Killadelphia Four overnight homicides aren't even newsworthy as far as The Philadelphia Inquirer is concerned

Today being Friday, there won’t be any more updates on the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page until Monday morning, which means that we’ll get the weekend homicide numbers all together. Nevertheless, you’d think that even the very #woke Philadelphia Inquirer would take notice of four more homicides in a day!

Screen capture of Inquirer main page, April 30, 2021, 10:25 AM EDT. Click to enlarge

It’s possible, of course, that some of those four additional homicides were from shootings from a couple of days ago, victims who didn’t give up the ghost until yesterday, but still, as of 10:26 AM EDT, nothing but crickets from the editors of what I have sometimes called The Philadelphia Enquirer.[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, which brings to my mind the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Last year saw 499 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, initially reported as 502, but later amended down. Assuming that three people didn’t actually recover from death on New Year’s Eve, my guess is that a few people didn’t expire until after midnight, though, knowing what a tool of Mayor Jim Kenney Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is, any sort of ‘massaging’ of the numbers is possible.

The numbers are stark. Last year’s 499 homicides was just one short of the record set in 1990, during the worst of the crack cocaine wars. As of April 29, 2020, ‘only’ 124 people had been murdered in Philadelphia. That was a 19.23% increase over 2019, but still ‘only’ 1.033 homicides per day.[2]With 2020 being a leap year, April 29th was the 120th day of the year, not the 119th as it is in non-leap years.

Things worsened as the year went along, following the Mostly Peaceful Protests™ over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the COVID-19 lockdowns. Oddly enough, crime kept increasing in Philadelphia, despite the lockdown orders. I was just so, so shocked!

But 169 homicides is a 36.29% increase over bloody 2020, and 62.50% increase over just two years ago. In case anyone hadn’t noticed, Donald Trump isn’t President anymore — though the left will still blame him — and we’ve had a COVID-19 vaccine available, and cities and states doing everything they can to get people vaccinated, and states and cities, including Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, are reducing their COVID-19 restrictions. Derek Chauvin was convicted on all charges concerning the killing of George Floyd. At this point, the left are out of external excuses on which to blame the increased violence in our inner cities.

Not that they won’t make up something else, of course, because that’s what they do.

So, what concerns the editors of the Inquirer?

There was a seemingly endless list of articles on the Eagles drafting DaVonta Smith in the first round of the NFL draft! But there were no stories which led me to believe that #BlackLivesMattered to the editors of the Inquirer. The #woke nature of the Inquirer staff, the ones who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline Buildings Matter, Too, even though Philadelphia experienced plenty of damage and violence in the protests over the killing of George Floyd, would have made anyone think that #BlackLivesMatter was of ultimate importance to the staff, so important that the innocent play on words over a legitimate concerns over the historic buildings in one of our oldest cities could be torched in those Mostly Peaceful Protests™.

But if the staff believe that black lives really matter, it’s obvious that the untimely ending of black lives, unless at the hands of a white policeman, simply isn’t newsworthy.

References

References
1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, which brings to my mind the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
2 With 2020 being a leap year, April 29th was the 120th day of the year, not the 119th as it is in non-leap years.

Hold them accountable!

I have an entire series entitles Hold them accountable, much of which is lost, or at least hidden, in a file containing whatever remains of this site prior to the reboot. However, before RedState closed itself to diarists, I had cross-posted nine of the Hold them accountable posts there, and they are still available. I have gone through the old RedState archives, and recovered those that I could, though the formatting may be poor.

My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met the man! — Robert Stacy McCain, formerly a real professional journalist, and now the site owner of The Other McCain has become quite the stupid crime blogger of late, and now he has another one:

Florida Woman Was in a Big Hurry to Reach Her Destination: Prison

by Robert Stacy McCain | April 28, 2021

The vehicle that Jennifer Carvajal destroyed, photo by Florida Highway Patrol.

Jennifer Carvajal was behind the wheel of a Hyundai Elantra clocked on radar at 111 mph headed west on I-4 by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper. It was 1:30 a.m., and three passengers were in the car with Carvajal, who did not have a driver’s license, because she had violated her probation.What was she on probation for? DUI manslaughter in 2014.

Yeah, that’s right — apparently you can kill somebody while driving drunk in Florida and you’re back on the streets in just a few years.

In 2016, Carvajal was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released in 2019. “According to Hillsborough Circuit Court Clerk records, she was then arrested in May [2020] for violating her probation with a drug-related charge and was sentenced to five more years probation.”

Did you get that? After killing somebody, then serving only three years in prison, she was arrested for drugs, a probation violation that could have sent her back to prison. But it’s Tampa, where all the judges are Democrats, so they just gave her more probation. Less than a year later, she was doing 111 mph on I-4 at 1:30 in the morning when the trooper caught her on radar. And when the trooper managed to catch up with her, Carvajal had a truly genius idea — right turn!

The result of Miss Carvajal’s right turn at 178½ KM/HR? She wasn’t driving on a banked NASCAR oval — where all of the turns are left turns anyway — but Interstate 4, so, as Mr McCain has the video, things did not go well. Miss Carvajal and twop of her passengers were seriously injured, and one was ejected and killed.

Mr McCain tends to write in a mocking and sarcastic vein when it comes to his stories on stupid criminals, and there’s more at his original, but, to me, this incident raises some obvious questions:

  • How did Miss Carvajal get just five years for killing someone? Was this the result of some cockamamie plea bargain? Was the judge just too lenient? In Florida, DUI Manslaughter is a class 2 felony, which can result in a sentence of up to fifteen years. The minimum sentence is four years.[1]Brian DeFreitas, 48, was sentenced to 12 years for the same offense.
  • How did Miss Carvajal get probation so soon, not quite four years, into her five year sentence? When she was considered for release, did no one think to ask, is she going to get drunk behind the wheel and kill someone else?
  • Who took the decision, and why, in May of 2020, to sentence Miss Carvajal to another five years of probation when she violated her existing probation rather than throwing her back in the clink?

Well, that’s the answer, of course: May of 2020. Our legal system was releasing everybody it could — and I’m surprised that Pennsylvania didn’t release Wesley Cook, the scumbag cop-killer who goes by the faux name of Mumia Abu-Jamal — due to the huge overreaction to COVID-19. In effect, the legal system in Tampa, Florida bet that it was wiser to protect Miss Carvajal from the virus than it was to protect other people from her drunken driving. The result of that bet? A 22-year-old man will never see 23, as he’s lying on the slab, stone-cold graveyard dead.

Jennifer Carvajal

As we have noted previously, some media organizations have become reluctant to post photos of criminals, for what I have come to assume are the ‘social justice’ reasons of not making it seem as though non-whites commit crimes. One of Mr McCain’s commenters, who styles himself Buffalobob, wrote:

ABC action news, “we choose not to show her mug shot because she is no longer a threat to the community. Will they show it when she is released again on probation?

Another news organization did choose to show Miss Carvajal’s photo, which Mr McCain found.

The sad story of Miss Carvajal, who has now sent two people to their eternal rewards, did not just happen. At several points, people who have sought public office and are responsible for law enforcement and trying to keep the public safe, took decisions which enabled Miss Carvajal’s deadly actions. Will the judge who sentenced Miss Carvajal to such a short sentence be held accountable? Will the probation and parole officials who decided to let her out early be held accountable? Will the prosecutors who decided, in May of 2020, not to send her back to prison for probation violations, be held accountable?

The sad, answer, of course, is that no, they won’t be held accountable. Her entire five year sentence, had it been served, would have expired before this crash, so the probation officials don’t bear any real responsibility here, but the judge, who sentenced her so leniently, and quite probably the prosecutors who arranged such a lenient sentence, do bear responsibility. The officials who decided to add another five more years probation, rather than send her to jail, bear responsibility. Everyone who played a part in Miss Carvajal not being sentenced to the maximum amount of prison time allowable under the law, and everyone who played a part in not keeping her locked up for as long as the law allowed, bear responsibility for the death of that 22-year-old man.

Until we start holding such officials accountable — which I suspect will never happen — we will continue to have stories along these lines, of how someone who could, and should, have still been in jail on a previous conviction, has murdered, mugged, raped or molested another innocent victim.

References

References
1 Brian DeFreitas, 48, was sentenced to 12 years for the same offense.

Killadelphia: Philly Police arrest 16-year-old connected to four murders

We have previously noted the apparent policy of the Lexington Herald-Leader not to publish photos of accused criminals, at least of accused criminals who are not white. And now it seems that The Philadelphia Inquirer is doing the same thing.

A 16-year-old is connected to four homicides, including a man shot outside a Philly jail, police say

Officials apprehended the teenager after highlighting his alleged crimes during the city’s first biweekly gun violence briefing.

By Anna Orso | April 28, 2021

Philadelphia police have arrested a 16-year-old who they say is connected to four killings since December, including the fatal shooting of man who was gunned down after his release from a city jail last month.

Ameen Hurst, of Philadelphia, faces murder and related charges in connection with two shooting incidents: a Christmas Eve killing in Overbrook and a quadruple shooting in West Philadelphia on March 11 that left two men dead. Police said charges are also expected to be filed against him this week in connection with the shooting death of Rodney Hargrove, 20, near the front gates of the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in the middle of the night on March 18.

Just a day before the incident outside the jail, officials had publicly named Hurst as a person of interest in the Christmas Eve killing of 20-year-old Dyewou Nyshawn Scruggs, who was streaming live on social media when he was shot.

In none of the cases did police offer a possible motive for the shootings.

Ameen Hurst, 16. Click to enlarge.

There’s more at the original. What there isn’t at the original is a photo of the accused. The website of WPVI-TV, Channel 6, the ABC owned-and-operated (O&O) station in Philadelphia, had Mr Hurst’s photo, as did KYW-TV, Channel 3, the CBS O&O station, so the photo was available. The Inquirer simply chose not to display it on its website.

As I noted in my stories concerning the Herald-Leader, it wasn’t an issue of saving bandwidth, because the Inquirer story was illustrated with this stock photo of Philly cops placing numbered markers by spent shell casings. It would have cost the Inquirer no more bandwidth to publish Mr Hurst than it did the stock photo.

I will admit to some surprise that the Inquirer printed the name of the 16-year-old suspect, as he’s legally a minor. That his name was released probably indicates that he is being charged as an adult, so why not publish a freely available photo?

I, of course, don’t know why the Inquirer didn’t include the photo in the website article, but knowing how the young #woke have captured the Inquirer’s newsroom, forcing the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too,” I would not be in the least surprised if the Inquirer declined to publish Mr Hurst’s photo because the accused is black.

#FirstWorldProblems: British writer worries about having a son who will grow up with running water and electricity

British Vogue isn’t exactly my go-to source for high-brow intellectual articles. Pieces like Oscars 2021 Red Carpet: The Best Dresses From the Night might not be the most inspirational articles on the scientific topic of Climate Change, but whatever! I’m sure that the lovely Amanda Marcotte would have approved of this article, and the author, until she revealed that she had, Heaven forfend! gotten pregnant!

Is Having A Baby In 2021 Pure Environmental Vandalism?

By Nell Frizzell | April 25, 2021

Is having a child an act of environmental vandalism or an investment in the future? Is it possible to live an ecologically responsible life while adding yet another person to our overstretched planet? Can I get away with it if I just never learn to drive, never get a dog and keep wearing the same three pairs of jeans for the rest of my life?

For the scientifically-engaged person, there are few questions more troubling when looking at the current climate emergency than that of having a baby. Whether your body throbs to reproduce, you passively believe that it is on the cards for you one day, or you actively seek to remain child-free, the declining health of the planet cannot help but factor in your thinking.

Well, not to worry, if enough people think the way Nell Frizzell does, we won’t have to worry too much about anthropogenic global warming climate change, as in a few more generations, there won’t be any more humans.

Oh, wait, I forgot. I need to stop using my sarcastic global warming climate change, because:

Scientific American magazine announced Monday that it would stop using the term “climate change” in articles about man-made global warming and substitute “climate emergency” instead.

So, what, now I have to switch to global warming climate change emergency? Sometimes it just gets so difficult to keep up!

But what got me was Miss Frizzell’s next sentence, which was a continuation of her second paragraph:[1] Miss Frizzell appears to be correct, in that her website “About” page states that she lives with “her partner, (and) her son,” which leads me to assume that she is not married.

Before I got pregnant, I worried feverishly about the strain on the earth’s resources that another Western child would add. The food he ate, the nappies he wore, the electricity he would use; before he’d even started sitting up, my child would have already contributed far more to climate change than his counterpart in, say, Kerala or South Sudan.

So, it wasn’t just a child, but a Western child which worried her. That child in South Sudan, who wouldn’t contribute as much to climate change? He’d be born into one of the world’s poorest countries:

South Sudan sits near the bottom of most human development indices, according to the United Nations, including the highest maternal mortality and female illiteracy rates.

Just how seriously am I supposed to take an article on saving the planet from a website that is also featuring “To All The White Boys I’ve Dated Before”?

So, no, he wouldn’t contribute as much to global warming climate change emergency, because he would very probably be born into a village with no electricity or running water, be more likely to be an orphan given the country’s high maternal death rate, and have a life expectancy of only 57.6 years. He would, in all probability, suffer more than Miss Frizzell’s British-born and reared son, but hey, he’d have less of an impact on global warming climate change emergency!

“(T)he nappies (her son) wore”? Well, if Miss Frizzell was all that worried about the contribution to global warming climate change emergency from those nappies, she could have bought cloth diapers, and washed them out in the toilet, as my mother, and every other American mother had to do in the 1950s. Was Miss Frizzell’s concern about the climate sufficient to encourage her to do that, or was she doing like most other First World mothers do in the 21st century, and buy disposable nappies?

But, at least in one regard, Miss Frizzell has told the truth, told a truth that so many of the climate activists either don’t realize or are reluctant to admit: to do as they say we should, they are going to have to leave London and Paris and New York, and start living that South Sudan lifestyle:

You don’t have to look into the future or to other continents to see that the world as it is organised now is dangerous for children. According to the World Health Organisation, 93 per cent of all children live in environments with air pollution levels above the WHO guidelines. Pollution now kills more people than tobacco – and three times as many as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Across the world, more than one in every four deaths among children under five is already directly or indirectly related to environmental risks. Even here in the UK, where our wealth and geography has so far largely protected us from the effects of climate change, children are already dying from pollution-related respiratory problems.

And yet, like millions of others, I did it anyway. I had a baby. I’d have another if my partner agreed. Is that because I am selfish, myopic or greedy? Did I simply learn to compartmentalise my thinking, choose to listen to the arguments that supported what I wanted to do anyway, or ignore what was right in front of my face? Perhaps. But I also believe that when it comes to the future health of the planet, the question is not one of whether or not we continue to have babies. People will always have babies. Here, there and everywhere. Instead, it is a question of how we raise those babies, of learning to live within our environmental means, of turning away from the fever of consumerism and overturning a political system that rewards a tiny rich minority at the expense of everyone else.

Perhaps Miss Frizzell could bring up her son, not in Oxford, with its consumerism and ridiculous real estate prices and pollution and conspicuous consumption, but in South Sudan. Living there, he would certainly grow up “learning to live within (his) environmental means”!

Miss Frizzell is a writer, her About page telling us that she has written for many august publications. Well, couldn’t she do that anywhere, and simply send her stories to Vogue over the (non-present) internet in her Sudanese village (without electricity).

Miss Frizzell appears to feel some guilt at having had the privilege of growing up in a modern, Western society. So, I have to ask: does she feel enough guilt at that to move somewhere else?

References

References
1 Miss Frizzell appears to be correct, in that her website “About” page states that she lives with “her partner, (and) her son,” which leads me to assume that she is not married.

Elect #SocialJustice public officials, and watch crime soar

StJohnTheDivineWilliamPortoIt was the summer of 2007, when my younger daughter, then a rising sophomore in high school, was considering architecture as a potential collegiate major, and she and I went to New York City on an architecture tour. One of the places that she wanted to see was the Episcopal Cathedral of St John the Divine, which is located at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue, at 112th Street.

Well, we missed our subway stop, and instead of getting off at 110th or 116th streets, we wound up getting off at 125th Street. That’s Harlem!

So, my daughter, who was the whitest white girl in town, and I walked back down to our destination. The streets were clean, the people were pleasant, and we didn’t have the first moment’s trouble.

Rudolph Giuliani had succeeded the abysmal David Dinkins as Mayor of New York City on January 1, 1994, and served through December 31, 2001. From Wikipedia:

Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.[3][4] After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, holding a platform of toughness on crime.[1][5] He led New York’s controversial “civic cleanup” as its mayor from 1994 to 2001.[1][6] Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City’s new police commissioner.[5] Reforming the police department’s administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory,[5] which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals.[7] In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a “family values” vibe and a return to the area’s earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts.[8] As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, yet later critics cite other contributing factors.[1] In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer.[9][10] For his mayoral leadership after the September 11 attacks in 2001, he was called “America’s mayor”.[5][11] He was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001,[12][13] and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

By the time my daughter and I made that trip, Mayor Giuliani had been succeeded by another Republican — who later became an independent, and later still, a Democrat — in Michael Bloomberg, and as mayor, he kept the strict policing policies of Mr Giuliani.

But, after three terms, Mayor Bloomberg was succeeded by far left social justice warrior Bill de Blasio. From the New York Post:

NYPD union slams Big Apple as ‘city of violence’ amid surge in shootings

By Amanda Woods | April 27, 2021 | 1:09pm | Updated

The NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association slammed the Big Apple as “the city of violence” amid a 250 percent surge in shootings last week, and a slew of other disturbing crimes citywide.

“Mayor de Blasio has allocated 30 million dollars to bring tourism to NYC,” the union tweeted Monday morning. “Welcome to the city of violence.”

The SBA included a screengrab showing nearly two dozen shootings across the five boroughs between Friday and Sunday.

“Shootings and Homicides plaque [sic] NYC and the numbers aren’t final,” the union tweeted.

NYPD data indicates that 50 people were shot in 46 separate incidents over a seven-day period ending Sunday evening.

The department said it logged 12 shootings with 14 victims during the same time last year — more than a month into the city’s COVID-19 lockdown, according to the weekly Compstat data.

Chicago and Philadelphia laugh! The latest weekly NYPD CompStat Report, for the week of April 12th through 18th, indicates that there had been 106 murders in New York City through the th, up from 100 at the same time last year.

As of the 18th, Chicago had seen 177 homicides, up to 185 as of the 25th, while Philly had piled up 159 dead bodies by the end of the 25th. With New York’s much larger population, their effective homicide rate is significantly lower, but it’s climbing, and getting away from the stricter policing under “Broken Windows” has proven to be ineffective.

The left have, for years, decried “mass incarceration,” but lenient law enforcement has proven to be a bad idea even for the criminals. We have previously noted how John Lewis, AKA Lewis Jordan, who slew Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, and Nikolas Cruz, accused of the mass murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were given every possible break. Had they been in jail at the time they committed their murders, yeah, they might have served a year or three, but Mr Jordan wouldn’t be on death row today, looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in prison, and Mr Cruz wouldn’t have the same kind of sentence looking him dead in the eye.

Philadelphia Police Officers and FOP members block District Attorney Larry Krasner from entering the hospital to meet with slain Police Corporal James O’Connor’s family.

Are Messrs Jordan and Cruz somehow better off today because lenient law enforcement kept them out of jail? Is Andrew Brown, with his 180-page-long rap sheet, better off today because, despite many criminal convictions, he was out of jail the day he decided to start a gunfight with several Pasquotank County, North Carolina, deputies trying to serve a couple of warrants? Was 21-year-old Hasan Elliot better off on that Friday the 13th when he should have been in jail, and would have been in jail had not Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office declined to have him locked up on a serious parole violation, and he had a shootout with police?

Treating the petty criminals seriously is better for everyone in the long run. It’s better for society, as it gets the bad guys off the street, and lowers the overall crime rate, and it’s better for the criminals themselves, because when they are locked up for crimes that leave them with hope of eventually getting out of prison, they don’t have as much time on the streets, usually in their prime crime committing ages, they are likely to commit the big crimes which will have them locked up for the rest of their miserable lives.

As nearly as I can tell, black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer unless they are taken by a white police officer.

When you have been married for 41 years, 11 months and 7 days, as my wife and I have — but who’s counting, right? — a six-month anniversary seems pretty inconsequential, something that you remember like six-months of dating or you first six months of being married.[1]Actually, we got married just six months and two days after we met, and one day short of five months after our first date!

So, April 26th being the six-month anniversary of Walter Wallace, Jr, being sent to his eternal reward by two Philadelphia policemen as he was advancing on them with a raised knife never occurred to me when I mentioned his death in an article on the 25th.

But Mr Wallace’s family remembered, and held a small, roughly 200-person rally, and it was covered by The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Walter Wallace Jr. is remembered 6 months after police fatally shot him

“We will never let my brother’s name be forgotten,” said Lakitah Wallace, growing choked up. “Our lives matter. Our lives matter.”

by Rita Giordano and Kristen A. Graham | April 25, 2021

Three siblings stood in Malcolm X Park on Sunday and looked out at a crowd of more than 200 who gathered in West Philadelphia.

But there should have been four, said Lakitah Wallace, 28. Six months ago Monday, her brother Walter Wallace Jr. died at the hands of Philadelphia police.

“We will never let my brother’s name be forgotten,” said Lakitah Wallace, her voice catching. “Our lives matter. Our lives matter.”

In her brother’s honor, scores marched from 58th and Spruce to Malcolm X Park. The event marked one of the first times the family has appeared publicly since Wallace’s death. It was part of a multi-city rally calling for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Russell Maroon Shoatz, both convicted of killing Philadelphia police officers.

Screen capture when searching Google for “Mumia”. Screen cap by Dana R Pico, April 26, 2021, at 7:46 AM EDT.

Freedom for Wesley Cook, who now goes by the fake name Mumia Abu-Jamal, huh? Mr Cook murdered a police officer, so naturally he’s some kind of hero to the #BlackLivesMatter protesters.[2]According to Wikipedia, “In 1968, a high school teacher, a Kenyan instructing a class on African cultures, encouraged the students to take African or Arabic names for classroom use; he gave … Continue reading

If you do a Google search for Mumia Abu-Jamal — and Google fills it in as soon as you finish typing Mumia — you get what I screen captured on the right, a claim that Mr Cook is a “Journalist.” If you click on his Wikipedia biography, you’ll get more material slanted in Mr Cook’s favor.

Mr Cook was sentenced to death for the murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner on December 9, 1981. Through exhaustive appeals, his sentence was later reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.[3]Fortunately, Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) does not have the power to issue pardons or sentence commutations absent “the recommendation in writing of a majority of the Board of Pardons,” or … Continue reading

Back to the Inquirer:

Lakitah Wallace — who was flanked by her sister Wynetta Wallace, Walter Jr.’s twin, and brother John Brant — led the crowd in a chant: “Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.”

“We want to give support to any family who has been traumatized by police brutality,” Lakitah Wallace said. “We want justice for my brother, we want justice for every other Black man who has been murdered and sacrificed in front of their loved ones.”

This is no different from the cries of outrage that a Columbus, Ohio, police officer shot and killed Ma’khia Bryant, a 16-year-old black girl, as young Miss Bryant was trying to stab another young black girl to death. What was the officer supposed to do, wait for Miss Bryant to kill her victim and then ask her to politely surrender so that he could place her under arrest?

A site search of the Inquirer’s website yielded no returns for Jaslyn Adams, a seven-year-old girl killed in a McDonald’s drive-through lane in Chicago, because gang-bangers were trying to kill her father? Her black life doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t taken by a white policeman.

Fortunately, one of the young Miss Adams’ alleged killers has been apprehended:

Marion Lewis, 18, faces a first-degree murder charge along with 17 other felony charges, including one count of aggravated vehicular hijacking, three counts of attempted first-degree murder and six counts of aggravated discharge of a firearm. . . . .

During Sunday’s bond hearing, prosecutors said Lewis was behind the wheel when two other suspects got out and fired several rounds into Adam’s vehicle. Police have identified the two suspects. Both remain at large.

But while Miss Adams’ murder has been prominent in the Chicago media, it still hasn’t been the media sensation that Ma’khia Bryant’s or Walter Wallace’s were, even though Miss Adams was an innocent victim, and the two killed by police officers were attacking with knives.

Where is the outrage in the black community, the nationwide black community, over the death of Miss Adams? Where is the outrage that the Inquirer, once considered a great newspaper, and, by some rights, the oldest daily newspaper in the United States, had no stories at all on the website main page, as of 8:45 AM EDT on any of the three homicides in the City of Brotherly Love over the weekend?[4]The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is updated only Monday through Friday. It reported that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, April 25th, 159 homicides had occurred … Continue reading

“If it bleeds, it leads,” is an old, old newspaper saying, yet, for the Inquirer, unless the bleeding victim is a child, a local child, a “somebody,” or a cute little white girl, — a site search for Rian Thal yielded 2,963 results — the Inquirer doesn’t cover it. As nearly as I can tell, black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer unless they are taken by a white police officer.

References

References
1 Actually, we got married just six months and two days after we met, and one day short of five months after our first date!
2 According to Wikipedia, “In 1968, a high school teacher, a Kenyan instructing a class on African cultures, encouraged the students to take African or Arabic names for classroom use; he gave Cook the name “Mumia”. According to Abu-Jamal, “Mumia” means “Prince” and was the name of a Kenyan anti-colonial African nationalist who fought against the British before Kenyan independence. . . . . Cook adopted the surname Abu-Jamal (“father of Jamal” in Arabic) after the birth of his first child, son Jamal, on July 18, 1971.” There is no indication in the Wikipedia biography that Mr Cook ever legally changed his name, and even if he had, as a cop killer, he does not deserve any respect, and I will not show him any respect by deferring to his use of a made-up name.
3 Fortunately, Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) does not have the power to issue pardons or sentence commutations absent “the recommendation in writing of a majority of the Board of Pardons,” or that idiot probably would set Mr Cook free.
4 The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is updated only Monday through Friday. It reported that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, April 25th, 159 homicides had occurred in Philly. The previous update, on Friday morning, stated that there had been 156 homicides as of the end of Thursday, April 22nd.

The credentialed media are the ones telling us that most black lives don’t matter

We noted on the 23rd how credentialed media institutions like what I like to call The Philadelphia Enquirer have been pushing the “cops shoot black people for no reason” meme, and how such an august newspaper — founded in 1829, making it decades older than The New York Timesresponded with such glee at the conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin over the death of George Floyd:

Even on Sunday, April 25th, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page is running a big section on the verdict against Mr Chauvin:

Screen capture, The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 25, 2021, taken at 11:25 AM EDT, by Dana R Pico.

Now comes former Washington Times reporter Robert Stacy McCain, noting how the credentialed media — if you can actually call the HuffPost “credentialed” — are still fanning the flames:

Media: The Enemy of the People

by Robert Stacy McCain | April 25, 2021

Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics remarks on Twitter:

Hard to imagine a more divisive, sensational, context-less headline. A textbook example of the media being the enemy of the people.

The story in question is by the Associated Press:

Even as the Derek Chauvin case was fresh in memory — the reading of the verdict in a Minneapolis courtroom, the shackling of the former police officer, the jubilation at what many saw as justice in the death of George Floyd — even then, blood flowed on America’s streets.

And even then, some of that blood was shed at the hands of law enforcement.

At least six people were fatally shot by officers across the United States in the 24 hours after jurors reached a verdict in the murder case against Chauvin on Tuesday. The roll call of the dead is distressing:

  • A 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio.
  • An oft-arrested man in Escondido, California.
  • A 42-year-old man in eastern North Carolina. . . .
  • An unidentified man in San Antonio.
  • Another man, killed in the same city within hours of the first.
  • A 31-year-old man in central Massachusetts.

The circumstances surrounding each death differ widely.

Were they engaged in crime? Were they resisting arrest? Did they pose a threat of deadly violence? “Circumstances . . . differ widely,” we are told, but all the Associated Press and the headline writers at the Huffington Post are interested in is the number, with the implication that the lives of innocent Americans everywhere are endangered by the police.

There’s more at Mr McCain’s original.

The “16-year-old girl in Columbus”? A police officer shot her as she was attempting to stab another girl to death! The Inquirer ran two stories on the death of Ma’khia Bryant, but I have not been able to find a single story on the newspaper’s website main page concerning the individual deaths of people virtually every single day in the City of Brotherly Love, which I believe to be because there’s no perceived political advantage to be found in stories about young black men being shot by other young black men. Jaslyn Adams, the seven-year-old girl killed in a McDonald’s drive-through lane, because gang-bangers were trying to kill her father? Her black life doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t taken by a white policeman.

Mr McCain noted:

Even if someone is charging at you with a knife, cops can’t shoot them — that’s the madhouse toward which the media seek to lead us.

When I saw that brief paragraph, with the internal link about Ma’khia Bryant, my mind went to the shooting of Walter Wallace, Jr. There were riots in the City of Brotherly Love last fall after two officers shot Mr Wallace, a mentally unstable man who had been the subject of several calls to police, by his own family, that very day due to his rampages. Body camera photos showed the whacked out Mr Wallace charging two officers, on the last call concerning Mr Wallace’s threatening behavior, with a raised knife.

Of course, the Usual Suspects waxed wroth. Why didn’t they shoot him in the leg, the Snowflakes™ chimed in? Why didn’t they use tasers? (The responding officers did not have tasers.) William Teach noted that the San Diego Union Tribune’s Editorial Board said that Police urgently need a more humane alternative to lethal weapons. It’s time to design one, as though no one is trying to do that right now. Sometimes I think that these people have watched too much Star Trek and think the police can just set their phasers on stun.

Naturally, the family, the same family who called the cops on Mr Wallace, “wanted answers.” The answer was simple: two officers responded, had to make a split second decision on a guy charging at them with a knife, and took the right one. Riots followed in Philly, and the Inquirer’s website gave 99 returns in a site search for Walter Wallace.

The activists at Ohio State University, which is located in Columbus, the city in which Miss Bryant was killed, were just thoroughly upset about it:

Destiny Brown, a senior at the Ohio State University, breathed a sigh of relief in her dorm room on Tuesday when the guilty verdict came down for former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. But the moment of respite proved short-lived. Minutes later, she scrolled on Twitter and learned that a 16-year-old Black girl, Ma’Khia Bryant, had been shot and killed that afternoon by Columbus police.

“I can’t even begin to process the fact that we live in a world where people’s lives — regardless of what they’re doing, what they have going on, guilty or not, innocent or not — their lives just do not matter,” Brown told Yahoo News. “It doesn’t make sense to me and never will.”

Overcome with a feeling of helplessness, Brown fired off a group text message to her friends Tuesday evening. “I’m ready to organize again,” she told them.

In a matter of hours, Brown and her friends had planned a sit-in to be held the following day at the Ohio Union, the university’s student center in Columbus. Their goal, Brown said, was simple: to demand that the school sever ties with Columbus police over Bryant’s killing and its mistreatment of students of color.

Columbus, Ohio, saw 175 murders in 2020, and, as of mid October, 75% of the victims were black:

Columbus Police also shared details on the homicide suspects. Of the 79 identified, 65 are Black with 59 being Black men, and nine are white with eight being white men.

Of the cases police say were solved, 56 had a Black victim and a Black suspect, two had a Black victim and a white suspect, seven had a white victim and a Black suspect and six had a white victim and a white suspect.

I couldn’t find more recent numbers, but in 2010, the population of Columbus was 28.0% black. Shouldn’t Destiny Brown, a senior at Ohio State, be asking why a city that’s 28% black is seeing 75% of murder victims being black, and that 96.6% of the solved murders of black people were committed by other black people? Then again, if the local media in Columbus are anything like the media in Philadelphia, Miss Brown may never have heard that so many black people had been killed locally, the vast majority of them by other black people.

The lovely Miss Brown wouldn’t admit it, of course, because she’s too #woke to do so, and asking the question leads to an uncomfortable truth: in urban America, the black culture allows these killings to happen, and the credentialed media have been their willing accomplices.

The Lexington Herald-Leader finally publishes a photo of a criminal suspect Could it be that because, this time, the accused is white rather than black?

We have previously noted that the Lexington Herald-Leader does not like posting photographs of accused criminals, even when those suspects are still at large and publishing the photo might help the police capture him.

So, we were somewhat surprised when the newspaper did publish such a photograph:

Kentucky man allegedly tried to kidnap 3-year-old boy, offered $1,000 to buy him

By Bill Estep | April 23, 2021 | 9:41 AM EDT

Ronnie L. Helton was charged in April 2021 with attempting to kidnap a child. Whitley County Detention Center

A Kentucky man who allegedly tried to kidnap a 3-year-old boy as he played in the yard has been charged in federal court.

A grand jury indicted Ronnie L. Helton, of Corbin, Thursday on one charged of attempted kidnapping.

Helton, 73, was arrested on state charges hours after an April 7 incident in Corbin in which a woman named Kristy Baker told police a man had tried to take her grandchild.

Baker said the boy was playing on a trailer sitting next to a fence around her yard when a man parked across the street and walked over to the child, according to the citation in the case.

There are more details of the case and the arrest at the Herald-Leader original.

This is one of the times I miss my late best friend, who grew up in Corbin. He would have turned 67 years old a month and a half ago, and, Corbin being the small town it is, might even have known the accused. He used to refer to the paper as the Lexington Herald-Liberal, and if it was true in the past, it is even more true today.

Mr Helton is, of course, presumed to be innocent until proven guilty, and perhaps the presumption of innocence could explain the Herald-Leader’s reluctance to publish photos of other suspects; after all, suspects’ photos will almost certainly lead to negative consequences for them locally in the event that some of them are acquitted or the charges are dropped! But such a consideration must not have been applied to Mr Helton, and in a much smaller town like Corbin, 2019 guesstimated population 7,202, he is likely to be far more widely known than in a city like Lexington, 2019 guesstimate population 323,152.

Mr Helton’s photograph was provided by the Whitley County Detention Center, and thus was freely available. But, as we noted in a previous story, the photo of then at-large suspect Juanyah Clay was published by all of the other Lexington media, and was available from both the Lexington city government and on the Lexington Police Department’s Facebook page. The Herald-Leader would not have had to pay for it, nor was bandwidth a problem, given that the newspaper’s website included stock photos of the police stringing up crime scene tape.

There was a stock photo in the story on the charges against Mr Helton as well, of two hands sticking through jail cell bars.

So, why not publish the photos of other suspects when they are freely available? As I speculated previously, I am guessing that it is because Juanyah Clay is black. The published photo of Mr Helton, who is obviously white, might not be proof that my speculation was correct, but it certainly provides evidence of it.

Is it any wonder black Americans don’t trust the police? Liberal media organizations like The Philadelphia Inquirer try to undermine trust

Do you know who Jaslyn Adams is?

You could be forgiven if you hadn’t heard of young Miss Adams, whose black life didn’t matter all that much, because she wasn’t shot by a white policeman.

‘I want my baby’s killers in jail,’ dad says at vigil for 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams

About 75 neighbors, family members and friends gathered in East Garfield Park Wednesday to honor Jaslyn, who was fatally shot Sunday while at a McDonald’s drive-thru with her father.

Jaslyn Adams. Photo provided to media by family.

By Madeline Kenney | April 21, 2021, 9:48pm CDTAbout 75 neighbors, family members and friends gathered in East Garfield Park Wednesday evening to honor the life of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams, who was fatally shot Sunday as she and her father were getting food at a McDonald’s drive-thru.

Pink spray paint covered the sidewalks and brick wall with messages, like “I love you, Pinky” — Jaslyn’s nickname. Dozens of pink balloons were taped to the wall.

Jaslyn’s father, Jontae Adams, who was also wounded in the Sunday afternoon shooting, struggled to get out of his car when he arrived at the vigil. His loved ones helped him walk with his crutches before his father stopped him and the two embraced.

“I’m sorry, man,” Adams murmured as he cried on his father’s shoulder.

I’ve said it before: murders of black people are not news to The Philadelphia Inquirer unless the victim is a child, a “somebody,” or a cute little white girl. Young Miss Adams was killed in Chicago, as some thug was gunning for her father, so it’s not Philly news, and, a site search of the Inquirer’s website for Jaslyn Adams, at 9:24 AM EDT today, got zero returns. The Inquirer never mentioned her killing.

Fortunately, a suspect has been apprehended, and Chicago police have said the killing was gang-related.

Police body camera image of Ma’khia Bryant trying to stab another woman.


The Inquirer did have two stories about the shooting death of 16-year-old Ma’khia Bryant at the hands of a white police officer; young Miss Bryant was shot while attempting to stab another black woman. Miss Bryant’s black life mattered because of who fired the shots who killed her, and, for some people, her black life mattered more than the girl, another black girl, she was trying to kill.

And so we come to the newspaper I have sometimes referred to as The Philadelphia Enquirer:[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Families of murdered Philadelphians know the hollow victory of justice

No verdict will undo the harm — whether it’s a death by state-sanctioned police brutality or by Philadelphia’s relentless gun violence.

by Helen Ubiñas | Columnist | April 21, 2021

Aleida Garcia watched the verdict against former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin at home, alone, and found herself reliving the 2018 day she sat in a cramped Philadelphia courtroom praying for justice in the murder of her son.

It all felt so familiar, she told me moments after the Chauvin verdict was announced Tuesday: the anxiety, the adrenaline, and then, finally, the relief when, just like the man who murdered her son in 2015, Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd.

Victory — if only a painfully hollow one.

“It’s like the twilight zone,” Garcia said, recalling the day the man who killed her son was sentenced to life in prison. “You feel like somehow you earned a prize and the prize is having your child back, that he’s going to walk through the door, but of course that’s never going to happen.”

Because as she and other loved ones of murder victims know all too well: No verdict will undo the harm — whether it’s a death by state-sanctioned police brutality or by Philadelphia’s relentless gun violence that claimed nearly 500 lives last year and more than 150 so far this year.

There’s more of the same drivel at the original, but notice: in both the article subtitle — which may have been written by an editor rather than Miss Ubiñas — and Miss Ubiñas’ copy, “state-sanctioned police brutality” is listed before “Philadelphia’s relentless gun violence.”

On the Inquirer’s website main page, at 10:03 AM EDT, there was not a single story listed concerning any homicides in Philadelphia yesterday or overnight . . . but, according to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, two more people were sent to an early grave in Philly’s mean streets, though one killing happened early enough yesterday for a very brief article on the website yesterday. The victim, a 20-year-old man, was shot “several times,” which makes it appear to be a deliberate hit, and probably gang-related. But, to Miss Ubiñas, let’s worry about the very few people killed by police officers. A whopping 156 people have been killed in Philadelphia so far this year, 38 more than the same date last year — and remember: 2020 was a leap year, so April 22nd was the 113th day of 2020, but just the 112th day this year — a 32.20% increase over last year. At 1.39 homicides per day, the City of Brotherly Love is on track for a record 508 murders in 2021.

But the Enquirer doesn’t care about that, or at least doesn’t comment on that, other than to use the euphemism “gun violence,” when the problem is bad people picking up those inanimate objects and shooting people. As we noted two days ago, the Inquirer was full of gloating and thankful articles about the conviction of Derek Chauvin, but nobody there seems to give a damn about the people, the mostly black victims, killed on the streets every f(ornicating) day by other people, mostly other black people, because to note that would offend the sensibilities of the #woke in the Inquirer’s newsroom.[2]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

I’ve said it before: black lives don’t matter, at least not to the editors, columnists and writers of the Inquirer, unless they are taken by a white police officer. It has become obvious with the way the Inquirer does everything it can to undermine the Philadelphia Police Department, and to ruin what little trust black Philadelphians have in calling the cops.
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Related articles from other sites:

References

References
1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwk/) 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.