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Killadelphia The not-so-subtle racism of an "anti-racist news organization"

As of 11:59 PM on Sunday, May 16th, there had been 196 homicides in Philadelphia. That having been the 136th day of the year, that worked out to 1.441 murders per day in the City of Brotherly Love, putting Philly on pace for 526 killings for 2021, if the average held.

That was a month ago. According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, as of the end of Tuesday, June 15th, the city hit what could wryly be called a milestone, it’s 250th murder. The math is pretty bad: 250 homicides ÷ 166 days = 1.506 per day, × 365 = 549.70 murders for the year. The evil, reich-wing Donald Trump has been out of office for just five days short of five months now, the very liberal, opposed to mass incarceration District Attorney Larry Krasner has been renominated, the pandemic restrictions have (mostly) been lifted, and Philly’s murder rate is increasing.

The city’s homicide record was 500, set in the crack cocaine wars of 1990; 2020 saw Philly win the silver medal, with 499. But if the current rate continues, and there’s no sign that it won’t, 550 bodies in the city’s mean streets will break the record by a solid ten percent. Yet, at least as of 3:15 PM, there wasn’t a single story on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page about the three killings overnight, or the ‘milestone’ having been reached, though there was an important story on how the strategic use of wallpaper remains popular in area homes.

Another statistic: 250 homicides thus far in 2021 have eclipsed the entire year’s totals of 246 in 2013 and 248 in 2014, when Michael Nutter was Mayor, Charles Ramsey Police Commissioner and Seth Williams was District Attorney.[1]Seth Williams was convicted on one count of receiving bribes, so he isn’t exactly spotless, but his record as District Attorney was sound. Last year’s 499 homicides exceeded those two years’ total killings. Whatever Jim Kenney, Danielle Outlaw and Larry Krasner, whom the Inquirer actually endorsed for renomination, have been doing has not worked.

#BlackLivesMatter, we are told, and Elizabeth Hughes, the publisher of the Inquirer, has said that her goal is to make the newspaper “an anti-racist news organization,” but, as far as I can tell, black lives don’t matter to the Inquirer. It seems that the only stories the paper publishes are small police blotter reports, usually not on the website main page, unless the victim is an innocent, like Christine Lupo, a “somebody,” like a local high school basketball player, or a cute little white girl, like the 2,782 site search results for Rian Thal.

The vast majority of homicide victims in Philadelphia are black, but when one black gang banger kills another black gang banger, it isn’t really news anymore, not to the Inquirer. Instead, the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s four separate stories; how many do the mostly black victims get?

It does not matter what Miss Hughes says about her goals, and it does not matter that the newspaper has its first Hispanic Executive Editor in Gabriel Escobar; the paper’s coverage shows us what they consider newsworthy. And black lives wasted are simply not newsworthy.

References

References
↑1 Seth Williams was convicted on one count of receiving bribes, so he isn’t exactly spotless, but his record as District Attorney was sound.
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For the Associated Press, #woke outweighs the public’s right to know

I suppose that this ought not to be a surprise.

We have previously noted the McClatchy Company’s mugshot policy, the one which doesn’t seem to be actually available on McClatchy owned newspaper websites, or McClatchy’s site itself. I only found documentation through a tweet.

Now it seems that the Associated Press has come up with its own version. From the Rock Hill, SC, Herald:

AP says it will no longer name suspects in minor crimes

By David Bauder, Associated Press Media Writer | June 15, 2021 | 5:51 PM EDT

NEW YORK
The Associated Press said Tuesday it will no longer run the names of people charged with minor crimes, out of concern that such stories can have a long, damaging afterlife on the internet that can make it hard for individuals to move on with their lives.

In so doing, one of the world’s biggest newsgathering organizations has waded into a debate over an issue that wasn’t of much concern before the rise of search engines, when finding information on people often required going through yellowed newspaper clippings.

Often, the AP will publish a minor story — say, about a person arrested for stripping naked and dancing drunkenly atop a bar — that will hold some brief interest regionally or even nationally and be forgotten the next day.

But the name of the person arrested will live on forever online, even if the charges are dropped or the person is acquitted, said John Daniszewski, AP’s vice president for standards. And that can hurt someone’s ability to get a job, join a club or run for office years later.

In one way, this makes more sense than the McClatchy policy, which doesn’t publish mugshots, but still prints the names of criminal suspects; search engines look for words, not faces. I noted in this story that while the Lexington Herald-Leader does not normally publish mugshots, it was easy enough for me to find the mugshots of criminal suspects.

The AP, in a directive sent out to its journalists across the country, said it will no longer name suspects or transmit photographs of them in brief stories about minor crimes when there is little chance the organization will cover the case beyond the initial arrest.

The person’s identity is generally not newsworthy beyond local communities, Daniszewski said.

The AP said it will also not link to local newspaper or broadcast stories about such incidents where the arrested person’s name or mugshot might be used. The AP will also not do stories driven mainly by particularly embarrassing mugshots.

The policy will not apply to serious crimes, such as those involving violence or abuse of the public trust, or cases of a fugitive on the run.

With this, the AP has taken it upon themselves to decide which crimes are serious. But, other than the ‘fugitive on the run,’ which wasn’t enough to get the Herald-Leader to publish Juanyah Clay’s mugshot, the rationale that publishing the name of a criminal suspect could hurt his life if he happens to be acquitted ought also to apply to rape, robbery or murder. Why would a man found not guilty of murder be different from a man found not guilty of disorderly conduct?

Remember the famous Duke lacrosse team rape case, the one in which Crystal Mangum falsely accused three team members of rape? The media absolutely loved that case, and even though then state Attorney General Roy Cooper “dropped all charges, declaring the three lacrosse players ‘innocent’ and victims of a ‘tragic rush to accuse'”, the names of the accused live on on the internet. Rape is a serious, violent crime, and three innocent men will be forever tarred with the accusation.

Now, either the public has a right to know about criminal charges, in which case names and mugshots of suspects are reasonably disclosed, or those accused have a right to privacy on everything, at least until they are convicted of a crime; that should not change based on the serious of the alleged crime.

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Journolism: The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer, with full evidence that too lenient law enforcement has led to more killings, wants to make probation more lenient!

It was less than a month ago that we noted the inherent racism of The Philadelphia Inquirer and it’s oh so #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading publisher Elizabeth Hughes. Miss Hughes’ call was for the Inquirer to become “an anti-racist news organization,” but in the process of doing so, she and her editorial team have instead converted a once-great newspaper into one in which virtually every story is run through the lens of racial consideration. There’s a reason I sometimes refer to it as The Philadelphia Enquirer![2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

There were two more homicides in the City of Brotherly Love yesterday, bringing the total to 247, in 165 days. That works out to 1.497 per day, putting Philly on pace for 546 murders in 2021, a number which would shatter, destroy, stomp into the mud the record of 500 set in 1990, and last year’s second place 499.

While the Inquirer continues to pay scant attention to homicides in Philadelphia, unless the victim is an innocent, a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl, it did pay attention to the senseless murder of Christine Lugo. I noted my guess that, when Miss Lugo’s killer was finally identified, we’d find out that he has a long rap sheet, and that, had he been treated seriously by the law enforcement in the past, could and should have been behind bars at 5:51 AM last Saturday morning. Well, we did find out, and, if the suspect in the case, Keith Gibbson, actually is Miss Lugo’s killer, he was allowed to plead down from a murder charge, one which, if convicted of it, would have had him behind bars in Delaware on the morning he (allegedly) shot Miss Lugo in the head. Several other people would be alive today had he not been treated so leniently.

And so we come to this, the lead editorial in the Inquirer on Flag day, and Donald Trump’s 75th birthday:

Is probation the key to gun violence prevention? Not the way Philly is trying.

For many, probation is a trap — not a path out of violence.

By The Editorial Board | June 14, 2021

In April, Philadelphia’s Office of Violence Prevention (OVP) released an update to the “Roadmap to Safer Communities,” the city’s anti-violence framework. One word was missing from the update: probation. The omission is peculiar because, in the mayor’s proposed budget, nearly a quarter of the OVP’s $12.5 million is earmarked for probation.

For decades, studies have shown that many of the people who are most likely to kill or be killed are already involved in the criminal justice system. If some of the people most at risk already check in with a probation officer, why not leverage that opportunity to also offer services in the hope of reducing gun violence?

You can see where this is going, right? The Editorial Board want to make probation easier, to make it softer, to replace law enforcement with social workers!

That was the logic behind the Youth Violence Reduction Partnership (YVRP).

Philadelphia launched YVRP in 1999. Almost exclusively Black teens and young men, who have been identified by either juvenile or adult probation officers or algorithms, would receive both closer supervision (such as home visits) and first dibs on services (such as help finding a job) with the goal of keeping them alive. A key element of the program was the utilization of street workers — not probation officers — to engage youth.

Between 1999 to 2020, YVRP served more than 9,000 individuals ages 14 to 26. Fewer than 2% were involved in gun violence. If those are the individuals most at risk, that seems like a success.

Somehow, the Editorial Board never gives consideration to the opposite solution: instead of letting the bad guys stay out on the streets, how about locking them up, where they can’t hurt the public? Had Miss Lugo’s (alleged) killer been locked up for the fifteen year minimum a murder charge in Delaware would have gotten him, he was instead allowed to plead down, spent just eight years in the slammer, and had continual probation violations after he was released. The Editorial Board know that, or at least they should if they read their own newspaper, but they are suggesting easier, not harsher treatment of criminals.

For many people, probation becomes a trap. What was supposed to be a lenient alternative to incarceration can become a life sentence due to technical violations and unreasonable expectations.

Unreasonable expectations, such as obeying the law? The linked story complains that people on probation are remaining “under court control for years after being convicted of low-level crimes, resentenced two, three, four, or five times over for infractions including missing appointments, falling behind on payments, or testing positive for marijuana.” Uhhh, missing appointments with a probation officer? Keeping those appointments is far less onerous than being in jail, but is a condition for not being locked up. Making payments? These things are required, as part of the probationary sentence? And testing positive for marijuana? That means those people have broken the law in buying and possessing and using pot. Should we somehow excuse people already being treated leniently for past violations of the law for breaking the law again?

As we noted in the beginning, the Inquirer under Miss Hughes now views everything through the prism of race. “Almost exclusively Black teens and young men, who have been identified by either juvenile or adult probation officers or algorithms,” the Editorial Board noted, as though the vast majority of the 247 dead bodies on the city’s streets this year were not black, and their killers, when known, were also black, is somehow a meaningless statistic.

This is what real journalists, rather than the journolists[3]The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term … Continue reading on the Inquirer’s staff, ought to investigate: just how many murders in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia[4]The formulation “foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia” comes from the song Piddle, Twiddle and Resolve from the musical 1776. would have been prevented had the killers been sentenced harshly for previous crimes and still been in jail when they committed the murder?

That would be reporting, that would be investigative journalism, but that would also be far, far, far outside of the mission Miss Hughes has set for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
↑3 The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑4 The formulation “foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia” comes from the song Piddle, Twiddle and Resolve from the musical 1776.
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It only took one line to reveal the reporter’s ignorance and bias

We noted yesterday the hypocrisy of the oh so #woke New York Times. And now we can see how one almost throwaway line exposes the bias and ignorance of Times reporter Jason Horowitz:

Vatican Warns U.S. Bishops: Don’t Deny Biden Communion Over Abortion

Conservative American Catholic bishops are pressing for a debate over whether Catholics who support the right to an abortion should be allowed to take Communion.

by Jason Horowitz | June 14, 2021 | 5:41 PM EDT

ROME — The Vatican has warned conservative American bishops to hit the brakes on their push to deny communion to politicians supportive of abortion rights — including President Biden, a faithful churchgoer and the first Roman Catholic to occupy the Oval Office in 60 years.

But despite the remarkably public stop sign from Rome, the American bishops are pressing ahead anyway and are expected to force a debate on the communion issue at a remote meeting that starts on Wednesday.

But the money line is in the next paragraph:

Some leading bishops, whose priorities clearly aligned with former President Donald J. Trump, now want to reassert the centrality of opposition to abortion in the Catholic faith and lay down a hard line — especially with a liberal Catholic in the Oval Office.

What kind of ignorance is this? The Catholic Church was a vocal opponent of abortion and euthanasia long before Donald Trump burst onto the political scene. The Church has been opposed to same-sex ‘marriage’ and ‘transgenderism’ long before the 2016 election.

But it is also true that the Church has been primarily on the political left on other issues. The Church is very much in favor of greatly eased immigration restrictions, the Church would like to see greatly increased social welfare programs, the Church favors economic changes far more in line with European ‘democratic socialism,’ and the Church is very concerned with environmental issues, especially global warming climate change. None of those policies are exactly Trumpian.

Did Mr Horowitz not know these things, or was he trying to use propaganda to undermine the more conservative bishops?

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Journolism: We publish what the Lexington Herald-Leader will not.

It has become somewhat of a passion with me to provide the information the Lexington Herald-Leader will not. We have noted the McClatchy Company’s Mugshot Policy and how the local newspaper has honored it by declining to publish mugshots of non-white criminal suspects but doing so when the accused are white. And we noted Robert Stacy McCain’s point that journalists used to refer to the “public’s right to know,” but that such has been subjugated to political correctness, and to what the Sacramento Bee called “perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.”

Mr McCain noted last Saturday that the media were, once again, seeking to avoid perpetuating stereotypes.

You might think that when 13 people are shot in downtown Austin, and the gunman is still at large, that it would be a public service to describe this murderous maniac. But you’re not “woke” enough:

Police have only released a vague description of the suspected shooter as of Saturday morning. The Austin American-Statesman is not including the description as it is too vague at this time to be useful in identifying the shooter and such publication could be harmful in perpetuating stereotypes and potentially put innocent individuals at risk.

Oh, if it was a right-wing white supremacist Trump voter who had committed this atrocity, you bet the media would have no qualms identifying the suspect, “perpetuating stereotypes” or not. Because the “woke” media have made themselves utterly useless as a source of facts, we must turn to Breitbart for the relevant information:

A statement from the Austin Police Department states . . . “It is unknown if there is one, or multiple suspects involved. There is one suspect described as a black male, with dread locks, wearing a black shirt and a skinny build.” . . . The shooting follows massive cuts in police funding by the Austin City Council. The council cut $150 million from the police budget . . .

Is it any wonder why people hate the “fake news” media?

The Austin American-Statesman is not a McClatchy newspaper. The Herald-Leader is:

2 more suspects arrested after death of Lexington man who was shot, set on fire

By Jeremy Chisenhall | June 14, 2021 | 11:55 AM EDT | Updated 4:11 PM EDT

Two more people have been charged in connection with a Lexington homicide after the victim’s body was set on fire in a barn, according to court records.

Martae Laron Shanks and Autumn Owens, both residents in the building where 38-year-old Lazarus Parker was allegedly shot and killed, have been charged with arson, abusing a corpse and criminal mischief, according to an indictment from a Fayette County grand jury.

The grand jury alleged that Shanks and Owens either intentionally started the fire or tried to help with the fire by purchasing gasoline in Fayette County and taking it to Bourbon County to burn Parker’s body.

Shanks and Owens were both arrested in Scott County and then transferred to the Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center last week, according to jail records.

Cecil T Russell (Fayette County Detention Center)

Cecil T. Russell, a co-defendant with Shanks and Owens in the case, was previously charged with murder. Russell was charged with killing Parker after a “cooperating witness” told investigators she heard Russell and Parker get into an argument before multiple gunshots rang out and someone screamed, according to an arrest warrant.

Cecil Russell’s mugshot was not published in the Herald-Leader, but I was able to find it in an Associated Press story published by WVLT-TV. The First Street Journal is dedicated to your right to know, and thus we reproduce it here.

Martae Shanks (Fayette County Detention Center)

More, I was able to open account with the Fayette County Detention Center, and get access to mugshots there, thus getting the mugshot of Mr Shanks. There are actually three mugshots of Mr Shanks in the records, dated October 16, 2015, March 4, 2021, and June 9, 2021, so it would seem that he is not unfamiliar with the jail. The record lists only the current offenses with which he is charged.

There were two mugshots for Autumn Owens, one dated March 4, 2021, and the current one June 10, 2021. It’s interesting that both of her bookings came concomitantly with Mr Shanks. As with Mr Shanks, only her current charges are listed on the jail website.

Autumn Owens

Is there something wrong with a mid-sized newspaper, part of a national newspaper chain, subjugating the public’s right to know to political correctness? I think that there is, and that’s why this website goes ahead and finds and published these mugshots. As for the claim that this “perpetuates stereotypes,” please note that one of the three suspects here is white, and that, in my previous post with mugshots, one of the convicted criminals was white, and one was black.[1]I confess: I had originally written that post with the black offender’s mugshot first, and the white offender’s second. Since Twitter tends to pick up the first photo in an article, I … Continue reading

A further note: the Lexington homicide investigations page has not, as of this publication, been updated since May 9th. We had previously noted this, and there have been three additional homicides in the city since that date. Someone needs to start doing his job.

Mr McCain was correct, and the credentialed media, decades ago, were correct: the public does have a right to know these things. The question is: why so small, private websites like Mr McCain’s or mine have to be the ones to

References

References
↑1 I confess: I had originally written that post with the black offender’s mugshot first, and the white offender’s second. Since Twitter tends to pick up the first photo in an article, I switched the order, so that the tweet of the article would show the white offender.
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Surely the #woke New York Times couldn’t be this misogynistic!

Remember how Bari Weiss was forced out by the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading of The New York Times? Remember how the #woke at the Times decided that the Grey Lady, long a supporter of the First Amendment, no longer thought Freedom of Speech was such a great idea?

Well, I spotted two tweets from the Times this morning, which showed that the very much anti-misogynistic they are:

This is actually a full sized screen capture of a promoted Tweet, promoted meaning that the Times paid Twitter to send it out; if you click on the image, it will take you to the original, at least if the Times doesn’t delete it. The Times is using the naked legs of a a reasonably thin white woman in the shower as clickbait. It was originally sent out at 12:35 PM EDT on May 28, 2021, but it’s paid-for status is evidenced by the fact it appeared on my Twitter feed this morning.

But, it wasn’t the only one:

Same thing: a screencap with the link embedded, in case the Times deletes it, this time using a cute bikinied white girl as the clickbait. The non-misogynistic editors of the Times apparently couldn’t find a picture of a male diver.

Oops, that’s wrong: in the article they had five photos used as illustrations, a male diver, tourists near Cebu Island in the Philippines feeding whale sharks in 2019, tourists hand feeding dolphins in western Australia, tourists photographing loggerhead turtles in Greece, and a video of green turtle’s view of feeding by tourists in the Bahamas.

What isn’t in the article is the photo used in the tweet. Normally, when you use Twitter to link an article, it will pick out one of the photos in the article to use, usually the first one. For this tweet to have the photo of the bikinied diver, it had to have been added manually by someone.

And here I thought that it was us evil-reich wing conservatives who were the sexist pigs! Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the left were trying to fool us?
____________________________
Also published on the American Free News Network.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Lexington wants to ban no-knock warrants As the crime rate in Lexington is rising rapidly, the Urban-County Council wants to further hamstring the police

The black communities around the country have been really eager in their attempts to ban no-knock warrants. Louisville’s Breonna Taylor was killed when plainclothes police officers returned fire — not opened fire but returned fire — after Miss Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, claiming that he thought the police were armed intruders, and fired, hitting Officer Jonathan Mattingly in the leg. The officers then fired 32 shots, entirely missing Mr Walker, but hitting Miss Taylor six times. From Wikipedia:

The Louisville Metropolitan Police Department investigation’s primary targets were Jamarcus Glover and Adrian Walker (not related to Kenneth Walker), who were suspected of selling controlled substances from a drug house approximately 10 miles away. Glover had cohabited with Taylor and said the police had pressured him to move out of Taylor’s residence for unspecified reasons.[37] Glover and Taylor had been in an on-off relationship that started in 2016 and lasted until February 2020, when Taylor committed to Kenneth Walker.

In December 2016, Fernandez Bowman was found dead in a car rented by Taylor and used by Glover. He had been shot eight times. Glover had used Taylor’s address and phone number for various purposes, including bank statements.

In a variety of statements, Glover said that Taylor had no involvement in the drug operations, that as a favor she held money from the proceeds for him, and that she handled money for him for other purposes. In different recorded jailhouse conversations Glover said that Taylor had been handling his money and that she was holding $8,000 of it, that he had given Taylor money to pay phone bills, and that he had told his sister that another woman had been keeping the group’s money.

In the recorded conversations and in an interview with The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Glover repeatedly said that Taylor was not involved in any drug operations and that police had “no business” looking for him at her residence, and denied that he had said in the recorded conversations that he kept money at her residence. Taylor was never a co-defendant in Glover’s case.

A no-knock warrant was reasonable, in that the LMPD believed that Miss Taylor was holding drugs and money for Mr Glover. While the evidence sought through the warrant never appeared, Miss Taylor was, at the very least, closely involved with Mr Glover, a notorious drug dealer. That part never penetrated the consciousness of the black community.

And so we come to Lexington, where the Urban-County Council has advanced, on a 9-6 vote, a proposed ordinance to ban no-knock warrants.

Vice Mayor Steve Kay said of the four no-knock warrants Lexington police have served in the past five years, all were executed to preserve evidence in drug cases, despite Lexington police previously saying that they have been not used to preserve evidence.

Translation: we’ve got to give the drug dealers time to flush their stashes down the toilet!

In a city of 308,000 people, four no-knock warrants used over five years does not exactly seem like overuse or some sort of blanket policy.

“I believe strongly that we have a great police force and it’s lead by a great chief,” Kay said. Yet, the Black community has repeatedly said it does not want the police to use no-knock warrants.

“My sense is that the no-knock represents a threat … a continuation of the way that they have been at the wrong end of police enforcement. I want them to have faith in the department,” Kay said. “What I don’t want to read is that there has been a shooting and no one will come forward and provide evidence to the police.”

If the black community in Lexington “have been at the wrong end of police enforcement,” might that not indicate that too many members of their community have been on the wrong end of the law?

Lexington police union blasts nine council members who voted for no-knock warrant ban

By Beth Musgrave | June 10, 2021 | 1:04 PM EDT | Updated: June 10, 2021 | 3:34 PM EDT

The union that represents Lexington police officers blasted nine members of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council who voted Tuesday to ban no-knock warrants, saying they were pandering to “radically anti-police protesters.”

In Facebook posts, the Fraternal Order of Police Bluegrass Lodge #4 tied a rise in the number of shootings and murders this year to the vote to ban no-knock warrants. “City leaders are less concerned with your safety than they are with pandering to a small group of radically anti-police protestors,” one post read. . . .

In another Facebook post, the FOP tied two Wednesday murders to the vote on the no-knock ban.

“These shooting deaths came just hours after the Lexington City Council irresponsibly voted to ban no-knock warrants in Lexington. When it comes time for officers to arrest these murderers, do we really want to restrict the tools they have to apprehend the suspects safely?”

The Lexington Police Department is like major police departments everywhere: the officers have a hard, dangerous job to do, and they are doing it during a time of increased lawlessness. Lexington has seen 19 homicides in 160 days, which puts the city on pace for 43 murders this year, which would blow 2020’s record of 34 out of the water. At a time in which the city is less safe than it has ever been, the black community want to hobble law enforcement even more.

“There is a concerted effort underway by the Fraternal Order of Police, as we speak, to paint council members who voted for this police reform, our group and others as supporting both criminals and the endangerment of our fellow citizens and police officers,” said Rev. Clark Williams, a member of the group (of black religious leaders).

“We are not the enemies of the Lexington police, and for the record, nobody wants Lexington to be safe for everybody more than we do,” Williams said. “But this form of misinformation and divisive rhetoric has no place in the legislative process, and it further demonstrates why we need a permanent ban on no-knock warrants.”

Really? If “nobody wants Lexington to be safe for everybody more than (they) do,” why are they trying to aid the criminal element in town?

No-knock warrants have hardly been abused in Lexington; there’s no need for an absolute ban. It would be an easy check to keep the current policy, of having the Mayor, someone who isn’t part of the Police Department, review and approve or disapprove of the applications before they are presented to a judge.

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Solomon Jones on race

Despite my massive brainpower, I will admit to being unable to understand some people. Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, and WURD radio host Solomon Jones would be one of those who baffles me.

Of the twenty Inquirer columns you will see if you click on the link in the above paragraph, sixteen are about race and racism. Mr Jones is an educated and successful man having been graduated, cum laude, with Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from Temple University in 1997. He went on to be published in Essence, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine, and the Philadelphia Weekly. It doesn’t surprise me that his June 11th column is, again, about race, but what he wrote certainly does:

It’s time to support the Black men in Philadelphia being destroyed by gun violence

Our city needs to pay for job training, therapy, and other resources so that the streets aren’t young men’s only option.

By Solomon Jones | Friday, June 11, 2021

In the streets of Philadelphia, young Black men are the likeliest victims of gun violence, and they are dying at the hands of men who look like them. Some say this is evidence that racism has no role in the murders that have spread through our community like a virus. But that’s not true. Racism is at the core. It’s just hard to see that truth through all the blood.

I know this because I run the non-profit ManUpPHL. Through a simple initiative called Listening to the Streets, we’ve spent weeks talking to some of the men who come from the Philadelphia neighborhoods that are beset by gun violence. To put it more accurately, we’ve spent weeks listening to them. In doing so I have been humbled, because they’ve taught me how much I don’t know about what’s happening in the streets of my city. They’ve taught me the underlying reasons for the gun violence, and they’ve shown me that many of the solutions being bandied about will not work.

This is not to say no one is trying. In fact, the opposite is true. Many people and organizations are trying, including city officials seeking to spend $100 million to address gun violence. But not even that much funding will stop the bloodshed if it is simply thrown into old solutions that are not drawn from the streets.

There’s a lot more at the original, but one thing is clear: Mr Jones is an articulate man. It was what came next that surprised me:

What we see now is the end result of systemic racism. The most glaring example of that is the billions spent on segregated schools that hold back the Black community. Naicere Simmons, a 26-year-old man from North Philly who participated in Listening to the Streets, explained it this way.

“It’s like I go to school, I graduate school, the only job I can get is McDonald’s? For real? No, I’m cool. I’m going to the block. Ain’t nobody trying to finish all them years of school, and then they say, ‘Yeah, you got to go to a trade school and do two years over here, and then maybe you can get a job over there, or maybe you can do another two years and maybe you can get a job again.’

“Then these white companies and big construction companies, they got nephews, brothers, uncles, all that, that they grandfather went to school and just taught them that s–t. They didn’t go to trade school and all that. They was taught it. We don’t have it. Our mentors and father figures either dead or in jail.”

You know how you get a job in a construction company? You go to a jobsite and ask for one! You’ll start out as a laborer, but if you pay attention, if you try, you’ll learn, you’ll pick up things, and you can become something more than a manual laborer.[1]In Philadelphia’s heavily unionized environment, this might be more barriers to advancement. How do I know? That’s what I did!

So, Mr Simmons went to school, and was graduated from high school, but he can’t speak English! The only job he can get is working for McDonald’s? McDonald’s isn’t that bad; the turnover is high, so someone with drive and ambition can get ahead working for McDonald’s, if he’ll just try. Really, just what kind of better job will give him an opportunity if all he speaks is a pidgin English? And the articulate Mr Jones, in his column, told us why Mr Simmons wasn’t successful, simply by quoting him directly.

Mr Jones is not all wrong in his column. He contends that the money poured into Philadelphia’s schools is misspent, not stressing the right things.

So how do we solve the problem right now? Not by pouring money into recreation centers. Our participants told us that in the most violent neighborhoods, those centers are not safe. Not by pouring more money into schools that have failed repeatedly, no matter how much money they’ve received. Not by putting the money into traditional approaches that have done precious little to measurably reduce gun violence.

If we are to decrease gun violence, we must start by listening to the men who are living it. And then we must spend the money where it belongs — on them. Pay them to do on-the-job training in careers where there is room for advancement. Pay them to attend the therapy they need to overcome the trauma of the gun violence they have witnessed. Pay them to show their scars to the generations coming up behind them. Pay them to live.

An old friend of mine who had a plumbing business told me his secret to being able to make good money: it was because he was willing to stick his hands into other people’s [insert slang term for feces here]. That’s a nasty job, but by being willing to do that nasty work, he was earning what would today be six figures. Electricians? Electrical work isn’t fun; it can mean working out in the sun when it’s 100º or in unheated buildings when it’s 12º F outside. Pulling wire is no joke, and the detail work of connecting switches and circuit breaker boxes when your finger are numb from the cold is difficult, but if you can learn that trade, you can make decent money, and you’ll never be out of work.

And the most important skill of all is a simple one: the ability to go to work, on time, every day. It seems so simple, but it’s amazing how many people can’t do that.

Mr Jones is wrong about one thing: the education of children, regardless of sex or race, begins not at school but in the home. If the kids need to be ‘fixed’ by the time they get to school, it is almost always too late. The schools are not designed to fix kids; the schools are supposed to provide students who are already trying to take the right path with the tools they need to succeed on that path. Children need their fathers, living with and married to their mothers. The ones who don’t have that are behind from the very start.

References

References
↑1 In Philadelphia’s heavily unionized environment, this might be more barriers to advancement.
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Andy Beshear: Lying through his scummy teeth!

As we have previously noted, the state Supreme Court has consolidated the cases against the General Assembly’s new laws restricting Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) ’emergency’ powers under KRS 39A, and a lawsuit against the Governor exercising those powers. The state Court then set June 10th, then eight weeks away, to hear oral arguments in the cases. That means, in effect, that the Governor will continue to exercise authority the General Assembly denied him, for at least 3½ months after the state legislature took its action, and, in all likelihood, a couple of months after that.

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

Several lawsuits were filed in state courts last year to stop the Governor’s emergency decrees under KRS39A. On July 17, 2020, the state Supreme Court put a hold on all lower court orders against Mr Beshear’s orders and directed that “any lower court order, after entry, be immediately transferred to the clerk of the Supreme Court for consideration by the full court.” Three weeks later, the  Court set September 17, 2020, another five weeks later, to hear oral arguments by both sides.

The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, until November 12, 2020, which upheld the Governor’s orders.

If the Kentucky Supreme Court, officially non-partisan but in practice controlled by the Democrats, follows the same pattern, a second eight week delay will mean a decision around the first week of August! Even if that decision supports the duly passed laws of the General Assembly, the state courts will have given the Governor half a year to exercise power that the General Assembly restricted.

On May 6th, Governor Beshear announced that he would loosen the restrictions, but not eliminate them entirely, effective just before the Memorial Day weekend. Then, on May 14th, the Governor announced that almost all restrictions would be lifted on Kentuckians, including the hated mask mandate, even for those who are not vaccinated against COVID-19. He had, the previous day, followed the Centers for Disease Control’s recommendations, and stated that “fully vaccinated” Kentuckians could dispense with face masks.

‘A huge relief.’ Businesses, politicians celebrate end of KY COVID-19 restrictions.

By Alex Acquisto and Daniel Desrochers | June 11, 2021 | 6:00 AM | EDT | Updated: 7:45 AM EDT

A year of mask-wearing and social distancing ends Friday, as Kentuckians were given clearance to stop taking routine precautions against spread of COVID-19 for the first time since the virus initially invaded the state.

Gov. Andy Beshear first required masks be worn in public places and around others outside one’s household in July of 2020 as a way to blunt the spread of the disease and has renewed that order each month since.

On Friday, that order was lifted, along with restrictions on crowd capacity in restaurants and most other businesses, ripping off the state’s COVID-19 protective band-aid.

So, despite the best efforts of Republicans, Governor Beshear has pretty much gotten away with his dictatorial and unconstitutional actions. At this point, the battle is to keep him from being able to do it again.

KY Supreme Court hears arguments on limiting the governor’s power during emergencies

By Jack Brammer | June 10, 2021 | 1:37 PM EDT | Updated June 11, 2021 | 7:57 AM EDT

A day before Gov. Andy Beshear is to remove most COVID-19 restrictions in Kentucky, the state Supreme Court on Thursday heard arguments on Beshear’s challenge of Republican-backed laws that limit his authority to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and other emergencies.

Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. said after nearly two hours of oral arguments on two related cases that the state’s highest court will rule “as quickly as we can.” A decision is not expected for several weeks.

The state Supreme Court last year unanimously ruled that Beshear’s orders were legal but that was before the legislature passed laws earlier this year restricting the governor’s powers.

There’s a lot more at the original, but basically the Governor’s attorney was arguing that the Governor had to have the powers he exercised.

After the court hearing, Beshear told reporters that a governor’s emergency powers certainly “have to be large enough with a one-in-every-hundred year pandemic that creates the deadliest year in our history, it has to be significant and strong enough to do what’s necessary there.”

“You look back at different things that this legislature has tried to do in the midst of this pandemic and they would have not had the courage to step up and mandate masks, which we know from the experts is absolutely necessary,” he said. “We would have looked like the Dakotas and not what we looked like here in Kentucky.”

The Governor was lying through his scummy teeth. The laws did not prevent him from issuing declaring a state of emergency or issuing executive orders under it; what hey did was to limit those orders to thirty days unless the General Assembly specifically authorized an extension. The legislature passed House Joint Resolution 77, which granted extensions to some, but not all, of the Governor’s executive orders, but did not include the hated mask mandate, and then highly partisan Judge Phillip Shepherd issued an injunction against that, saying that the Governor’s existing executive orders and emergency regulations constituted “proper responses to a public health crisis.” That’s a political judgement, not a legal one.

Mr Beshear was pissed off that the legislature did not agree with all of his executive order, only some of them. Saying that the legislature “would have not had the courage to step up and mandate masks, which we know from the experts is absolutely necessary” is a political argument, not a legal one.

Republicans, frustrated by the courts’ refusal to rein in the Governor’s mandates, ran against the Governor and his actions in the 2020 elections, and the voters rewarded Republicans with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, for a 75-25 majority, and two additional seats in the state Senate, out of 17 being contested, for a 30-8 majority in that body. The state legislature, in passing the bills at the beginning of this year’s session, was doing whet the voters of Kentucky wanted them to do. The Governor does not like that the voters did not agree with his dictates.

Mr Beshear, who was very, very, very concerned about the law when he was state Attorney General and doing his best to frustrate Governor Matt Bevin (R-KY), doesn’t seem to care much about the law anymore, not when the law is a problem for him. He has argued necessity, as though the Governor’s personal judgement of what is necessary somehow trumps or supersedes the law.

Well, not just no, but Hell no! The law is the law, and the constitution is the constitution, and no Governor, not Mr Beshear or anybody else, should have the authority to just suspend or ignore parts of it.

Alas! I am not confident that the state Supreme Court will follow the law; they’ve been far too compliant with the Governor’s wishes. But, with the restrictions over, there is no reason at for the justices to ignore the laws passed by the General Assembly other than the argument of what might happen sometime in the future.

The real solution for Kentuckians will come on November 7, 2023, when they will have the chance to vote this wannabe dictator out of office.