Tag Archives: #Crime

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Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader endangers citizens by refusing to publish a mugshot

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States specifies:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

And thus we come to the case of George Aldridge:

Man charged in 3 Lexington sexual assaults has been tied to another case, police say

By Christopher Leach | Monday, August 28, 2023 | 9:17 AM EDT | Updated: 10:01 AM EDT

George Aldridge, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

A Kentucky man previously charged in three Lexington sexual assault cases is now facing charges in another sexual assault due to a breakthrough discovery by a Kentucky State Police investigative team, officials announced Monday.

George Aldridge, 53, was indicted last month on a charge of first-degree rape in Jefferson County, according to court records. KSP said the incident happened in 2005 and investigators solved it nearly two decades later thanks to DNA evidence.

The new indictment adds to several other offenses Aldridge has been accused of: he was indicted on two counts of first-degree rape, two counts of first-degree sexual abuse, two counts of first-degree sodomy, three counts of kidnapping and one count of first-degree wanton endangerment in April, according to court records.

Those charges stem from three abductions and sexual assaults between 2009 and 2016 in Fayette County, Lexington police previously said.

No, of course, following the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, the Lexington Herald-Leader did not include the suspect’s mugshot; I had to get it from the Fayette County Detention Center records.

But this 5’9″ tall, 285 pound man is clearly a danger to any woman he encounters, and he does have a bail amount set. Shouldn’t the women in Fayette County knows what this fine gentleman looks like, so they can be on alert should they happen to see him? Continue reading →

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

How could this have happened? After all, this was illegal! Surely, surely! gun control laws should have prevented it!

Well, it’s Montgomery County, not Philadelphia, so the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, ‘progressive’ District Attorney, Let ’em loose Larry Krasner, won’t have anything to do with it.

Abington-Cheltenham football game suspended after student found with a gun

The Cheltenham High School student was arrested on felony weapons offenses, including possession of a firearm, police said. Players were safely dismissed to the Abington High School locker rooms.

by Diane Mastrull | Saturday, August 26, 2023

Friday night’s football game between Montgomery County rivals Abington and Cheltenham High Schools was suspended at halftime when a parent noticed a student with a gun in the stadium, police said.

When police found the student at Abington High School’s stadium shortly before 8:30 p.m., a handgun with an extended magazine was protruding from his waist area and the youth was in possession of a second, loaded magazine, police said in a statement posted on Facebook. Continue reading →

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SEPTA should be paid for by the people who use it, not people who can’t use its service

Our house in Jim Thorpe.

I used to live in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, fifty miles north of foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, SEPTA, did not have a bus or train service up into Carbon County; I commuted every day. Why, then, I asked myself, was I taxed to support and subsidize the people who did have SEPTA service in Philadelphia and its collar counties. I no longer live in the Keystone State, so this story doesn’t affect me, but the question still remains: why should my old neighbors and friends in Pennsylvania, many of whom are out of reach of SEPTA’s service area, be taxed to support a system they cannot use?

SEPTA wants more state sales-tax revenue to avoid ‘draconian’ service cuts next spring

A change in the law would give SEPTA an additional $190 million from the state sales tax each year to run its buses, trolleys and subways.

by Thomas Fitzgerald | Thursday, August 24, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

In an effort to secure desperately needed funding, SEPTA officials are lobbying for a proposal in Harrisburg that would increase by about 45% the annual share of state sales-tax revenue devoted to paying for public transportation.

If their efforts are successful, the state’s Public Transportation Trust Fund would receive 6.4% of the money generated by the sales tax, up from 4.4%, generating an additional $295 million annually for public transit operations across the state. The sales tax itself would not increase.

SEPTA estimates that it would get an additional $190 million annually, with a $65.6 million increase for Pittsburgh Regional Transit and $38.8 million more for other systems, based on the state’s funding formula, which allocates dollars to transit agencies.

“We’ll really be able to prevent a draconian service reduction and extraordinary fare increases,” SEPTA CEO Leslie S. Richards said Wednesday when asked about the proposal. “That is what we will be left with when we get to next spring, if we don’t see a way out of this looming fiscal cliff.”

Part of that “looming fiscal cliff” would be from the $75,000 per year raise that the SEPTA Board gave CEO Leslie Richards just last May:

A panel of three board members reviewed publicly available salaries for the leaders of other large transit systems to help determine Richards’ salary, SEPTA said in a statement announcing the reappointment.

Perhaps, but shouldn’t that also be based on whether Mrs Richards was actually doing her job well?

SEPTA has been plagued by delayed service and accidents, with chronic shortfalls in essential staff:

One in six budgeted engineer positions is unfilled, per SEPTA figures, and the total number of train operators and trainees is 12% lower than it was in January 2019. Funding isn’t the problem, although overall the agency is generally worried about its fiscal future.

Billy Penn also reported that workers are leaving faster than positions can be filled. If Mrs Richards cannot keep these, to use the Democrats’ mantra, “good, well-paying, union jobs” filled, what does that say about her job performance?

Early Monday morning (June 12, 2023), a Trenton train was delayed because of “manpower issues.” A park and ride service at one station on the line was repeatedly canceled last week “due to operator unavailability.” On Friday (June 9, 2023), trips on the Market-Frankford and Broad Street subway lines were canceled for lack of workers. “Operator unavailability” is frequently given as the reason for delays and cancellations, especially on certain bus lines.

The unreliable service has sparked doubts SEPTA can step in to provide a needed workaround to the highway collapse.

“SEPTA better commit to quick and significant improvements of service or the city is going to see a major exodus from any northern suburb employees,” rider Kristen McCabe of Media wrote on Sunday.

Yet, despite all of that, despite SEPTA’s inability to manage the assets and service it currently has, there’s significant political pressure to build the Roosevelt Boulevard subway line, guesstimated to cost between $2.5 and 3.4 billion, in year 2000 dollars. We have previously noted The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story in which the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, SEPTA, admitted that they had “lost control of the train cars.”

The Biden Administration and the global warming climate change activists want us to all leave our cars behind — if we would even be allowed to own them — and depend on public transportation as much as possible. The Philadelphia Tribune reported that 42% of Black households and 50% of impoverished households in Philly don’t own a car, yet SEPTA has been hit with decreased ridership:

Ridership remains well below pre-pandemic levels, and SEPTA needs those passengers back, officials say. Federal pandemic aid will run out by April 2024, and the agency depends on rider fares to make enough money to operate.

Really, who would want to depend on SEPTA? The trains are filthy, crime on board the buses and trains, and at the train and subway stations, has been increasing, and too many of the stations have become de facto homeless shelters, littered with trash and used hypodermic needles left by junkies.

That decreased ridership? It has been politically correct to lay the blame for that on the panicdemic — spelled exactly the way I see it, as a huge overreaction — and the fact that some Center City office workers who were able to work remotely during the COVID-19 shutdowns have found that pretty good, and are still doing so. But the crime and the filth are also to blame. It seems that the good Democrats in Philly, who gave 81.44% of their votes to Joe Biden, the President who wants them to use public transportation, aren’t quite so eager to ride SEPTA’s buses and trains.

And so we have Leslie Richards, $425,000 a year Leslie Richards, wanting to make the people in Jim Thorpe and Summit Hill and Mahanoy City have more of the sales taxes they pay go to help SEPTA, rather than those dollars coming back to their communities, even though Mrs Richards has proven that she cannot manage the system she oversees. SEPTA should be paid for not by the citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but by the people who use the service, and fares should be increased to support that service.

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Killadelphia: We knew all along whom the Usual Suspects would blame!

500 block of North Creighton Street, via Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

We have previously noted the shooting in the 500 block of North Creighton Street in West Philadelphia. A semi-dilapidated neighborhood with a few rowhouses boarded up, it’s wholly unsurprising that City Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier would blame it not on bad guys or street gangs, but “massive blight and disinvestment.”

Police identified the 19-year-old man who was fatally shot at a West Philly block party

Kevin July, 19, was fatally shot early Saturday on the 500 block of North Creighton Street, police said. Another eight people were wounded in the incident at a late-night outdoor party.

by Chris Palmer and Rodrigo Torrejón | Monday, August 21, 2023

Philadelphia Police on Monday identified the man who was fatally shot at what officials are now calling an unpermitted block party over the weekend as 19-year-old Kevin July, saying he was one of nine people shot in the violent episode in West Philadelphia’s Mill Creek section. The eight other victims survived, police said.

Still, authorities have released few other new details about the crime as they continue to investigate, saying they were not yet sure of a motive, nor were they even certain how many people opened fire during the incident.

July’s relatives declined to comment when contacted by phone Monday.

The shooting happened on the 500 block of North Creighton Street around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, police said, when shooters fired at least 60 shots into a crowd of dozens of people who had gathered for a party or barbecue. The celebration took place at end of the rowhouse-lined street that dead ends in between Wyalusing and Westminster Avenues.

The article noted that the block party had not applied for or received a permit for such, and that permitted block parties must end at 8:30 PM. Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore told the media that shell casings from at least three different types of ammunition had been recovered, and that means only one thing: gangs!

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents the area, said in an interview that she’d spoken to the captain of the 16th Police District and been told that the event was a private gathering that had attracted guests from elsewhere, and that some people who live on the block “didn’t even know people who engaged in the dispute.” . . . .

She also said Mill Creek, the neighborhood in which the shooting occurred, is burdened by “massive blight and disinvestment,” including city-owned properties that have grown dilapidated. And she said the city should focus on investing in housing, clearing vacant lots, and improving the nearby recreation center as ways to improve conditions that can lead to violence.

“The chronic disinvestment experienced in neighborhoods like West Mill Creek lends to the thought that nobody cares here, anything goes here,” she said.

Would you invest in an area like that? If I were going to invest my money in something, it would be something which showed an at least plausible return on investment. West Mill Creek is not a place in which that plausible return on investment exists.

I grew up poor, too, reared by a divorced mother, alone, with two younger sisters, but somehow, some way, I did get involved with street gangs, and I never shot anyone. Poverty is no excuse!

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Killadelphia: Just because 60 bullets flew doesn’t mean it was gang related!

Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Chris Palmer’s last paragraph contained an element of truth that Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw would like for you not to realize:

More than 1,100 people have been shot in the city as of Wednesday, according to police statistics, and 245 of those victims have died. The pace of gunfire was about 23% lower than last year, the statistics show, but still much higher than the years before 2020, when gun violence began hitting record heights.

The impetus for Mr Palmer’s story? Yet another gang-banger shooting in West Philadelphia!

Seven people were shot, one fatally, during possible shoot-out at West Philly block party, police say

Several gunmen sprayed at least 60 bullets through a crowd on the 500 block of North Creighton Street around 1:30 a.m., police said.

by Chris Palmer | Saturday, August 19, 2023 | 12:42 PM EDT

Seven people were shot, one fatally, when several gunmen sprayed at least 60 bullets through a crowd on a West Philadelphia street early Saturday morning, according to police.

The shooting happened about 1:30 a.m. on the 500 block of North Creighton Street, said Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore. The victims ranged in age from 19 to 51, he said.

The 500 block of North Creighton Street is a poor, mostly black, rowhouse street, but, as we have reported previously, the good people of West Philadelphia don’t want public projects to make the area nicer, because that might cause more white people to move there.

Some witnesses described the shooting as a “shoot-out” at a block party or barbecue on the rowhouse street, said Vanore, though he added that detectives were in the early stages of gathering information and evidence.

A woman who lives on the block said in an interview that at least 100 people had been outside for a birthday party before gunfire erupted. . . . .

“It was a nice party — they were dancing, drinking, having fun, and then these knuckleheads [opened fire],” said the woman, who declined to give her name due to fear of retribution.

One of the victims, a 19-year-old man, was pronounced dead early Saturday, said Vanore. He declined to identify the man pending family notification.

Creighton Avenue PPD report, via Steve Keeley.

The Philadelphia Police reported that the deceased was a 19-year-old black male, but naturally, the Inquirer scrubbed the victim’s race from the report, even though the Philadelphia Police Department provided it. However, anyone ever remotely familiar with the City of Brotherly Love simply assumed that the deceased was black, just from the area.

There’s a truth that the Inky simply won’t report. The deceased was “shot several times to the face”, which tells you all that you really need to know: this was a deliberately targeted gang hit. We were, of course, reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups,” something that the newspaper has now come to use as well. I suppose that the word “gang” is now racist somehow, as though there cannot be any white gangs out there.

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Californie ain’t the place you wanna be! "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein

After Jed Clampett struck oil when he missed a shot at some game he wanted for the dinner table, and became an instant millionaire, his kinfolk said that he needed to get away from the hillbilly life, and that “Californie is the place you wanna be, so they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly.”

Hills, that is. Swimming pools, movie stars.

Well, these days, perhaps Californie ain’t the place you wanna be. Ballot Proposition 47, which passed 4,238,156 (59.61%) to 2,871,943 (40.39%) on November 4, 2014, reduced several (purportedly) non-violent offenses from felonies to misdemeanors:

  • Shoplifting, where the value of property stolen does not exceed $950
  • Grand theft, where the value of the stolen property does not exceed $950
  • Receiving stolen property, where the value of the property does not exceed $950
  • Forgery, where the value of forged check, bond or bill does not exceed $950
  • Fraud, where the value of the fraudulent check, draft or order does not exceed $950
  • Writing a bad check, where the value of the check does not exceed $950
  • Personal use of most illegal drugs (Below a certain threshold of weight)

Robert Stacy McCain has been calling California a kleptocracy for some time now, but, of course, he’s just another evil Right Wing Extremist, so his views don’t matter.

It has been said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, something certainly not entirely true, as I have not been mugged; whether Mr McCain has been, I do not know. But what happens when reporters for the liberal Cable News Network get robbed?

CNN reporter burglarized a third time while covering rampant crime in the Bay Area

Kyung Lah warns tourists visiting San Francisco and Oakland, ‘do not leave a single thing in your car’

By Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Fox News | Wednesday, August 2, 2023 | 9:00 PM EDT

A CNN crew has been burglarized a third time while covering the rampant crime in the Bay Area of California.

CNN correspondent Kyung Lah took to Twitter on Wednesday and shared video of her crew’s car with a completely-shattered window.

“I’m #Oakland, shooting a story about crime. Got broken into again— but this time our car was completely empty. We were across the street— this happened in seconds,” Lah wrote. “Even tho the car is empty, the thieves break in and lower the seat so they can steal anything in the trunk. Our trunk was empty. If you come to San Francisco or Oakland, do not leave a single thing in your car. Ours was thankfully empty.”

The CNN reporter continued:

If you’re here keeping track, this is the 3rd time my CNN rented car has been broken into in the Bay Area in the last year. But I’ve finally learned to not leave even a candy bar in the car anymore (still doesn’t stop the car break in but at least we don’t lose anything)

“(A)t least we don’t lose anything,” she wrote, but, then again, it wasn’t really her car, was it?

At the rental car return lot, the employee tells us of the 250 cars returned yesterday, 27 had been broken into, just more than 10% of cars returned

Just how long will the rental car agency be able to stay in business if 10.8% of the vehicles it rents out come back damaged like that? The agency’s insurance rates will have to increase, along with the repair costs within the deductible, and that means the price to rent a car will get jacked up. At what point do businessmen simply say, “This [insert slang term for feces here] just isn’t worth it”?

Fox News had a story on Miss Lah’s previous encounter with crime.

We previously wrote, At some point, you’d think that even the most liberal of the liberals would realize that without some semblance of law and order, you no longer have civilization! Yes, after fifteen good years in the Keystone State before I retired, I tend to concentrate on crime, mostly violent crime, in Philadelphia.

Carjackers beat a man to death in Northern Liberties, police say

The incident occurred late Thursday night, according to police, when two men pulled a 60-year-old from his vehicle and beat him before fleeing the scene in his car.

by Beatrice Forman | Friday, August 18, 2023

A pair of carjackers assaulted a man before fleeing the scene and taking his vehicle, leaving him for dead in Northern Liberties Thursday night, Philadelphia police say.

The incident occurred just before 10 p.m. on Third and Cambridge Streets, when two masked men pulled up on what a witness told police was a dirt bike. Then, the pair pulled a 60-year-old man from the driver’s seat of a parked 2023 Toyota Highlander, according to the witness account that police relayed to reporters.

That would be a “small, frail, thin, lightweight” 60-year-old Asian man, according to the Philadelphia Police. They sure proved how manly they are!

An altercation ensued before one of the masked men took off in the Highlander and the other took off in the on the dirt bike, according to police.

When officers arrived on the scene, they found the 60-year-old laying in the street as witnesses attempted to render aid.

“He was bleeding from the head. He was semi-conscious,” Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters. “He was unable to stand up.”

The victim was transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, but was pronounced dead less than an hour later.

Officers tracked the location of the Highlander to Camden, where it was recovered unoccupied by Camden police. The dirt bike was last seen traveling north on Third toward Girard Avenue Thursday night.

So, whatever the thugs had planned — and remember: they didn’t know that the victim they beat had died — they simply dumped the car they stole on the far side of the Ben Franklin Bridge, and at least one of them was back in Philly, and while Northern Liberties isn’t that bad an area, heading north on Third takes you to some not so great parts of town. But the innocent man they beat lost his life over what turned out to be a joyride for the thugs, and the odds are pretty good that the carjackers, the killers, were teenagers, and juveniles.

Beatrice Forman, the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, cannot always choose the stories she is assigned; news comes in, and has to be written up. She is, after all, a “general assignments reporter.” But when I read her bio at the bottom of her article, where it said that she “enjoys covering Philly-specific tomfoolery,” I had to wonder how she felt about this specific bit of tomfoolery, because, the way it ended, at least on the part of the killers, was little more than tomfoolery as far as they were concerned.

We have previously noted Oakland/Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, yet another one of the ‘progressive’ civil rights defense lawyers funded by George Soros, like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, who are softer-than-Charmin on crime. These idiots good people believe that they are somehow doing something good and noble by keeping oh-so-misunderstood young men out of jail, but what they have created, and what the Pyrite State’s Proposition 47 has enabled, a situation in which crime has few consequences, a situation in which crime has been enabled, and the ‘tomfoolery’ of a joyride into Camden has left an innocent man stone-cold graveyard dead.

Civilization requires civility, and civilization requires law and order, to keep the people living in it safe. Perhaps CNN correspondent Kyung Lah didn’t really feel the full effects of the car break-ins while she was reporting on crime in the Bay Area, because, after all, it wasn’t her car. But other people are feeling it, the rental car agency which has to repair the vehicle her producer and she rented, and the extra costs which that imposes on the agency, and eventually, its next customers. The people of Ward 8 in the District of Columbia are feeling the effects of crime, as the only grocery supermarket there is at least looking at closing its doors due to rampant shoplifting, and the store’s employees might feel the effects of crime as they could lose their jobs if the store closes. Michael Salerno’s family are feeling the effects, as he was murdered during a carjacking attempt, allegedly by a 15-year-old. “The latest serial carjacker had all of his cases dismissed in juvenile court and slaughtered a 19yo while on ankle monitor GPS.”

I would like to believe that Miss Price and Mr Krasner and the rest of the ‘progressive’ prosecutors are genuinely good people, who actually believe that what they are doing will reduce crime and create a better society, rather than just evil, because good people can eventually learn from their mistakes, from the consequences of their actions and policies. I would like to believe that ‘progressives’ in general are seeing the consequences of the policies they support, and at least considering whether conservatives have been right all along, and that crime needs to be punished, and punished harshly. I would like to believe that good people could see that excusing lesser crimes, crimes which could put the malefactors in jail for five years, does the bad guys no favors, when, instead of being able to look forward to being released in a few years, they have been enabled to commit crimes which could get them locked up for the rest of their miserable lives.

Sadly, if that is going to happen, it hasn’t happened yet, as the good, white liberals who live in Society Hill and University City voted for the Larry Krasner-supporting Helen Gym Flaherty, because crime hasn’t come to their doorsteps yet. Perhaps, just perhaps, Miss Lah and her staff have learned the hard lesson the easy way, and might at least consider voting for conservatives, rather than the same old, same old who have enabled America’s large cities to turn into crime-ridden [insert slang term for feces here]holes. California is run almost completely by liberal Democrats, and Philly hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Harry Truman was President.

Albert Einstein, usually considered a fairly smart fellow, once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” I keep hoping that our ‘progressives,’ who consider themselves to be very smart people indeed, eventually see that, despite their very good and noble intentions, that what they have been doing, how they have cast their votes, has led to only bad results.

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At some point, you’d think that even the most liberal of the liberals would realize that without some semblance of law and order, you no longer have civilization! In the end, 'progressive' and 'civilized' are mutually exclusive terms

Perhaps, just perhaps, even the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating District Attorney of Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, is starting, if just barely, to realize the seriousness of crime, as the District Attorney’s Office has said that they will seek to try the suspect arrested, supposedly the 17-year-old son of attorney and former judicial candidate Qawi Abdul-Rahman, as an adult. But it is also true that the United States Attorney could charge the thus-far unnamed suspect as an adult, if Mr Krasner chose not to do so.

Democratic primary voters in the city rejected Helen Gym Flaherty in the mayoral primary, instead nominating Cherelle Parker Mullins, who has at least contemplated bringing back ‘stop, question, and frisk, with her voting strength coming from the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the City of Brotherly Love. However, Mrs Mullins was also the only black top-tier candidate in the race, and her strength among black voters could be attributed to that.

So, are the most liberal of the liberals realizing that some semblance of law and order are needed? Mrs Flaherty’s voting strength was primarily among the white liberal areas of the city, including the areas around the University of Pennsylvania, where people are generally safer than in the combat zones, and it is physically safer to vote for the harder left candidates.

My good friend, and occasional website pinch-hitter William Teach pointed out this article to me, and I think it’s an important one:

DC supermarket near closing after $500K in groceries walks out the door

Jamie Joseph | Monday, August 14, 2023 | 4:35 PM EDT

As cities across the U.S. grapple with a growing shoplifting problem, a Washington, D.C., grocery store may be on the verge of closure after rampant theft has depleted much of its resources, a D.C. councilman warned.

A popular Giant Food store reported $500,000 in product loss due to shoplifting, the store’s management told D.C. Councilman Trayon White recently, which equates to roughly 20% of sales after theft.

White called the news “disheartening” in a press conference last week, especially after the store recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire security guards and upgrade its equipment.

Despite its effort to crack down on shoplifters, thieves remained emboldened and continued to walk out of the store with their carts filled with stolen items, White said.

“We know it’s tough times, and we know the price of food has skyrocketed in the last three years,” White said. “Well, we cannot afford to hurt ourselves by constantly taking from the store, because I mean, everybody is going to be without a place to eat, and enough is enough.”

The store has had to stop suspects 135 times, “and they almost doubled that amount and didn’t get stopped,” White said.

If the store has to shut its doors, White warned the impact would be felt hard in the community, as the chain is the only major grocery outlet in Ward 8, serving more than 85,000 people.

There’s more at the original. Mr Teach pointed out:

Ward 8 is the section of D.C. that is south of the Anacostia River, and, overall, is probably the worst ward for crime. Should this really be happening in our nation’s capitol? This is embarrassing.

Embarrassing? Yes, but unexpected? No, not really, and if the Giant Food Mart closes, people in the area will be left with either having to travel further to buy groceries, or buy them at smaller bodegas or convenience stores, where prices are usually higher. The Philadelphia Inquirer noted, in a completely unrelated article:

Groceries typically operate with very low profit margins of about 1% to 2%. But stores in poor, urban neighborhoods often operate with a 4% loss, Brown said. In Philadelphia’s case, that resulted in supermarket chains largely pulling out of disadvantaged Black and brown neighborhoods by the 1990s.

I still chuckle at the Inky’s stylebook, coming from the Associated Press, of capitalizing ‘Black’ to refer to race, but leaving ‘brown’, which in this case usually means Hispanic, in lower case. We do not engage in such silliness at The First Street Journal, but also do not alter the direct quotes of others.

But I digress. Why would “stores in poor, urban neighborhoods often operate with a 4% loss,” if they were charging the same prices as ones in more affluent areas, unless retail theft is higher in stores in those depressed areas?

Robert Stacy McCain noted that the unprecedented wave of brazen retail theft can be directly attributed to the election of ‘progressive’ politicians and other leftist policies:

“Absolutely unacceptable,” says the mayor who was elected by these same criminals. That’s just it — California has become the world’s first mass kleptocracy. All the honest people have left the state, and the criminals have taken over. Everybody is stealing everything:

Proposition 47 . . . reduced penalties on property thefts less than $950 from a felony to a misdemeanor. This means no prison time. Charges for grand larceny (a felony) now require thefts of more than $950 – more than double the previous threshold of $400.

Now, not only will a thief steal more without facing a felony charge, they may steal again, and again, and again, without serious consequences. Each theft is counted as a single incident. The law allows for serial thefts. Thieves can repeat their criminal behavior as long as they don’t steal more than $950 in each larceny.

Proposition 47 passed with 60% of the vote in 2014, and opponents of the measure clearly warned that this would happen, so it’s not as if the people of California are victims — they inflicted this disaster on themselves.

‘Progressivism’ in the United States is a mindset that we just have to be understanding and kind to everyone — except, of course, those evil reich-wing MAGA Republicans! — and have sympathy for the poor and downtrodden. The result has been a serious relaxation of law enforcement, especially since the unfortunate death while resisting arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled previously convicted felon and career criminal George Floyd, and now the criminal culture has metastasized, with more and more of those poorer people realizing that they don’t have to obey the law, at least not for the more ‘minor’ offenses, because breaking the law brings no real consequences to them. And despite the great sympathy for the poor and downtrodden, that increase in crime has occurred in just those areas in which the poor and downtrodden live! Mr McCain said, “All the honest people have left the state,” but that’s hyperbole, and not true at all. Some of the honest people have left the Pyrite State, but, just as the well-to-do, honest people in Rittenhouse Square and University City haven’t been the victims of crime themselves, many have remained, safely able to vote for ‘progressive’ politicians and policies, because their personal philosophies haven’t been punched in the mouth by street crime.

The real victims? The people of Kensington have been made victims, not by wallowing in the open-air drug markets themselves, but by tolerating its existence, and voting for the politicians who won’t clean it up. The honest, working-class employees of the Giant Food Mart in Ward 8, and the Nordstrom in the Topanga Mall, have been made victims, because, if things keep going as they have been, when the store closes, they’ll lose their jobs.

This is the conundrum that the left just can’t seem to understand: in their great and noble sympathy for the poor, the downtrodden, and minority Americans, their policies have made things worse for those very same people. In their attempts to shield them from the realities of law, order, and civilization, they have subjected poorer and minority communities to lawlessness, disorder, and barbarians.

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Will Larry Krasner send this case to juvenile court?

We previously reported on the identification of 15-year-old Rasheed Banks, Jr, as the alleged killer of Michael Salerno during a carjacking attempt, and pointed out that The Philadelphia Inquirer had not covered that story. A check of the newspaper’s website shows that they never did catch up to reporting on that.

However, now that young Mr Banks has been captured, the Inky has covered it:

15-year-old suspect arrested in fatal attempted carjacking in South Philadelphia

On July 12, Michael Salerno, 50, attempted to prevent a carjacking of his vehicle on the 1100 block of Porter Street when he was shot in the head.

by Robert Moran | Monday, August 7, 2023

Authorities on Monday arrested the 15-year-old boy wanted in the fatal shooting of a 50-year-old man during an attempted carjacking last month in South Philadelphia.

Rasheed Banks Jr. was apprehended in Camden by Philadelphia agents of the U.S. Marshals and members of a regional New York and New Jersey fugitive task force, the U.S. Marshals Service Philadelphia announced.

Naturally, the Inquirer did not publish the photo that Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News used in his tweet, nor young Mr Banks’ mugshot, which the Philly television media had and published.

Why not? Remember: publisher Elizabeth Hughes has mandated that the newspaper will be an “anti-racist news organization,” and would censor the news if the news happened to be too politically incorrect.

But what, exactly, is the Inky trying to hide? Yes, they did not publish young Mr Banks’ photo, but let’s tell the truth here: simply publishing his first name, Rasheed, tells every reader that the suspect is black. The newspaper isn’t fooling anyone!

The real question now is: will the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating ‘progressive’ Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Krasner, charge Mr Banks as an adult? I have heard that Mr Krasner has never offered up a juvenile for an adult charge, though I can’t document that. But if young Mr Banks is indeed the murderer — and he is innocent until proven guilty — and is charged as a juvenile, the longest he could be held in juvenile confinement is until he reaches age 21; then he would have to be released, and his juvenile record sealed.

That’s six years, six years for wanton, willful murder.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer does some good reporting . . . and then they hide it

We have previously noted some articles in The Philadelphia Inquirer marked as exclusive for paid subscribers. The newspaper has a digital paywall which allows non-subscribers a limited number of articles a month before it descends and blocks access to all articles, but even if you haven’t tried to open an Inky article for months, the subscribers only block will stop you from accessing those stories. Nevertheless, the story below is one that should have been available to more Philadelphia readers!

Yes, the Inquirer does have to make money to stay in business, and the economic condition has been serious enough that the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism has sent out begging letters to subscribers at least thrice that I have documented, so perhaps the $285.48 that I’ve been paying still isn’t enough.

Jim Kenney raised money to boost progressive candidates but spent it on consultants and restaurant tabs

Of the more than $780,000 that Kenney PAC has spent over the last three years, only about $60,000 went to other campaigns. The money has also gone to political operatives and miscellaneous expenses.

by Sean Collins Walsh | Monday, August 7, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

In early 2020, things were looking good for Mayor Jim Kenney, who had just coasted to reelection after a productive first term and was eyeing statewide office.

In June of that year, he launched Kenney PAC, a political action committee that he said would “help progressive candidates in the forthcoming legislative races in Pennsylvania defeat extremist pro-Trump Republicans.”

Giving money to Democrats across the state would have built goodwill for a mayor little known outside Southeastern Pennsylvania, and news of the PAC helped fuel speculation that Kenney might run for U.S. Senate or governor in 2022.

Well, those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” haven’t had much success in the Keystone State, but the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sure hasn’t benefitted under those ‘progressive’ Democrats! Under Mayor Kenney, the City of Brotherly Love, the town he was (supposedly) running, in 2020, the year he launched Kenney PAC, went from 356 homicides — which the Philadelphia Police have now revised down to 353 — to 499, and there are serious reasons to believe that the number was actually 502, as initially reported.

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.

2020 was the year of the unfortunate death while resisting arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled convicted felon George Floyd in Minneapolis, and riots broke out in many cities, including Philly, but the change in attitudes continued far beyond 2020; Philly saw a whopping 562 homicides in 2021, a number which blew the old record completely apart, along with 190 deaths marked ‘suspicious’. 2022 saw an improvement of sorts, with the official number of homicides down to 516, which was still second all time.

Why, it’s almost as though Philly could have used those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” running the city!

Back to the Inky:

But of the more than $780,000 that Kenney PAC has spent over the last three years, only about $60,000 went to other campaigns, according to an analysis of campaign finance reports. Instead, the PAC’s money has primarily gone to benefit operatives close to Kenney — who abandoned his hopes of higher office after his popularity tanked starting in 2020 — and to pay for miscellaneous expenses, such as events, hotel rooms, and restaurant bills.

You know what that is? That’s actually good, investigative reporting, which makes me wonder why the newspaper’s Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar decided to restrict the article to subscribers only. If there’s anything in the Inquirer’s reporting which should draw in new subscribers, it’s the “high-impact journalism“, “speaking truth to power“, and “high-impact election reporting” the Leftist Lenfest Institute told us the newspaper delivered, yet that’s just what Mr Escobar, or possibly one of his minions, restricted.

I’ve quoted a lot of the article, and cited my sources, as always, but unless you are a subscriber, you can’t even check to see if I’ve lied to you; that bothers me.

I can’t simply quote the whole thing, and I really wish that more people could read it for themselves, but I’ll note briefly here that reporter Sean Collins Walsh pointed out that the top ten donors to Kenney PAC, roughly $399,000 out of $850,000, were all building trade unions; the unions had also been the primary contributors to the Mayor’s two campaigns. Mayor Jim Kenney has just plain checked out, marking time until he’s no longer in the job. The members of those very same unions are the working men of the city who are at risk from the bullets flying around town, especially in the working-class neighborhoods.

What the unions bought with their support of Mr Kenney is greater danger for their members and their families! Perhaps some of those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” could have done a better job? After all, it hardly seems that they could have done worse!