Tag Archives: #Crime

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He had a second chance, and he blew it

If you robbed a bank, got caught, and sentenced to five year in the big house, and somehow managed to get a university professorship, you’d have to think that you had gotten a huge, lucky break, and you need to straighten up and fly right, wouldn’t you? If you had an annual salary of $173,422 as a university department head, you’d think that you’d really turned your life around and pretty much had it made, right?

UK professor arrested for sexual abuse of a minor was ‘model teacher,’ personnel file says

by Monica Kast | Thursday, October 13, 2022 | 1:47 PM EDT | Updated 1:57 PM EDT

Kevin Real, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

The University of Kentucky professor who was arrested last month for sexual abuse of a minor and incest was convicted of robbing a bank in the 1980s and was sentenced to five years in jail, according to court documents.

When asked if the university was aware that Kevin Real, the chair of the UK Department of Communication, had been convicted of bank robbery before his employment at UK, the university declined to comment. Real remains on paid leave from the university, UK spokesperson Jay Blanton told the Herald-Leader.

Real appeared to be well-liked among colleagues and students, according to his UK personnel records the Herald-Leader obtained through an open records act request. In a letter of recommendation for Real to receive the Outstanding Teacher Award in 2015, one colleague called him “a model teacher.”

There’s more at the original.

You know, that’s actually a common feature in stories about sexual predators: they are always well-liked by the people who know them.

Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Monica Kast did a better job than Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Vinny Vella in concealing whether Dr Real’s (alleged) victim was a boy or a girl:

Real was arrested on Sept. 8 by the Lexington Police Department on charges of incest, first degree sexual abuse of a person under the age of 12 and first degree sodomy. According to his arrest citation, Real allegedly abused the victim when they were 6 years old, and again in July 2022.

His bond hearing took place Thursday morning, where Real was permitted to leave house arrest as long as he stays in Fayette County and avoids certain locations. He will continued to be electronically monitored and must stay 1,000 feet away from a local high school and the residence of his victim. In court documents, Real denied the allegations against him.

At the time of his arrest, Dr Real was assigned a $30,000 bail, which was reduced to $15,000 the following day. He was ordered into home confinement with electronic monitoring, though allowed to make limited released, and have no contact with children other than his own. Following a court hearing on Thursday, the conditions of his release were lightened: he’s still under electronic monitoring, but he is allowed to travel throughout Fayette County, as long as he avoids certain locations. Under Kentucky law, any suspect not charged with murder is entitled to have a reasonable bail set, which begs the question of whether $15,000 is reasonable.

  • Under KRS §510.110, first degree sexual abuse of a child under 12 years old is a Class C Felony.
  • Under KRS §510.070, first degree sodomy of a child under 12 is a Class A Felony.
  • Under KRS §530.20, incest with a child under 12 is a Class A Felony.
  • Under KRS §532.060, the penalty for a Class A felony is not less than 20 years, nor more than 50 years, or life imprisonment; for a Class C felony, the term is not less than 5 years nor more than 10 years in prison.

Only Dr Real and the (alleged) victim absolutely know whether he is guilty, but if he did commit those crimes and is convicted of a Class A felony, he’ll never get out of jail; he’s already 65 years old. And that means he has every reason to make a run for the border.

$15,000 bail, for a man who had been receiving — and is still receiving; he’s on paid suspension — a salary of $173,422, $15,000 is really nothing, not for a bail amount. He has the money, and the freedom to move around Fayette County, to get a stolen car with a bogus license plate, cut off his ankle bracelet, and get the heck out of town! If he can get as far west as Kansas, he’d be entering the mostly empty states, and could turn either north or south, and head to Canada or Mexico, borders which are not really well defended.

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Is this why Central Bucks schools have been pushing back against LGBTQ+ agenda?

We have previously noted how the Central Bucks school district has drawn all sorts of fire from the left as the district pursues a path of excluding sexually-charged materials in school libraries and stated that teachers and staff should not use ‘transgendered’ students’ preferred names and pronouns without the consent of their parents. I have to wonder: did this case help push the school district in its decisions?

A former Central Bucks teacher entered a no-contest plea to molesting and secretly recording his students

Joseph Ohrt, a longtime fixture at schools in the district, touched two of the victims inappropriately during incidents in the 1990s, according to prosecutors.

Joseph Ohrt, via the Bucks County Herald. Click to enlarge.

by Vinny Vella | Thursday, October 13, 2022 | 2:15 PM EDT

A once-prominent teacher in the Central Bucks School District entered a no-contest plea Thursday to molesting two of his former students and secretly recording another one.

Joseph Ohrt, 57, entered the plea to indecent assault, corruption of minors, invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence before Bucks County Court Judge Jeffrey Finley on what was initially scheduled to be the first day in his criminal trial.

Ohrt’s attorney, Matthew Sedacca, declined to comment after the hearing.

For nearly 40 years, Ohrt was a fixture in the Central Bucks district, serving as a music teacher and choral director at various middle, elementary and high schools. He gained recognition beyond the region in 2021, when the pop singer P!nk, who attended Central Bucks West High in her youth, praised him on Twitter and in one of her music videos as an early mentor of hers.

There’s more at the original, including a statement that parents of students had claimed in court filings that Mr Ohrt’s behavior was an “open secret” in the schools, though the Inquirer article did not specify whether the claim was that this was an open secret among students only, or if any teachers or staff were also aware.

Vinny Vella, the article author, was very careful to conceal the sex of the students molested by Mr Ohrt, because that’s just so politically incorrect, but he revealed it in the eighth paragraph:

County prosecutors first began investigating Ohrt in May 2021, when a former student reported that Ohrt had touched him and told him he loved him while he was a senior at Central Bucks West in 2016. After the student graduated, during a choir trip to Kansas City, Ohrt shared a bed with him and put his hand down the teen’s pants, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Ohrt’s arrest.

So, the molestation, the “grooming,” was homosexual in nature. Naturally, I took a screen capture of that paragraph, because I strongly suspect that the story will be subsequently edited to hide that fact. Surely, surely! one of Mr Vella’s editors will notice this, but now that it’s out there, and an [insert slang term for the rectum here] both noticed and documented it, the Inky might have no real choice but to leave it up, because they might figure that, having been noticed and documented, the Inquirer’s bias would be publicly noted . . . again.

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Danielle Outlaw is disgusted, and Larry Krasner is disgusting.

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw released a statement after three SWAT Team officers were shot and wounded, though none fatally, while attempting to serve a warrant in the Richard Allen housing projects on North 10th Street Wednesday morning:

Today, shortly after 6 AM, while serving a warrant on a murder suspect, members of our SWAT unit were fired upon. As the officers were knocking and announcing the warrant, without warning, this suspect fired through a window and door. Three of our brave officers were shout by the assailant, but were still able to return gunfire.  By the grace of God, it appears our officers will physically recover from their wounds.

The suspect was killed in the exchange.

Although I am currently in Dallas, Texas, for the Major Cities Chiefs’ Conference, I was grateful to be able to speak with the officers involved, and thank them for their remarkable service to our city.

While our SWAT officers are highly-trained professionals, this is yet again another cold reminder of the dangers involved in the work they do. Warrant service is always a high-risk assignment; particularly when the suspect is wanted in connection to violent crime.

That, of course, is why the SWAT Team officers were wearing body armor and helmets; they knew that the “suspect,” Raheem Lee, was armed and willing to kill people.

But let me make sure something is perfectly clear: it is NOT the job of our officers to be shot at.

Well, it shouldn’t be, but apparently a fairly sizable segment of the city’s population do believe that it is the job of police officers to be shot at. The Philadelphia Inquirer tried to make a hero out of young Thomas Siderio, who shot at police. And District Attorney Larry Krasner wants to try for murder officers who shoot back and kill offenders.

The Commissioner then, without naming his name, begins her criticism of Mr Krasner, the anti-police defense attorney who, thanks to $1.45 million from George Soros, was elected District Attorney.

It is not their job to be stabbed, spat upon, accosted or attacked in any way. And this type of violence towards our police — towards anyone — cannot continue to be normalized.

We are tired of arresting the same suspects over and over again, only to see them right back out on the street to continue and sometimes escalate their criminal ways.

We are tired of having to send our officers into harm’s way to serve warrants on suspects who have no business being on the street in the first place.

No — not everyone needs to be in jail. But when we repeatedly see the extensive criminal histories of those we arrest for violent crime, the question has to be asked as to why they were yet again back out on the street and terrorizing our communities.

A whole lot more people do need to be in jail, but the voters of the City of Brotherly Love first elected, and then, by a landslide margin, re-elected Mr Krasner, who not only made the promise to drastically reduce the number of criminals locked up, but kept his promise.

I am beyond disgusted by this violence. Our entire department is sickened by what is happening to the people that live, work, and visit our city.

Residents are tired of it.

Business owners are tired of it.

Our children are tired of it.

We are long past “enough is enough.”

As your Police Commissioner, I can promise you this: Our officers will not be intimidated, and we will continue to do everything we can to make Philadelphia a safer place to live.

Philadelphians keep saying that they want the violence to stop, but at the same time, they keep voting for the public officials who let the bad guys go, who won’t take responsibility for the results of their policies,

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Killadelphia: another 13-year-old (probable) gang-banger wannabe bites the dust * Updated! * If the Philadelphia media don't step up, don't start telling the unvarnished truth, they will not have done everything they can to reduce the carnage

That the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page showed that seven people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards over the four days since the last report — the PPD does not issue updated reports on the weekend or holidays — wasn’t exactly a surprise: not only had I heard of five killings via Philly Crime Update, but seven killings over a weekend is simply not uncommon in the City of Brotherly Love.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

13-year-old boy killed in West Oak Lane shooting

The boy was outside on the corner of 65th Avenue and North Smedley Street when he was shot just before 6:50 p.m.

by Robert Moran | Monday, October 10, 2022

A 13-year-old boy was fatally wounded in a shooting Monday evening in the city’s West Oak Lane section, police said.

The story was originally entitled 13-year-old boy critically wounded in Philadelphia shooting, so reporter Robert Moran began it before he was notified that the victim had died.

Just before 6:50 p.m., the boy was outside on the corner of 65th Avenue and North Smedley Street when he was shot at least one time in the face, said Chief Inspector Scott Small.

The boy was rushed by police to Einstein Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 9:12 p.m., Small said.

The boy, who lived about four blocks away, was believed to have been visiting friends in the area when he was shot by possibly two assailants who then ran from the scene, Small said.

There’s your first red flag: if the young victim was shot “by possibly two assailants” who then fled, you’re getting the first clue that this wasn’t a tragic accident, but a gang killing, though the Inky would apparently prefer a term like “cliques of young men.”[1]We were 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 … Continue reading Nevertheless, Mr Moran continued with a bit more, setting the stage for another heart-wrenching story:

Jerry T. Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, issued a statement identifying the boy as a student at Wagner Middle School.

“Our city is once again reeling from the murder of a child — a thirteen-year-old boy in West Oak Lane whose life was stolen from him, robbed of his future dreams and aspirations, never to even graduate eighth grade. My heart breaks for all who knew and loved him: his family, his friends, his neighbors, the entire Wagner Middle School community; the impact of such a tragedy is measureless,” Jordan said.

While the Inquirer hadn’t identified the victim as of 5:35 PM EDT, Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News did, via a tweet. Sure seems like the beginning of a new story telling us what a great kid he was, and how his life was ended before he ever lived it.

That, however, might be jumping the gun. People knew who this victim was, and knew enough to check his social media accounts. Will B Late tweeted:

These photos are from what appears to be his tiktok account. If it is indeed him, he can be seen in the video with a gun, drugs and making signs. Horror at a 13 year old being murdered is founded. The question becomes, how is a 13 year old being enabled to live and die like this?

Mr Late added three photos as evidence. Mr Late stated that he blurred the faces, because many of the boys pictured are probably minors.

The Philadelphia media, other than Fox 29 News, really don’t cover most of the murders, because most of the killings in the city involve members of one “rival street group” shooting members of another “rival street group,” and a whole lot of people see these things as public service homicides. If some gang-bangers are wiping out other gang-bangers, well, that’s the risk you take when you become a member of a “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families“.

But while the boys who are susceptible to joining such “groups”, who see a glamorized “gangsta life“, probably hear that it’s dangerous, the media need to put out the facts, the brutal, uncensored, tell-it-like-it-is truth, a truth which might make some of them think twice, and more than twice, and strengthen the parents to keep a much closer eye on their kids.

For the family of young Jeremiah Wilcox, assuming that the identification of his name and social media are accurate, it’s too late. There are, I assume, parents and grandparents and siblings and neighbors who are saddened, are crying, that Mr Wilcox is dead. But if the Philadelphia media, especially the Inquirer, which has the space to really delve into and publish the facts, something television news doesn’t really do that well, don’t step up, don’t tell the unvarnished truth, they will not have done all that they can to reduce the number of Jeremiah Wilcoxes bleeding out their life’s blood in Philly’s mean streets.
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Update! Tuesday, October 11, 2022 | 7:53 PM EDT

The previous was published at 5:47 PM EDT. I hadn’t expected it quite so soon, but yup, the Inquirer is here to tell us what a wonderful boy young Mr Wilcox was:

‘He was just a baby’: The family of a 13-year-old who was fatally shot remember him as a loving, protective boy

Jeremiah Wilcox, 13, was fatally shot Monday evening in West Oak Lane, just a block from his middle school. “He was just a baby,” cried his aunt Jamillah Patterson. “He didn’t deserve this.”

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, October 11, 2022 | 6:26 PM EDT

It was 6:36 p.m. Monday when Jasmine Wilcox spoke on the phone with her 13-year-old son, Jeremiah, for what she did not know would be the last time.

“Jeremiah, you OK?” she asked.

“Yes, Mom, I’m outside talking to my friends,” Wilcox recalled her son saying. “And I said, ‘OK it’s a school night. Be home by 8.”

Twelve minutes later, Jeremiah was shot twice, struck in the head and body, police said, as he stood outside his friend’s house in West Oak Lane.

Sure sounds like a good kid, huh?

Jeremiah Wilcox, aka “Jay” or “Jerry,” was a sweet, funny boy, who was protective of his family and loved his mama, (Jasmine Wilcox, his mother) said. He had a bright smile and loved to make his family laugh, they said, but wasn’t afraid to speak his mind if something was bothering him. He liked football and basketball, and played casually with friends. In his free time, he watched anime and played video games like Fortnite and Call of Duty with his cousins.

Cheesesteaks were his favorite food, and he got his sweet tooth from his mom, she said.

He kept the waves in his hair fresh, his family said, and he knew he was handsome, always talking to and flirting with girls.

Jeremiah was an eighth grader at Wagner Middle School, just a block from where he was shot. He and his mom had started looking at high schools for next year, she said, and he was interested in attending Roxborough High for its engineering program and football team.

There’s a lot more at the original, all of it letting us know what a fine, upstanding young man he was. What was not in the story was any mention at all of the allegations in social media that young Mr Wilcox might have been a wannabe gang-banger, including no refutation of those claims.

So, are the claims true? We don’t know yet, but those allegations are definitely out there. It’s going to be an interesting development, to see whether the Inky rushed forward with one of their “innocents” killed, without checking it out, or whether the claims that young Mr Wilcox was a gang-banger wannabe flashing guns and gang signs are the false ones. If, as Chief Inspector Scott Small stated, the police believe that he was shot “by possibly two assailants who then ran from the scene,” turns out to be true, then this was a targeted killing.

References

References
↑1 We were 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“.
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Yes, actually, homicide rates can be brought down!

St Louis, Missouri used to be our nations murder capital, but has been downgraded to second place behind New Orleans. The Gateway City saw a whopping 263 homicides in 2020, which, with the city’s population being 304,709 that year, the homicide rate was an astounding 86.31 per 100,000 population.

In 2021, the city dropped to a still horrible 199 murders, and, using 2021’s population guesstimate of 293,310, that works out to a homicide rate of a still horrible 67.85, but at least it’s improving.

As of October 7th of this year, St Louis has seen 154 murders in 278 days, which is on pace for 202.19 homicides for the year. With St Louis population for 2022 guesstimated to have slightly increased, to 298,034, the homicide rate works out to 68.11 per 100,000 population.

Philadelphia’s Democratic leadership have tried to blame the huge increase in homicides on just general stuff, saying that homicide is increasing everywhere, but the actual numbers from St Louis demonstrate that homicides, even one of our deadliest cities, can be reduced.

Part of the solution just might be simply telling the truth about murders. The Philadelphia Police Department issue a gross numbers daily update, while the St Louis report breaks down the statistics the police have. Of course, the statistics are very, very, very politically incorrect!

This year, murders in the City of Brotherly Love have been moving up steadily, and with 416 homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, October 6th, the city, at 1.4910 killings per day, is on pace for 544.22 murders in 2022, a slight improvement on last year’s 562, but still easily in second place all time.

Yeah, Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw are doing what some older Kentuckians would have called a fine, fine, super-fine job.

This article is 10 months old now, but nothing has changed:

Turning the Tide on Gun Violence . . . Everywhere but Philly

Some big city mayors are saying enough is enough and are—finally—doubling down on smart policing and prosecution. Here in Philly? Not so much

by Larry Pratt | December 32, 2021

Last week started with our incredibly shrinking mayor releasing his annual holiday video message to the citizens of Philadelphia. A stirring call to arms in the middle of a gun violence crisis it was not. Instead, it had all the optics of a hostage video—the dour-faced protagonist, reading cue cards in a lifeless monotone, no doubt counting down the days, hours and minutes until he’s free. Someone arrange a ransom payment to Jim Kenney’s City Hall captors!

Watching, it was tempting to feel deflated. Two more years of Kenney fiddles while Philly burns? Breathe, I told myself. Turns out, inspiration was to be had last week, once I widened the aperture of my lens beyond the see-no-evil—and warring—triumvirate of Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner and MIA Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.

In fact, last week may turn out to be an inflection point in the war on murder and mayhem in our cities. On Tuesday, two former two-term mayors appeared at our Ideas We Should Steal Festival, and made one of the most full-throated arguments we’ve seen for investing in smart policing while reforming what needs fixing in law enforcement. As if a clarion call, within days two current big city progressive mayors delivered the same “enough is enough” message—a nuanced argument that you can be tough on crime and (be) just at the same time.

This is the problem: for ‘progressives,’ “reforming the police” means reducing policing, cutting policing, and, let’s be frank about this, eliminating a lot of laws as well. We saw that in Philadelphia, where the idiotic City Council approved the Driving Equality Act, which prohibits the police from stopping a vehicle for some specific “secondary offenses,” something which enabled carjackers like the ones who committed the Roxborough High School shooting to drive a stolen vehicle with an expired Delaware temporary paper tag. The City Council wanted to decriminalize ‘driving while black,’ but the cops can’t usually tell if a driver is black or white when they are behind a vehicle.

“It seems that there’s this notion that we can either reform the police or we can be safe, and I think that’s just bullshit,” former Mayor Michael Nutter said at the Festival. Under Nutter, Philadelphia posted its lowest murder rates in over 60 years, and he went on to paint a picture of how that gets done. “You have to do both. There’s a lot of focus on the numbers, but it’s not just numbers. There are people behind those numbers. Thats a life in this city. That’s a family that’s been damaged. That’s a neighborhood. When someone is shot or killed on a block, it is not just a personal incident. That entire block and community and neighborhood is affected. Those kids are going to have nightmares at night. Just washing down the sidewalk does not take away the trauma.”

That’s a mayor striking at the emotional heart of a searing issue, something we’ve seen far too little of recently. And then he shifted into game-plan mode: “I had a district attorney, Seth [Williams], who we could work with, and talk to,” he said. “Obviously, he had his other issues and challenges, but as DA, Seth Williams did a better job than the person who is in the job right now because he understood the importance of public safety. That partnership—of our administration, Commissioner Ramsey, the DA, the courts, the federal agencies, the A.G.’s office, the governor’s office, and citizens who said we are not gonna tolerate this shit going on in our neighborhoods—that’s why crime went down in Philadelphia.”

Kasim Reed, the charismatic two-term mayor of Atlanta who hired more than 900 cops during his tenure and lowered crime by nearly 40 percent while growing his city into an economic juggernaut, argued that those two things—safety and prosperity—go hand in hand. “When Mayor Nutter cut crime, you see a thriving economy run right on the tails of that because people believe in their hearts, the city is mine, too,” he said. “And murder and violence make you believe less and less that the city is yours. And fundamentally we’re at our best when everybody believes the city is ours.”

It was a great applause line that makes one wonder: Have we heard anything from our leaders that makes us want to applaud? Hell, they won’t even talk to one another. Kenney and Krasner snipe and snub, while the body bags pile up.

There’s more at the original, but it points out that some — certainly not all — major cities have cut their overall crime rates, and homicide rates specifically, by supporting law enforcement.

Why hasn’t Philly? Because the city has a District Attorney who is actually a defense lawyer, someone who wants to get criminals off the hook. Solutions like “Broken Windows Policing,” which has been proven to work, are appalling to Larry Krasner, who prefers to excuse the ‘little’ crimes, even though some of the ‘little’ criminals are emboldened enough to start committing worse and worse crimes. We’ve seen this time and time and time again: someone treated too leniently by law enforcement — Nikolas Cruz being the most extreme example — has been enabled by that lenient treatment, and then goes out to commit a far worse crime, one which can get him locked up for decades, perhaps the rest of his life, and, in extreme cases, sentenced to death. Have such criminals really been done any favors by the ‘progressive’ prosecutors fighting ‘mass incarceration’?

Crime can be reduced, but it cannot be reduced by ignoring the lesser offenses. And it certainly cannot be reduced by treating actual criminals like poor, mistreated, young people.

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Killadelphia: Somebody talked? * Updated! *

Somebody talked.

Someone recognized the five shooters who jumped out of the stolen SUV from which the shooters, and possibly a sixth person, driving the vehicle, at the Roxborough High School shootings following a football scrimmage on September 27th. Perhaps it was the thus-far-unnamed 17-year-old black male who appears to be the intended target of the shooting which killed 14-year-old Nicholas Elizalde and wounded five others, or perhaps it was a bystander.

Or, perhaps nobody talked, but the Philadelphia Police were able to get some of what they need from forensic evidence from the stolen vehicle, which was found dumped outside a strip club.

Philly Police say a 16-year-old is expected to face murder charges in last week’s Roxborough High School shooting

Police believe Dayron Burney-Thorne participated in the crime, which left a 14-year-old boy dead and four others wounded. They declined to say if he’s a suspected shooter or get-away driver.

by Chris Palmer | Tuesday, October 4, 2022 | 2:04 PM EDT

Philadelphia detectives are searching for a 16-year-old who is expected to face murder charges over last week’s fatal shooting outside Roxborough High School, authorities said Tuesday.

Dayron Burney-Thorne, via Steve Keeley on Twitter Click to enlarge..

Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said police believe Dayron Burney-Thorne participated in the crime, which left a 14-year-old boy dead and four others wounded. Still, Vanore declined to specify if detectives believe Burney-Thorne was one of the five shooters who jumped out of an SUV and began firing in the ambush-style attack, or if the teen might have served as a getaway driver.“He was there and participated,” Vanore said.

A warrant had already been approved for Burney-Thorne’s arrest on counts including theft and obstruction of justice over his connection to the stolen Ford Explorer that was used in the crime, Vanore said. The teen was now also expected to be charged as an adult with counts including murder, attempted murder, and weapons offenses, according to police.

Remember when I said that, despite young Mr Elizalde’s mother stating that her son isn’t just “a number,” in the larger scheme of things, yes, he really was just a number? Well, in Chris Palmer’s article, Mr Elizalde’s name is not mentioned until the seventh paragraph. Instead of writing, in the second paragraph, “which left 14-year-old Nicholas Elizalde dead,” Mr Palmer wrote, “which left a 14-year-old boy dead.” A small point, perhaps, but noticeable, at least to a careful reader.

The Philadelphia Police Department released Mr Burney-Thorne’s mugshot on Twitter at 12:01 PM EDT, more than two hours before the Inquirer article was published, so reporter Chris Palmer had access to it, but the newspaper didn’t publish it. Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw tweeted, at 12:50 PM EDT, that Mr Burney-Thorne was still wanted, meaning that he was not yet in custody, and the newspaper could have helped the police by publishing his mugshot, but they didn’t. The last thing publisher Elizabeth Hughes’ “anti-racist news organization” wants to do is help law enforcement!

It seems that young Mr Burney-Thorne, of whom the Philadelphia Police already had a mugshot, so he’s been arrested previously, has a rather substantial criminal record already, having active warrants for theft, obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence and criminal conspiracy, and he’s just 16 years old.

Juvenile records are normally sealed, so perhaps we’ll never know, but it has to be asked: has Mr Burney-Thorne, who was only 12 when District Attorney Larry Krasner took office, been the beneficiary of lenient treatment by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, and was it possible that Mr Burney-Thorne could have been locked up last Tuesday, had the District Attorney treated him seriously, when he (allegedly) made the ‘mistake’ that could send him to adult prison for the rest of his miserable life? If he could have been incarcerated in juvenile detention, he would not have been (allegedly) involved in Mr Elizalde’s murder, and who knows, perhaps Mr Elizalde would still be alive today.

We’ve seen this time and time and time again: someone treated too leniently by law enforcement — Nikolas Cruz being the most extreme example — has been enabled by that lenient treatment, and then goes out to commit a far worse crime, one which can get him locked up for decades, perhaps the rest of his life, and, in extreme cases, sentenced to death. Have such criminals really been done any favors by the ‘progressive’ prosecutors fighting ‘mass incarceration’?
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Updated! Tuesday, October 4, 2022 | 9:55 PM EDT

Via Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News, we find that yes, Mr Burney-Thorne has been treated leniently by the system:

Dayron Burney-Thorn’s priors include resisting arrest by @PhillyPolice in March last year while possessing gun illegally, law enforcement sources tell FOX29 News. Another arrest just 10 months ago in January. Law Enforcement sources tell FOX29 News Dayron Burney-Thorn,16, was then caught in January by @PhillyPolice 10 months after gun arrest, pushing a carjacked vehicle into a parking lot trying to hide it. He was charged with receipt of stolen property in that case. Burney-Thorn was released without bail after his latest charge in January for receipt of stolen property involving the prior carjacked vehicle he was caught pushing into a parking lot to hide it.

So, in March of 2021, Mr Burney=Thorne was arrested for the illegal possession of a firearm. If the District Attorney’s office levied any punishment at all against the offender, then aged just 15 years old, he was nevertheless out on the streets in January of 2022. He was then caught trying to hide a carjacked vehicle, and charged under Title 18 §3925, which is a third degree felony if the value of the stolen property exceeds $2,000 but is under $100,000. Under Title 18 §106(b)(4), the penalty for a felony in the third degree is imprisonment for up to seven years. Mr Burney-Thorne was released without any bail on this charge.

So, what do we have? A criminal suspect, who previously been arrested for the illegal possession of a firearm, was caught in possession of a carjacked vehicle, a crime of dramatically increased incidence in the City of Brotherly Love, and the DA just lets him go free? Is it any wonder that the suspect thought that he could get away with murder?

Mr Krasner and his office did Mr Burney-Thorne no favors. Caught with an illegal firearm, little or nothing was done. Then caught with a carjacked vehicle, again, nothing was done. Now young Mr Elizalde is stone-cold graveyard dead — something that could have happened without Mr Burney-Thorne’s participation — and the suspect is looking at a sentence of spending the rest of his pathetic life behind bars.

If the District Attorney had found a way to keep the suspect behind bars, he’d have been looking at a maximum sentence of seven years for the carjacking case, but still having the prospect of getting out of jail while in his twenties. Now, he’s looking at life.

This is the kind of thing that happens when ‘progressive’ George Soros-sponsored defense attorneys get elected as prosecutors: in their oh-so-noble sympathy for the poor and downtrodden, they enable the small-time criminals to become big-time criminals, rather than giving them the harsh lessons early, lessons which might, just might, persuade them to stop being criminals.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child” is an old, old saying, one in which Mr Krasner clearly does not believe, but in the case of Mr Burney-Thorne, that spoiled child just might spend the rest of his days in a maximum security prison.

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Mayor Jim Kenney just can’t think things through

On Tuesday, September 27, 2022, Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) signed an executive order banning the possession of firearms and other deadly weapons at city parks and recreation centers, something that even The Philadelphia Inquirer recognized as likely to draw a legal challenge.

It didn’t take long: on Monday, October 3rd, the executive order was tossed by a judge:

Judge bars Philadelphia from enforcing Mayor Jim Kenney’s ban on guns at rec centers and playgrounds

The lawsuit cited a Pennsylvania state law that prohibits the any city or county from passing gun-control measures stricter than state gun laws.

by Robert Moran | Monday, October 3, 2022

A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge on Monday blocked the city from enforcing an executive order Mayor Jim Kenney signed last week banning guns at recreation centers and playgrounds following the fatal shooting of a Parks and Recreation employee last month.

The Gun Owners of America, on behalf of several state residents, filed a lawsuit last Tuesday, the day Kenney signed his order. After hearing arguments Friday, Judge Joshua H. Roberts issued his ruling siding with the plaintiffs and ordering Philadelphia to be “permanently enjoined” from enforcing Kenney’s ban.

The lawsuit cited Pennsylvania state law that prohibits any city or county from passing gun-control measures. The preemption law, which the city has repeatedly sought to overturn, bans local government from passing gun-control measures that are stricter than state gun laws.

Andrew B. Austin, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, said in an emailed statement: “For my part, I am gratified that the Court of Common Pleas was able to so quickly resolve this suit, but that was in large part because the law is so explicit: The City is not allowed to regulate possession of firearms in any manner.”

There’s more at the original, and the pre-emption law is pretty clear and explicit.

The right to keep and bear arms is pretty explicit in our Constitution, and I support that without reservation. In this, I am going to ignore the constitutional and legal issues, but ask the obvious question: just what would Mr Kenney’s executive order have done were it allowed to go into effect?

A ban on the possession of firearms at city parks would probably be mostly obeyed by legal gun owners in the city. If someone has gone to the effort of obtaining a license to carry a firearm, he is pretty much a law-abiding citizen.

But the impetus for the Mayor’s order, the killing of Mill Creek Recreation Center worker Tiffany Fletcher by a stray bullet allegedly fired by 14-year-old Makie Jones, was not something that the executive order would have prevented had it been in place at the time. Young Mr Jones was using a “ghost gun,” a privately-manufactured weapon put together with spare parts and having no serial number, which had an extended magazine. Mr Jones supposedly saw some of his enemies, and a gun battle ensued:

The killing came after a shootout around 1 p.m. Friday between Jones and at least three other people near the rec center on the 4700 block of Brown Street, Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said Monday. Vanore said it was not clear what sparked the gunfire, but that investigators later recovered 12 fired cartridge casings at the scene — eight on one side of the street, and four on the other.

Does the Mayor seriously believe that a 14-year-old who was willing to obtain and carry a ghost gun with an extended magazine, and engage in a gun battle with his enemies would care about an executive order banning the carrying of firearms in a city park? Anyone with any sense at all — a definition which certainly excludes Mr Kenney — would know that someone like the alleged killer wouldn’t care at all about such a restriction, not that one would suspect young Mr Jones of having read the Inquirer to even know of its existence.

One question to which I have never received an answer is just how Mr Kenney thought his executive order could be enforced? Was he hoping that Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw would have Philadelphia Police officers stationed at the rec centers, stopping and frisking everyone there for a weapon? I saw nothing like that in the media, though, to be fair, I could have missed it.

Back to the main article cited:

Kevin Lessard, a spokesperson for Kenney, said in an emailed statement: “We are reviewing today’s decision and are disappointed by the outcome, which as it stands prevents city employees from making the reasonable request that anyone with a firearm or deadly weapon leave a recreation facility. Since 2019, nearly 300 reported incidents of gun violence have occurred at city recreation facilities, in addition to dozens of other incidents of violence with a deadly weapon.”

OK, then: the mayor was apparently counting not on the police, but on unarmed city employees, employees like the late Tiffany Fletcher, to ask people spotted carrying firearms to leave. Has the Mayor forgotten assaults by three ‘unruly’ teenaged girls on July 21st, which led to vandalism, led the city to drain the pool and close it for the rest of the season. City Parks and Recreation said that the pool was closed due to concerns for the safety of staff and visitors, and that this pool, in the crime-ridden Kensington section, has had many problems, including multiple break-ins after hours. The Parks Department did not say that the staff had all just up and quit, or refused to work at that pool again, but the city has had a serious shortage of lifeguards for the pools, and opened only 50 of the 65 pools in the city. If the city had to close the McVeigh Recreation Center because three uncivilized, but apparently unarmed, brats were disruptive, and vandalized the place, just how can he expect unarmed staff to confront and ask to leave someone they believe is carrying a firearm?

This is a huge problem when it comes to the left: they just can’t seem to think things through! Anyone with any common sense ought to have realized that an enforcement incident, the way Mr Lessard described it, is too fraught with danger in a city like Killadelphia; it’s a way to get an unarmed staffer killed.

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It wasn’t a difficult prediction to make

I wrote, on September 27th:

As we have noted many times before, The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl. So, while a 14-year-old boy being killed would normally be seen as the death of an “innocent,” a planned “hit” on a group of junior varsity football players certainly sounds like there was something to have generated bad blood between at least one of the players and a “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families.” The dead player might not have been involved in whatever dispute the “clique beefers” had, but the obvious assumption is that at least someone among the departing players might not have been quite the “innocent” the Inky would like to make him out to be.

When the Inky stops telling us what a good and noble fellow the dead boy was, we’ll know a lot more.

Subsequent reports in the Inquirer have indicated that yes, this was a gang hit an unfortunate action by a “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,”[1]We were 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 … Continue reading but that the Philadelphia Police believe that the targeted individual was a 17-year-old black male who had been shot himself in the commission of a carjacking and has been “referenced several times for his criminal activity, and who was not on one of the football teams, but the only victim who was killed, 14-year-old Nicolas Elizalde, was apparently an innocent casualty rather than being part of such a gang clique himself. That means it’s time for the Inky to run a nice story on him!

The mother of Roxborough shooting victim Nicolas Elizalde, 14, has a message: ‘He isn’t a number’

“He was happier than he’s ever been,” Meredith Elizalde said of her son, 14, starting the school year and joining the football team.

by Ellie Rushing and Kristen A. Graham | Saturday, October 1, 2022

Nicolas Elizalde had begged his mother to let him play football for years, but she always said no, too worried about the injuries that can come with the sport.

This year, Nick was starting high school in a new area, and needed a way to make friends. So Meredith Elizalde gave in. And in August, they trekked to the athletic store to buy him a new pair of cleats.

They were the cleats that she saw from afar on Tuesday, as she ran toward the sound of gunfire outside Roxborough High School.

But even before she saw them, she knew.

There are dozens more paragraphs, plus photos, in the Inquirer original, telling us that young Mr Elizalde was a good kid who never got into any trouble. Our heartstrings are pulled when we are told that his corneas were donated to help save the vision of two other people.

But despite what his mother said, young Mr Elizalde is just a number, number 401 in the list of people murdered in the City of Brotherly Love. Most of the people killed in Philadelphia are just as bad a guys as the guys who killed them, and Mr Elizalde, like Tiffany Fletcher just a few weeks earlier, will be forgotten in not much more time, as the number of dead bodies continues to rise. As of the end of Thursday, September 29th, two more Philadelphians were shot in broad daylight walking down the public streets, in an obviously targeted hit — note that the victims started to run as the shooter got out of the car, because they recognized that this was a hit, in a way innocent people most probably would not — and no story in the Inky tells us what we already knew: these were just as much gang-bangers as the guy who shot them.

Josef Stalin purportedly said, “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” There were 562 people murdered in Philly last year, and if the current year is slightly behind that pace, it’s not behind by much, and unless the daily average of murders falls dramatically, there will be something on the order of 540 to 550 homicides in 2022.

And this is why young Mr Elizalde really is just a number. Why is he just a number? It’s because nobody really cares! Most Philadelphians aren’t out there shooting people, but the people who know who the shooters are still keep their mouths shut, still don’t help the police solve murders.

Some of that is clearly fear, but the police have set up well-publicized anonymous tip lines which could at least get the police pointed in the right direction. Some of it is that so many residents just plain hate the cops and hate law enforcement, as evidenced by the fact that the voters re-elected, by landslide margins, a District Attorney who loves to prosecute cops but does not want to send street criminals to jail. And some of it is a sense that most of these killings are public service homicides, one group of bad guys taking out another group of bad guys. In that, and yes, I recognize that I’m being an [insert slang term for the anus here] for pointing it out, but young Mr Elizalde was simply collateral damage.

References

References
↑1 We were 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”.
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Punishment before the trial?

We noted, on September 2nd, the case of Eyvette Hunter, 52, a nurse accused of deliberately killing a 97-year-old patient because he was agitated and difficult. Miss Hunter just had her bail reduced and trial scheduled . . . for next June.

Eyvette Hunter, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Bond reduced for Lexington nurse accused of murder. Trial date set for June 2023

by Taylor Six | Thursday, September 29, 2022 | 5:19 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, September 30, 2022 | 7:30 PM EDT

Fayette Circuit Court Judge Thomas Travis has granted a $50,000 bond reduction for a former Lexington nurse accused of killing a man through an unauthorized injection.

Eyvette Hunter, 52, was indicted on one charge of murder and arrested on Aug. 23, according to court records. Police say Hunter’s maltreatment caused the death of James Morris, a 97-year-old patient who died at Baptist Health Lexington on May 5.

On Thursday afternoon, she appeared in court after her attorney filed a motion to lower her bond, which was set at $100,000. Hunter’s attorney, Daniel Whitley, successfully requested that the bond be reduced 50% to $50,000 full cash, according to court testimony.

Mr Whitley argued before the judge that the previous bail was simply beyond the means of the family, while the prosecutors, Aubrey McGuire and Traci Caneer, were strongly opposed, and stated than Miss Hunter’s bail should be increased, not reduced. Miss Hunter, if her family make bail, will not be required to wear an ankle monitor, given that she has no past criminal record, and is a low flight risk.

Herald-Leader reporter Taylor Six, from her Twitter biography.

A lengthy section follows, containing the Commonwealth’s allegations against Miss Hunter, which are contained in my previous article on the case, so I needn’t repeat them here; you can also read the Lexington Herald-Leader’s account here. It was the conclusion of Taylor Six’s news article which got to me:

Whitley also said that before the commonwealth indicted Hunter for murder, they neglected to consult with a medical examiner, nor did they seek to do any toxicology to determine the levels of Ativan, or any other substance, in his system at the time of death.

The commonwealth has yet to tender any discovery from any witness stating that the alleged victim died due to the use of Ativan, Whitley said in court documents.

A trial date was set for June 12 and is scheduled to last four days.

Now, what does this mean? Does the prosecution not already have enough evidence put together? Did the defense request this extreme delay? The article states, “The commonwealth has yet to tender any discovery from any witness stating that the alleged victim died due to the use of Ativan,” according to the defense. Does this mean that the prosecution is not yet ready to proceed? If the defense attorney’s statement is accurate — and it was apparently made to the judge — then the prosecution has not given to the defense the required material for the defense to prepare.

I have to ask: what purpose is served by scheduling a trial 8½ months in the future? The defendant has already spent more than a month behind bars, and, if despite the bail reduction, she can’t make bail, would wind up spending 294 days, almost ten months, in jail for a crime of which she has been accused but not convicted? The prosecution wanted Miss Hunter’s bail not only not decreased, but increased, because the Commonwealth’s Attorney apparently wants to keep her locked up for those 294 days, to punish her for that almost ten months, before she even goes to trial, before the Commonwealth has to prove its case against her.

What if she is acquitted? The prosecution wants to punish her in advance, just in case they don’t win.

Miss Six did not include, in her article, whether either the prosecution or defense requested the June trial date, or whether this was simply a decision by the court.

One final point: while in previous Herald-Leader articles on this case, Miss Hunter is alleged to have injected James Morris with Lorazepam, while in this one, the drug mentioned is Ativan. While these are two brand names for the same drug, any reader who did not know that could be confused.