It has been pointed out countless times on The First Street Journal that The Philadelphia Inquirer only cares about individual homicides when the victim is an ‘innocent,’ a person already of some note, or a cute little white girl.
And so it has been with the killing of Josh Kruger. Continue reading
We have noted, really too many times to note all of them, that The Philadelphia Inquirer is not really concerned about individual homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl is the victim. On Monday morning, it was reported that Josh Kruger, a freelance journalist of at least some note in Philly was murdered, which we noted here, and the left in Philly — Rue Landau, Inquirer reporter Ellie Rushing, Jordan Winkler, Mayor Jim Kenney, the Liberty City Dems, state Senator Nikil Saval, The New York Times, WPVI-TV, Inquirer editorial writer Daniel Pearson, CNN, Taj Magruder, Maggie Hart, and an untold number of other people are all mourning his death.
Yet what about the three people murdered early this morning, along with a fourth person critically wounded, in the Crascentville section of the city, and the ‘person of interest’ suspected in the killings? They are, as far as the media have told us thus far, not ‘somebodies,’ and there are few tweets about them, few messages I have seen, and, as far as I can tell, other than friends and family, nobody f(ornicating) cares. Mayor Kenney has said nothing about those four people, whom I assume to be black from this photo in the Inky. Mr Kruger was white.
And you know what? I am not surprised in the least!
It was on May 25th that I noted the somewhat unusual statistical trend, and ask the headline question, Could Philly see ‘only’ 450 homicides in 2023?
In 2020, the City of Brotherly Love had 499 ‘official’ homicides, though, as we have noted, several times, the change in the Philadelphia Police Department’s statistics, down from the 502 homicides initially reported for 2020, down to 499, one short of the then-all-time record of 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, under the ‘leadership’ of then-Mayor Wilson Goode, he of MOVE bombing fame. I made a totally rookie mistake, and failed to get a screen capture of that, but a Twitter fellow styling himself NDJinPhilly was apparently smarter than me that particular time, took the screen shot, and then tweeted it to me.
The trend of the numbers was such that it looked as though the total homicide numbers would be higher than 2022’s 516, but also lower than 499. As of Wednesday, July 26th, the total homicide numbers year to date have dropped below the level in 2020.
How do the numbers work out? Wednesday was the 207th day of the year, meaning that, if the 242 homicides number is correct, Philly has been seeing ‘only’ 1.169 murders per day, an average which works out to 426.71 for the year. However, the first half of the year contains more colder months than the latter half, and homicides normally increase with warmer weather. In 2022, which saw 516 killings, 59.88% of the year’s murders were committed by July 26th. At that rate, we would expect a total of 404.14 killings for all of 2023, a number which is close enough to 399 to leave the city with fewer than 400 murders.
May 25, 2020, saw the unfortunate death of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl addled convicted felon George Floyd while he was resisting arrest for passing counterfeit money in Minneapolis. With that, the American left went absolutely bonkers, and killings soared. May 24, 2020 had seen 147 murders in Philly, 1.021 per day, on a path toward 373.625 for the year, a bit above the 356 homicides for the previous year, but not monstrously so.
My conclusion is simple: the lawless reaction of Antifa and the idiotic #BlackLivesMatter protesters led to the killings of an additional 125 people in Philadelphia in 2020!
There are some assumptions that I have to take here, assumptions which may not play out. But if I plot out a graph from 374 ‘should have been’ homicides in 2020, to a ‘projected’ 427 for this year, assume that rise to have been steady, there should have been 391 murders in 2021, 409 in 2022, and the projected 427 for this year. That means that the left-wing riots led to 125 more murders in 2020, 171 in 2021, and 107 in 2022. Yeah, there are entirely too many assumptions that I’ve had to take, but I’m seeing 403 more people murdered, in Philadelphia alone, due to the lawlessness of attitude spawned by the riots, and most of those murder victims have been black males.
Yes, this is way too simplistic a calculation. The inaction of District Attorney Larry Krasner when it comes to locking up criminals before they are graduated to murder, as well as the strongly pro-abortion status of the city’s politicians have a lot to do with it, but there has been a cheapening of life, a callousness in the city, a callousness which doesn’t see killing other people as all that bad a thing. Yes, I see an entire ‘extra year’ of killing in Philly due to Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and #woke progressives.
We’ve known for a while now that District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) does not like charging juveniles with adult crimes. Really, he doesn’t like charging adults with adult crimes. Nevertheless, he hasn’t completely ruled out charging the worst of Philly’s teens as adults:
The changes do not apply to juveniles who are repeat offenders or who are charged with serious crimes including gun possession, aggravated assault resulting in serious injury, sexual assault, and other felonies involving weapons.
Now comes a big test of Mr Krasner’s resolve:
2 teens arrested in quadruple shooting that killed 3 teens in Philly
“Just a travesty,” said Veronica J. Joyner, founder and chief administrative officer of Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School of Philadelphia Inc., attended by two of the shooting victims.
by Diane Mastrull | Saturday, April 29, 2023 | 3:35 PM EDT
Two teenagers have been arrested in connection with a quadruple shooting that left three teens dead and one hospitalized Friday afternoon in Philadelphia’s Crescentville section, police said.
Police identified the dead Saturday as Malik Ballard, 17, of the city’s Frankford section; Khalif Frezghi, 18, of East Mount Airy; and Salah Fleming, 14, of North Philadelphia.
The shooting occurred about 3:30 p.m. Friday on the 5900 block of Palmetto Street, where, police said, Ballard was found shot on the sidewalk, Frezghi on a front porch, and Fleming just inside the front doorway of a home. All were pronounced dead at the scene by medics.
A fourth victim, a 16-year-old male who has not been identified, arrived at Jefferson Frankford Hospital with a gunshot wound to the stomach, police said.
Following that are several paragraphs telling us what good guys the victims were, we get this:
A short time after the shootings, police said Friday night, they found a black Ford Edge believed to have been involved in the shootings. It had crashed on the 500 block of East Wyoming Street. Police took two juveniles into custody and said they believed they had dropped off the injured 16-year-old at the hospital.
Police identified them only as 15- and 16-year-old males and said they have been charged with violation of the Uniform Firearms Act and related offenses.
Huh? If reporter Diane Mastrull’s story is accurate, we are expected to believe that the alleged killers then rescued one of their intended victims, and took him to the hospital. Does this make sense to anyone? My first impression is that the surviving victim was actually shot by one of the three dead boys, possibly in a gun battle, and the killers scooped the victims’ weapons before fleeing. Other scenarios could be constructed, such as the killers accidentally wounded one of their own.
There is, of course, the possibility that the police got the situation wrong.
A 15-year-old can be charged as an adult in the Keystone State for certain violent crimes
5900 block of Palmetto Street, image from Google Maps. Click to enlarge.
Amusingly enough, all of the homes zillow.com lists for sale in the neighborhood show as having natural gas heat via hot water or steam radiators, so if Helen Gym Flaherty wins the Democratic nomination for Mayor, she’ll want all the residents in that poor, though not totally devastated, neighborhood to convert to electric heat pumps! 🙂
This is the last day of April, and the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page tells us that, through April 29th, there were 124, 169, and 154 murders on that date in 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively. Those years finished with 499, 562, and 516 homicides, though that 499 number for 2020 is suspect, at least. Currently, with at least 137 homicides as of Friday, April 28th, the City of Brotherly Love is doing better than 2021 and 2022, but is ahead of the 2020 homicide rate.
The important date is May 25th, the date in 2020 in which the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled previously convicted felon George Floyd died while resisting arrest in Minneapolis. That led to a whole summer of riots civil unrest in the #BlackLivesMatter protests. If the current year is ahead of 2020’s pace, the real numbers will tell us something if the pace stays ahead of 2020 post May 25th.
The homicide rate in Philly has been very much up-and-down in recent years, and I’m hesitant to start making projections based on current statistics. With the daily rate being higher than 2020, I could say that the city is on a path to more than 500 again, but being significantly below 2022, perhaps not. But one thing seems certain: teenagers in Philly are continuing to carry firearms, illegally, and show little restraint in using them.
I have a bunch of stories under the category Capitol kerfuffle, because that is exactly what I think of it, a frat party that got out of control. I have said that the next Republican President, whom I very much hope will be inaugurated on January 20, 2025, should immediately pardon all of the Capitol kerfufflers. He won’t be able to give them their lost time back, but at least the fines that some have to pay would be restored to them, and their convictions expunged.
But that seems unlikely to happen, which makes this good news!
A Philly man will serve five years in federal prison for the torching of a cop car during racial justice protests
Khalif Miller, 27 — who had previously been critical of his prosecution — told a judge Monday that he was sorry for his actions during the demonstrations in 2020.
by Chris Palmer | Monday, April 3, 2023
A Southwest Philadelphia man was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison for his role in the torching of a police car outside City Hall during the 2020 racial justice protests.
Note how the very woke Philadelphia Inquirer calls them “protests,” instead of what they really were, riots.
Khalif Miller, 27, told the judge he was sorry for his actions, which prosecutors described as throwing papers into a burning cruiser as dozens of demonstrators gathered nearby. For that conduct, U.S. District Chief Judge Juan R. Sánchez imposed a 61-month penalty.
Thankfully, this was a federal case, which kept Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored District Attorney Larry Krasner from giving a slap on the wrist instead of prison time.
As recently as last year, Miller had been harshly critical of the case against him, casting himself as a political scapegoat being unfairly targeted. But Monday, he told Sánchez he now believes his behavior during the May 2020 demonstration — sparked by the murder of George Floyd — may have taken away from the reason he attended in the first place: to raise awareness about the need for better integration of mental health professionals within law enforcement.
“I regret it,” Miller said. “Honestly, I really regret it.”
Well, I’m sure he regrets getting caught, anyway, but maybe taking a selfie in front of a police car you’ve torched wasn’t the wisest idea.
Mr Miller got off lightly: he was allowed to plead down, when he was charged with arson, which carries a seven-year mandatory minimum sentence.
A bit further down came the money paragraph:
Sánchez also told Miller he believed the punishment was necessary due to the severity of the offenses. In addition to admitting he obstructed law enforcement during a civil disorder, Miller pleaded guilty to illegally possessing firearms when federal agents searched his house to arrest him in October 2020. Miller was ineligible to possess guns because of a 2015 conviction for involuntary manslaughter.
So, Mr Miller wasn’t just someone who got “swept up in the pandemonium of the situation,” but a criminal who previously killed someone, and was knowingly in possession of firearms when he was legally barred from doing so as a previously convicted felon.
Under federal law, while prisoners can earn time off for good behavior, convicts are normally required to serve at least 85% of their sentences in custody.
We have previously mentioned Washington Post columnist and dedicated #NeverTrumper Jennifer Rubin many times before. Most recently we noted a tweet of hers at the end of October:
Crime has shown up as one of the major issues in the upcoming election, so naturally Mrs Rubin has made a silly claim trying to blame Republicans for crime, due to the rather odd attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, by a Canadian nudist hippie who somehow has morphed into an evil reich-wing extremist.
The tweet to the left is actually a screen capture; when someone like Mrs Rubin tweets something dumb — which is fairly frequently — I always assume that she might decide to delete it, but, alas! the internet is forever when there are [insert plural slang term for the anus here] like me around.
As we have reported previously, Pennsylvania’s firearms control laws are pretty much uniform across the Commonwealth; state law prohibits municipalities from imposing restrictions which are stricter than those provided for under state law. In 2020, there were 1,009 murders in the Keystone State, 499, or 49.45%, of which occurred in Philadelphia. According to the 2020 Census, Pennsylvania’s population was 13,002,700 while Philadelphia’s alone was 1,603,797, just 12.33% of Pennsylvania’s totals.
Now there’s a “here she goes again” moment!
Law enforcement is failing to crack down on domestic terrorism
By Jennifer Rubin | Tuesday, November 29, 2022 | 9:00 AM EST
Given the spate of domestic terrorism attacks in recent years — the slaughter at the Tree of Life synagogue, the massacre in Buffalo, N.Y., and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection; for example — you would think law enforcement agencies are engaged in a robust effort to combat such violence, right? Wrong.
Note how Mrs Rubin characterizes the Capitol kerfuffle as “domestic terrorism.”
Earlier this month, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released a largely overlooked — yet damning — report detailing the failures of national security agencies on this front.
“Over the past two decades, acts of domestic terrorism have dramatically increased,” the committee reports. “National security agencies now identify domestic terrorism as the most persistent and lethal terrorist threat to the homeland.” The uptick is predominately attributable to “white supremacist and anti-government extremist individuals and groups.” Yet “without better data, it is difficult to evaluate whether federal agencies are appropriately allocating resources and setting priorities.”
The report arrived just as billionaire Elon Musk opened the floodgates to right-wing extremists and purveyors of disinformation on Twitter. The committee notes, “Social media platforms have played an increasing role in the spread of extremist content that translates into real world violence, due in part to business models that incentivize user engagement over safety.” It also found that these companies’ business models “are designed to increase user engagement (i.e., keep people viewing content online) and that, as experts testified before this Committee, more extreme content tends to increase user engagement, thus leading such content to be amplified.”
Well, of course Mrs Rubin is upset, as are so much of the left, that Twitter is reducing — it has not eliminated — censorship of views which she does not like.
The extent of the threat is staggering. The report mentions a 2021 study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies that found there were 110 domestic terrorist plots in 2020 alone, a 244 percent increase from 2019. The Anti-Defamation League also reports that over the past decade, domestic extremists have killed 443 people. More than half of the deaths were attributable to white supremacists. Had foreign terrorists committed such crimes, Republicans would have raised a ruckus.
Perhaps Republicans have “raised a ruckus,” but not the kind of ruckus the left like. She noted that “over the past decade, domestic extremists have killed 443 people,” but as of 11:59 PM EDT on Hallowe’en, more than that, 445 to be precise, had been murdered in Philadelphia alone. But, of course, they weren’t killed by “domestic extremists” or “white supremacists” but other Philadelphians, mostly other black Philadelphians.
That number is up to 472 now, but phht! nobody really cares.
According to the Philadelphia shootings victims dashboard, through Monday, November 28th, there had been 147 total shootings in the City of Brotherly Love, 23 of which had been fatal. From 2015 forward, there have been 2,118 fatal shooting victims in Philly, 76.74% of the total, along with 154 black female victims, 5.58% of the total. In a city which is not majority black, 82.32% of all homicides by gunfire victims have been black.
Hispanic males, which are counted separately, and can be either white or black, constitute 283, 10.25%, of the victims, while Hispanic females suffered 36 such deaths, 1.30%. 93.87% of the homicide by shooting deaths in Philly have been among people The Philadelphia Inquirer would classify as “black or brown,” and though the statistics do not tell us the racial makeup of the known killers — and the Philadelphia Police have a rather low rate of actually solving homicides — we know that, generally speaking, the vast majority of homicides involve intraracial, not interracial violence.
The St Louis Metropolitan Police Department, which does publish racial statistics of apprehended killers, noted that, as of November 29, the vast majority of murder victims, 163 out of a total 179, or 91.06%, have been black, and out of 125 identified homicide suspects, 121, or 96.80%, have been black.
The Census Bureau puts St Louis population as being 45.7% black.
As noted above, Republicans in Pennsylvania have “raised a ruckus,” and are impeaching Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner, blaming him for the city’s huge surge in murders, but naturally, the Democrats, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, are appalled, and fighting to save the George Soros-sponsored Mr Krasner.
Mrs Rubin, of course, doesn’t mention any of that, but in just one American city, not even the one with the highest number of total killings, more people have been killed in less than a year than the 443 she told us were murdered by “domestic terrorism,” much of which was perpetrated by “white supremacists.” What am I to conclude other than, for the Post’s august columnist, black lives really don’t matter much?
I have not been exactly enamored of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, a movement started over the wholly justified killing of Michael Brown as he assaulted a police officer. Young Mr Brown had just roughed up a store clerk half his size in the course of a robbery. Several grifting incidents have been recorded concerning the Black Lives Matter organization.
Nevertheless, black lives do matter and should matter, just as all lives do matter and should matter. Yet it is becoming ever-clearer that, to the American left, black lives matter much less to them than do ‘progressive’ policies.
Solomon Jones, from his Twitter biography.
And thus I come to Solomon Jones, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the author of “Ten Lives Ten Demands: Life and Death Stories and a Black Activistʼs Blueprint for Racial Justice.” He also has a radio show weekdays from 7 to 10 AM on WURD 900 AM. The amazon.com description of his book states what it concerns:
Told through the powerful stories of Black lives that were ravaged by racism, this manifesto holds 10 demands to rectify racial injustice
Told through his perspective as an activist, acclaimed commentator Solomon Jones tells the stories of real people whose lives and deaths pushed the Black Lives Matter movement forward. He explains how each act of violence was incited by specific instances of structural racism, and details concrete and actionable strategies to address crimes committed by our “justice” system.
These stories and strategies are a critical resource for social justice activists looking to further their anti-racist education. These 10 demands form an actionable plan that is necessary to repair our racist past, change the racist present, and bring justice to the future:
- George Floyd: Pay financial reparations to Black communities that have been damaged by legalized racism.
- Michael Brown: Use consent decrees to reform police departments that demonstrate a “pattern or practice” of racism and police brutality.
- Hassan Bennett: Offer compensation for all those who are wrongfully imprisoned.
- Breonna Taylor: Require functioning body cameras and ban no-knock warrants.
- Eric Garner: All police disciplinary and dismissal records must be made public.
- Alton Sterling: Change federal law to allow prosecution of flagrant lawbreakers within police departments.
- Tamir Rice: Use independent prosecutors to eliminate prosecutorial conflicts of interest.
- Trayvon Martin: Eliminate stand-your-ground laws.
- Deborah Danner: Defund the police and move funds to trained social workers, mental health professionals, and conflict resolution specialists.
- Sandra Bland: End racial profiling.
It seems that Mr Jones has picked from a list of mostly bad people — Tamir Rice was just a kid, but a kid playing with a realistic-looking toy gun about whom a civilian called the police with a “man with a gun” report — on which to base his ‘ten demands. Mr Jones’ ninth demand is very specific about his goal: to reduce law enforcement.
However, it is Mr Jones’ Inquirer column of Friday which tells us just how much he values progressive politics over black lives:
What was Larry Krasner’s biggest offense? Correctly calling out a racist criminal justice system.
While Pa. lawmakers blame the district attorney for the increase in gun violence in Philadelphia, I suspect their true motive is to punish him as a white man who challenged a biased power structure.
by Solomon Jones | Thursday, November 17, 2022
The Republican-led Pennsylvania House has approved articles of Impeachment against Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, and while the Republicans claim the impeachment is about Krasner’s failure to stop gun violence, I’m convinced that it’s about his attempt to address racism.
Sadly for Mr Jones’ argument, the homicide rate in Philadelphia has soared since Mr Krasner, an anti-police defense attorney sponsored by a big campaign contribution from George Soros, became District Attorney. Since taking office on New Year’s Day of 2018, the number of homicides recorded in the City of Brotherly Love jumped from 315 the previous year to 353, then 356, then 499, and to 562 in 2021. Through Thursday, November 17th, the 2022 homicide total stands at 461, a 5.53% decrease from the same day last year, but one which is still on track to see 524 murders for the year, easily good for second-place all time in Philly.
However, if the number of murders has decreased a bit, the number of attempted murders has increased: according to the city’s Shooting Victims Database, There were 2,107 shooting victims through November 16th of this year, compared to 2,069 people shot in the City of Brotherly Love through the same date last year.
Since and including 2015, black males in the city have been the victims of 10,010 fatal and non-fatal shootings, a whopping 74.01% of all victims, with an even 1,000, or 7.39%, being black females. There have been 1,384 (10.23%) Hispanic males and 188 (1.39%) Hispanic females. For us evil white folks, there were ‘just’ 598 males (4.42%) and 131 (0.97%) females shot. While Mr Jones believes that the opposition to Mr Krasner is “about his attempt to address racism,” the effect, if removal of the District Attorney helped to reduce shootings and killings, would be to reduce the number of black victims. Wouldn’t Mr Jones like to see fewer black Philadelphians shot and killed? Or is it that, like The Philadelphia Inquirer for which he writes, that black lives really don’t matter, at least not as much as reinforcing progressive politics?
While state legislators publicly seek to blame Krasner for the increase in gun violence in Philadelphia, I suspect their true motive is to punish him as a racial traitor. Krasner, you see, is a white man who had the temerity to challenge a racist criminal justice system that routinely puts innocent Black people in jail. In the eyes of the individuals and institutions that thrive on the current power structure, Krasner has challenged racism itself, and for that, he must be punished.
Among the admittedly smaller circle of friends with whom I deal, I still cannot, over 69½ years of my life, a significant portion of which, 43 years, has been spent living in the South, ever remember a white person refer to another white person as a “racial traitor.”
In a city where the death penalty was once the order of the day under prosecutors like Lynne Abraham, Krasner has brought significant change. He has exonerated the wrongly convicted, eschewed the testimony of crooked cops, and charged police officers who have killed unarmed citizens from Philadelphia’s poorest, most marginalized communities.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been only three executions in Pennsylvania since the restoration of capital punishment, all last century, only one of which was for a crime committed in Philadelphia. All three men executed were white, and all three were “volunteers,” meaning that they had voluntarily dropped all of their appeals to just go ahead and get it over.
Lynne Abraham was succeeded in office by Seth Williams. Like both Mrs Abraham and Mr Krasner, Mr Williams is a Democrat, but, unlike them, he is black. Somehow, I have a difficult time considering Mr Williams as someone who was supporting a racist system.
Mr Williams, who had legal problems of his own and was forced to resign in 2017, was part of the top three in law enforcement in Philadelphia, along with Mayor Michael Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, all of whom were black. And under those three men, the numbers of homicides dropped significantly. Does Mr Jones believe that those three black men were somehow racists, somehow prejudiced against blacks?
But, while all Democrats, they were just liberal Democrats, not ‘progressives,’ and not men who saw everything through some ‘racial justice’ lens.
There are several more paragraphs in Mr Jones’ original, and I have already quoted more of his column than with which I am comfortable, even though Fair Use standards allow such when fisking an article. Suffice it to say that Mr Jones uses the formulation “Black, brown and progressive” several times because his point is really a simple one: it’s racist to try to overturn the votes of minority citizens. Unhappily, I concluded a while ago that the voters of Philadelphia will, if he runs again in 2025, once again return Mr Krasner to office by a landslide margin, because his policies of not enforcing the law, of letting the less serious crimes go unpunished, is what a majority of the city’s voters really want. A homicide rate that has doubled from what it was under Messrs Nutter, Williams and Ramsey is apparently a price that the progressives are willing to pay to have fewer gang-bangers and wannabes locked up for rape, robbery and assault.
The only conclusion to which I have been able to come is that, in Philadelphia, black lives really don’t matter, not to Mr Krasner, nor to Mr Jones, nor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, nor to most of the voters.
Yup, I called it!
So, since an “innocent” was killed, the @PhillyInquirer will cover the story, right?
— Dana Pico (@Dana_TFSJ) September 22, 2022
I’ve said it before: The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl. I noted how the Inquirer covered the murder of Temple University student Samuel Collington, and I pointed out that, growing up poor as I did, #WhitePrivilege was not something I saw as real, but that the Inky taught me one heck of a lesson about it.
Thus, it was easy to predict that the Inquirer would cover the murder of this innocent Temple University graduate:
A recent Temple graduate was fatally shot in West Philadelphia in a potential robbery
Everett Beauregard, born and raised in Chester County, had just graduated from Temple in June and was working as an operations processor for Wells Fargo Bank.
by Ellie Rushing and Dylan Purcell | Thursday, September 22, 2022 | 4:24 PM EDT
Everett Beauregard, 23, was fatally shot in the Powelton section of Philadelphia in the early morning hours of Sept. 22 in what police are investigating as a robbery. Photo provided to The Philadelphia Inquirer by the Beauregard family. Click to enlarge.
A recent Temple University graduate was fatally shot early Thursday in the Powelton section of the city in what detectives are investigating as a robbery, police said.Just before 12:30 a.m., Everett Beauregard, 23, was shot once in the neck on the 400 block of North 35th Street. He was rushed by officers to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, but died a short time later, said Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore.
Vanore said detectives believe the shooting was part of a robbery — a crime that has risen starkly across the city in the last few years. He said police are in the early stages of pouring over video collected from the scene, and the investigation remains ongoing.
Beauregard, born and raised in Chester County, had just graduated from Temple in June and was working as an operations processor for Wells Fargo bank in Philadelphia, according to his LinkedIn. He was involved with political organizing for the area’s Democratic Party, and in 2018, interned for U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle.
There’s a good deal more about Mr Beauregard, and a long section noting how armed robberies have greatly increased in the City of Brotherly Love.
While the story in the Inquirer doesn’t mention it, notifications on Twitter tell us that Mr Beauregard was attempting to flee when he was shot. At near the intersection of North 35th and Spring Garden Streets, this isn’t the normal combat zone in Philly, but is near Drexel University.
It was only a couple of hours earlier that columnist Helen Ubiñas published this gem:
In Philly, every day is National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims
As we approached a day meant for us to remember, I reached out to an ever-growing list of mothers whose stories I’ve yet to fully tell.
by Helen Ubiñas | Thursday, September 22, 2022
They remember. On the day that their loved ones were born, and on the day that they died.
They remember. As they release balloons into the sky, and place fresh flowers on well-kept graves.
They remember. In their private thoughts, in public displays, and, of course, on Sunday’s National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims, a day to pay tribute to those lost, and also those left behind who will never forget.
As the day neared, I heard from mothers whose heartbreak I’ve long chronicled — those who’ve received some justice for the deaths of their loved ones, and even more who are still waiting.
It’s been six years since Yullio Robbins’ 28-year-old son, James Walke III, was shot and killed on a Germantown street in broad daylight.
Her son’s case recently took a bitter turn: She received a text from the detective who had committed himself to trying to solve Walke’s murder. After more than 30 years on the job, it was time for him to retire and turn the case over to another investigator. She wept at the news.
A few more paragraphs down:
In my own effort to make sure none of us forget, I regularly share many of the stories behind those numbers. But the truth is that I could share the story of a murder victim every day, in any given year, and still fail to scratch the surface of the collective toll that all of this pain has taken on our city.
Yes, I am a subscriber, who checks the Inquirer every day, but no, I don’t read Mrs Ubiñas’ column every time. She has, as we have previously noted, given us at least the names of some of Philly’s murder victims, but she also admitted that, for most of the dead, that was the most they’d get.
Not so for Mr Beauregard! He was a white guy, a Temple University graduate, and “was involved with political organizing for the area’s Democratic Party, and in 2018, interned for U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle.” He gets his picture in the paper, and he gets at least a brief bit of his life story told, because he wasn’t a drug addict in Kensington or a gang-banger in North Philly. Mrs Ubiñas may be mentioning some of the black victims and their families, as part of somewhat of a mission to make their stories better known, but the Inky in general is taking care of publicizing Mr Beauregard’s killing.
What do I see in the Inquirer, a newspaper which publisher Elizabeth Hughes vowed to make “an antiracist news organization”? I see that 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 five separate stories, a whole lot more than the two or three paragraphs most victims get.
There was the murder of the previously mentioned Mr Collington, a white victim, allegedly murdered by a black juvenile in a botched robbery. The Inquirer then published 14 photographs from a vigil for Mr Collington, along with another story about him. Five separate stories about the case of a murdered white guy.
The Inquirer even broke precedent when it came to Mr Collington’s murder by including the name of the juvenile suspect in the case, and delving into his previous record.
Compared to the coverage the Inquirer gives concerning black victims, that’s some real white privilege there!
#BlackLivesMatter we are told, in all seriousness, and the Inquirer made a big deal out of a series of stories it called Black City, White Paper, when it comes to crime in the City of Brotherly Love, it mostly goes unmentioned, because those stories about black victims really shouldn’t be told, not to the very, very politically correct newspaper.
So, what lesson about white privilege has the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper taught me? It has taught me that if you’re an innocent white guy and you get murdered, the Inky will cover it, and it will be helpful if you family provide a nice, usable photograph as well. If you’re a black guy, well, too bad, so sad, die in obscurity.
Josephus Davis, photo via WPVI-TV, Click to enlarge.
‘You will die in prison’: Philadelphia man is sentenced to life in prison for murder of Brewerytown man walking his dog
Josephus Davis, 21, was convicted in the murder of Milan Loncar, who was fatally shot while walking his dog in Brewerytown last year.
by Ellie Rushing | Friday, August 26, 2022
After an emotional two-hour hearing that brought even a seasoned homicide prosecutor to tears, a Philadelphia man on Friday was ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison for fatally shooting a man as he walked his dog in Brewerytown last year.
Josephus Davis, 21, was convicted of second-degree murder, robbery, and related offenses in June for the killing of Milan Loncar, 25, a Wayne native and Temple University graduate. Loncar was walking his dog after work in January 2021 when Davis and another man held him at gunpoint in an attempted robbery. After rifling through his pockets, Davis shot Loncar in the chest, then ran away as Loncar lay bleeding on the street.
Think about that: after robbing Mr Loncar, when there was absolutely no need to do so, Mr Davis shot and killed his victim anyway, but, “It’s a shame that another black male, young male, is losing his life to the system.” Perhaps, just perhaps, it was Mr Davis who took the decision to spend the rest of his miserable life in jail, not that “white judge, white family, (and) white DA.”
During Friday’s sentencing hearing, Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott read segments of the approximately 25 letters submitted by family and friends detailing how Loncar’s death has affected their lives. All described him as caring and loving, “the best person [they’d] ever met.”
Jelena Loncar, 28, said she has not been able to work more than 20 hours per week since her brother’s death. She sold her house in Brewerytown after the shooting and, along with other family and friends, moved out of Philadelphia, the pain and fear of the ongoing violence crisis too much to bear.
Ellie Rushing, The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, went through some time and effort to tell us how loved Mr Loncar was by his family and friends, but there’s a certain point which arose in my mind: yes, Mr Loncar may have been a wonderful guy, but does that mean his life was somehow worth more than the lives of many of the thugs who’ve also been killed in the City of Brotherly Love? We have previously noted how Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn “mediated” crimes and allowed lenient plea deals and sentences for murderers — I suppose “manslaughterers” would be a more mocking term for their crimes now — and if that happened in the Bluegrass State rather than Philadelphia, the same things are happening all around the country in our cities. Of course, in those Lexington cases, the murdered manslaughtered men were black gang members as well, while Mr Loncar was white.
And even as Davis maintained his innocence, and his mother testified of his traumatic childhood filled with abuse and instability, Judge McDermott was firm in meting out his punishment.
“You will die in prison,” she said.
McDermott sentenced Davis to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the mandatory sentence in Pennsylvania for second-degree murder.
Jelena Loncar, left, with her brother Milan Loncar, in December 2020 outside of Tinsel bar in Center City.
Courtesy of Jelena Loncar, via The Philadelphia Inquirer. Click to enlarge.
The Inquirer even broke precedent when it came to Mr Collington’s murder by including the name of the juvenile suspect in the case, and delving into his previous record.
The Inquirer, a newspaper which publisher Elizabeth Hughes vowed to make “an antiracist news organization”? I see that 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 five separate stories, a whole lot more than the two or three paragraphs most victims get.
Let me be clear here: I absolutely support the sentence Mr Davis received, and it’s a good thing that state law sets life in prison without the possibility of parole as being mandatory for second-degree murder; no judge should have any leeway in that. What I oppose is the lenient plea bargain deals which let murders off with manslaughter convictions, meaning that they can see a time at which they will be released, and, all too frequently, are eligible for early parole. Murders should not get out of prison until the day that their victims come back to life!
It seems that this was not Mr Davis first brush with the law:
Prosecutors, though, said the evidence was clear: As Loncar walked his dog, Roo, near 31st and Jefferson Street that January evening — two blocks from his residence, and a half-block from Davis’ — Davis and an accomplice attacked him.
So, both murderer and his victim were neighbors, living in an integrated area. Zillow shows me an area of mixed housing, some older and in not the greatest repair, while other residences have been fixed up and selling well into the $300,000 range.
Later that night, Davis was stopped by police in Kensington after officers recognized the car he was in as having been reported stolen in a carjacking the day before. Davis and a few other men hopped out and ran, Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore said.
When police caught and questioned Davis, he wore a distinctive belt and shoes — evidence prosecutors used to match him to surveillance video of Loncar’s murder. Police later tested Davis’ clothes for ballistics evidence and found a small amount of gunshot residue on one of his jackets. The accomplice has not been identified.
Davis, one of 14 children, spent most of his life in the system, family testified. His mother said he was taken from her, along with his siblings, when he was 8, and forced to live with his father, who struggled with addiction and homelessness. Davis was arrested for the first time at 14 for assault, and bounced between numerous behavioral health facilities through his childhood. When he was 12 years old, his mother said, Davis witnessed a facility staffer fatally beat another child.
“You all think he is a monster,” she said. “But the streets turned him that way.”
Well, perhaps his mother being such a rotten parent that the Commonwealth took her children away from her might have had something to do with it, and not just “the streets.”
Davis’ crimes continued into adulthood. He was arrested four times for robbery and aggravated assault, the judge said. He was on probation for robbery at the time of the murder, and was awaiting trial on charges of carjacking and assaulting a jail guard. He had been released from jail two weeks before killing Loncar.
Mr Davis has two brothers also locked up, so it’s a criminal family, which makes me wonder: was he treated leniently by the District Attorney in a manner which allowed him out of jail two weeks before he killed Mr Loncar? Could Mr Davis have been behind bars on January 13, 2021, the day he robbed and killed Mr Loncar? If he could have been behind bars on that date, did the legal system, did the District Attorney, do him any favors by letting him out early? The 21-year-old Mr Davis might have been looking at several more years behind bars, but at least be able to see, into the future, when he would get out. But because he was out, and able to kill someone, he will only be freed when he has been freed from this mortal life.
I can have some sympathy for Mr Davis, in that he grew up without much of a chance. Saying that he was “forced to live with his father” is the same thing as saying that his father did not live with his mother. Somehow, some way, Western culture has decided that the primary organizational structure of every human society of which we have any knowledge, for as far back into history as we can determine social structure, normal, heterosexual marriage, with both fathers and mothers living together and rearing their children together, is just so much junk, and can be blithely discarded, leaving people like Mr Davis’ mother alone to bring up 14 kids. We have allowed our own selfishness to ruin things for everyone.
But having some sympathy for Mr Davis does not mean that I think his crimes should be excused or minimized: he killed another man, and were he somehow freed, he’d wind up killing someone else. I can hope that he finds God in prison, and that his life after this one will be better.
