of upcoming contract negotiations with municipal unions, including the police.

Of the cash that would run through the Managing Director’s Office, about $6 million would fund a citywide program that pairs behavioral health specialists with officers responding to mental health-related 911 calls. Another $750,000 in spending for that office would expand training for police “to make positive decisions when put in difficult situations.”

There’s more at the original.

So, the Mayor is yielding to the leftist mobs, and not increasing funding for the Philadelphia Police Department, despite 145 homicides in the city, 35 more than the same date last year, a 31.8% increase, and last year saw a near-record 499 people bleed out their life’s blood in Philly’s mean streets.^[1]The record was 500, set during the crack cocaine wars in 1990.

But he also knows that more funding is needed, so he’s hiding it in other areas of the city budget. There are more details in the Inquirer story.

But proponents of defunding the police criticized the proposal, saying tax dollars going toward reforms still prop up a system they see as harmful.

“Mayor Jim Kenney is trying to pull the wool over our eyes,” said Kris Henderson, executive director of Amistad Law Project, a West Philadelphia public-interest law center that advocates ending mass incarceration. “Resources that end up in the hands of police are police funding.”

So, what is the Amistad Law Project? They say they are “a public interest law firm and organizing project working to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania and fighting to get our communities the resources they need to thrive,” without realizing that the problem isn’t ‘mass incarceration,’ but that too few people are locked up!

When a 6-year-old boy was wounded, and a man killed when someone fired “at least” twelve shots at them as they were sitting in a parked car in the 800 block of South 53^rd Street Wednesday evening, do the very concerned “attorneys and organizers” of Amistad think it was really nothing? Are they saying to themselves, “Well, at least the shooter, or shooters — the story said that there was “at least” one shooter but there could have been more — wasn’t incarcerated”?

It seems that almost every time we read about a suspect in a Philadelphia murder — in the too few times the police actually identify and catch him, anyway — we read that he already had a criminal record, that he couldn’t legally own the gun he used, and that he was already wanted on a parole violation. Such suspects usually could still be in jail, were they given the maximum sentence for their previous crimes.

Nikolas Cruz was not a victim of ‘mass incarceration,’ because the Broward County Sheriff’s Department let him go without charges on several occasions. Young Mr Cruz could have been in jail on an in-school assault charge, but the school board did not want to contribute to the “school to prison” pipeline, so he had no criminal record, was able to purchase his weapon legally, and now seventeen people are pushing up daisies, because oh-so-well-meaning people like the Amistad “attorneys and organizers” didn’t want to take his earlier crimes seriously.

In Philadelphia itself, Lewis Jordan, a.k.a. John Lewis, had been treated leniently by the office of then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham, and was out on the street when he could, and should, have been in jail. On October 31, 2007, Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy walked into a Dunkin’ Donuts, the scene of a previous robbery, to check on it, just as Mr Jordan was attempting to rob the place; Mr Jorden shot Officer Cassidy in the head, killing him. Had law enforcement treated Mr Jordan seriously, rather than dropping the charges if he’d attend drug counseling courses, he would have been in jail, and Officer Cassidy would have gone home to his wife that Hallowe’en.

More, Mr Jordan might have spent what, a year in the clink. No one can say whether he would have learned his lesson in prison, but if he had been locked up that day, as he could have been, he (probably) wouldn’t be on death row now.

Amistad opposes “mass incarceration,” but had criminals been treated more seriously for their lesser offenses, people like Mr Cruz and Mr Jordan would have a reasonable chance of walking free at sometime in the future. As it is, they will both die in prison.

This is what those who are soft on crime have wrought. Petty criminals who aren’t slapped down hard become bigger criminals, and worse things happen. At some point, the soft-heartedness of the left has to be recognized for what it really is, soft-headedness.