Tag Archives: #Crime

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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.
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Hold them accountable!

Meet Edwin Vargas. If you were expecting to see Mr Vargas’ mugshot in The Philadelphia Inquirer, your expectations would have been dashed, but at least the Inky covered his arrest:

Man arrested for quadruple shooting that killed 3 in Mayfair

Edwin Vargas also is charged with murder that occurred on Jan. 3. Vargas has been in custody since Jan. 18 for an earlier gun incident.

by Robert Moran | Tuesday, January 24, 2023

A 24-year-old man is facing murder charges for the deaths of three young men in a quadruple shooting on Jan. 9 in the city’s Mayfair section, police said.

We had previously noted the killings in Mayfair. We said then:

According to the city’s shooting victims database, which records only three victims, not four, and only two fatally shot, not three, as of 12:22 PM EST on Tuesday, January 10th, the victims were all Hispanic white males; what I have often 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. doesn’t want to tell you that part. As of this writing, the 18-year-old victim does not appear on the database.

A check of the city’s shooting victims database, which now lists 124 shooting victims since the beginning of the year, now lists all four victims.

Mr Vargas was already behind bars, and has been charged with another murder that occurred on January 3rd, but had been locked up since January 18th for a December 30th “gun incident”. The police finally connected him with the January 3rd killing after he had been jailed, and then detectives sought a warrant for him for the triple murders.

But here comes the money line:

Court records show Vargas has been in and out of jail as an adult since late 2016, when he pleaded guilty for firearms violations.

Last July, Vargas pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a telecom device by an inmate.

On Aug. 30, he was released from prison.

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.”

Yet, according to the Inquirer, Mr Vargas was locked up for less than two months for this crime.

So, Mr Vargas, “in and out of jail as an adult since late 2016”, and with who knows how many juvenile offenses under his belt, could have been locked up until 2027, but someone, somewhere, decided that nahhh, they could let him back out on the streets.

And now four people are stone-cold graveyard dead.

Mr Vargas is, of course, innocent of those four murders until proven guilty, but if he is guilty of even one of them, whoever decided to turn this fine gentleman loose has the victim’s, or victims’ blood on his hands. Will that person, or persons, ever be held accountable?

That, of course, is a rhetorical question: no, nobody will be held accountable. But if we did hold prosecutors, judges, and parole boards accountable for the crimes committed by previously convicted criminals who could have still been behind bars but were treated leniently and released before the maximum possible sentence, we would see crime rates go down dramatically, if for no other reason than the bad guys would spend more time in prison and less out on the streets. Had Mr Vargas been behind bars when he could have been, when the state already had him in custody, four more men — assuming the charges are correct — could still be alive today.

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.
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Killadelphia: Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Broad + Liberty’s Philadelphia Homicide Tracker noted that the dead body found on January 23rd was not classified as a homicide by the Philadelphia Police Department, although the website did not tell us how the police did categorize it. And there was no change in the PPD’s Current Crime Statistics page to indicate that it was a homicide.

But here’s the PPD’s press release on the discovery of the body, which was Broad + Liberty’s information source:

Death Investigation:

39th district .. Stabbing –3xx Hansberry Street inside at 11:50 AM  a 25-year-old black male was stabbed to the right side of his neck, under his chin. The male was pronounced (dead) on location at 11:52 AM by Medic 28. Scene held, no weapon recovered, no arrest made.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the fact that someone died from being stabbed in the neck, under his chin, and the fact that the knife was not found on the scene, sure makes that seem like a homicide to me! Broad + Liberty obviously thinks so, as would anyone with an IQ higher than Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw’s, but the Philadelphia Police Department can’t quite seem to say that’s what it is.

There are things which could make it not legally a homicide: if it was a killing in self-defense, it’s not considered a homicide under the law. A suicide is also not considered a homicide under the law, but this was no suicide, because the knife disappeared.

It would make more sense to list this as a homicide, and if it turns out to be a self-defense case, remove it from the homicide report later. As it is, it looks like Commissioner Outlaw’s minions are trying to keep the numbers down artificially.

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Lexington’s first homicide of 2023

Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Meet Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas. Mr Vasquez-Barradas has, allegedly, been a very bad boy:

Lexington man accused of repeatedly kicking pregnant woman, leading to fetal homicide

by Christopher Leach | Tuesday, January 24, 2023 | 8:10 AM EST

A Lexington man facing a fetal homicide charge allegedly kicked a pregnant woman in the stomach three times during a physical argument, according to court documents.

No, of course the Lexington Herald-Leader did not publish Mr Vasquez-Barradas’ mugshot! I had to look that one up myself.

Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas, 24, is charged with first-degree fetal homicide, first-degree strangulation and second-degree assault — domestic violence, Lexington police previously said in a news release. Police said they were called to a local hospital that was treating a domestic violence victim Friday morning.

Court documents say Vasquez-Barradas and a woman who was 18 weeks pregnant got into an altercation that turned physical on Thursday. Vasquez-Barradas shoved the woman to the ground four times and kicked her in the stomach three times, court documents say.

Vasquez-Barradas also strangled the woman while she was on the ground, according to court documents.

While speaking with investigators, Vasquez-Barradas admitted to shoving the woman but denied kicking her in the stomach, according to court documents.

There’s a little more at the original.

As of this writing, the murder of the unborn child is not listed in the Lexington Police Department’s 2023 homicide investigations report, but that page is not updated daily. I do wonder, however, if the powers that be will include the murder of an unborn child on that list.

Mr Vasquez-Barradas has been charged with:

  • KRS §508.020: Assault, second degree- domestic violence. Assault in the second degree is a Class C felony.
  • KRS §508.170: Strangulation, first degree. Strangulation in the first degree is a Class C felony.
  • KRS §507A.020: Fetal homicide, first degree. Fetal homicide in the first degree is a capital offense.

Under KRS §532.060(2)(c), the sentence for a Class C felony is imprisonment for “not less than five (5) years nor more than ten (10) years”. The penalty for a capital offense under KRS §532.030 is:

  • death; or
  • imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole; or
  • imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole until he has served a minimum of twenty-five (25) years of his sentence; or
  • imprisonment life; or
  • imprisonment for not less than twenty (20) years nor more than fifty (50) years.

Under that fourth possibility, imprisonment for life, a prisoner first becomes eligible for parole after serving a minimum of 20 years in prison.

Me? I’m hoping that Mr Vasquez-Barradas is not allowed some lenient plea bargain arrangement and, if he is guilty, sentenced to life without parole.

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Why, it’s almost as though gun control laws don’t work!

It was just one sentence, buried far down in the story:

“I believe the weapon that was recovered at the Alhambra location is not legal to have here in the State of California,” LA County Sheriff Robert Luna said Sunday.

The New York Post reported that the alleged Monterey Park gunman, Huu Can Tran, 72, was essentially nuts:

The gunman who slaughtered 10 people at a California dance club before killing himself had been a regular patron at venue — and believed that the instructors said “evil things about him.”

Huu Can Tran, 72, opened fire at Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park late Saturday with a semiautomatic pistol, killing 10 people and wounding at least 10 others before storming the rival Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio, where two bystanders disarmed him.

He later killed himself inside a cargo van during a stand-off with police in Torrance, about 30 miles from Monterey Park, officials said.

The motive for his rampage after a Lunar New Year celebration remains unclear but several disturbing details have emerged about the gunman, who had once been a regular patron at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, where he gave informal lessons, CNN reported.

There’s more at the original, and the Post is not behind a paywall.

It has been reported that Mr Tran was looking for his ex-wife at the two dance halls; she had been invited, but he had not. It was, as it is so often, a domestic dispute.

Mr Tran used a Cobray M11 9mm semi-automatic pistol, a weapon not highly regarded by firearms experts, but one for which a thirty-round magazine has been available. The Los Angeles County Sheriff said that the weapon was not legal to be possessed or owned in California, but Mr Tran apparently had one anyway. Why, it’s almost as though nuts and criminals don’t obey gun control laws.

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Killadelphia The city counts 17 homicides, but Broad + Liberty has documented 20.

We had previously noted the decline in the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love that began last November, and that, as of the end of November, there was actually a margin-of-error chance that the city could finish with slightly under 500 ‘official’ homicides. It didn’t work out that way, and Philly finished 2022 with 516 ‘official’ homicides, though with the number of deaths classified as ‘suspicious’ rather than homicides, the real number could be much higher. Currently, the Philadelphia Police are reporting 17 homicides as of 11:59 PM EST on Tuesday, January 17th, but Broad + Liberty are reporting 20 through that time period. The Broad + Liberty site includes its sources, and every single one of them is documented with Police Department press releases.

Of the 21 homicides noted by Broad + Liberty — their update at 11:28 AM EST this morning includes a killing this morning — 14 of the victims, 12 males and 2 females, were black, six were Hispanic (all males), and there was one Asian male constituting the victims. This is the kind of information The Philadelphia Inquirer has, in that they receive the same press releases as Broad + Liberty, but they censor out of their news stories.

Two dead, one in critical condition after shooting breaks out at a Chinese restaurant in Southwest Philly

Police said the motive is unknown, but the victims all lived close to the restaurant where the shooting occurred.

by Beatrice Forman | Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Shangri-La Chinese food takeout, August 2019, via Google Maps.

Two people were killed and another was in critical condition after a shooting at a Chinese takeout restaurant in Southwest Philadelphia.Police told reporters at least 16 shots were fired at the Shangri-La restaurant on the 5400 block of Chester Avenue around 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday night as customers were picking up orders.

Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said officers found three unconscious victims on the floor of the takeout area when they arrived on the scene: a 19-year-old man, a 20-year-old man, and a 43-year-old woman. “All three victims were suffering from gunshot wounds,” Small said.

Police confirmed the 19-year-old man and the woman were pronounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The 20-year-old man is in critical condition.

While Broad + Liberty reported that the two who were killed were black, I had to find out from the city’s shooting victims database that the third victim, the 20-year-old male, was also black. I would have guessed that anyway, given that the Inquirer’s story said that the two men were brothers. While Inspector Small stated that the motive was unknown, or who were the intended targets, the shootings victims database indicated that the two men suffered multiple body wounds, including a head wound to the survivor, while the slain woman was struck in the shoulder. I’d note here that the database is a pain to use, and the three shooting victims from the same incident are not listed together, but on the fifth, seventh, and nineth lines of the database, as accessed at 1:40 PM EST.

It’s still early in the year, but the difference between 17 homicides and 20 is stark. Extrapolated over the full year, it’s a difference between 365 and 429 murders for 2023. With three more dead bodies documented in the city, the Philadelphia Police Department need to explain why three people who are stone-cold graveyard dead, three people who died from gunshot wounds according to Broad + Liberty’s statistics, don’t count as homicides.

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Nice guys will never solve Kensington’s problems Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here] to get things done

The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer is, since publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes took over, and the firing resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski, has been the wokest of the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading, so it’s rare for me to see them get something even half-right, but half right they got it:

It’s going to take more than $20 million to help the people of Kensington | Editorial

Without a comprehensive plan to clear the open-air drug markets and help those struggling with addiction and homelessness, the city will be throwing good money after bad.

by The Editorial Board | Sunday, January 15, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST

The city’s plan to steer millions of dollars to Kensington to combat the opioid crisis is a much-needed welcome start. But without a comprehensive plan to address the rampant open-air drug markets and homelessness lining the main business corridor there, the city will be throwing good money after bad.

Mayor Jim Kenney announced plans to distribute $20 million to community groups in Kensington to fund a variety of efforts, including overdose prevention, home repairs, and improvements to parks and schools.

The money is part of the $200 million Philadelphia expects to receive over 18 years as part of a national settlement with Johnson & Johnson and three drug distribution firms that helped fuel the opioid crisis.

Overall, Pennsylvania expects to receive $1.6 billion as part of the settlement negotiated by then-Attorney General (and now Gov.-elect) Josh Shapiro.

To their credit, Kenney and District Attorney Larry Krasner initially balked at the city’s portion of the settlement, given the scale of the opioid epidemic in Philadelphia, which has resulted in more than 1,100 deaths annually since 2017.

Philadelphia is ground zero in the state’s opioid crisis and should receive more funding. But the city ultimately went along with the settlement, figuring it was better than nothing.

The challenge now is to not waste the opportunity — or the money. For far too long, the city has allowed Kensington to devolve into an infamous drug bazaar.

That blurb above? That was in the online version of the editorial itself. It pretty much pegs the irony meter having the Editorial Board telling us about the “opioid crisis” and the Hellhole Kensington has become, and then link an OpEd which implores making illegal drug abuse safer!

As for the “infamous drug bazaar” mentioned? That’s a link to the Inky’s story about the Mexican government using videos of Kensington’s homeless and junkies in an ad campaign to scare Mexicans away from drug use!

The scene along the main business corridor is dystopian. Homeless encampments line the trash-strewn streets along with used needles, human feces, and vomit. There are scores of people smoking, drinking, sleeping, sitting, standing, and stumbling in different states of addiction.

Those unfamiliar with the jaw-dropping sight should google videos of Kensington, as words can’t capture the daily horror. It is an appalling and embarrassing blot on the city that no leader should accept.

Let’s tell the truth here: Mayor Jim Kenney has accepted it! Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has accepted it. And District Attorney Larry Krasner has accepted it. Oh, they’ll never say that, not out loud, but the fact that they haven’t actually done anything about it speaks volumes.

I don’t particularly like copying photos from the Inquirer, but the one on the right, which you can click to enlarge, illustrates the problem, and I thought that photographer José Moreno captured it well. An unidentified junkie, passed out on litter-strewn Kensington Avenue, just a few steps from the SEPTA Market Street/Frankford rail line station, by security roll-down shutters marred by graffiti, with someone trying to see if he’s just passed out or maybe dead, while the police look on. Are the police doing anything about it? Has an ambulance been called?

Another photo can be found here.

Near the end of the editorial:

Past efforts to clamp down on drug dealing and homelessness have been successful, but short-lived. In 1998, then-Police Commissioner John Timoney launched Operation Sunrise, a major effort designed to retake control of Kensington’s streets.

In 2017, the city cleared a large heroin encampment that existed for years in a gulch along the Kensington rail line. In 2021, the city cleared two homeless encampments along Kensington Avenue.

Really? The Editorial Board could reference just three major efforts in twenty-five years? Well, perhaps there were more, and the newspaper simply didn’t have all of the information, or the Board believes that more links would make poorer prose. But I did notice that after a major story in the Inquirer on August 17, 2020, there’s no referenced story about the police making a major raid that year.

The Editorial Board noted that the l;aw abiding residents in Kensington want the police to “crack down” on the open air drug markets, on the crime and the homelessness, but one particular paragraph stands out:

“If the drug dealers are not here then the drug addicts won’t be here,” Darlene Burton, a Kensington resident and community activist, told the Editorial Board. “You have to cut off the head of the snake.”

The Board let that statement stand without challenge, but let’s tell the truth: as long as there are drug addicts, there will be people willing to sell drugs to them. And that is where all of the proposals to attach the dealers fail: the city needs to crack down on the addicts as well.

The addicts need to be arrested and charged for using illegal drugs, and they need to be kept locked up at least long enough for the drugs to get out of their systems, and go through detoxification. You can’t just offer the junkies drug rehabilitation, you have to get them through detox, and force them to go through rehab, or you are just wasting your time and money. You need to convict them of crimes, so that they can, at the very least, be put on probation with frequent, mandatory drug tests.

Why haven’t Mayor Kenney, Commissioner Outlaw, and District Attorney Krasner done anything about Kensington? Because, deep down, they know that what I wrote in the previous paragraph is necessary, and none of them are willing to invest the time or money or political capital to do that. But if the city doesn’t do that, doesn’t treat not only the drug dealers but the drug addicts seriously, then the current situation in Kensington will continue. Oh, a police action of sorts could move the junkies out every so often, but without taking care of the addicts, all that can be done is push them into Fairhill, Harrowgate, or Hunting Park.

The truth ought to be obvious: you can’t be a nice guy and solve the problems. Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here].

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.