Tag Archives: #Crime

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Another soft-on-crime “progressive” prosecutor gets in trouble

With some major cities saddled by George Soros-sponsored “progressive” chief prosecutors, law enforcement officials whose goals are not to protect the public, but to keep criminals out of jail, sensible people have been trying to take action. Endorsed by such liberal luminaries as as Senatore Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Cooks County State Attorney Kim Foxx, and Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner, Chesa Boudin won the race for District Attorney in San Francisco:

Boudin campaigned for the office on a decarceration platform of eliminating cash bail, establishing a unit to re-evaluate wrongful convictions, and refusing to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with raids and arrests. The San Francisco Police Officers Association (SFPOA) and other law enforcement groups spent $650,000 in an unsuccessful effort to defeat Boudin. Attorney General William Barr criticized Boudin and like-minded DAs, accusing them of undermining the police, letting criminals off the hook, and endangering public safety. In an interview during the COVID-19 pandemic, Boudin questioned whether the nation “can safely continue the national system of mass incarceration. Why do we need to take people to jail for non-violent offenses if what they really need is drug treatment or mental health services?”

Even liberal San Franciscans had had enough, and Mr Boudin lost his position in a recall election on June 7, 2022.

Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner, about whom we’ve written numerous times, doesn’t have to worry about a recall election; there is no provision in Pennsylvania law for such a thing. The Pennsylvania state House of Representatives impeached Mr Krasner, but the state Senate has not yet held the trial, and it’s being held up by legal issues.

Now we have this, from the St Louis Post-Dispatch:

Missouri attorney general’s ultimatum to Kim Gardner: Resign or face removal from office

Jack Suntrup | Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2023

JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said late Wednesday that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner would face removal from office if she didn’t resign by noon Thursday.

Bailey, a Republican, said he would initiate “quo warranto” proceedings to remove Gardner if she didn’t quit.

Under the Missouri state Constitution, quo warranto may be used to remove officials not subject to impeachment from office. The state The Supreme Court has jurisdiction to hear quo warranto proceedings to remove county officer. State ex rel. Danforth v. Orton (Mo.), 465 S.W.2d 618.

The announcement adds to mounting pressure facing Gardner, a Democrat, after a 17-year-old volleyball player from Tennessee lost her legs in an accident involving a man out of jail with pending robbery charges.

Gardner’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday evening.

Former Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat, used the manuever to seek the removal of the Dent County prosecutor in 2009. The action centers around whether a person has forfeited the legal right to hold public office.

“As Attorney General, I want to protect the people of St. Louis, and that includes protecting victims of crime and finding justice for them,” Bailey said in a statement Wednesday night.

St Louis city only recently lost it’s status as the murder capital of America, to New Orleans, but it’s still right at the top. With an even 200 homicides in 2022, and a guesstimated population of 293,310, the Gateway City has a homicide rate of 68.19 per 100,000 residents.

“Instead of protecting victims, Circuit Attorney Gardner is creating them. My office will do everything in its power to restore order, and eliminate the chaos in St. Louis caused by Kim Gardner’s neglect of her office.”

Bailey said Gardner “has a long history of failure to prosecute violent crime, with a backlog of at least 3,000 cases.

“It is time for the Circuit Attorney to go and for the rule of law and justice to prevail,” he said.

The Associated Press reported:

Daniel Riley, photo via Fox 17 WZTV Nashville. Click to enlarge.

The Missouri attorney general called Wednesday for the resignation of St. Louis’ elected prosecutor, after a motorist who repeatedly violated his bond conditions on earlier charges crashed and injured a teenage volleyball player from Tennessee, resulting in amputation of both of her legs.

The case has renewed criticism of Democratic St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner amid questions about why the driver wasn’t behind bars after court records showed more than 50 violations of bond conditions. . . . .

Police said Daniel Riley, 21, an unlicensed driver, was speeding and failed to yield at an intersection when his vehicle hit another car that then struck (Janae Edmondson, a 16-year-old player in town for a volleyball tournament). Riley was out on bond after a 2020 robbery charge that was dismissed and re-filed last year.

His bond violations included letting his GPS monitor die and breaking terms for his house arrest, according to court records, which show he violated bond at least seven times since Feb. 1, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Court officials said they didn’t know Riley had violated his bond because prosecutors had never filed a motion to revoke it.

Emphases mine.

Let me be clear about this: Janae Edmonson has lost her legs directly due to the negligence and outright disregard for her duty by Circuit Attorney Gardner. If Miss Gardner and her minions had done their duty, Miss Edmonson would be able to walk today.

This is the kind of thing which ‘progressive’ prosecutors’ policies yield. Leaving criminals out on the streets, ignoring even the smaller crimes, such as Mr Riley’s (allegedly) violating his bond conditions, results in tragedies for innocent people.
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Are dog lives more important to “animal rights activists” than defending your own dog, and yourself, from an attacking dog?

We noted on Tuesday how The Philadelphia Inquirer paid more attention to the shooting of a dog than the newspaper usually does when people are killed. Well, here they go again!

Who is Jacqueline Maguire, the FBI’s top agent in Philly facing scrutiny for fatally shooting a dog in Center City?

The head of Philadelphia’s FBI field office is facing an investigation after she shot and killed a pit bull outside a Center City apartment building Monday evening.

by Jeremy Roebuck | Ash Wednesday, February 22,2023 | 5:55 PM EST

The shooting of a pit bull by an off-duty FBI agent on a busy Center City street this week has sparked an uproar on social media and protests by animal rights activists outside the FBI’s offices on Arch Street.

The Inquirer gave us 687 words in the story, exclusive of the headline, subtitle, story byline, and not one but two photos of Jacqueline Maguire.

Here’s what we know about the incident, the agent involved, and what happens next:

Philadelphia police and the FBI have confirmed that an off-duty FBI agent shot “an aggressive dog” outside the Touraine apartment tower on the 1500 block of Spruce Street on Monday. But so far, they haven’t named the agent involved, citing FBI protocol that governs the bureau’s response whenever an agent is involved in a shooting.

Two sources familiar with the investigation identified the shooter as Jacqueline Maguire, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Field Office. The dog’s owner, Maria Esser, said her 7-year-old pit bull, Mia, died within moments of being shot.

So, neither the Philadelphia Police nor the FBI released Miss Maguire’s name, citing policy, but the Inky had to dig deep and find out from inside sources.

Naturally, the Police and FBI have procedures through which they have to go during their investigations.

Security cameras outside the apartment building captured footage of the shooting. And while police have not publicly released the video, one source who reviewed the tape described it to The Inquirer on Tuesday.

According to the source, who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the ongoing probe, the video shows Maguire sitting on a bench with her small dog in her lap as a woman walking two other dogs passed by. One of the dogs — Mia — suddenly dragged her owner toward Maguire, snatched the small dog off the agent’s lap, and began aggressively shaking it, the source said.

Maguire threw herself into the fight and tried to separate the animals, eventually drawing her weapon and placing it directly against the pit bull’s hindquarters before firing, the source said.

The pit bull’s owner claimed that Agent Maguire’s use of force was a “reckless” disregard for safety, for the dog, and bystanders. I don’t know about you, but if I was trying to save my dog from a larger, attacking animal, I would call that, if accurately described, a reasonable use of force. Actually, from the description, which matched a statement by Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore, I would say that Maria Esser, the pit bull’s owner, could face charges for losing control of a dangerous animal.

(Miss Esser) and animal rights activists who gathered to protest Tuesday outside of the FBI’s offices on Arch Street are calling for Maguire to be held accountable.

Really? For defending her dog, and herself, from Miss Esser’s (allegedly) out of control dog?

In the meantime, Philly’s homicide total went from 62 Monday night to 63 Tuesday night, but there were no stories at all on that killing, in either the Inquirer’ website main page or specific crime page.

Yup, we know what’s more important to the Inky!

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Are dog lives more important than humans in Philadelphia?

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page has reported that 62 Philadelphians have been sent untimely to their eternal rewards as of 11:59 PM EST on Monday, February 20th. While that number is lower than the same date in 2021 and 2022, it’s higher than in 2020, which saw 499 ‘official’ homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. And, as we have reported frequently, very few of those killings — other than the fatal shooting of Temple Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, allegedly by a privileged punk kid from Bucks County — have received much press coverage from The Philadelphia Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and the newspaper of record for the entire area.

Well, this morning, the newspaper I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. showed us just what shootings in the city are really important!

Off-duty FBI agent shoots dog in Center City

The incident occurred Monday evening on the 1500 block of Spruce Street. It was not immediately known if the dog survived.

by Robert Moran | Tuesday, February 21, 2023 | 7:38 AM EST

An off-duty FBI agent shot a dog outside a Center City apartment building Monday, the FBI and Philadelphia police said.

Video posted on social media showed the aftermath of the incident on the sidewalk in front of the Touraine residential high-rise on the 1500 block of Spruce Street.

The special agent was walking a small dog when she encountered at least one other person walking two dogs, according to witnesses. A fight broke out involving the three dogs.

It was not immediately known if the dog that was shot survived. The FBI did not identify the agent.

At the end of the story:

Animal rights organization Revolution Philly is planning to protest the animal shooting in front of FBI headquarters at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

“This woman is a trained professional and a dog owner. Her first reaction shouldn’t be to shoot first,” said Revolution Philly organizer Tiffany Stair in a statement. “This is unacceptable and we are demanding that she be held accountable.”

The entire article, exclusive of the headline, subheading, photos, and byline, was 237 words over nine paragraphs, a lot longer than the usual reports of killings.

Polar Bear, the Great Pyrenees who is trying to move in with us.

We have two dogs ourselves, and a third, a 150 lb Great Pyrenees we have named Polar Bear, who is trying to move in with us. If we didn’t know his actual human, who lives ¾ mile away from us, we’d let him, but his real human loves him. Bear loves our dogs, and us, more than his human. So, yes, to us, the shooting of a dog is a bad, bad thing.

But, radically enough, the idea that a dog was shot, and perhaps killed — that part is as yet unknown — is generating a protest by Revolution Philly, while the 230 reported shooting victims[2]Through February 20, 2023, including 46 fatally shot, plus 16 other murders, have mostly drawn nothing but the sound of crickets in the city, strikes me as a terrible thing.

Murder has simply been normalized in Philadelphia. Yes, Officer Fitzgerald’s senseless murder, by a punk who seemingly thought he was playing Grand Theft Auto in real life, has generated a lot of emotion in Philly, but for the most part, murder victims are mourned by their family and friends, and otherwise dismissed as just the same old, same old.

And why not? The city is governed by Democrats, has been since Harry Truman was President, and it seems as though preserving prenatal infanticide is the most important issue to them. It’s not as though teenagers don’t get that message, that people who are inconvenient can simply be disposed of, and it really isn’t a surprise that teenaged gangbangers and wannabes find life cheap enough that they will shoot people over the least provocation. The Democrats want to ‘explain’ the city’s killing spree as the result of poverty, racism, segregation, and community ‘disinvestment,’ but the 18-year-old white kid who (allegedly) killed Officer Fitzgerald was a privileged kid, living in his mother’s $1.2 million, 15-acre estate in Bucks County, who’d had one previous ‘contact’, a telephoned and internet reported bomb threat that got him one month’s probation in Bucks County, with law enforcement as a juvenile. For whatever reasons there were, his parents — who are now divorced, with a rumored, but unconfirmed by reliable sources, custody dispute — didn’t teach their son respect for life, and now he’s looking at spending the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

The death penalty, to which I am opposed anyway, is off the table: Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) has stated that he will not allow any executions to proceed as long as he is in office,[3]In Pennsylvania, the Governor does not have independent authority to commute capital sentences, but can only do so with the recommendation of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. and District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) has campaigned on, and vowed, never to seek the death penalty in any capital crimes committed while he is prosecutor. A photo of the alleged killer shows him in custody, leaning back, apparently awaiting questioning, with a posture that says, “What the f(ornicate) did I do? The rest of my life is trashed,” perhaps the best picture from this entire, sad episode. His father and mother — and the mother may be charged with a crime as well, for allegedly picking up her son after he called her for help — are going to have to live with that image, burned into their minds, wondering what they could have done differently.

There’s also a photo of him, as a juvenile, wearing a Biden-Harris t-shirt. Yeah, that’s a way not to rear your children right!

Philadelphia, and many other urban areas as well, are places in which human life has become cheap, and with life being cheap, life is being taken cheaply. When we have politicians telling us that human life before birth can be sucked out and destroyed, because some babies are just plain inconvenient, when we have parents supporting and voting for the politicians who support prenatal infanticide, we’re going to get more punks like the one who murdered Officer Fitzgerald. And we’re also going to get more punks roaming the streets of our major cities who apparently think nothing of blowing away rival gang members or girls that cheated on them or people who resist armed carjacking attempts or just look at them the wrong way.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 Through February 20, 2023
↑3 In Pennsylvania, the Governor does not have independent authority to commute capital sentences, but can only do so with the recommendation of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.
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It’s just so easy for the white liberals in safe neighborhoods to support ‘progressive’ politicians After all, most of the crime happens in other places

My good friend Harrison Finberg — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met him, but we can be good friends on Twitter these days — noted this tweet from Philly First Ward, the Democratic Executive Committee in Philadelphia’s First Ward. We have previously noted the mayoral candidacy of Helen Gym Flaherty,[1]Even though Mrs Flaherty does not respect her husband, attorney Bret Flaherty, enough to have taken his name, The First Street Journal will not show him a similar disrespect. one of the furthest left of the ever-growing list of hopefuls, whom The Philadelphia Inquirer described as a “longtime activist who is typically aligned with the Democratic Party’s left wing”. Mrs Flaherty’s campaign website is full of the usual ‘progressive’ bromides, but, at least as of this writing, there’s no actual issues page, telling the city’s voters — of which I am not one — what she would actually do, other than those bromides, in office if elected.

While she says that she will fight “gun violence,” what she doesn’t want to do is fight the criminals who use guns. I guess that’s not much of a surprise, since ‘progressives’ seem to think that guns simply levitate and shoot people all by themselves.

Helen Gym makes it official and launches a run for Philadelphia mayor on a pledge to address gun violence

The now-former Council member and leader of the city’s progressive movement launched her run at the William Way LGBT Community Center in Center City.

by Anna Orso | Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Former City Councilmember Helen Gym announced Wednesday that she will run for Philadelphia mayor on a pledge to address the city’s alarmingly high rate of gun violence, saying, “Everything is at stake right now.”

In remarks to a room of about 350 supporters gathered at the William Way LGBT Community Center, Gym centered her message on public safety, vowing to declare a state of emergency on her first day in office and prioritize improving homicide clearance rates.

I am amused that Mrs Flaherty chose a homosexual ‘Community Center’ as the place in which she announced her long-anticipated candidacy, but that’s probably something of which The Democratic Executive Committee in Philadelphia’s First Ward approves.

But while the longtime activist who is typically aligned with the Democratic Party’s left wing said violence is “destroying our city and our people,” she was far from taking a tough-on-crime tone.

“I will not use this crisis to roll back the clock on civil rights,” she said. “While many people in this race will talk about public safety, let me be clear: Decades of systemic racism and disinvestment brought us to this place.”

Further down:

Gym has opposed tax cuts for businesses and corporations, and has been critical of the Police Department, championing legislation to ban the use of tear gas on protesters and rejecting calls to bring back stop-and-frisk. In 2020, she voted against a planned increase to the Police Department’s budget — along with a majority of Council.

And here’s what Mrs Flaherty tweeted in 2019.

I support reducing the prison population by 50% from 2019 levels, We must center transformative and restorative justice practices in Philadelphia.

Can any policy have failed as badly as District Attorney Larry Krasner’s ‘decarceration’ program has failed the city since then? Murders get the most attention, and yes, they’re down a bit, but shootings, and every non-self-defense shooting is an attempted murder, are up.

So, who are The Democratic Executive Committee in Philadelphia’s First Ward? The First Ward is a gentrifying area, between Wharton and Mifflin Streets north and south, bounded on the west by South Broad Street and running east to the Delaware River. To the left is their group photo from their website, and with only four exceptions, they’re all as white as ceiling paint.

The area? Even a dump fixer-upper like this one is listed for sale for $475,000, though the fixed up row house at 1007 Mifflin Street is listed for $465,000.

It’s pretty typical in today’s urban areas, where the well-to-do whites who aren’t worried about street crime, who aren’t seeing the dead bodies or hearing the gunfire in their neighborhoods can blithely support ‘restorative justice‘ and ‘decarceration‘, because the bad guys who aren’t locked up aren’t in their neighborhoods.

Then again . . . .

Armed Delf-Defense in Dallas

by Robert Stacy McCain | Saturday, February 18, 2023

This happened in December, but the police took a while to complete their investigation and make arrests, so we’re just now getting a detailed account of what happened:

There are a lot of new details about how a recent attempted carjacking of a luxury car went down in an upscale area of Dallas.

Police arrested the three suspects they were looking for, and court documents detail a good lead police had.

One suspect showed up at a hospital with a gunshot wound minutes after the attempted carjacking and shootout last December.

Police say he was shot by a friend of the Maserati owner they were trying to carjack.

Skipping the details of the crime, down to Mr McCain’s conclusion:

This attempted carjacking happened, as they say, “in an upscale area” on the north side of Dallas, which shows that there is no such thing as a “safe” neighborhood in 21st-century America. Who knows what might have happened had it not been for the fact that the Maserati owner’s friend was armed? Permit me to recommend two books by my friend Robert Waters, The Best Defense: True Stories of Intended Victims Who Defended Themselves with a Firearm and Guns Save Lives: True Stories of Americans Defending Their Lives With Firearms.

It is unfortunate that civilization has collapsed to the point that no one is safe unless they’re carrying a pistol, but we must live in the world as it is, rather than that fantasy world where “safe” neighborhoods still exist.

The good, noble, progressive Democrats of Philadelphia’s First Ward might, just might, find the effects of the politicians and policies for which they have voted visiting their own gentrifying streets.

The feelgood story about the three ‘unsuccessful’ carjackers came from Dallas, and there’s always a better chance that Texans will be armed. The good progressive Democrats of the First Ward? The city’s Democratic politicians — and Democrats outregister Republicans in Philly about 7 to 1 — don’t want the public to carry firearms, so it might be less likely that an attempted carjacking on Wharton Street would be met with a prospective victim who was armed. Might as well give up their wheels, and hope the ‘jackers don’t go ahead and shoot you anyway.

References

References
↑1 Even though Mrs Flaherty does not respect her husband, attorney Bret Flaherty, enough to have taken his name, The First Street Journal will not show him a similar disrespect.
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The utter bovine feces of ‘restorative justice’ How does 'restorative justice' repair the harm done when the victim is stone cold graveyard dead?

In Robert Stacy McCain’s “Everything Is White Supremacy: Inside America’s New Maoist ‘Struggle Sessions’“, I noted a smaller part of something he quoted:

In their “transformative-justice” workshop, my students learned to name “harms.” This language, and the framework it expresses, come out of the prison-abolition movement. Instead of matching crimes with punishments, abolitionists encourage us to think about harms and how they can be made right, often through inviting a broader community to discern the impact of harms, the reasons they came about, and paths forward. In the language of the anti-racism workshop, a harm becomes anything that makes you feel not quite right.

There’s a serial rapist loose in Philadelphia, with four reported sexual assaults near the Broad Street SEPTA line, and, with rape being a crime often not reported, I have to wonder what the perp’s real number of assaults is.

So, I have to ask: how can the “harm” this rapist has done to at least four women in the City of Brotherly Love “be made right”? How can the “harm” done to the 46 people murdered so far this year in Philly “be made right”? Yeah, I can think of one way, involving a rope and an oak tree, but the prison abolitionists would not support that alternative, would they? Continue reading →

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Killadelphia

We have previously reported a decline in the rate of homicides in Philadelphia that began last November, and that had continued into early this year. But a bloody weekend in the City of Brotherly Love has led to the Philadelphia Police Department now reporting 41 murders in the city through 11:59 PM EST on Sunday, February 5th, and that, while lower than 2021 and 2022, is now higher than the same day in 2020, a year in which the city finished with an “official’ 499 murders.

Official murders, that is!

On January 4, 2021, I posted the article, “Killadelphia reaches the milestone: I didn’t think they’d make it, but they did: 502 homicides in 2020.” That soon went out of date, because the Philadelphia Police Department changed the figure on their Current Crime Statistics page to 499 homicides in 2020. I couldn’t prove that they had initially reported 502 killings; it was something that I remembered, but in a truly rookie mistake, I failed to consider that the political powers that be, including Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, a political appointee of Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), not an officer who rose up in the ranks of the PPD, might not want that number to break 500, and the previous record of 500 set under Mayor Wilson Goode (D-Philadelphia) of the MOVE bombing fame, during the crack cocaine wars of 1990.

Well, if I made that mistake, someone obviously smarter than me did not. I got a tweet from NDJinPhilly with the screenshot I failed to get, so I consider that confirmation of my earlier stories.

The website Broad + Liberty has been keeping its own running track of city homicides, and they actually show two fewer murders — than do the Police, 39 murders plus one ‘suspicious’ death. B+L currently shows 40 homicides, but the 40th killing they show is listed as having occurred early this morning, not on the 5th. But I have to wonder: are B+L’s data being restricted, or has Commissioner Danielle Outlaw decided that she might as well have her department report more honestly now that somebody is counting?

The first five weeks of the year don’t really provide a good average daily number of killings; the warmer weather of late spring and summer get into the real averages. And 2020 was the year of the unfortunate death of methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled career-criminal George Floyd in custody, leading to the “Black Lives Matter” riots in many of our cities, including Philadelphia. That probably inflated the number of killings in Philly that year, but I’d note that the number of murders in the city was significantly higher in both subsequent years.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page had no stories at all about the weekend’s killings[1]Access3ed at 10:10 AM EST on Monday, February 6th. — though it naturally included a four-day-old OpEd piece once again supporting open homosexuality — while the specific crime page showed two stories about three of the murders. Given that the Philadelphia Police Department acknowledged five more homicides than in its previous report, ending on Groundhog Day, one would think that two more deaths would have been noted. I suppose that tells us just what is more important to the editors of the Inquirer.

References

References
↑1 Access3ed at 10:10 AM EST on Monday, February 6th.
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Killadelphia: Not as bad as last year!

January is over, and we have the final numbers from the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page: the city officially admits to 30 homicides for January, a major improvement over January of the previous three years. If the current rate of killings is maintained throughout the year, that would put Philly on track for 353 murders for 2023.

However, the website Broad + Liberty, following its exposé concerning how the official numbers have dramatically undercounted killings, has a different number. Broad + Liberty has been keeping a running track of homicides and suspicious deaths in the City of Brotherly Love, including documenting with official police press releases.

B + L have counted 33 homicides, plus one suspicious death. Yeah, that’s still significantly lower than the last three years, but it’s 10% higher than the city admits.

As always, there’s more. The city’s official shooting victims database has documented 141 shootings in January. That’s an improvement over January of 2022, in which the same site recorded 166 shootings, a 15.06 decline in shootings, which is a far lower decline than the 31.82% decline in the official homicide numbers. Either the city is getting better at keeping people who have been wounded by gunfire from dying, or the gang-bangers have become even worse shots than usual; both could be true.

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Did treating Edwin Vargas leniently do him any favors? There are four people now stone-cold graveyard dead thanks (allegedly) to his lenient treatment

We first reported on Edwin Vargas on January 25th, but missed this story in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

North Philadelphia man charged with four homicides, terrorizing a woman, police say

Edwin Vargas, 24, has been charged with multiple shootings, including a high-profile triple homicide in Mayfair earlier this month.

by Ellie Rushing | Wednesday, January 25, 2023

A North Philadelphia man has been charged with committing a spate of shootings this month that left four people dead and a young woman terrorized, law enforcement officials said Wednesday. . . . .

Officials said the shootings were connected and domestic in nature, and stemmed from Vargas’ obsession with a young woman he had been stalking and terrorizing over the course of multiple days.

Court records show that these incidents were not the first time Vargas had shot at someone, and that he’s spent the entirety of his adult life — and at least a portion of his childhood — in and out of jail.

That’s the part you already knew. But further down was this:

Records show Vargas entered the justice system as a teen, when in 2013, at just 15 years old, he was arrested for a drug crime.

In 2016, just a few months after turning 18, he was convicted of illegally possessing a gun with an obliterated serial number. He was sentenced to up to 23 months in jail, plus five years’ probation.

Then, in January 2020, Vargas was charged with aggravated assault and illegal gun possession, after video showed he shot at someone multiple times in Kensington, according to court records. No one was injured.

He was convicted in that shooting and sentenced to up to 23 months in jail, plus three years’ probation, with required mental health supervision.

Vargas was released in August 2022, under the condition that he participate in a reentry program requiring weekly meetings with a caseworker while incarcerated, and for a few months after his release.

Ellie Rushing’s article missed one important point, which we mentioned in our previous article: in July of 2022, Mr Vargas pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a telecom device by an inmate. Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §5123(c)(2), illegal possession of a telecom device by an inmate is a first degree misdemeanor. Under Title 30 §923(a)(7), the sentence for a first degree misdemeanor is “a fine of not less than $1,500 nor more than $10,000, or imprisonment not exceeding five years, or both.”

In other words, Mr Vargas did not need to be released in August of 2022, but could have been kept locked up until 2027. We understand: many district attorneys believe in ‘second chances’ for criminals, hoping that they’ve learned their lesson and will attempt to become productive members of society. But just how many ‘second chances’ should someone who has been in the criminal justice system since he was 15, and “spent the entirety of his adult life . . . in and out of jail” receive? Could no one see that Mr Vargas was a bad dude?

Let’s tell the truth here: all of that lenient treatment didn’t do Mr Vargas any favor. Instead of being in prison now, with a reasonable hope of being released no later than 2027, and probably earlier, Mr Vargas is back in jail, and he will, if convicted, (probably) spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. Four people who would otherwise (probably) still be alive are now pushing up daisies, another seriously wounded, and others terrorized from being shot at even if they weren’t struck.

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Philly’s Mother of the Year Has The Philadelphia Inquirer finally admitted that there are gangs in the city?

We have expended some bandwidth mocking The Philadelphia Inquirer for its statement that there are no real gangs in the City of Brotherly Love:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

We also mocked the George Soros-sponsored defense attorney who is now the city’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, when his office decided to refer to them as rival street groups. And we pointed out, at the end of last year, that what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. was still using euphemisms to refer to gangs those cliques of young men, though the word “gang” in one article, apparently for prosaic reasons, since the term “street group” had been used previously in the same sentence.

Well, perhaps the journolists[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading at the Inky got tired of being mocked; I know that I wasn’t the only one doing it!

A Southwest Philly street gang burglarized three gun stores, stealing nearly 100 guns, DA says

Members of 54th Street targeted gun stores in the suburbs, prosecutors said Wednesday, committing overnight, smash-and-grab burglaries that put guns in the hands of criminals.

by Vinny Vella | Thursday, January 25, 2023

Investigators in Montgomery County dismantled a Philadelphia street gang that they say burglarized a series of suburban gun stores in the fall, stealing 93 firearms that they used in shootings in the city or sold to other criminals. One of the guns, prosecutors said, was used in the murder of a 16-year-old.

OK, reporter Vinny Vella gets a point for using the word “gang,” but he loses a point for using the horrible, made-up word “burglarized,” which has, sadly, come into the dictionary, when the proper word is “burgled.”

In a sweeping affidavit of probable cause released Wednesday, prosecutors outlined the investigation of 54th Street, a gang active in Southwest Philadelphia. The group, mostly teens, wielded guns openly on social media and in music videos of rap songs in which they bragged about killing their rivals and terrorizing their neighborhoods, according to the document.Two adults and 11 juveniles were charged in the investigation, but only four were named in the affidavit: Angel Mason, 40, Elijah Terrell, 16, Donte Purnell, 22, and Liv Hall, 18. The nine other suspects, between the ages of 14 and 17, have been charged in juvenile court and were not publicly identified.

All have been charged with operating a corrupt organization, conspiracy, gun violations, and related offenses.

Elijah Terrell, photo via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.

Hmmm, young Miss Hall looks like she never expected to get into this kind of trouble! The Inky, of course, did not include her photo, but Fox 29 News did.

But she’s 18-years-old, legally an adult, and she (allegedly) took a stupid decision to join in burgling a gun store. They whooped and partied and made some good bucks last fall, but now someone is stone-cold graveyard dead, shot by one of the guns the 54th Street clique of young men, and apparently women as well, (allegedly) stole, and since the burglary occurred in Montgomery County and not Philadelphia, Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner won’t be able to cut her any sweetheart plea bargain.

None of the attorneys representing the four charged as adults had any comments concerning the cases. Mr Vella wrote that he found no indication that two of the defendants had yet hired lawyers.

According to Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele, only 33 of the stolen guns have been recovered. That means that sixty of the stolen firearms are still out there, almost certainly in the hands of other criminals. Perhaps, just perhaps, the gun control laws the editors of the Inquirer say that Philly ought to be able to enact on the city’s own authority wouldn’t do anything at all to have stopped a few dozen bad guys from obtaining the firearms they wanted.

Donte Purnell, photos via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.

The first burglary was committed on September 24, 2022, when Miss Hall and four of the charged juveniles broke into Founding Fathers Outfitters in Springfield Township, getting away with 26 handguns, only six of which have been recovered.

Angel Mason would be my nominee for Mother of the Year in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy, Philadelphia. It seems that 16-year-old Elijah Terrell, her son, (allegedly) attempted to rob a man at gunpoint in Southwest Philly, but was thwarted when his intended victim drew his own weapon and shot Mr Terrell. After that, our Mother of the Year candidate supposedly called 22-year-old Donte Purnell, who is also her son, to tell him to get the stolen weapons out of their home before detectives arrived with a search warrant.

There comes a point at which it’s difficult to believe that anything else in Philly could surprise you, and then you read a story like this. Apparently there’s really no bottom to the decadence in the City of Brotherly Love. Liv Hall, the fourth suspect pictured? She was caught when she (allegedly) used one of the weapons from the first burglary to shoot at her brother during an argument outside of their home.

These people were caught not so much because they are evil but because they are just boneheadedly stupid. Who knows, Miss Mason might be the leader of this gang, but a criminal mastermind she isn’t.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.