Tag Archives: #BlackLivesMatter

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Black community in Philly protests against the police, but also complains that police aren’t solving enough killings Black community claim that #BlackLivesMatter, but don't do anything to prove that

I was doing some research, looking for a story I remembered, in which then Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey decried the “no snitchin'” culture in the heavily black neighborhoods of Philadelphia, when I came across a story about his announced retirement.

Philly Police Commissioner Ramsey to retire

by Aubrey Whelan and Claudia Vargas, Inquirer Staff Writers| October 14, 2015

Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey couldn’t stand the thought of burying another one of his own.

It was March, and he had long been thinking of retirement, ever since Mayor Nutter had won reelection. Even then, he had been “95 percent sure.” His career was at an apex – there had been presidential appointments, and prominent positions on national policing boards, and an unprecedented drop in homicides in a city once dubbed “Killadelphia.”

When 2015 ended, there had been 280 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, an unfortunate jump from 248 the previous year, but overall he presided over a sharp drop in murder. In 2007, the year before he became Commissioner, there were 391 bodies laying in the city streets. In Mayor Michael Nutter’s (D-Philadelphia) and the new Commissioner’s first year, homicides dropped to 331, and then to 302 the following year. 2013 saw 246 homicides, the lowest number since 1967.

It seems that the city has re-earned that nickname.

As of December 9th, Killadelphia had seen 465 corpses homicides. That’s good for the bronze medal, 3rd place in all of the city’s long history, under Mayor Nutter’s successor, Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), under ‘social justice’ District Attorney Larry Krasner, the beneficiary of George Soros’ campaign millions, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, who seems to be trying, but is little more than a pawn and tool of Mayor Kenney, and had her own ‘social justice’ history in Oakland and Portland.

What moved me to do that research in the first place? It was this article in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Under Fire

In 8,500 shootings since 2015, suspects have been charged in 1 out of 5 cases and convicted in just 9%.

by Chris Palmer, Mike Newall, Mensah M. Dean and Dylan Purcell | December 10, 2020 | 5:00 AM EST

Every trip outside the house for Jackee Nichols brings a new reminder of the pain.

Nichols is from a part of South Philadelphia that has been embroiled in a shooting conflict for as long as anyone can remember. In October 2018, that violence claimed her 15-year-old grandson. Police believe he was gunned down for living on the wrong block — but, like most shootings in Philadelphia, no one has been charged in the crime.

Now Nichols faces the daily torment of living among the people she suspects killed her grandson, Rasul Benson, leaving trauma to resurface in unexpected moments.

There is, of course, the very #woke notation that this article was “One in an occasional series about Philadelphia’s unchecked gun violence,” as though a gun, an inanimate object, is somehow responsible, and not the criminal mindset allowed to run rampant through Strawberry Mansion and not-so-Nicetown. “Gun violence” is the euphemism used by the credentialed media and the left to avoid blaming actual people.[1]In The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, I noted that “The term “gun violence” is, if you will pardon the pun, a politically loaded one, meant to convey the impression that an … Continue reading

Nichols, 57, a devout Muslim, raced home and cried and prayed for forgiveness, overwhelmed by the feeling that she has been ignored by police, abandoned by some in her neighborhood, and failed by a city she believes has turned an uncaring eye toward unsolved killings.

“It seems to me,” she said, her voice catching, “like you all forgot about my boy.”

Nichols’ pain is one shared by thousands of Philadelphians, because city law enforcement is failing to fulfill one of its most fundamental responsibilities: Secure justice when people are shot.

There are people in her neighborhood who know who murdered her grandson, but unless someone actually tells the police, gives them some clues as to who did it, and why, don’t blame “city law enforcement.” The police depend on the public to help them.

The article goes on to include some grisly statistics:

  • Out of almost 8,500 shootings since 2015, just 21% led to charges, less than 9% have reached a conviction.
  • As of November 1, just under one in six of this year’s nearly 1,900 shootings had led to a suspect in custody.

Then the #woke had to have their say:

What’s more, in a historically segregated city, where Black and brown neighborhoods have long suffered from government disinvestment, institutional racism, and heavy-handed police tactics, The Inquirer found that this system has disproportionately failed these communities.

Since 2015, almost 2,700 young Black men were wounded in shootings, but suspected triggermen were convicted in only 6% of their cases.

White men of the same age were three times as likely to see their shooters convicted.

Uhhh, if white victims of the same age were thrice as likely to see the men who shot them tried and convicted, isn’t it possible, just possible, that it was because a greater percentage of white witnesses cooperated with the police? Of course, the #woke among the Inquirer’s reportorial staff would never even ask that question. Instead, they’d frame the statistic, as they did, by blaming “institutional racism”. Remember, they forced Stan Wischnowski, senior vice president and executive editor of the Inquirer to resign, and the paper to issue an apology, because their precious little feelings were hurt.

Protesters, including Jamaal Henderson of ACT UP Philadelphia, gathered outside Philadelphia City Hall in June and called for allocating funds to community services instead of the police.. Photo by Alejandro Alvarez, The Philadelphia Inquirer,

One has to ask: why, if the black community in Philadelphia are so upset that the police are not solving many of the homicides in black neighborhoods, are so many from that community demanding that the city ‘defund the police’? Would not reducing the resources available to the Philadelphia Police Department be more probable to reduce the number of crimes that they can solve, the number of patrols they can do?

The article does note the ‘defund’ movement, but uncritically states that it’s the fault of the police because the black community do not trust them.

Police say they are embracing reform, developing smarter, more targeted tactics, and trying to overcome the challenge of making cases when so many witnesses don’t want to talk. Within the Philadelphia Police Department, many officers — including Commissioner Danielle Outlaw — have also grown increasingly outspoken about what they view as a criminal justice system and reform-oriented prosecutor’s office that have not cracked down hard enough on illegal guns.

“The criminal community, they’re more emboldened to go out and do more,” Outlaw said in an interview.

Conviction rates for nonfatal shootings and illegal gun possession have fallen since District Attorney Larry Krasner took office in 2018, according to data published by his office. Some police commanders also complain that repeat offenders now routinely get low bail or shorter sentences for gun crimes.

Still, Outlaw acknowledged that the Police Department is primarily responsible for building investigations to get suspected shooters off the street. And the failure to secure justice in the vast majority of gun-violence cases, she said, was “very concerning, for obvious reasons.”

I’ve noted the failures of Mr Krasner’s office previously, but they aren’t failures to him: he wants to see shorter jail terms, he wants to see fewer criminals convicted. And, once again, the “gun violence” trope is used.

Instead, the Inquirer published a sympathetic story, just the previous day, about cop killer Wesley Cook, who calls himself Mumia Abu-Jamal these days, and poor Mr Cook’s 39 years locked up for the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal demand his freedom on the 39th anniversary of his arrest in the death of a Philadelphia police officer

by Mensah M. Dean | December 9, 2020

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981, used the 39th anniversary of his arrest to call for his release from prison on Wednesday, saying he was innocent.

They also condemned the 1985 bombing of the MOVE compound in West Philadelphia and rejected a recent apology Philadelphia city councilmembers offered for the city’s actions that day in starting a fire that killed 11 people.

Well, in one way that apology was worthless: none of the Philadelphia councilmembers were in office thirty-five years ago, and none of them had anything to do with the MOVE action. How can anyone apologize for someone else’s actions?

The group, many of them MOVE members, gathered at the corner of 52nd and Larchwood Streets to demand freedom for Abu-Jamal, 66, a MOVE supporter who lived under a death sentence for two decades before his sentence was overturned by a federal judge in 2001. He’s now serving life without parole for the Dec. 9, 1981, slaying of Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Despite Abu-Jamal’s conviction and numerous failed appeals, his supporters maintain that he is not guilty of killing Faulkner, who was 25, and that his trial was tainted by racism and corruption.

Well, of course they do. There’s no evidence that Mr Cook[2]While I have not changed the fake name used in quoting the article, I will not go along with his ridiculous alias in my own words. did not shoot Officer Faulkner, but that doesn’t matter: they don’t care if he is actually innocent, but are deifying him precisely because he did kill a police officer. Yet the same people are complaining that the Philadelphia Police Department isn’t bringing murderers in their own communities to justice.

In virtually every one of the murders in Philadelphia, there are people who were not involved but who know who the killers are, who have all of the evidence the police and even the stupid District Attorney need to make the arrests and win the convictions, to lock these killers away for the rest of their miserable lives.

Instead, the left pretend that the problem is ‘mass incarceration,’ when the real problem is that not enough criminals are incarcerated, for not long enough.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 In The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, I noted that “The term “gun violence” is, if you will pardon the pun, a politically loaded one, meant to convey the impression that an inanimate object was somehow violent all by itself. Sensible writers should use the term “shooting,” to make it clear that a person committed the violent act.” I do not use the term “gun violence,” save in direct quotes or to mock the concept that guns are somehow responsible for murder.
↑2 While I have not changed the fake name used in quoting the article, I will not go along with his ridiculous alias in my own words.
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The killing of a black man in Philadelphia is as commonplace as a traffic jam on the Schuylkill Expressway.

The main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website listed, at 2:45 PM EST, the following stories:

Five main page stories referencing race.

You know what wasn’t on the main page? Not one single story about the black men being killed on the streets of the City of Brotherly Love. According to the Philadelphia Police Department, as of 11:59 PM EST on November 10th, 427 people have bled out their life’s blood in the city’s streets so far this year, a 40% increase over the same day last year. Those 427 homicides are good for 7th place all time on Philly’s homicide list . . . with 51 days left in the year. With a rate of 1.356 killings per day, Philadelphia is on track for 69 more homicides in 2020, for a grand total of 496, which would easily push 1989’s 489 murders out of the way for 2nd place.

But, not to worry: 1990’s record of 505 seems out of reach.

Maybe, like Roger Maris’ 61 home runs in 1961, they’ll put an asterisk beside this year’s 2nd place finish, given that it’s a leap year, and Philly had an extra day for mayhem.

According to the Philadelphia shootings victims dashboard, 244 out of 295 fatal shootings in the city (as of November 8nd) were of black males; that’s 82.7%. Yet if there has been a story about this in the Inquirer, I have missed it.

I did, however, find this Letter to the Editor:

Letter: Do black lives matter to the Philly media?

by Will O’Brien, Philadelphia | Posted: March 22, 2016 | 3:01 AM EDT

Do black lives matter to media?

A recent stabbing in Rittenhouse Square was certainly tragic, and I grieve for the family and friends of the victim (“Rittenhouse Stabbing Arrest,” Tuesday). But I have to express my frustration that, once again, the murder of a white person merits front-page coverage as well as follow-up stories, updates on the arrest, and almost certainly coverage of the trial months from now. At the same time, numerous murders in communities of color are relegated to the back pages, often with little more than a paragraph – and practically never with follow-up stories.

One local television newscast started with cursory coverage of two killings in an African American neighborhood before leading into the Rittenhouse Square incident with “But the big story tonight . . .” And it continued to be a lead story several days later.

This has been the infuriating and persistent pattern in the Inquirer and other Philadelphia media for all of the 30 years I have lived here. This sends a very strong message that white lives are more valuable than black and Latino lives. The death of a white person is seen as more important, more newsworthy, and more tragic than the death of a person of color. This is precisely why the Black Lives Matter movement is urgently needed and why many white people’s response that “all lives matter” is a milquetoast assertion that ignores harsh social realities.

Our media must do better by not playing into and even affirming long-standing racist attitudes that have wounded our society for too long.

Since Mr O’Brien has lived in Philadelphia for 30 years, he must remember the days and days coverage of the murder of Cute Little White Girl Rian Thal.

His letter was 4½ years ago, before George Floyd, before Breonna Taylor and before Walter Wallace, all heavily covered by the Inquirer and the rest of the credentialed media. Their killings were covered because they wound up being political flashpoints.

But the hundreds of black Philadelphians, primarily black males? Unless the victim was a Somebody, the Inquirer didn’t care. If the victim is a white male, and the shooting probably accidental, yeah, that merits not just one but two stories.

Mr O’Brien’s letter was written in 2016, when the city saw 277 homicides. Philly left that total in the dust somewhere around August 18th. I did not note the date that homicide #277 occurred, but noted that at the end of August 17th there had been 276 homicides.

As of 11:59 PM EDT yesterday (August 17, 2020), 276 homicides were recorded in the City of Brotherly Love. That’s a 31% increase over the same day last year, more than the entire year’s murder totals in 2013 and 2014, and just one fewer than the entire year total for 2016.¹

In 230 days, Philadelphia has seen 276 homicides. That’s 1.2 murders per day. With 136 days remaining, if the average holds, that’s an additional 163 homicides, for a projected total of 439 people.

I don’t know how many gang-bangers in Philadelphia read The First Street Journal or my stories on RedState, but sometimes it seems that they’ve taken what I’ve written as a personal challenge. Philadelphia’s good citizens raised that 1.2 homicides per day in mid-August to 1.356 by the 10th of November, not quite three months, and the projected total from 439 to 496.

Mr O’Brien asked, “Do black lives matter to (the Philadelphia) media?” The short answer is no, they don’t matter, because, to be very blunt about it, another black man dying in Philly’s streets just isn’t news anymore. The murder of a black man in the city is as commonplace an event as a traffic jam on the Schuylkill Expressway.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Korean businesses matter, too!

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is only updated “during normal business hours, Monday through Friday,” so it was no surprise to me that, at 10:05 AM EST on Sunday morning, the same number of homicides that was specified on Friday, 411, was still showing. And when I checked the main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, though there were follow-up stories on the death of Walter Wallace, Jr, the knife-wielding man who was advancing on two police officers, I did not find a single story indicating that anyone else had been murdered on the city’s frequently bloody streets.

But I did find one story about racism related to the death of Mr Wallace:

Korean American business owners, among hardest hit by looters, feel victimized and alone

by Sam Wood | October 31, 2020 | 5:01 AM EDT

For many of the nearly 100 beauty supply stores in Philadelphia, it was another rough week.

From Monday to Wednesday, thieves and vandals broke into at least 17 stores, making off with merchandise and even store fixtures. The losses were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In some cases, thieves struck again at shops that were damaged previously during a more widespread outbreak of looting that flared in May after police in Minneapolis killed a man there. The damage and theft this week erupted after news broke Monday of how police had shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr. in West Philadelphia.

“Some owners tried to call the police, but they didn’t respond,” said Sharon Hartz, president of the Korean American Association of Greater Philadelphia, an advocacy organization for many of those who operate the supply shops. “A few had a chance to get police but when they came, they dismissed it. Groups of 20 to 30 people came to loot at a time. It was scary.”

Her group provided a count of damaged shops. “Some of the stores, they’re thinking of closing down for good,” she said.

A count, I would note, that was not included in the Inquirer story.

I have to admit: I wonder about the job of Sam Wood, the reporter who wrote the article, and the editor who approved it, because it implies the question of racism against Korean business owners by the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrators. Remember: Stan Wischnowski, 58, was fired resigned as senior vice-president and executive editor of the Inquirer, following a newsroom protest reminiscent of the rebellion of the #woke at The New York Times that got OpEd section editor James Bennet fired to resign following his decision to allow a sitting United States Senator to publish an OpEd piece the #woke didn’t like, after the headline “Buildings Matter, Too” was used in an article on the loss of historic architecture in the riots over the death of drug-addled convicted felon George Floyd in Minneapolis.

I picked “Korean Businesses Matter, Too” as the headline for this article after writing the previous paragraph. Claira Janover could not be reached for comment.

There’s considerably more at the Inquirer original, noting that businessmen of Korean descent in the city were afraid for their businesses, many having been looted, and that some of them have hired private security, a business expense they certainly do not want, and that at least a few have been camping out in their businesses, armed with handguns and shotguns to protect themselves from looters.

The article may have given us a few facts, but it was also an example of poor journalism. Not only did it fail to give us the number of businesses damaged, even though it stated that the number was provided, but it failed to provide any links to its sources among the Korean American Association of Greater Philadelphia and the Korean American Chamber of Commerce for Philadelphia. It did not address whether Korean-owned businesses are being singled out more than businesses owned by those of other racial or ethnic groups, nor tell us whether Korean-owned businesses are more heavily concentrated in black neighborhoods, nor tell us how prevalent other-than-black-owned businesses are in predominantly black neighborhoods. Given that Asian, and particularly Korean, owned businesses were heavily targeted during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, that seems like a particularly glaring journalistic lapse.

Nor does the story address that most glaring of politically incorrect facts: what percentage of the looters destroying these Korean businesses are black? In a story about racial unrest, wouldn’t the information about race be considered part of the story?

Of course, I am mocking current editorial standards in the credentialed media. Editors decided, many years ago, to not include racial statistics in any form that might contribute to racism. Walter Wallace, Jr, could be identified as black, because he was the victim of a almost certainly justified shooting by police officers. The victims of the looting being identified as Korean-Americans? Again, they were the victims. But perpetrators of crimes? They must not be identified by race, because that could lead to bad impressions based on race, to racial stereotypes being formed.

So there we have it: good, complete journalism is being squashed because good people don’t want to tell you a bad truth, because bad truths might result in, horrors! bad opinions, or even Thoughtcrime.

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The proper way to deal with the not-so-peaceful parts of Mostly Peaceful Protests™

We already know that District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) hates the police and will not seriously prosecute #BlackLivesMatter protesters who break the law and destroy property, so, to do the right thing, unfortunately, requires that the feds take action. It’s a good thing it was Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton appointing United States Attorneys! From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Arson charges against prominent West Philly activist draw swift rebuke from protest movement

by Jeremy Roebuck, Posted: October 29, 2020- 10:43 AM

A federal indictment charging a prominent West Philadelphia activist and two others with setting a police car on fire during racial injustice protests this spring was unsealed Thursday, drawing a swift response from protesters and lawyers who questioned the nature and timing of their arrests.

The filing, though sparse on details, alleges Anthony Smith — a social studies teacher and one of the lead organizers of the Philadelphia Coalition for Racial and Economic Legal Justice (Philly for REAL Justice) — was involved in burning a police vehicle during demonstrations outside City Hall on May 30 in reaction to the police killing of George Floyd.

But the document does not indicate whether prosecutors believe Smith, 29, actually set the blaze or assisted those who did or whether they have evidence to suggest he was working in coordination with the other two men charged — Carlos Matchett and Khalif Miller — or any wider group.

All three face charges arson charges that carry a seven-year mandatory minimum sentence upon conviction. They have also been charged with obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder — under a rarely used before this year civil disorder statute that was enacted during the Nixon administration’s efforts to crack down on anti-war and Black Power movements in the late 1960s. They remain in custody pending court appearances later this week.

The .pdf file of the indictment is here.

U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain, who we have previously noted has clashed with Mr Krasner before, released the indictment by grand jury. The Usual Suspects complained about the timing, just a few days prior to the presidential election, and during the Mostly Peaceful Protests™ over the killing of Walter Wallace, Jr, by two Philadelphia police officers as he approached them with a knife that he refused to drop.

Smith’s attorney, Paul Hetznecker, balked at what he described as “the blatant political nature of this prosecution,” noting that his client was arrested less than a week before Election Day for crimes that allegedly occurred five months ago.

“Utilizing the awesome power of the federal government to target activists and select them for federal prosecution during one of the most important social justice movements in our history sends a dangerous message,” he said. “The prosecution of my client, Anthony Smith, a respected teacher and political activist, is part of a broader effort by this administration to criminalize and quell dissent expressed by progressive political movements.”

If Mr Smith truly was involved in the arson of a Philadelphia Police Department vehicle, then he is not only not a “respected teacher,” but is not a person who should be teaching young people at all. What, I have to ask, is Mr Smith teaching his students?

There was a scene on the television series Blue Bloods, in which a leftist teacher was causing problems for Nikki Reagan-Boyle. The fictional student and her mother met with the fictional teacher in the fictional Catholic high school, and there was a picture of Che Guevara on the wall. I laughed at the obvious political message of the program, that one would ever suppose that a parochial school would allow a teacher to have Señor Guevara’s photo displayed, but it does make me wonder what some public school teachers, whose unions are essentially Democratic Party operatives, are teaching their students.

Mr Hetznecker was appalled that the indictment was for crimes that allegedly occurred five months ago? The indictment was brought via a grand jury, something that takes time. Mr McSwain could not move before the indictment was delivered.

Does it send to Philadelphia voters the message that President Trump will try to protect people from lawlessness? I very much hope so!

Since May when Floyd’s death in Minneapolis sparked demonstrations across the country, Attorney General William Barr has urged U.S. attorneys to pursue cases against “violent rioters” using specific charges like the ones deployed against Smith, Matchett and Miller on Thursday.

Nationwide, federal prosecutors have lodged more than 300 felony cases against defendants espousing both progressive and right-wing ideologies connected to the demonstrations, with 20 of them in Pennsylvania, according to research by The Prosecution Project, which has tracked protest-related arrests.

Note the media bias in that paragraph. “(B)oth progressive and right-wing ideologies” would not be politically loaded had it been formulated “both left-wing and right-wing ideologies” or “both progressive and conservative ideologies,” but the way the Inquirer phrased it, bias is indicated.

Of course, if the Justice Department is pursuing cases against both left and right in riot cases, that isn’t bias, other than the structural bias that conservatives are much more likely to do something really radical, and not riot.

In June, FBI agents arrested Germantown massage therapist Lore-Elisabeth Blumenthal, alleging she set fire to two police cars parked outside City Hall during the same demonstration during which Smith, Matchett and Miller are accused of committing crimes.

It’s good that they nailed Miss Blumenthal early on; it’s unfortunate that the cases against Messrs Smith, Matchett and Miller took as long as they did, but, if they are guilty, it will be good to see justice eventually being done.
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We need to stop pretending that #BlackLivesMatter . . . . . . because in the City of Brotherly Love, it's very apparent that they don't.

The Current Crime Statistics released by the Philadelphia Police Department note that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on October 21st, 391 souls had been sent to their eternal rewards. That isn’t the record, of course, but 2007 is the base year on the Current Crime Statistics website, and that was the number of people killed that year in Philly. This year has now matched that total . . . with 71 days left in the year.

The math is simple: 391 people killed in 295 days so far equals 1.325 people killed every single day. With 71 days left in the year, at that rate the city should see another 94 people sent to their deaths before the ball drops in New York City.

391 + 94 = 485.

That would not be a new record; 1990 holds that dubious honor with 505, killings, and 1989 comes in second with 489, but 485 would be solidly in third place!

According to the Philadelphia Shooting Victims Dashboard, since 2015, 6,129 shooting victims in the city had been black males; that’s 75.59% of them. Another 518 (6.39%) were black females. 1,102 of the shootings, 77.77%, which were fatal were of black males; while black females added another 72, or 5.08%.

I have noted previously that the Philadelphia media aren’t overly concerned with murder victims anymore, unless the victim is a cute little white girl. I suppose that’s reasonable, because the killing of white women is pretty rare: since 2015, only 15 white women were shot to death, 1.06% of the total. Sixty-two white males were killed in that same time frame, 4.38%. A black woman is more likely to be murdered than a white male in the City of Brotherly Love.

At least as of 4:30 PM, The Philadelphia Inquirer hadn’t noted this ‘milestone’ in city killings, but it sure had a big story, from yesterday, still up on the main page:

‘We’re not going to disappear’

Philadelphia Black Lives Matter activists say they’re building the movement beyond protests — they’re confronting the disparities that put people in the criminal justice system in the first place

by Oona Goodin-Smith, Anna Orso and Raishad Hardnett | October 21, 2020

For the umpteenth time this year, they assembled under the ivory glow of Philadelphia City Hall, cardboard signs and megaphones in hand. The air was crisper than when they began the crusade for George Floyd 116 days prior, but the unrelenting chant from the crowd in September was familiar.

“Say her name, Breonna Taylor.”

“Is my brother next?” one woman’s sign read. “This isn’t change,” declared another. “This system has got to go down!” a demonstrator yelled to the crowd.

For activists like Christopher Bowman, protesting is only the beginning.

“The final step is just community advancement,” said Bowman, a Philadelphia teacher who was teargassed and detained on I-676 in June and inspired to cofound I Will Breathe, an organization fighting racial injustice.

The #BlackLivesMatter activists are very, very worried about the cops:

After Philadelphia’s summer of protests against police brutality and systemic racism, activists are moving into a new season. They’re sustaining momentum by expanding their objectives and establishing their own community group model, working in the neighborhoods they want the city to invest in.

But the numbers say that the police aren’t the black community’s problem in Philly. Using the same site, and selecting for “Officer Involved,” we find 23 such shootings in 2015 and 2016, dropping to 13, 12, 9 and 8 (so far) in subsequent years. (The site does not correct for fatal vs non-fatal in this option.)

Eight officer involved shootings thus far in 2020, out of 1,684, which is 0.475% of the total.

The problem isn’t police brutality; it’s brutality within the black community, because the vast majority of the black people in our cities who are murdered are murdered by other black people.

“Our solutions live within ourselves and not within the system,” said YahNé Ndgo, a core organizer with Black Lives Matter Philly. As she sees it, activists are themselves building programming that’s “making a positive difference in our community.”

“We’re not being antipolice. We’re being antiviolence and pro-health and pro-community,” she said. “And [others] will see that we’re building toward all those things and not seeking to remove something and leave a vacuum, but to replace something that is not healthy for our community.”

Some activists spent the summer calling for police abolition, while others believe policing should remain, but have ideas for reform. Across the city, dozens of groups — new and established — protested, and each had unique priorities.

Are there no mirrors in the black community in Philadelphia? The problem isn’t the police, but the members of their own communities. But no one is willing to say that, because, why, that could sound raaaaacist.

Well, the #BlackLivesMatter protesters got what they wanted, even before this year’s protests, with the election of Democrat Larry Krasner as District Attorney. When the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer, surprisingly, endorsed Republican Beth Grossman over Democrat Larry Krasner for District Attorney. Daniel Denvir waxed wroth:

The Philadelphia Inquirer just endorsed mass incarceration

by Daniel Denvir | October 17, 2017

In May, Philadelphians went to the polls and made history, voting by a large margin to back civil rights attorney Larry Krasner in the city’s Democratic primary for district attorney. On Sunday, residents awoke to find that the Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board had endorsed Krasner’s Republican opponent, Beth Grossman, a former top prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office.

Krasner rallied Philadelphians to an upstart, radical campaign calling for an end to the era of mass incarceration and impunity for police misconduct. The city’s struggling paper of record endorsed a candidate who presided over a nationally infamous civil asset forfeiture program through which prosecutors seized homes and other property from city residents, oftentimes poor and working-class, black and Latino. At least, the editorial gushed, she has “a welcome hesitancy to go for the death penalty.”

Philadelphians want change. The Inquirer board ploddingly declared itself for the enervating cause of defending an intolerable status quo that will most likely be defeated on election day.

But points for consistency: Grossman is the second candidate for top prosecutor the paper has endorsed who has also been backed by the city’s Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #5, an unapologetically reactionary officers union headed by a man who recently called Black Lives Matter protesters “a pack of wild animals.” That first FOP-backed candidate the Inquirer endorsed was Rich Negrin, one of Krasner’s primary opponents. Oddly, the board’s praise for Negrin included a note that the “criminal justice pendulum has been swinging in a new direction for some time, away from ‘tough on crime,’” but failed to mention that it was Krasner’s insurgent, movement-based campaign that had swung the primary field to the left.

After a few more paragraphs of such drivel, Mr Denvir wrote:

In reality, the board’s rationale is a pretext to protect an office that has long prized convictions and lengthy sentences regardless of the costs or whether the outcomes comport with any sense of justice. The Inquirer praises Grossman for her career going “after drug dealers, gunslingers, thieves, and blighters” and her “passion for defending the rights of crime victims.” Not a word about mass incarceration. To editorialize in favor of such a brutal status quo is an insult to the Philadelphians on whose behalf the board purports to be writing.

Well, Mr Denvir got his wish: Larry Krasner won the election. And rather than Mrs Grossman going “after drug dealers, gunslingers, thieves, and blighters,” the City of Brotherly Love has a District Attorney who does not do that, who fired a whole slew of veteran prosecutors upon taking office, and who certainly doesn’t believe in “mass incarceration.”

The result? In 2018, Mr Krasner’s first year in office, city homicides jumped from 315 to 353, a 12.06% increase. The following year, homicides held almost steady, rising to 356, but so far this year, 391 people have been murdered in Philadelphia, a 39.64% increase over the same day  last year.

The cost of Mr Krasner’s victory, and the policies Mr Denvir wanted to see put in place, has been written in blood. Philadelphia has seen more murders, many more murders than New York City, which has more than five times Philly’s population.

Philadelphia’s daily average inmate population was 6,409 when Mr Krasner took office, and was down to 4,849 on August 31, 2019. That’s the end, sort of, of ‘mass incarceration,’ but it sure hasn’t resulted in less violence on the city’s streets. The problem isn’t mass incarceration; the problem is that not enough criminals are incarcerated.

Black lives don’t matter, at least not in Philadelphia, because the black community apparently does not care enough about them to address the problem within itself.