Tag Archives: #Crime

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Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right "Nice guy" policies have led to disaster in our urban areas

I have previously noted a major article in The Philadelphia Inquirer about the city’s open-air drug market near Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, complete with a photo of a man who appears to be shooting up right outside the SEPTA station. The photo shows the street littered with trash, and people just plain not caring.

The theme of the article, dated August 17, 2020, was that the COVID-19 crisis might have caused shortages in everything else, but not in the availability of drugs.

I continued to scan the newspaper for stories about how the Philadelphia Police Department had gotten their dander up about the Inquirer article, and had a massive raid to round up the drug dealers and close the drug trade down there, but it just never seemed to happen. Now there’s this, from Fox 29 News:

Philadelphia officials consider resolution designating Kensington a FEMA site

By Shawnette Wilson | April 13, 2022 | 11:30 PM EDT | Updated April 14, 2022 | 7:28AM EDT

SEPTA station on Kensington Avenue, in the background, with homeless tents on the sidewalk. Photo from Fox29 News. Click to enlarge.

KENSINGTON – Reported as the worst possible section of the United States, in terms of homelessness and drug abuse, city officials are looking for a federal and state government intervention in Kensington.

“When I was a teenager, this neighborhood was fine,” David Adcox stated. He says it’s different for his two teenage children he’s raising in Kensington, where he has lived about 45 years.“You could hang on the corner and play football. You used to be able to block Somerset off and have block parties,” Adcox added.

He says since the late nineties, things have steadily changed for the worse.

“Drugs happened and it’s been downhill since,” Adcox commented.

Some Philadelphia city officials announced last week they are taking drastic steps to address the open drug use and addiction on the streets of Kensington.

At least as of 8:08 AM on Friday morning, there was no story on the Inquirer’s website main page about this. One would think that the city considering turning this problem over to the federal government would make the news.

“What we’ve been doing has not worked. This has been going on for 10, 20, even 30 years,” Philadelphia Councilmember At-Large Allan Domb said and went to say it’s a humanitarian crisis.

“It’s the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse,” Domb added.

Domb, Councilmember Maria Quinones-Sanchez and Councilmember Mark Squilla have announced a resolution requesting that Kensington be declared a FEMA and PEMA site, like areas hit with tornadoes, floods and hurricanes.

It would mean federal and state involvement with resources and financial assistance.

“40 percent might be Philadelphians, but at least 60 percent or more are not. They may have obtained ID’s for Philadelphia, but it’s not right that the city has to take care of this humanitarian crisis when the majority of the people are not from Philadelphia,” Domb explained. “We need to bring people back to the homes where they came from, take care of the population that’s Philadelphia and get them into the right services and help them.”

But, but, but, I thought that Philadelphia was a sanctuary city, welcoming everybody, regardless of immigration status. And Councilman Domb is a Democrat.

Mr Domb has been on the city council since January 4, 2016. Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez has been in office since January 7, 2008, while Councilman Mark Squilla has been there since January 2, 2012. All are Democrats.

Have they not noticed the problem until now?

The Inquirer was all #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 and social justicey on August 17, 2020, when Aubrey Whelan’s article appeared — the firing resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski two months earlier, and “anti-racist” publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes was in place the previous February — yet even the newspaper covered the story at the time. Kensington is a heavily Hispanic neighborhood, with the non-Hispanic black population being relatively low, so perhaps that allowed the Inky to cover it?

The solution is not that complicated: send in the police and clear out the druggies, users as well as dealers. When the next group of dealers move in, as they will, send in the police again.

Philadelphia has been run by the Democrats for the last seven decades; the last Republican Mayor left office when Harry Truman was still President. And while the Democrats have not always been the squishes on law enforcement that they have been for a while, Democratic policies have enabled Kensington to become “the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse” are concerned.

If you want to clean the place up, you need conservative policies, and conservative policies are not nice ones. To be a conservative, you have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] at times, because yielding to sympathy has meant allowing the existing problems to fester and get worse. It is better for the city, it is better for the United States, for [insert plural slang term for the rectum here] to be running the government, at all levels, people who will not allow sympathy and lenient policies to turn everything to [insert slang term for feces here], as has happened in all of our major cities.

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.
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The reason Philly murders are down is that the bad guys are lousy shots * Updated! * They meant to kill more people

The blood was flowing on Philly’s streets early on Thursday!

Shootings across Philly leave 1 dead and 12 injured

An unidentified young man was found shot dead on the 400 Block of Manton Street in South Philadelphia around 2:10 p.m.

by Robert Moran | Thursday, April 15, 2022 | 7:28 PM EDT | Updated: 8:39 PM EDT

Thirteen people were shot — including one fatally — in gun violence across Philadelphia on Thursday, police said.

Around 2:10 p.m. in South Philadelphia, an unidentified young man was found with a gunshot wound to the head outside on the 400 block of Manton Street. He was pronounced dead at the scene by medics. Police reported no arrests.

The 400 block of Manton Street is not a bad neighborhood. Well-kept row houses, some new construction, houses in the $400-$500,000 range, and a South Philadelphia neighborhood that appears to be gentrifying. Continue reading →

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An accused killer arrested in Lexington, had gotten off lightly for a previous murder

We have previously noted that Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn had a history of giving accused murderers the opportunity to plead guilty to manslaughter instead, and get reduced sentences.

Miss Red Corn was a member of the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office in 2012, but was not the office holder at the time.

    Man previously convicted in a deadly shooting faces murder charge in Lexington

    by Christopher Leach | Friday, April 8, 2022 | 2:40 PM EDT | Updated: 3:12 PM EDT

    Kenneth Waskins, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

    The Lexington Police Department has arrested a man accused of killing 38-year-old Wesley Brown on Breckenridge Street more than a year ago.

    Kenneth Wadkins, 41, was taken into custody Friday morning, police said. He’s been charged with murder and is being held at the Fayette County Detention Center on a $500,000 bond, according to jail records.

    On Jan. 21, 2021, police found Brown with a gunshot wound in the 500 block of Breckenridge Street after responding to a call of shots fired, according to police. Brown was taken to the hospital but died of his injuries two weeks later.

    The incident was one of five fatal shootings in Lexington in January 2021. Wadkins previously faced a murder charge when he was arrested and accused of the 2010 killing of Rocardo Cole. His charge was later amended down to facilitation to manslaughter after accepting a plea deal. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Joseph Richardson, another defendant accused of killing Cole, pleaded guilty to reckless homicide. He was also sentenced to five years.

    The victim’s family said at the time they didn’t feel justice was served, but prosecutors said they had trouble finding witnesses who saw the entire altercation that led to Cole’s death. The prosecution ultimately negotiated plea deals with both men after talking to witnesses and the defense.

Also see: Applause in courtroom when Woodford County judge rejects a negotiated 10-year sentence after killer allowed to plead down.

This is what happens when a killer is treated leniently. While Mr Wadkins must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, if the charge against him is accurate, the only reason that Wesley Brown is dead is because Mr Wadkins was not in prison when he should have been, when he could have been had the Commonwealth’s Attorney been able to find sufficient witnesses to put him away for murder.

The Lexington Herald-Leader, of course, declined to publish Mr Wadkins’ mugshot. Given that Herald-Leader reporter Christopher Leach referred to viewing “jail records”, and it was from the Fayette County Detention Center’s public records that I obtained the photo, it’s obvious that Mr Leach saw the mugshot, and could have used it, were it not for the stupid McClatchy Mugshot Policy.

That policy is meant, supposedly, to protect those accused but not convicted, but Mr Wadkins was an already convicted felon. This is the kind of man who, if you see him coming toward you on the sidewalk, you should be on your guard, and cross the street if you can, but the Herald-Leader doesn’t want the people of Lexington to have that information.

Will Miss Red Corn be able to put Mr Wadkins away for murder this time? Will she even try? After all, she allowed Xavier Hardin to plead guilty to manslaughter, when his killing of Kenneth Bottoms, Jr, was caught on a security camera.

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The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer tell us just how racist they are I don't think that they ever realized what they did

As we noted on Thursday, a poll by the Pew Charitable Trust found that 70% of Philadelphians believe that public safety is the most important issue facing the city. As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, April 7th, 127 people had been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love[1]The referenced site is updated weekdays during normal business hours, so if you check it on a day after this has been posted, the number you see may be higher..

And on Friday, the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer have told us that segregation is the problem:

In a segregated city, race determines safety. That’s unacceptable. | Editorial

Segregation is at the core of so many of Philadelphia’s problems. How do we move from moral indignation to meaningful action?

by The Editorial Board | Friday, April 8, 2022 | 9:30 AM EDT

In his budget address last month, Mayor Jim Kenney listed the issues facing the city — “a global pandemic, political turmoil at the national level, and intensified violence” — and proclaimed: “We are facing those challenges together.”

That might be true in spirit, but in practice, Philadelphia is not facing all of its challenges together. That is the reality of a segregated city.

A new poll by the Pew Charitable Trusts, again, demonstrates this disparity with a statistic that is unacceptable: The percentage of Black and Hispanic Philadelphians who feel unsafe in their neighborhood is double the percentage of white Philadelphians.

With this, the Editorial Board have admitted what the Inquirer does not like to say out loud: the problems of crime, especially violent crime, are problems primarily among black and Hispanic Philadelphians. The city’s Shooting Victims statistics indicate that, for April, through April 7th, there were 39 victims in Philadelphia, 31 of whom were black, and 8 of whom were white. Of the 8 white victims, 6 are listed as Latino. White Philadelphians are relatively safe.

Following a couple of paragraphs in which the Board tell us what we already knew, that while city residents felt much safer, and that the bullets flying around the city hadn’t flown in their neighborhoods, we get to the money line:

This disparity is only possible because Philadelphians of different races don’t share the same neighborhoods — despite more than half a century of lip-service to integration as the policy of the United States.

It’s certainly true that Philadelphia is one of our most internally segregated big cities, something the Inquirer has previously reported, complete with colorful — pun most definitely intended — graphics.

But if zip code 19118 — Chestnut Hill — is 2/3 white, doesn’t that mean that it really is integrated?

Of course, Chestnut Hill is an expensive place to live. Home to Chestnut Hill College and several tony private schools — Springside Chestnut Hill Academy’s tuition rates are currently $33,250 for grades 1-4, $39,700 for grades 5-8, and $44,150 for grades 9-12 — and with a median family income of $50,554 in zip code 19138 — primarily West Oak Lane and East Germantown — there can’t be too many families there who could afford Chestnut Hill Academy.[2]Full disclosure: while working in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, I did some concrete work at Chestnut Hill Academy. It’s a beautiful place.

The Board continue on to tell us about the Kerner Commission warning us that continued segregation risked prolonging social unrest, and that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act. My mother, who was a mortgage company employee, end eventual vice president, told me about the non-discrimination restrictions under which she had to operate. Even though we lived in the Bluegrass State, my mother grew up in Maine, and segregation was something foreign to her.[3]The house she bought, in Mt Sterling, Kentucky, had a restrictive covenant on it, disallowing sale of the property to anyone who was black, but by that time restrictive covenants were legally … Continue reading

The Kerner Commission’s report was sadly prophetic. The only thing it failed to anticipate was gentrification and how white city dwellers would go on to create segregated pockets within the heart of big cities. More than half a century after the Kerner Commission and the Fair Housing Act, Philadelphia remains one of the nation’s most diverse and most segregated cities.

It seems that the Board are opposed to gentrification, but gentrification means, among other things, white people moving into and improving homes in what have frequently been heavily minority areas. These are white people who have no objections to having black neighbors. I previously noted a Lexington city task force recommendation which stated:

The Task Force was created out of concern about neighborhood change when that change includes:

  • Properties turning over at an accelerated rate;
  • Most new owners being more affluent and differing from the traditional residents in terms of race or ethnicity.

Really? The city is going to work to stop integration of neighborhoods?

The Board cannot be supporting increased integration, to fight violent crime, and be opposed to white people moving into primarily non-white areas.

What does it mean to be a segregated city in a gun violence crisis? According to the Controller’s Office’s gun violence mapping toll, the zip codes of Rittenhouse Square and Chestnut Hill, where about 70% of the population is white, haven’t experienced a fatal shooting since before 2015. Contrast that with nearly 200 fatal shootings in North Philadelphia-Strawberry Mansion, where more than 90% of the population is Black, or nearly 240 in the Kensington-Port Richmond area, with a Hispanic population of 50%.

Rittenhouse Square is a beautiful park — and a safe one. The Black and Hispanic neighbors of McPherson Square and Hunting Park deserve to feel equally safe in public spaces near their homes.

The Board illustrated their editorial with a photograph of people, all white people as far as could be discerned, enjoying a “balmy March afternoon” in Rittenhouse Square.

Segregation is at the core of so many of Philadelphia’s problems — including gun violence, which to this day almost perfectly aligns with the borders of the redlining maps created by the federal government to keep, particularly, Black home buyers out of certain areas.

How do we move from moral indignation to meaningful action? How do we deliver on the promise of fair housing such that we implement what the Kerner Commission called “the integration choice?”

The first step is to retain affordable housing options that already exist (some are being lost now in University City) and creating alternatives to predatory financial institutions for those seeking home loans (such as creating a public bank). But fundamentally, segregation will persist as long as Philadelphia continues to fail to provide basic amenities to all neighborhoods. Good schools, clean streets, open libraries and recreational centers — those shouldn’t be a privilege for the few who can afford it, but a feature of life for all Philadelphians, regardless of zip code.

Until the recent Bidenflation, conventional mortgage loans could be found, fairly easily, for under 3%. Of course, a conventional loan required 20% of the purchase price as a down payment, and that means people have to be disciplined enough to save their money for that purpose, and if someone can’t be that disciplined, can he really be trusted to make his mortgage payments? It wasn’t that long ago that we saw a major economic recession caused by the subprime mortgage crisis.

Gun violence is both a disease and a symptom. It’s crucial that our city’s goal be twofold: ensuring that all Philadelphians feel safe, and that the ranks of those who do not isn’t determined by skin color. Only when that is the case can Philadelphia truly say it is facing its challenges together.

For what are the Board asking here? They have already let us know that they don’t like gentrification, wealthier white people moving into predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods, and fixing up distressed homes; that, they claimed, led to segregated white pockets in the city. Somehow, no one seems to see the increased values in gentrifying areas lifting the net worth of the homes of black and Hispanic people living in those areas, or the value of white residents who are completely accepting of living in an integrated neighborhood. The Board seem to want more black residents in Chestnut Hill and Rittenhouse Square, but unless those residents can afford to move there, either the city, or someone, will have to provide the same subprime mortgages that caused the crash, or build ‘affordable housing’ in places which would then see other people’s property values decline due to it.

There is, of course, a not-so-subtle undertone to the Board’s editorial, the theme that white people make places safer, while blacks and Hispanics make areas more dangerous. The members would deny that, of course, but it is right there, obvious to anyone who reads what they wrote.

References

References
↑1 The referenced site is updated weekdays during normal business hours, so if you check it on a day after this has been posted, the number you see may be higher.
↑2 Full disclosure: while working in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, I did some concrete work at Chestnut Hill Academy. It’s a beautiful place.
↑3 The house she bought, in Mt Sterling, Kentucky, had a restrictive covenant on it, disallowing sale of the property to anyone who was black, but by that time restrictive covenants were legally unenforceable. It would, however, have cost legal fees to get the covenant language removed.
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The people in Philly can feel in their bones what The Philadelphia Inquirer won’t report

Another soul was sent untimely to his eternal reward in the City of Brotherly Love yesterday, but Philadelphia, which had been one ahead of its daily total for last year, fell behind by two, as four people were murdered on April 6, 2021. The numbers remain so close that no conclusions can reasonably be drawn as to whether 2022 will see more homicides than last year, but unless there is a very drastic change, 2022 will certainly exceed 2020’s 499 murders.

    70% of Philadelphians believe public safety is the most important issue facing the city, poll finds

    The number of residents who said crime, drugs, and public safety was the No. 1 issue — about 70% — has increased by 30 percentage points compared to August 2020.

    by Anna Orso | Wednesday, April 6, 2022

    More than half of Philadelphia residents do not feel safe in their neighborhoods at night, two-thirds have heard gunshots in the last year, and an overwhelming majority see public safety as the biggest issue facing the city.

    That’s according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which surveyed 1,541 Philadelphians in January on issues related to crime, policing, and the twin impacts gun violence and COVID-19 have had on residents’ outlook. It was conducted after 2021 saw record numbers of people killed or injured by gunfire.

    Among Pew’s starkest findings was that the number of residents who said crime, drugs, and public safety was the No. 1 issue — about 70% — has increased by 30 percentage points compared with August 2020, the last time Pew conducted such a survey. It’s the highest percentage any topic has received since Pew started polling more than a decade ago, said Katie Martin, senior manager of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia research and policy initiative. . . . .

    And while more than half of Black and Hispanic residents said gun violence has had a major effect on quality of life in their neighborhoods, less than 20% of white residents said the same.

There’s a lot more in the original, and while Philadelphia Inquirer articles are hidden behind a paywall, you can see a few free articles a month.

The last quoted paragraph I included reflects the city very well. Though the Inquirer has referred to Philadelphia as a “black city”, the  2020 census found that just 38.3% of the city’s population were non-Hispanic black, and Hispanics, who can be either black or white, made up 14.9%. Between non-Hispanic whites, 34.3%, Asians, 8.3%, and “other groups,” 4.3%, the city is 46.9% non-black, and it doesn’t take a terribly large percentage of the Hispanic population being white to get the city to majority non-black. The non-Hispanic white population of the city have certainly declined, but they are hardly gone. If white residents do not see crime as the most serious problem, the way black and Hispanic Philadelphians do, much of that can be attributed to the fact that, while the city’s overall population are quite “diverse” — a word I’ve come to despise — internally the city is highly segregated.

In being highly segregated, white residents can afford to see crime as a less serious problem, because crime hits white residents far less frequently. The Inquirer is very, very good at covering stories in which the victim was clearly an ‘innocent,’ a ‘somebody,’ or, most importantly, a cute little white girl. When Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student approaching graduation was murdered. Mr Collington was a white victim, allegedly by a black juvenile in a botched robbery. On December 2, 2021, the Inquirer published 14 photographs from a vigil for Mr Collington, along with another story about him. Five separate stories about the case of a murdered white guy. The newspaper even broke precedent when it came to Mr Collington’s murder by including the name of the juvenile suspect in the case, and delving into his previous record.

Oh, it’s not as though the Inquirer doesn’t publish stories about black victims, at least when it comes to black victims who are ‘innocents’. The murder of Samir Jefferson merited two stories, and four stories about the killing of 13-year-old Marcus Stokes.[1]I did note my suspicion that young Mr Stokes might not have been quite the innocent the Inquirer, and writer Anna Orso, made him out to be. A story is merited if the victim was a local high school basketball star, and cute little white girls killed get tremendous coverage: a search of the newspaper’s website for Rian Thal returned 4855 results! But for the vast majority of black victims, Inquirer coverage is a couple paragraphs, mostly in the late evening, and which have disappeared from the main page of the newspaper’s website by morning, if even that much.

Why? It’s simple: reporting about black bad guys getting killed by other black bad guys, in the words of the Sacramento Bee, “perpetuat(es) stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.” In her “apology to black Philadelphians and journalists,” publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes did not use those specific words, but the effect has been the same: no reporting of stories which might tell readers what they already know: that the vast majority of the murder victims, and their killers, in the City of Brotherly Love are black males who have been involved in the gang or criminal lifestyle.

However, despite the Inquirer’s attempt at minimizing crime in black neighborhoods, while reporting on it more diligently when the victims and perpetrators are white, because under Miss Hughes the newspaper is determinedly “anti-racist,” nobody is fooled. Part of the issue is that the newspaper’s paid circulation is pathetically low: the Philadelphia metropolitan area has roughly 6,108,000 people, meaning that the Inquirer’s circulation is paid for by a whopping 1.67% of what ought to be its service area. The circulation numbers are total, but even if all of its circulation was in the city itself, it would be paid for by just 6.35% of the population.

Pretty poor for the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper!

An Inquirer graphic shows how concerned Philly residents are. The people who are more heavily impacted by violence are more concerned, and most white residents simply are not; the gang bangers are shooting up Kensington and Strawberry Mansion, not Rittenhouse Square or Society Hill. The newspaper might not report much on killings in minority neighborhoods, but the people who live there know what happens. And while the Inquirer deliberately eschews publishing the photos of black victims and perpetrators, the television stations there are not so reticent.

Television is, after all, a heavily visual medium, and the television news broadcasts reach far more people than the Inquirer: the Inquirer itself reported that WPVI drew 287,000 viewers for it’s 6:00 PM local newscast, in February of 2018, and 163,000 for the 11:00 PM news show, while the newspaper had a circulation of 101,818 daily copies in May of 2019. WPVI, which has higher ratings than the other Philadelphia stations, is still only one of four.

Of course, local television news is free — although most people are paying for cable subscriptions — while newspapers cost money, but it would seem that a lot more people watch the local news on television than read the newspaper. There is something to be said for providing your customers what they want.

The Inquirer, under Miss Hughes and Executive Editor Gabriel Escobar, deliberately censor their coverage, to meet their “anti-racist” goals, but the truth leaks through. When the newspaper reported on the shooting of a 13-year-old boy at the intersection of 49th and Hoopes Streets, simply printing the location told Philadelphians that it was in a heavily black neighborhood, and while the newspaper didn’t report it, the victim was, in fact, black. When the paper reported on the targeted shooting death of a 15-year-old boy near Tanner Duckrey School, just printing the victim’s name, Juan Carlos Robles-Corana, told readers that the victim was Hispanic.

And so we have the report on how people feel about the issues in the city, and with the Inquirer publishing it, we can see that the propaganda the paper is trying to push has not resulted in people being misinformed. They know what is happening around them!

Also see: Republican registrations surge in Pennsylvania in warning sign for Democrats

Perhaps even more pathetically, white Philadelphians are contributing to the crime wave. Yes, the city is plurality non-Hispanic black, and yes, black voters traditionally give around 90% of their votes to Democrats, but softer-than-soft on crime District Attorney Larry Krasner was re-elected with 71.81% of the vote in November of 2021. That number has to include a whole lot of votes from the liberal white areas, from the voters who saw the impact of violence on the quality of their lives as having a minor (49%) or no (33%) impact. It’s easy to be sympathetic to liberal causes when it’s not in your back yard.

I have complained, more than once, that the Inquirer tries to hide the full truth, because the full truth does not match their editorial philosophy, but, in one very obvious sense, they really haven’t hidden the truth from the black and Hispanic populations of the city; those residents can see and hear and feel what has been happening around them. It’s actually the white residents of Chestnut Hill and Manayunk who have been deceived.

References

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Lexington prosecutor Lou Anna Red Corn lets more killers off leniently She is failing the people of Kentucky!

We noted, just last week, on April 2nd, that Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn had a history of giving accused murderers the opportunity to plead guilty to manslaughter instead, and get reduced sentences. Well, here she goes again!

    Suspects accused of killing 2 men in a Lexington gang retaliation take plea deals

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Wednesday, April 6, 2022 | 6:00 AM EDT

    John George Boulder IV, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record. Click to enlarge.

    Four men have pleaded guilty to reduced charges for their involvement in a deadly daylight shooting that Lexington prosecutors say was a gang retaliation.

    A Lexington gang planned to retaliate against two 18-year-olds because members of the group believed those two made “disparaging remarks” about a dead gang member, according to court records. Dwayne Slaughter and Darrian Webb, both 18 years old, died in the shooting on Oct. 19, 2019. All four suspects entered guilty pleas in Fayette Circuit Court Friday.

    Three of the men who pleaded guilty in the deadly shooting are among the 14 people who have been indicted in a related organized crime case, according to court records. The fourth suspect hasn’t been criminally connected to the gang but was accused by a witness of being part of the same group.

    The shooting happened on Oct. 19, 2019, at the intersection of Winchester Road and Seventh Street. De’Shaun Quantrell Armor, Sevion Mitchell and Kenneth Jakobe Jackson were in a vehicle driven by John George Boulder IV when they pulled up behind a vehicle with the two victims inside, according to court records.

    Armor, Mitchell and Jackson were all armed, according to court records. The suspects opened fire and dozens of shots rang out in the middle of the intersection, leaving Slaughter and Webb dead, according to court records. A third person in the victims’ vehicle was injured but didn’t die.

There’s much more at the linked original; the mugshots were not included in the Lexington Herald-Leader original, but looked up and added by The First Street Journal. Mr Armor’s mugshot was not available.

These are some bad dudes! The Fayette County Detention Center had not one but six mugshots of Mr Boulder, from six separate arrests, the first dated September 9, 2017, not quite four months after his 18th birthday.

Sevion Mitchell, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record. Click to enlarge.

Messrs Armor, Mitchell and Jackson were each charged with two counts of murder when they were first indicted, while Mr Boulder, who was not armed at the time of the killings, was charged with facilitating murder. Following ‘mediation’ to work out a plea deal, Mr Armor pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter as well as to charges of evidence tampering and evading police; other charges were dismissed. Prosecutors recommended that he be sentenced to seven years in prison for each manslaughter count and one year for each of his tampering and evading convictions. No recommendation was made as to whether the sentences should run consecutively or concurrently.

Mr Armor pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter, as well as one count each of tampering with evidence and evading capture. Prosecutors recommended seven years in prison for each manslaughter count and one year for each of his tampering and evading convictions.

Messrs Mitchell and Jackson, who were juveniles, 17, when the killings occurred, each pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter, with other charges against them dismissed, and the prosecution recommended that both be sentenced to seven years for each of their manslaughter convictions; again, no recommendation was made concerning whether the sentences run consecutively or concurrently. Depending upon how Fayette Circuit Judge Thomas L. Travis sets their sentences on June 15th — he does not have to accept the prosecutors’ recommended sentences –these thugs could be out of jail while still in their twenties, still in their prime crime-committing years.

According to reporter Jeremy Chisenhall’s story, the shooting in the middle of an intersection, at busy Winchester Road and Seventh Street, by a Speedway gasoline station and mini-mart, left 37 shell casings recovered by investigators; these guys were firing and endangering more than just the two 18-year-old rival gang members, but bullets could have struck innocent bystanders as well.

Kenneth Jackson, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record. Click to enlarge.

Was the evidence against these gentlemen on the shaky side? Did Miss Red Corn fear that the state might lose if it went to trial? Why ‘mediate’ lenient sentences?

Under KRS §507.020, murder is a capital offense in Kentucky. Under KRS §532.030, the punishment for a capital offense shall be:

  • 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 for not less than twenty (20) years nor more than fifty (50) years.

Miss Red Corn could have gotten these very bad guys off the streets for a long, long time. She could have gotten them locked up until they were at least middle-aged, possibly until they were elderly, or even gotten them locked up until they die. She could have done her duty to the citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky!

Instead, she followed her recent pattern, of taking the easy way out, by allowing negotiations which could have these criminals out early.

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Killadelphia A 15-year-old was killed, possibly as a result of an earlier fist fight.

A 12-year-old, the son of criminals, takes a shot at the police, and winds up dead. A 15-year-old is arrested for shooting at teenaged girls in a fleeing car, hitting two of them, and the police say that he is a suspect in two other shootings as well. A 17-year-old is accused of shooting and killing a Temple University student in a botched robbery.

Is it any wonder that Philadelphians are applying for concealed carry permits at a record-breaking pace?

    13-year-old boy shot in head in West Philly

    The victim was sitting alone in a car at 49th and Hoopes Streets when someone started shooting shortly before 8:30 p.m., police said.

    by Robert Moran | Monday, April 4, 2022 | 9:55 PM EDT

    A 13-year-old boy was hospitalized in critical condition after he was shot in the head Monday night in the Mill Creek section of West Philadelphia, police said.

    The shooting was reported shortly before 8:30 p.m. at 49th and Hoopes Street.

4931 Hoopes Street, listed for sale at $125,000, from Zillow.com.

Hoopes Street consists almost entirely of two-story row homes, in not the best or repair, and 49th in that area is no better, yet people are being charged $1,195 a month to rent these marginal residences, at least according to this listing on Zillow. A vacant lot at 4935 Hoopes Street is being listed for $50,000, while this disaster at 4931 Hoopes is being listed for $125,000.[1]Here are the other three photos of 4931 Hoopes Street, from the current Zillow listing. Those photos will eventually disappear from the listing if that dump is ever sold. No wonder people in this neighborhood have little hope; they’re being robbed just to live in dumps! Yet it was a neighborhood which got a 13-year-old boy shot in the head; what could have been worth that in that neighborhood?

    The boy, who lives in the neighborhood, was sitting alone in the front passenger seat of an Acura SUV when someone approached the car from that side and opened fire, said Capt. John Walker, commanding officer of the Shooting Investigation Group.

The police believe that the victim was personally targeted, and several shots were fired at him. As of Tuesday morning, Fox29 is reporting that the victim is still “fighting for his life,” so he is not a current homicide statistic.

What does it say that I have quite reasonably referred to a 13-year-old boy as a “statistic”?

A 15-year-old boy was shot dead in the city earlier in the day, and police said that at least 20 shots had been fired in the confrontation. Fox29 reported, that a law enforcement source said that investigators believe the shooting may have stemmed from a fist fight earlier in the day.

At some point it has to be asked: what can a 15-year-old, an eighth grader, and a 13-year-old have done to have caused their enemies to hunt them down and assassinate them in deliberate, targeted killings? One murder was possibly a revenge engagement from a fist fight? If that’s the case, then investigators will know with whom the fist fight occurred, and he’ll be caught. One kid is dead, and another will be locked up, hopefully for the rest of his miserable life, behind a fist fight?

In just the first three days of April, ten people, all of them black, were shot in the city, two fatally, and it’s nothing other than routine in the City of Brotherly Love. 125 people have been murdered in Philly as of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, April 4th, and April 4th in 2021 was the end of a weekend.

Also read: The Philadelphia Inquirer: ‘I just need to know why.’ Mother pleads for answers in the slaying of son, 15.

This is a cultural thing, an urban culture which glorifies carrying guns to the point that adolescents are doing so, exhibiting the quick, responsive, irresponsible and immature judgement of adolescents, and other adolescents are frequently the victims when these kids start firing away. But no one will ask why this is the case, no one will even acknowledge that this could be the result of an urban culture, because that will lead to the obvious point: this is a primarily black phenomenon, and to point out that is raaaaacist.

It ought to be obvious: you cannot address a problem, and certainly cannot solve a problem, if you will not admit the problem, if you cannot discuss the problem, and no one wants to do that, not with this problem. The political, intellectual, and journalistic leaders in the city would rather ignore the problem, would rather see the killing continue, than to risk being labeled racists by doing the very radical thing of just telling the truth.

We have previously noted that not only does The Philadelphia Inquirer decline to print such news itself, but has criticized other media for reporting the news the editors of the Inquirer believe should be ignored.

Of course, the people of Philly know that the problem of killings in the city is a largely black problem; just because the Inquirer specifically, and the rest of the media more generally, try to obscure that doesn’t mean that the public are unaware. When Philadelphians hear that these killings are happening in Kensington or North Philadelphia or Strawberry Mansion or around Temple University or in West Philly, they know that these are heavily black neighborhoods. The primarily law-abiding black residents in those areas have to dread what can happen on their streets, and the wealthier white liberals don’t need to care, because Chestnut Hill and Rittenhouse Square just don’t experience that violence. The truth is that black lives don’t matter, not in Philadelphia, at least they don’t matter enough to address the problems.

References

References
↑1 Here are the other three photos of 4931 Hoopes Street, from the current Zillow listing. Those photos will eventually disappear from the listing if that dump is ever sold.
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Lexington prosecutor Lou Anna Red Corn lets another killer off leniently

Lou Anna Red Corn, from her official biography page, and is a public record. Click to enlarge.

On January 10, 2022, James Edward Ragland II, 31, was sentenced to ten years in the state penitentiary for shooting and killing Iesha Edwards, 27, outside what Lexington Herald-Leader euphemistically called a “gentleman’s club.” Originally charged with murder, Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn allowed Mr Edwards to plead down to manslaughter.

On January 19, 2022, Malachi Jackson, now 20 but 16 at the time of his crime, charged with the murder of 15-year-old Kevin Olmeda, was allowed by Miss Red Corn to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter, second-degree assault, and first-degree criminal attempt to commit robbery. With a recommended sentence of 15 years by the prosecution, time already served taken into account, and the state minimum of 85% of sentence required, Mr Jackson could be out of jail by the age of 31.

On February 11, 2022, Jemel Barber, 23, was sentenced to twenty years for the killing of 40-year-old Tyrece Clark. Mr Barber was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter and second-degree robbery, down from murder, by Miss Red Corn, and if he serves his full sentence, including time already served, he could be out by age 39.

On March 11, 2022, Xavier Hardin, 21, was allowed by Miss Red Corn to plead guilty to manslaughter, assault and wanton endangerment charges in the killing of Kenneth Bottoms Jr., 17, and charges of murder were dropped. The shooting was caught on security tape in Fayette Mall.

And here she goes again!

    Lexington man gets 10 years in prison after pleading guilty in a deadly shooting

    by Christopher leach | Friday, April 1, 2022 | 10:23 AM EDT

    The man who shot and killed a 44-year-old man in March 2020 was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Friday.

    Seantel Watson, via WKYT-TV.

    Seantel Watson, 34, was originally charged with murder for shooting and killing Larry Steven Rose Jr. but was convicted of a lesser charge. Watson turned himself in one week after the deadly shooting. The charge was amended down to manslaughter when Watson accepted a guilty plea deal on Feb. 14, nearly two years after the shooting. The shooting took place on Smith Street near Transylvania University on March 6, 2020.

    A call of shots fired came in shortly after 3 p.m. and Rose was pronounced dead just over 30 minutes later.

Prosecutors recommended he be sentenced to ten years, which Judge Thomas Travis accepted. The murderer manslaughterer received credit for the slightly more than two years he has already spent behind bars. Mr Watson, 34, if released after serving the state minimum of 85% of his sentence, could get out when he’s just 40 years old. His victim will still be dead.

I have to ask: at what point does the Commonwealth’s Attorney start prosecuting murderers for murder? At what point does Miss Red Corn stop treating killers leniently?

Oh, wait, I already know: Miss Red Corn will prosecute Bemjamin William Call to the full extent of the law, because he is accused of beating John Abner Tyler to death in a Lexington parking garage. The Herald-Leader ran four separate, sympathetic stories about the victim. Mr Abner was not another black male with a shady past, or a black dancer at a strip club, but a white man ‘married’ to another white man.

In Lexington, the sentence for killing someone depends on whom was killed.

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A public service homicide It shouldn't be any surprise the Philly has become like the Wild, Wild West, when the sheriff has apparently left town

The initial reports were that the store owner shot and killed a would-be robber in the City of Brotherly Love. After the initial, confused reports, things were clarified:

    Armed robbery suspect shot, killed by customer in North Philadelphia store, police say

    Fox 29 News | Wednesday, March 30, 2022 | 1:42 PM EDT | Updated 5:41 PM EDT

    Crime scene. Photo via Steve Keeley, Foxn29 News.

    PHILADELPHIA – Authorities say a suspected armed robber was shot and killed by a customer at a North Philadelphia corner store Wednesday afternoon.

    Officers from the Philadelphia Police Department were called to the 1400 block of Master Street around noon for reports of a shooting.

    A police source told FOX 29’s Jennifer Joyce that two young men wearing masks entered the store and approached a man in his 23-year-old man waiting for a food order. One of the robbers hit the man in the head with the gun and a struggle began.

    The robber handed the gun to his accomplice at which point law enforcement sources said the customer shot the armed robber twice in the abdomen. The customer is licensed to carry a firearm, according to police sources.

    The suspect was taken to Temple University Hospital by responding officers but later succumbed to his injuries. The second robber fled the store after the shooting and has not been captured.

    Law enforcement sources say the customer was released and is unlikely to be charged. The entire incident was captured on store surveillance that has already been turned over to investigators.

When I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page on Thursday morning, I found the number of killings unchanged since the previous day, which means that the Department did not consider the killing of this thug to be a crime. Some of us might even consider it a public service.

I had figured that, being a day later, even The Philadelphia Inquirer ought to have something on this story, but, unless I completely missed it, there was no story on it on either the newspaper’s website main page or specific crime page.

The bodega in which the shooting occurred is on the corner of Master and 15th Streets, close to Temple University, and it isn’t a slum. Rather, 15th Street is lined with fairly new construction three-and-four-story residences, with the look of having been constructed to house Temple students.

We noted, just a couple of weeks ago, that applications for concealed carry permits in Philadelphia had surged, and the reasons are clear: the city is not protecting citizens from the gang-bangers and the criminal class, and the public increasingly feel the need to protect themselves. When the District Attorney, a George Soros stooge, won’t prosecute crimes, won’t put the bad guys behind bars, what real choice do Philadelphians have?