Tag Archives: #BlackLivesMatter

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Does Amelia Carter believe that the law should not apply to black Americans?

Conservatives have roundly mocked the chyron used by CNN to tell us about the “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” as a television reporter who might as well have been called Baghdad Bob stood in front of a burning building.

So now we come to Amelia Carter, an organizer for the Philly Human Rights Appeal event, Human Rights Violated Here, scheduled for May 31. She is from Philadelphia and lives on 52nd Street. Miss Carter was granted OpEd space in today’s what might as well be called 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.

A year ago, 52nd Street was teargassed by police. Now we’re fighting back. | Opinion

To make change in policing locally, we need to look in new directions.

By Amelia Carter | May 28, 2021

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings. One year since the public flooded the streets, calling for an end to police impunity, the defunding of police budgets, and investment in Black people. And one year since our communities — including mine on 52nd Street — experienced the severe state repression that followed that call.

I have never seen or felt anything like the seven-hour police occupation of my predominantly Black neighborhood, Cobbs Creek, on May 31, 2020. Although neighbors screamed, “Kids live here! Please don’t shoot,” tear-gas canisters flew relentlessly through the air, landing on residential streets. Gas quickly filled the nurseries where babies napped and the hallways where everyday people did everyday things. To escape the tear gas, families were forced from their homes into the street, where police were indiscriminately shooting people with rubber bullets. The cops said they were there to protect us from rioters — but it was them we feared.

The thing that struck me most about that day was the unity I experienced with neighbors. People sprung into action: bringing milk for our stringing eyes, picking us up off the ground, even as they were stumbling. Some made makeshift protest signs and confronted police directly on Chestnut Street as the tear gas finally subsided. At one point, we all decided — without speaking — to hold the line at Chancellor Street to ensure tanks didn’t press farther into our neighborhood. Without realizing it, we all became activists that day.

There’s much more at the original, which you can read if you follow the link embedded in the title. But what you will not find in the 802 words the Inquirer granted Miss Carter is why the police were using tear gas, were using force along 52nd Street. Fortunately, the Inquirer did report just why that happened:

Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?

That’s the question that has been raging on the streets of Philadelphia, and across my architecture-centric social media feeds, over the last two days as a dark cloud of smoke spiraled up from Center City. What started as a poignant and peaceful protest in Dilworth Park on Saturday morning ended up in a frenzy of destruction by evening. Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire.

Their chances of survival are slim, which means there could soon be a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia, in one of its most iconic and historic neighborhoods. And protesters moved on to West Philadelphia’s fragile 52nd Street shopping corridor, an important center of black life, where yet more property has been battered.

What Miss Carter told her readers was “the public flood(ing) the streets, calling for an end to police impunity, the defunding of police budgets, and investment in Black people,” was in fact, a destructive riot. The Inquirer reported that:

  • A crowd had broken into the Foot Locker store at the intersection of 52nd and Chestnut Streets;
  • people breaking into stores;
  • a few setting police cars on fire; and
  • some officers pinned down by people throwing rocks along one of West Philadelphia’s busiest business corridors

From the story:

Just before 3 p.m., an officer’s voice crackled over police radio.

“Just to advise you, at 5-2 and Chestnut off of 5-4 and Market, we’ve got a large crowd gathering.”

Radio calls from that afternoon depict an increasingly volatile scene stretching from Arch to Chestnut Streets growing chaotic, and quickly. For 90 minutes, police asked for backup, and as it arrived, people pelted police officers with debris, according to radio calls. People smashed the windows of police cars, looted their contents, and set some ablaze. Others put a burning squad car in drive and pushed it toward officers on the street.

Fifteen officers were injured. A captain took a cinder block to the leg and developed a blood clot and needed emergency surgery. Inspector Derrick Wood, a 22-year veteran who oversees police operations in West Philadelphia and has made rebuilding the relationship with residents a focal point of his command, suffered a fractured nose in two places when he was hit by a brick.

To be fair, Miss Carter did link that story in her original, but she never indicated, in any other way, that the police were using force because the Mostly Peaceful Protesters™ were rioting.

52nd Street is a mostly black business corridor; the police were attempting — sadly, with little success — to protect the black residents who were not rioting, and the primarily black businesses from being damaged or destroyed. “Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed,” the article originally entitled “Buildings Matter, Too” noted.

I suppose that Miss Carter doesn’t think that buildings matter, despite the fact that people, including a majority of black people, live and work in the neighborhood the police were trying to defend.

But, let’s tell the truth here: the neighborhood are afraid that 52nd Street is ‘gentrifying.

The topic of the community meeting — a plan to beautify 52nd Street, to make it safe, welcoming, and prosperous once again — was, on its face, nothing but good news for West Philadelphia’s long-declining business corridor.

Yet the audience of about 50 residents and retailers, mostly African American, grew increasingly agitated as urban designer Jonas Maciunas flipped through a PowerPoint presentation of proposed improvements. Many weren’t seeing a vision of a neighborhood revitalized from Market to Pine Streets. Instead, in the talk of redesigned intersections, leafy thoroughfares, and better bus shelters, they heard the ominous whisper of gentrification.

“It just seems that when white people decide to come back to a certain neighborhood, they want it a certain way,” said Carol Morris, 68, a retired elementary school teacher. . . . .

The area’s population remains predominantly black, but residents say they’ve noticed a growing white presence.

I suppose that, for that neighborhood, more white people is considered a bad thing.

Integration was supposed to bring white and black Americans closer, to beat down prejudice and discrimination. I guess that the (mostly) white liberals of the 1960s thought that to be a good thing, but apparently many in black neighborhoods don’t see it that way.

And so we return to Miss Carter. Her complaint is that the law applies to black people as well as whites:

As Malcolm X pointed out, we will always be limited in our ability to fight for the rights of Black Americans through civil rights, because that requires asking for justice from the very systems built on our oppression. Instead, just as the NAACP and W.E.B. Du Bois appealed to the United Nations, we must claim the rights and freedoms entitled to us in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — and join hands with survivors of state repression around the world to upend this broken country. We must recognize that, just as America weaponizes diplomacy to wage long-haul wars abroad, the police are its mechanism for shoring up the empire at home.

The City of Brotherly Love, the city in which Miss Carter lives, has seen 211 people murdered so far this year, and the great majority of those murder victims, in a city that is not majority black, are black. Does she not want the police to respond to calls over robberies or rapes, over arson and vandalism, over muggings and murders?

The police are not there to oppress black people; the police are there to try to enforce the law. Does Miss Carter believe that enforcing the law is “oppression” of black people? Does she believe that the laws should somehow be different for black Americans? Philadelphia got its ‘social justice’ prosecutor in District Attorney Larry Krasner, and all the city, all the black neighborhoods like Miss Carter’s, got for that is more Philadelphians, primarily more black people, pouring out their life’s blood on the city’s mean streets.

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↑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.
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Killadelphia Shockingly enough, a murder victim's killing actually gets covered by The Philadelphia Inquirer

Credit where credit is due. I noted yesterday:

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, as of the end of Monday, May 25th, 208 people had been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love. That works out to 1.434 people being murdered every single day, and, if that figure is maintained throughout 2021, 524 homicides for the year, leaving last year’s 499, and 1990’s record of 500, well back in the rear view mirror.

Two of those 208 deaths were reported as having occurred on May 25th, the anniversary of Mr Floyd’s death. Yet, at least at 10:42 AM on the following day, there was not a single story on the Inquirer’s website main page concerning those deaths. The seven killings the Police Department reported as having occurred over the weekend did not rate a single story on the newspaper’s website main page. A site search for homicide turned up nothing, though searching for reporter Robert Moran, who usually covers these stories, turned up two very short news articles, covering one murder on the 24th and two separate murders on the 25th.

If I have to know which reporter to search to find these stories, how am I supposed to believe that #BlackLivesMatter, at least to the news staff of The Philadelphia Inquirer?

I guess that Philadelphia Inquirer really was working on the story, and it just appeared later, because this one had a large spot on the newspaper’s website main page this morning:

Two Philadelphia high school students were fatally shot Tuesday. One was two weeks from graduation.

The young people shot Tuesday night are the latest victims in a surge of unrelenting gun violence in the city.

By Mike Newall, Anna Orso, and Chris Palmer | May 26, 2021

An 18-year-old who was two weeks from graduating from Overbrook High School and set to attend Kutztown University this fall was fatally shot in West Philadelphia on Tuesday, one of two teenagers killed in the city within an hour of each other.

Nasir Marks, of Overbrook Park, spent the evening practicing a speech on diversity in America — his senior project — in front of his mother and brother, his family said. He slipped on a hoodie and got on the bus to visit his girlfriend, texting her at 7:15 p.m. that he’d arrived.

Fifteen minutes later, police were called to the 3900 block of Poplar Street and found Marks with multiple gunshot wounds. His father, Jermaine Thurman, said his son had stepped into gang territory, where groups of young men on both sides of Girard Avenue have traded gunfire.

A police officer places makers on evidence on the 3900 block of Poplar Street 18-year-old Nasir Marks was fatally shot Tuesday. Steven M Falk, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.

There’s more at the original.

I try to avoid using photos from the Inquirer, due to copyright issues, but this one seems appropriate. A Philadelphia Police Officer is placing evidence markers, which normally means where shell casings were found, and marker number 17 is visible; that’s a lot of rounds fired off.

The 3900 block of Poplar Street, between 39th and 40th Streets, near Fairmont Park off Girard Avenue, isn’t exactly a high rent neighborhood. Primarily working-class row homes, some in decent repair and some not, there are a few which are boarded up. The economic condition of the neighborhood is evident in the background of the Inquirer’ photo.

Boathouse Row, one of the hoitier of the toitier neighborhoods, is just across the Schuylkill River. The contrast is stark.

Just a few minutes after young Mr Marks was killed, 15-year-old Kanye Pittman, of North Philadelphia, was murdered in the 2500 block of North Sydenham Street, a North Philadelphia neighborhood of shabby row houses, some of which are boarded up, a long commercial building, and overgrown vacant lots.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department, two more people were murdered in the city last night, bringing the total for the year to 210. That’s 1.438 homicides per day, putting Philly on pace for 525 for the year, which would be a new record. The long, hot summer hasn’t even arrived yet.

Inquirer reporter Robert Moran had two very brief stories yesterday, one noting the murder of an unidentified 23-year-old man in a calculated hit — the story said her was “shot several times” — and another about a 23-year-old woman shot once in the head and pushed out of a car, later found abandoned. She was not listed as having died in Mr Moran’s story, but may have expired later, possibly making her that 210th victim.

At least for a bit, the Inquirer seems to be doing better. Nasir Marks was not a “somebody,” or a cute little white girl, but the paper used three reporters to write about his senseless death. Whether we’ll read more about the two people murdered last night, well, that’s something for the future.

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The racism of The Philadelphia Inquirer The Publisher of the Inquirer says the paper is "an anti-racist news organization," but there's no actual evidence of that

I am not from Missouri, not from the “Show Me” State, and, to the best of my recollection, I’ve only passed through the place once, way back in August of 1972. Nevertheless, I am one of the people who likes to see something really radical, like actual evidence, of something before I accept it as true.

Thus, when I came to this OpEd piece by Elizabeth H. Hughes, the Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of The Philadelphia Inquirer, my truth detector sounded, loudly.

Inquirer publisher: One year later, reflection and a look ahead

A year after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the printing of a racist headline in The Inquirer, work remains left to achieve an equitable future for all.

By Elizabeth Hughes | May 26, 2021

June 2 will mark a year since The Philadelphia Inquirer published this racist headline: “Buildings Matter, Too.”

If printing those words in 72-point type had occurred in a vacuum, it would have been a grievous and unpardonable offense. That it was published at a moment of national reckoning over social justice — prompted by the vicious murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police a year ago yesterday — amplified the outrage and brought us well-deserved scorn and scrutiny.

There is somewhat of a playbook whenever a self-inflicted crisis like this threatens to define any institution and the people who work for it. And so it played out here. Apologies were issued, a change in newsroom leadership was announced, earnest promises of reform and redress were made.

Translation: Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski was forced to resign.

But what, exactly, was “racist” about the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too”? Philadelphia is an old city, founded in 1682 by William Penn, to serve as the capital for the Province of Pennsylvania, on a land grant from King Charles II. Boelson Cottage, built sometime between 1678 and 1684, is the oldest still standing house in Fairmont Park. Independence Hall was built in 1753, and is where both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were debated and adopted. The city has an Historical Commission, dedicated to preserving Philadelphia’s rich history. Why, in a place like Philadelphia, would anyone think that buildings don’t matter?

Even buildings with far fewer, or even any, historic connection, serve important purposes, being places where people live and eat and work, things necessary to survival.

What did the “Buildings Matter, Too” article say?

Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?

That’s the question that has been raging on the streets of Philadelphia, and across my architecture-centric social media feeds, over the last two days as a dark cloud of smoke spiraled up from Center City. What started as a poignant and peaceful protest in Dilworth Park on Saturday morning ended up in a frenzy of destruction by evening. Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire.

Their chances of survival are slim, which means there could soon be a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia, in one of its most iconic and historic neighborhoods. And protesters moved on to West Philadelphia’s fragile 52nd Street shopping corridor, an important center of black life, where yet more property has been battered.

The very first line by Inquirer architecture writer Inga Saffron asked whether the destruction of buildings in the riots in the city after the killing of George Floyd mattered. She claimed that the anger of the protesters was justified, but also noted that yes, those buildings did matter, too.

“People over property” is great as a rhetorical slogan. But as a practical matter, the destruction of downtown buildings in Philadelphia — and in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and a dozen other American cities — is devastating for the future of cities. We know from the civil rights uprisings of the 1960s that the damage will ultimately end up hurting the very people the protests are meant to uplift. Just look at the black neighborhoods surrounding Ridge Avenue in Sharswood or along the western end of Cecil B. Moore Avenue. An incredible 56 years have passed since the Columbia Avenue riots swept through North Philadelphia, and yet those former shopping streets are graveyards of abandoned buildings. Residents still can’t get a supermarket to take a chance on their neighborhood.

The headline that Mr Wischnowski wrote was entirely appropriate for Miss Saffron’s column, because it expressed, succinctly, what was in the article. It noted that the destruction of these buildings was going to hurt Philadelphians, black and white alike, because damage and destruction was going to cost people their jobs.

More, it was catchy, in a way that editors are supposed to write headlines, to attract people actually to read the articles. That, however, was lost on the young #woke who populate the Inquirer’s newsroom.[1]A newsroom, I would note, that moved out of its own historic building almost a decade earlier, as the then Philadelphia Media Holdings sold the old building because the company was in poor financial … Continue reading

Back to Miss Hughes’ original:

But what has happened since? If our call then was to become an anti-racist news organization, what has been done? Has the passage of a year yielded anything concrete? Is there anything that adds real meaning to the lofty and ambitious goals announced over a few tense days when we faced the deserved public criticism?

The reader can follow the link to the Publisher’s original to see what she believes has been accomplished, but what I see is far, far different. According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, as of the end of Monday, May 25th, 208 people had been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love. That works out to 1.434 people being murdered every single day, and, if that figure is maintained throughout 2021, 524 homicides for the year, leaving last year’s 499, and 1990’s record of 500, well back in the rear view mirror.

Two of those 208 deaths were reported as having occurred on May 25th, the anniversary of Mr Floyd’s death. Yet, at least at 10:42 AM on the following day, there was not a single story on the Inquirer’s website main page concerning those deaths. The seven killings the Police Department reported as having occurred over the weekend[2]The Philadelphia Police Department only updates that page Monday through Friday, so the previous update, showing 199 homicides, was for 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, May 20th. did not rate a single story on the newspaper’s website main page. A site search for homicide turned up nothing, though searching for reporter Robert Moran, who usually covers these stories, turned up two very short news articles, covering one murder on the 24th and two separate murders on the 25th.

If I have to know which reporter to search to find these stories, how am I supposed to believe that #BlackLivesMatter, at least to the news staff of The Philadelphia Inquirer?

I am not the only person who has noticed this:

On Friday, December 11, 2020, Helen Ubiñas published an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.”

The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

Just weeks before the end of 2020, that number doubled. More than 400 people gunned down.

By the time you read this, there will only be more.

Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

“A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

Of course, Miss Ubiñas followed the Inquirer’s stylebook in claiming that these Philadelphians were “killed by guns.” No, they were killed by bad people, people who used guns as their tools. But the Inquirer doesn’t want to ever say that part.

I’ve told the truth previously: unless the murder victim is someone already of note, or a cute little white girl, the editors of the Inquirer don’t care, because, to be bluntly honest about it, the murder of a young black man in Philadelphia is not news. Unless the victim was a Somebody, the Inquirer didn’t care. If the victim is a white male, not even in the city, and the shooting was probably accidental, yeah, that merits not just one but two stories.

If the Publisher of the Inquirer really wants the paper to be, as she put it, “an anti-racist news organization,” then she needs to see to it that the newspaper, and its website,[3]I am a digital subscriber to the Inquirer. There is no getting a paper copy out in the wilds of eastern Kentucky. actually covers the news, covers the killings, follows up on the murders, and tells the truth to its readers.

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↑1 A newsroom, I would note, that moved out of its own historic building almost a decade earlier, as the then Philadelphia Media Holdings sold the old building because the company was in poor financial shape. Perhaps now working in the old Strawbridge’s building was less inspiring to the staff as far as architecture was concerned.
↑2 The Philadelphia Police Department only updates that page Monday through Friday, so the previous update, showing 199 homicides, was for 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, May 20th.
↑3 I am a digital subscriber to the Inquirer. There is no getting a paper copy out in the wilds of eastern Kentucky.
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Black Lives Don’t Matter in St Louis!

I’ll admit it: I went on kind of a rant in the comments section of my good friend William Teach’s story:

In Violent St. Louis, Mayor Wants To Empty Prisons And Defund The Police

By William Teach | May 19, 2021 | 10:30 AM EDT

No, wait, they should do this, because every experiment needs an experimental group. But, anyone who voted for the mayor should not be allowed to leave the city. They have to live what they voted for

‘More police doesn’t prevent crime’: Mayor of America’s most murderous city vows to shut notorious prison and defund the police

St Louis, Missouri, holds the unenviable record of the highest murder rate in America, ahead of Baltimore, Chicago and Detroit for the sixth year running.

But despite 262 killings in 2020 – more than twice as many as London in a city with the population of Brighton – residents have just voted in a new mayor promising to defund the police and close the city’s most notorious prison.

Tishaura Jones, a Harvard-educated single mother, who once filed for bankruptcy and whose father spent time in jail, is part of a growing progressive wing of the Democratic party making gains under US president Joe Biden. (snip)

Questions have been asked, therefore, as to why she wants to cut $4 million from the $171 million policing budget and shut down one of the city’s two prisons.

“More police doesn’t prevent crime,” says the 49-year-old, speaking from her grand, wood-paneled office in Downtown, near the baseball stadium and train station, just a short walk from the Mississippi river.

“Research done in the police department shows that 50 per cent of calls can be answered by someone other than police.

Really? And just how many of these calls in which someone other than the police could have been responded to by someone other than the police is it apparent that someone else could have responded as the response is dispatched?

“So, why not deploy someone other than police, and free up police to do the work that they were trained to do in our academy.”

So, apparently, fewer police means less crime? They’ve been working on this experiment since the Michael Brown incident, with police officers leaving due to the anti-cop mentality of citizens and politicians, and are hard to replace. The crime numbers show that fewer police, and police who are reticent to work hard against crime due to being blasted for doing the job, doesn’t help. Oh, I’m sure that certain neighborhoods are well protected, like the rich ones Tishaura Jones lives in. Others? Not so much.

One of Mr Teach’s frequent, very liberal, commenters styles himself as Elwood P Dowd, who wrote:

Teach didn’t read the article. But tell us, has the old system worked all that well? No? So keep doing the same old thing?

The Mayor says she wants to free up police from calls that do not require officers, but she’s not white, so what does she know? The “Workhouse” should have shut long ago. The mayor proposed cutting the police budget 2.5% while saving another 5% shutting down the “Workhouse”.

We’ve invited Teach’s festering hemorrhoid (Lil Lap-puppy) to visit several times and he keeps refusing. Chicken!

According to the St Louis Police Department, there have been 73 homicides as of May 18, 2021. That’s not bad, just 0.529 per day, on track for 193 for the year, which would be an improvement over last years 263, but we haven’t hit the long, hot summer yet.

0.529 per day is nowhere close to Philadelphia’s 1.44 per day, but, then again, St Louis population of 308,174 is but a fraction of Philly’s 1,579,000. Assuming that the 193 number holds, that gives the Gateway City aa homicide rate of 62.63 per 100,000 population, where the City of Brotherly Love’s projected 526 homicides yields a homicide rate of 33.31 per 100,000 population.

Using the same statistics page, 68 out of the 73 homicide victims were black, 53 males and 15 females. Only three of the victims were white, and of the two known suspects, both were white. Out of the 34 identified suspects, 2 were white, 2 were Hispanic, and 30 were black.

Yet only 45.3% of the population of the city are black, and 44.1% are white. You guys have a problem, but it’s not the problem you are willing to admit, or address.

Let’s do a little more math. At the current rates, 8 whites and 180 blacks will be murdered in St Louis this year. That gives a white homicide rate of 5.89 per 100,000 population, but a black murder rate of 128.94 per 100,000.

I know, I know, it’s raaaaacist to point out that, isn’t it? But if you will not acknowledge the problem, honestly, you’ll never solve it.

The Mayor says she wants to free up police from calls that do not require officers, but she’s not white, so what does she know?

I don’t know, what does she know? Does she tell the truth about your homicide problem, or does she obscure it with euphemisms like “gun violence”, as though inanimate firearms simply pick themselves up and shoot people? Those inanimate guns sure are racist themselves, ’cause they seem to shoot mostly black people!

The problem is a black culture that allows this, that tolerates it. They are like Gaza, a place which could have been made into a showcase, but instead chose Hamas to lead them, and provide shelter and concealment for the Hamas terrorists who shoot rockets into Israel, thus causing the Israelis to retaliate in far greater measure. Like the Palestinians of Gaza, the good people of the heavily black neighborhoods of St Louis — and Philadelphia, and Chicago — have decided to provide shelter and concealment for the gang-bangers that terrorize the entire community. St Louis’ black population has brought this on themselves!

Perhaps Mr Dowd remembers the criticism of Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), that he was an “oreo,” black on the outside but white on the inside. Well, dude, the only thing that’s going to save your black population is for them to become white on the inside, to adopt a culture of less violence, to stop shooting each other. But Mr Dowd won’t say that, will he?

Adding the figures from what most people think of as our nation’s murder capital, the Windy City, The Chicago Tribune reports 227 homicides so far in 2021, up from 191 on the same day last year. On the 139th day of the year, that works out to 1.633 homicides per day. If the rate remains constant through the year, that puts Chicago on track for 596 homicides in 2021, which, with a population of 2,710,000, works out to a homicide rate of 21.99 per 100,000 population.

Mr Dowd’s hometown is three times as bad as the Windy City!

Lexington, Kentucky, with a population of 320,000, slightly larger than that of the Gateway City, has seen 16 homicides so far in 2021. In 2020, the city set it’s record of 34 murders, not even half of what St Louis has seen so far this year. But Lexington is so worried about violence that the city just hired a new violence prevention program coordinator.

While Mr Dowd makes excuses, St Louis has become the white supremacists’ dream; the black people there are killing themselves at a prodigious rate.

Just think what that does! Not only are there fewer blacks in the population to reproduce more black people, but since the killings of blacks is almost entirely by other blacks, the ones who are arrested and get locked up for life, removing their reproductive capacity from the city as well. That’s a win/win as far white supremacists would be concerned.

But there he is, supporting his Mayor for cutting back on the Police Department, and shutting down a prison to keep the bad guys locked up. He is enabling the very things which will get more of the city’s population killed.

But, then again, with a white homicide rate of 5.89 per 100,000, and a black homicide rate of 128.94 per 100,000, the white folks in his home town don’t have all that much about which to worry.

Don’t tell me that Black Lives Matter, because it’s pretty clear that, to the esteemed Mr Dowd, and to the black people in St Louis, black lives really don’t matter.

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Political correctness in the city of Lexington

We have previously noted that the Lexington Herald-Leader apparently does not post photos of criminal suspects, — though an exception was recently made for a white suspect — even though the other city media do, and that McClatchy Company, which owns the Herald-Leader, apparently does not either.

Lexington Police Department shooting investigations chart; screen capture from city website.

Well, it seems that the Lexington city government is just as eaten up with political correctness as its newspaper. The unreadably small chart to the right, which you can expand by clicking on the image, is a screen capture from the city government’s Shooting investigations page, taken at 4:02 PM EDT on Monday, May 10th. If you expand it, you will see that it lists the victims’ sex, race and age, along with the suspect, if known. Of 31 shooting investigations, 24 of the victims are listed as black, 3 as Hispanic, and 4 as white.

Lexington Police Department shooting investigations chart; screen capture from city website.

But when you come to the city’s Homicide investigations page, on a different page of the same website — the two pages are linked — shown on the left, you’ll notice, if you click on the screen capture and expand it, the victims’ sex and race are not included. The Shootings investigation page excludes homicide victims.

I wonder why that is.

Now, you can get that information on the website original, in some cases, by clicking on the crime scene location. Nevertheless, I find it an odd omission, considering that the information is posted on the shootings investigations page; why exclude information that the police clearly have?[1]Note that the investigation of the shooting on January 31, 2021, on the 100 block of West Vine Street, has both a surviving shooting victim and the murder of Lonnie Oxendine. Are we to somehow think … Continue reading Why do the Lexington Police and city government censor information they clearly have? Why, if they are going to make the information posted for plain public view in the first place, do they deliberately withhold statistical information?

Well, I think that I can tell you. Lexington is, according to 2019 Census Department guesstimates, 74.9% white, 14.6% black and 7.2% Hispanic (of any race). If the city puts out too much information, then an [insert slang term for the rectum here] like me might look at the numbers and ask something like, ‘If the city is only 14.6% black, why are 77.4% of the shooting victims black? If the Lexington Police Department told us the race of the homicide victims, would we find a similar racial disparity?[2]According to the Homicide investigations page, all 15 of the listed victims — the page had not been updated with the most recent homicide — were killed by gunfire.

Lexington isn’t Chicago or Philadelphia yet, though sometimes it seems as though the criminal element there is taking that as a personal challenge. But if the city’s violence problems are ever going to be solved, they have to be solved by addressing the problem properly, by recognizing what and where the problem lays, and that’s something the city, and its newspaper, just won’t do.

References

References
↑1 Note that the investigation of the shooting on January 31, 2021, on the 100 block of West Vine Street, has both a surviving shooting victim and the murder of Lonnie Oxendine. Are we to somehow think that the Lexington Police recorded the race, sex and age of the surviving shooting victim but not that of the man who perished?
↑2 According to the Homicide investigations page, all 15 of the listed victims — the page had not been updated with the most recent homicide — were killed by gunfire.
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And another one bites the dust! Do black lives matter in Lexington?

There are no suspects yet, so I cannot fault the Lexington Herald-Leader for not posting their photos, but it does seem to be the newspaper’s policy specifically, and McClatchy Company’s policy in general, not to do so.

Teenager killed, two others injured in North Lexington shooting

By Karla Ward | May 8, 2021 07:57 PM EDT | Updated; May 9, 2021 | 10:20 AM EDT

Two men and a teen boy were taken to the hospital with serious injuries Saturday night after a shooting in a neighborhood off Georgetown Street.

The teenager, later identified as 17-year-old Mar’quevion Leach, died of his injuries at University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital, the Fayette County Coroner’s Office announced late Saturday.

Lexington police Lt. Chris Cooper said Saturday that officers were called to the 700 block of Florence Avenue just after 6 p.m. He said police received several calls about shots fired.

“Upon arrival, we did locate several individuals who had been injured by gunfire,” he said.

There’s a little more at the original.

Unless I’ve missed one, young Mr Leach would be the sixteenth person murdered in Lexington thus far this year. Saturday having been the 128th day of the year, that would put Lexington at one murder every eight days, assuming none of the other victims of what may have been a gun battle die. At that rate, Lexington would see 45 to 46 people murdered in 2021; the city set it’s records of 34 murders just last year, and that was four over the previous record of 30, set the year before.

Actually, 45 to 46 (the actual number is 45.625) is a better rate than just three weeks ago, when the city was on track for 51 homicides. But, if one of the other shooting victims succumbs, and becomes the 17th homicide victim, the projected total jumps to between 48 and 49 victims. A 17th would be fully half of 2020’s total, just 1/3 of the way through the year.

And the summer hasn’t started yet!

Do black lives matter in Lexington? It doesn’t really seem so, as young black men are being killed at record rates in a city which used to be fairly peaceful; I lived in the city from 1971 through 1984.[1]There is a Facebook page for a Mar’quevion Leach in Lexington, though the profile photo was posted ten years ago. I assume that this is the same person, as the name is fairly unusual.

The Herald-Leader reported that the police believe that the victims were “probably targeted.” At least to one person, Mr Leach’s black life didn’t matter, nor the lives of the other two victims.

References

References
↑1 There is a Facebook page for a Mar’quevion Leach in Lexington, though the profile photo was posted ten years ago. I assume that this is the same person, as the name is fairly unusual.
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Black Lives Don’t Matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer

I rather mockingly tweeted, on Sunday around 11:30 AM:

At 10:33 AM EDT this morning, I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, and it stated that as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, May 2, 2021, there had been 176 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year. The previous update showed 169 homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, April 29, 2021. (The site is only updated Monday through Friday, so there are no separate totals for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Naturally, I checked The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website immediately after the Current Crime Statistics page, and there was not a single story on the rather long main page about any of the killings. Not a single one!

I’m pretty good in math, but perhaps I made a mistake. I did it twice, just to be sure, and I came up with 176 – 169 = 7. I did get that right, didn’t I?

So, if I got the math right, there were seven murders in Philadelphia over the weekend — counting Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights as the weekend — yet none of the journolists journalists or editors at the Inquirer found that newsworthy?

There was an article, “Black-owned school-lunch business moving to Philly area to create ‘culturally relevant’ meals for kids,” dated April 30th, still on the main page, and an article about a golf club agreeing to admit women as members, “Reports: Pine Valley to admit women as members, provide unrestricted access to guests,” dated two days ago, and even this large section, on Asian American and Pacific Islander activism, with some articles dating from over a month ago, but not one word about seven homicides in Philly over the weekend.

The tremendously #woke staff of the Inquirer were so concerned that #BlackLivesMatter that they forced the firing resignation of Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski for entitling an article “Buildings Matter, Too,” seem to have no concern at all for black lives lost to the carnage on Philly’s mean streets, at least not enough concern to publish a paragraph of two when they are snuffed out.

The truth is simple: there is no evidence, no evidence at all, that black lives matter to the staff of the Inquirer

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Was it worth it?

Demond Goudy, 21, Photo released by Chicago Police Department.

We have thrice mentioned the killing of seven-year-old Jaslyn Adams in the Windy City. Chicago Police have now apprehended a second suspect in that shooting, as Demond Goudy, 21, was taken into custody Monday in the 1500 block of South Springfield following a SWAT standoff. Marion Lewis, 18, allegedly the driver, was previously apprehended.

Mr Goudy has been denied bail, because he was already out on bond awaiting trial on other charges. WGN noted that Mr Goudy’s life had been a long spiral of violence:

In recent years, violence has been a constant in the life of Demond Goudy, one of the men accused of taking part in the fatal shooting of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams earlier this month.

Court records show that Goudy was shot and critically wounded on the West Side last October. That shooting occurred less than two weeks after Goudy’s brother was shot and killed in Humboldt Park. No one has been charged in either case.

Before he was charged in Jaslyn’s killing — a shooting that also left her father seriously injured — Goudy was already facing four separate criminal cases.

Court records show that, in addition to the murder charge, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has accused Goudy of robbery, manufacturing/delivery of cocaine, possession of a controlled substance, possession of a gun with a defaced serial number and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. None of the charges against Goudy are more than 2 ½ years old.

According to court filings made by his attorney, Goudy was a participant in READI Chicago, “a job readiness program that provides cognitive behavioral therapy and work force training.”

Let’s face facts: young Mr Goudy was a waste case, and no ‘job training’ program was ever going to turn him into a decent and law-abiding member of society. Mr Goudy was already under electronic monitoring when he was shot in the back, just two weeks after his brother, Edward James, had been murdered. Cook County Judge Edward Maloney, asked by Mr Goudy’s attorney to loosen the conditions of Mr Goudy’s monitoring so he could go to medical appointments following his release from the hospital, instead dropped the monitoring altogether, after Cathryn Crawford of the Lawndale Christian Legal Center, Mr Goudy’s attorney, argued that, “Demond is not a threat to anyone given his condition.” Apparently neither the judge nor the defense attorney thought that, eventually, Mr Goudy would recover.

Naturally, I checked out the Lawndale Christian Legal Center’s website, and found this, on their main page:

THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IN OUR COUNTRY IS BROKEN.

It’s costing too much and hurting us all. But we are standing at a pivotal moment where the conversation has begun in earnest about shifting power back to the community as a more effective way to ensure peace, make communities safer and provide equity for everyone.

Over a decade ago at Lawndale Christian Legal Center, we committed to providing legal defense for juvenile and emerging adult clients in North Lawndale, keeping them out of prison, surrounding each one with the right resources to address the systemic problems threatening their future, and involving the community in seeking justice. We believe it is – and always has been – the most effective way to build a system that is fair for everyone.

This is a restorative justice program supported by holistic social and legal services that walk juveniles and emerging adults through, and away from, the court system for good. Through our work, we’ve been helping transform young lives tangled in a deeply flawed system, and inspiring hope in places where hope has been hard to come by.

I get it. Everyone deserves a legal defense. But perhaps, just perhaps, Miss Crawford, their Director of Holistic Legal Services, may just have a bit too much goodness in her heart:

Cathryn is a graduate and former professor of Northwestern University’s School of Law. With a decades long legal career, she joined LCLC due to its unique community-based holistic legal representation model and the vision espoused by Cliff Nellis, Executive Director. Before coming to LCLC, Cathryn worked in Texas representing clients on death row. People like Cathryn’s mother, a single mom and tenants’ rights community activist, instilled in her a strong sense of social justice and work ethic from an early age. Cathryn hopes to reform the justice system by making it holistic instead of punitive and to eliminate the pernicious racism that characterizes it. She wants our clients to be seen as unique individuals with real strengths rather than simply the offense with which they have been charged. She is motivated by her team and by her clients.

Or perhaps she’s just an idiot. Those gang tats on Mr Goudy’s neck ought to have told her something, ought to have told her that perhaps, just perhaps, her “strong sense of social justice” was a bit misplaced when she told Judge Maloney that Mr Goudy wasn’t a threat to anyone. 

Does Miss Crawford even think about Jaslyn Adams, and how the client she helped to get released from monitoring shot her stone-cold graveyard dead?  Does she feel any responsibility, does she have any sense or remorse?

Miss Crawford did Mr Goudy no favors. If Mr Goudy was indeed one of the shooters — remember: he is innocent of that until proven guilty — at least the years he would spend behind bars for his previous crimes would have left him with some hope of eventually getting out of prison. Now, if he is convicted in the premeditated murder of a seven-year-old innocent girl, well, that’s it, he’ll spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.

How about Messrs Goudy and Lewis? The shooting was, apparently, some gang-related action. Yeah, they sure showed Jontae Adams, young Miss Adams’ father, what for, but now the 21 and 18 year olds are looking at never, ever, getting out of prison. Was it really worth it for them?

Well, assuming that Messrs Goudy and Lewis are the guilty parties, they will be held accountable by the criminal justice system.

But what about Judge Maloney, who freed Mr Goudy from monitoring, and Miss Crawford, who worked as hard as she could to see to it that Mr Goudy was out on the street, and able to (allegedly) shoot his victims? We know that, legally, they’ll never be held accountable, but morally and ethically, if Mr Goudy really was one of the men people who killed Miss Adams, Mr Maloney and Miss Crawford are at least in part responsible. This death should gnaw at their hearts forever.

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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.