Tag Archives: #Crime

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So, who failed here? It seems that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson isn't the only one being soft on child porn sentences

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Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record of sentencing child pornography case offenders to below the minimum in federal sentencing guidelines looks like something that even Joe Biden wouldn’t have been stupid enough to ignore before nominating her to the Supreme Court, if he knew about it, so the obvious question becomes: who in the Administration failed to discover this during the vetting process?

That, at least, was what I thought when I first heard about this pattern of sentencing. Then I read this article, and it isn’t pretty:

Fact check: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson child porn sentences ‘pretty mainstream’

Monday, March 21, 2022 | 9:02 PM EDT

Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson open this week amid a flurry of misleading allegations by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley that the nominee has a “long record” of letting child porn offenders “off the hook” during sentencing.

“In every single child porn case for which we can find records, Judge Jackson deviated from the federal sentencing guidelines in favor of child porn offenders,” Hawley tweeted Thursday, highlighting nine cases from her time as a federal District Court judge.

How, I have to ask, are Senator Hawley’s “allegations” that Judge Jackson “has a ‘long record’ of letting child porn offenders ‘off the hook’ during sentencing” “misleading”? Did she, or didn’t she impose more lenient sentences on convicted child porn offenders?

While court records show that Jackson did impose lighter sentences than federal guidelines suggested, Hawley’s insinuation neglects critical context, including the fact that the senator himself has voted to confirm at least three federal judges who also engaged in the same practice.

Oh, so she did do what the distinguished gentleman from Missouri said that she did.

Federal appeals court Judges Joseph Bianco of the Second Circuit and Andrew Brasher of the Eleventh Circuit, both Trump appointees, had each previously sentenced defendants convicted of possessing child pornography to prison terms well below federal guidelines at the time they were confirmed with Hawley’s support, an ABC review of court records found.

Asked about the votes Monday by ABC News, Sen. Hawley made clear he has never supported a high court nominee with a similar record in child porn sentencing cases. “Not for this court I haven’t, not for the U.S. Supreme Court,” Hawley told ABC’s Rachel Scott when asked whether his criticism of Judge Jackson presented a double standard.

Hawley said he would not consider a below-guidelines child porn sentence “acceptable” from a nominee and suggested that he was not aware of the times Judges Bianco and Brasher and a third judge, Carl Nichols of the D.C. District Court, had rendered such judgments.

Apparently ‘what aboutism’ is the defense being used to support Judge Jackson on this. If Senator Hawley knew about such in the record of previous nominees for whom he voted, then shame on him, but it is obvious that nominees for lower courts don’t receive the same type of delving into their records that Supreme Court nominees do.

Skipping down a few paragraphs, we come to this:

“If and when we properly contextualize Judge Jackson’s sentencing record in federal child porn cases, it looks pretty mainstream,” wrote Doug Berman, a leading expert on sentencing law and policy at The Ohio State University School of Law.

“Federal judges nationwide typically sentence below the [child porn] guideline in roughly 2 out of 3 cases,” Berman noted on his blog, and “when deciding to go below the [child porn] guideline, typically impose sentences around 54 months below the calculated guideline minimum.”

Professor Berman continued to note that below-range sentences are frequently requested by prosecutors, including some on the cases before Judge Jackson, and that many judges determine that the guidelines are “unduly harsh,” especially when it comes to “first-time offenders.”

And that is the problem!

Let me be clear here: child pornography offenders, whether first-time or otherwise, are sick bastards who need to be locked up for as long as the law allows. Forget the purely advisory sentencing guidelines, just throw them in jail, and hide the key for as long as it can be hidden. Under 18 USC §2252A, a person who is convicted of knowingly possessing child pornography can be sentenced up to 10 years in prison or up to 20 years in prison if the minor depicted in the image is under the age of twelve. A person who is convicted of distributing or receiving child pornography faces a 5 to 20 year prison sentence, and prior convictions can lead to longer sentences.

Ten years, twenty years, is not too harsh a sentence for these offenses; such sentences are, in fact, too lenient. Judges should have multiple count conviction sentences run consecutively, not concurrently.

Of course, read the wording here: when prosecutors recommend specific sentences, it almost always means that this is part of a plea bargain arrangement. In child pornography cases, either the defendant was caught to the child porn, or he wasn’t. Witnesses aren’t required, save for procedural and chain-of-custody, simply the evidence. If the evidence is solid, have the defendant either plead to the maximum, or go to trial. We have previously noted how, locally, Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn has allowed lenient plea bargain arrangements even in murder cases, and while that’s too small a sample, the truth is that it happens everywhere in this country.

Prosecutors love plea bargains! Guaranteed convictions make them look good, and reduce the amount of work they have to do, but we need to hold prosecutors, judges, and probation and parole officials accountable, accountable for the proper punishment of criminals and for the safety of the public.

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A Philadelphia crook is laying on a slab in the morgue Updated! Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

As we noted yesterday, Philadelphians have been applying for concealed carry permits in droves, due to the city being unable to protect them from the bad guys. Now, another Philadelphian has protected his property:

    West Philadelphia resident fatally shoots trespasser who tried breaking into car

    A West Philadelphia resident on Wednesday night shot and killed a trespasser who had thrown a brick through the resident’s car

    by Rodrigo Torrejón | St Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2022 | 7:49 AM EDT

    A West Philadelphia resident on Wednesday night shot and killed a trespasser who had thrown a brick through the resident’s car, according to reports.

    Shortly after 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, police responded to a call of gunshots on the 4400 block of Fairmount Avenue, 6ABC reported. When officers arrived, they found a 23-year-old man lying on the 700 block of 44th Street, with multiple gunshot wounds.

    The man, whose name was not released, was taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead soon after.

    Police said that the 23-year-old had scaled a fence and trespassed onto the Fairmount Avenue property, into an enclosed rear yard and threw a brick into the driver side window of a Alfa Romeo SUV, 6ABC reported. After hearing the noise, the 49-year-old homeowner, whose name was also not released, came out to confront the man and shot at least three times.

The legal punishment for vandalism is not death; the legal punishment for stealing a car is not death. But sometimes the legal punishment for stupidity is death! When you break into someone’s property — and climbing a fence into someone’s “enclosed rear yard” definitely constitutes breaking into someone’s property — bad things can happen to you. As Robert Stacy McCain would put it, ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes.’

From 6ABC News:

    Before receiving word of gunshots, (Chief Inspector Scott) Small said police got several calls about a man wearing a mask trespassing on the rear or properties in the area and one call about a man breaking into a vehicle.

    “We believe these calls are related to the shooting,” Small said.

And the money line:

    The 23-year-old is known by police and his last known address is two blocks from where he was shot, Small said.

“Is known by police,” huh? That’s the euphemism for “he was a frequent crook we’ve arrested several times.”

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Crazy people are dangerous.

This leads to the obvious question: why wasn’t the 23-year-old frequent flyer already behind bars? Did the police not have enough evidence to get him convicted of something in their previous encounters with him? Did the cops let the guy go with just a warning a couple of times? Did Larry Krasner, who has been Philadelphia’s District Attorney since the deceased was 19 years old, decline to prosecute, or offer the criminal lenient plea bargains which kept him from being locked up for a long sentence, or kept him out of jail completely? There’s some obvious speculation here, but one thing is certain: Philadelphia’s criminal justice system did this guy no favors! Had he been behind bars last night, he wouldn’t have been happy, but he’d at least have been able to look forward to getting out of jail sometime, and getting on with his life.

Instead, he’s lying on a slab in the morgue right now.

I’ve said it before: former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani showed us the way. When he was in charge, New York City strictly enforced the law against the entry-level crooks, giving them an early look at the inside of the penitentiary, giving them early incentive to straighten up and fly right before they got themselves into really serious trouble. It didn’t always work: some of them continued with a life of crime after every stint behind bars, but at least while they were locked up, they weren’t out on the streets preying on innocent civilians.

Well, this guy won’t be breaking into people’s back yards, won’t be smashing car windows, and won’t be stealing laptops or whatever else was left in those cars. Instead, he’ll be pushing up daisies somewhere. This is what “social justice” and “racial justice” law enforcement gets us: criminals out on the streets, and some criminals in early graves.

Updated: Friday, March 18, 2022:

The Inquirer story has been updated to note that the deceased is named Nijer James-Murphy, and that the unnamed homeowner is a good guy:

    While the District Attorney’s Office will determine if the shooting is a justifiable homicide, preliminarily, it appears the homeowner acted in self-defense, (Philadelphia Homicide Capt. Jason) Smith said.

    “He has a valid permit, his gun is registered to him, he has no priors, he called the police, he turned the gun over, and he is cooperating. He’s done all the things that a good, outstanding citizen should do,” he said.

Well, that settles it: Mr Krasner, sponsored by George Soros, and thoroughly eaten up with ‘social justice’ and ‘racial justice’ and a hatred for the police, would seem likely to want to charge the homeowner with something. After all, the deceased is listed as a black male in the city’s shooting victims database. The question is: where would the District Attorney find twelve honest citizens, twelve people in the city without criminal records, to serve on a jury which would convict a man defending his property in his enclosed backyard from a thug like Mr James-Murphy?

Let’s face it: the city ought to throw the homeowner a parade!

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Shockingly enough, Philly is seeing a huge surge in license-to-carry applications That's kind of what happens when law enforcement doesn't actually enforce the law

As of 11:59 PM EDT on the Ides of March, Philadelphia had seen 103 homicides, one more than on the same day in murder record-shattering 2021. That’s actually an improvement; the city was nine murders ahead of last year as recently as March 7th. All of which makes this article from Philadelphia magazine a surprise to absolutely no one:

License-to-Carry Applications Have Skyrocketed In Philly — Even More Than You’d Think

“When I saw how high the numbers were, I had to call our stats department to make sure they were right,” a Philadelphia Police Department representative told us.

by Victor Fiorillo | Wednesday, March 16, 2022 | 8:00 AM EDT

It didn’t surprise me a bit to learn that license-to-carry applications in Philadelphia have risen over the past year. First, you have the constant reports of shootings, carjackings and other violent crimes in the city. Second, the Philadelphia Police Department made it dramatically easier to apply for a license to carry, starting in January 2021. But I wasn’t exactly ready for just how big this increase has been. And neither was the Philadelphia Police Department, it seems.

“When I saw how high the numbers were, I had to call our stats department to make sure they were right,” police department spokesperson Jasmine Reilly told me after I requested the data.

From 2017 through 2020, the number of license-to-carry applications in Philadelphia held about steady, ranging between 11,049 and 11,814 applications each year. But in 2021, 70,789 people applied for licenses to carry guns.

In other words, license-to-carry applications more than sextupled last year. And in January of this year, the number of applications continued its upward trajectory. (The Pennsylvania State Police publish an annual report showing the number of licenses issued in the counties surrounding Philadelphia as well as in the rest of the state, but a spokesperson for PSP says that data isn’t yet available for 2021.)

There’s a lot more at the original.

The rate of increase of applications for concealed carry permits might have surprised some, but that they have increased dramatically can’t stun anyone. Since Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat — and the last Republican Mayor of Philadelphia left office when Harry Truman was still President — took office in January of 2016, killings in the city have risen from 277 to 315 to 353 to 356 to 499 to last years 562; the number of annual homicides has more than doubled since Mr Kenney took office. The George Soros-sponsored District Attorney Larry Krasner, also a Democrat, took office in 2018, and the homicide rate jumped 59.21% in his four years.

In March alone, while ‘only’ 19 people have been murdered, 73 people have been shot in the city; the gang-bangers are really kind of lousy shots. But while the wounded but not killed can take some solace that they are still alive, that’s only so much comfort.

The cited article goes through some of the steps required to obtain a concealed carry permit, and then we get to this:

Of course, just because you’re denied doesn’t mean you’re not carrying, and carrying without a license is generally a first-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to five years in prison. But that charge can be upgraded to a felony depending on the circumstances.

“I have a pistol on me at all times,” one local resident who says he was denied a carry license told me. “You’ve got to be crazy not to, the way things are going.”

The leadership of the city continually complain that the state legislature isn’t doing enough in the way of passing gun control legislation, or allowing the city to pass its own, stricter ordinances, but that really doesn’t matter: District Attorney Krasner doesn’t really enforce the gun control legislation that is on the books:

The urgency of Philadelphia’s crisis of fatal and non-fatal shootings will not be met by looking away from shootings. As noted above, City Council has led a valuable “100 Shooter Review,” a title that makes clear what we already know: that shootings are the primary issue. Our efforts must be focused on preventing shootings and holding people who commit shootings accountable, and we should not accept arrests for gun possession as a substitute.[1]100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30 of the document, page 32 of the .pdf file.

This is very much in line with Mr Krasner’s statement:

This office believes that reform is necessary to focus on the most serious and most violent crime, so that people can be properly held accountable for doing things that are violent, that are vicious, and that tear apart society. We cannot continue to waste resources and time on things that matter less than the truly terrible crisis that we are facing.

Really? Perhaps, just perhaps, if law enforcement, from the police through the prosecutor, would treat the crimes that “matter less” than homicide seriously, people like the cretin who gunned down Hyram Hill would have been behind bars Monday morning, not out robbing someone, and not putting nine bullets into an apparently innocent victim.

It was then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-New York) who showed everyone the way. Under his Administration, and (mostly under that of his successor, Michael Bloomberg, New York went after the small-time criminals, using the theory that if you prosecuted and punished the ‘entry-level’ bad guys, maybe they’d get scared enough seeing the inside of the penitentiary early that they’d straighten out. Murder, after all, isn’t normally an entry-level crime. Even if it doesn’t set them on a better path, criminals in jail aren’t out on the streets, committing other crimes.

Since Mr Krasner, the social justice and racial justice warrior that he is, does not like putting away criminals, is it any wonder that the citizens of Philadelphia think that they are on their own, that they have to protect themselves, because the city will not?

Pennsylvania law says you can be denied a license to carry if you’re judged to be an “individual whose character and reputation is such that the individual would be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety.” There’s a lot of subjectivity in there, and an appeals process does exist for those who are denied.

The gun-carrying resident I spoke with didn’t bother appealing. He has a history of minor drug violations, a DUI, and various summary and misdemeanor offenses and says he’s more concerned about his personal safety than whether the police say he’s allowed to carry a gun.

“It’s not like they are going to protect me,” he argues.

Of course, the gang-bangers out there shooting people don’t bother with getting concealed carry permits. It’s shocking, I know, but it seems that criminals don’t obey the law!

There’s a lot more at the original, and unlike the Philadelphia Inquirer articles I frequently cite, this one isn’t behind a paywall; it’s worth a read.

References

References
↑1 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30 of the document, page 32 of the .pdf file.
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Big Brother is watching you!

Fortunately, what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal, which refuses to publish mugshots of criminal suspects, even when those suspects are previously convicted felons, did publish a photo of what these license plate readers look like. This will enable the bad guys to spot them and then destroy them.

    Lexington to get cameras that read, track license plates. Here’s how they will be used

    by Beth Musgrave | Tuesday, March 15, 2022 | 5:00 PM EDT

    Web capture of photo from the Lexington Herald-Leader. Click to enlarge.

    There will soon be additional video cameras on Lexington streets.

    The city recently partnered with Flock Safety and the National Police Foundation for a one-year pilot study using 25 fixed cameras that automatically read license plates in areas experiencing high crime.

    The cameras are expected to be installed sometime in April. It’s not clear where those cameras will be located.

Normally, I avoid photos from the Herald-Leader, but this one is germane to the article; this is the photo used by the newspaper to show everybody what these devices look like, and I include it as documentary evidence that the paper did publish the photo of what the license plate readers look like. Don’t think that the bad guys won’t spot them. Personally, I hope that the bad guys do spot them, and destroy every last one of them.

Further down:

    Lowe said the cameras will take six or seven images of a vehicle. The license plate will automatically be checked if it is on various lists including Amber alerts for kidnapped children, stolen vehicles or vehicles associated with a violent offenses. If the reader finds a vehicle on that list, law enforcement will be notified.

    Sometimes police also get information from witnesses about cars or trucks leaving a scene. Police can use the cameras to try to find that vehicle, he said.

Lexington Assistant Police Chief Eric Lowe stated that he did not believe that the data gathered could be used for such things as people trying to get access to the data through an Open Records Act request to track someone such as an ex-spouse, but, of course, he doesn’t actually know that, since it hasn’t been tested in a Kentucky court. Nor can he know, now, what changes will be made in the future as far as use of the data gathered will be.

We can’t know, in advance, just what changes will be made to the allowable use of the data, but we know from long experience that whenever the government adds a citizen surveillance method, the uses for it continually expand.

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I had no idea that Larry Krasner was Lou Anna Red Corn’s mentor!

It is a story reminiscent of something I’d find in The Philadelphia Inquirer: a lenient prosecutor letting a killer off easy.

    Xavier Hardin, mugshot from Fayette County Detention Center, dated June 15, 2021, and is a public record.

    Lexington man who committed deadly Fayette Mall shooting reaches plea deal. Here’s why

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Friday, March 11, 2022 | 12:19 PM EST | Updated: 1:06 PM EST

    The man who shot and killed a 17 year old inside Fayette Mall in 2020 has reached an agreement with prosecutors to accept a conviction for manslaughter instead of murder, according to court records.

    Xavier Hardin, 21, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, assault and wanton endangerment charges in the killing of Kenneth Bottoms Jr., after reaching a plea agreement earlier this week, according to court records. Hardin, who was 19 at the time of the incident, also injured two bystanders when he fired shots inside the mall on Aug. 23, 2020.

    Fayette Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn said Hardin’s plea agreement was reached through mediation and Bottoms’ family was in agreement with the plea deal. The plea agreement accounted “for the facts of the case,” Red Corn said, which included that “both the defendant and Kenneth were carrying handguns that day at the mall.”

    “There were video recordings of their encounter, and the defendant raised a claim of self-protection,” Red Corn said. “Regardless of the defendant’s claim, he injured innocent persons and put others in harm’s way when (he) started shooting. This is another tragic example of why teens should not be carrying guns in the first place.”

There’s more at the original here.

Messrs Hardin and Bottoms had a long-standing dislike for each other, a “beef” as Lexington Herald-Leader reporter put it. In Fayette Mall, Mr Harin is shown on surveillance video looking over his shoulders, as though worried he was being followed. Eventually Mr Bottoms and three men with him confronted Mr Hardin, and an argument ensued. One of Mr Bottoms’ friends tried to pull him away from the confrontation, but failed.

    One witness testified to police that Bottoms spit on Hardin during the argument, according to court records. Another noted hearing expletives. Another said they heard Hardin ask, “You don’t think I’ll pull it out?”

    As the argument intensified, bystanders started to flee, according to the video. Hardin then pulled a gun out of his waistband and fired.

In other words, Mr Hardin was not defending himself from a deadly assault, but pulled out his weapon and fired. Though Mr Bottoms was also armed, there’s nothing in the story to indicate that Mr Bottoms pulled out his gun.

According to the Fayette County Detention Center, Mr Hardin’s charges are:

  • KRS §507.030: Manslaughter, First Degree, a Class B felony with a sentence of no less than ten years and no more than twenty.
  • KRS §508.060: Wanton Endangerment, First Degree: Class D felony, with a sentence of one to five years in prison
  • KRS §508.020: Assault, Second Degree, Class C felony, penalty at least five years to a maximum of ten years in prison
  • KRS §508.030: Assault, Fourth Degree, Class A Misdemeanor, penalty imprisonment for up to 12 months.
    Hardin is scheduled to be sentenced in May. He faces a maximum of 23 years in prison if his sentences are run consecutively, based on the sentencing recommendations made by prosecutors in the plea agreement. Prosecutors didn’t make a recommendation on whether or not Hardin’s sentences should run consecutively or at the same time.

    If a judge decides to run all his sentences at the same time, he would have to serve at least eight and a half years, based on the prosecutors’ recommendations. He’s required by to serve at least 85 percent of the sentence given to him for his manslaughter conviction because it is a violent offense.

Of course, since Mr Hardin has been locked up since at least May 15, 2021, he has already served 301 days. The jail records are not clear; he was also arrested on August 24, 2020, the day after the murder, and if he was locked up since then, that would be an additional 200 days. He could serve as little as 7 years and 8 months, if locked up since May 15, 2021, or 7 years and one month if he has credit since August 24, 2020. Mr Hardin, who is 21 years old, could get out of prison when he’s still in his twenties!

Had Miss Red Corn not accepted a plea bargain arrangement, had charged him with murder, taken it to trial and gotten him convicted, he could be locked up for the rest of his miserable life, which would protect the citizens of Fayette County. The most we can expect, if the judge decides to run the sentences consecutively, is that he’d get out of jail at age 44, a prison-hardened criminal, and while Mr Bottoms is still stone-cold graveyard dead.

Miss Red Corn has a history of giving killers lenient plea bargains. That’s great for murderers; it’s not so great for the citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

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Killadelphia! Perhaps some introspection on just the numbers. 100 people killed in the City of Brotherly Love.

It was in no way unexpected that the City of Brotherly Love would see its 100th homicide of the year this week; the only question was on which day that would happen. For a numbers geek like me, it has led to some introspection, but first, the report from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Philadelphia reaches 100 homicides for 2022, outpacing last year

More people have been killed in Philadelphia so far this year than by this time last year, which ended with a record 562 homicides.

by Robert Moran | Friday, March 11, 2022 | 7:00 PM EST

Philadelphia has topped 100 homicides so far in 2022, outpacing the number of killings this time last year, which ended as the deadliest in the city’s recorded history.

The 100th victim was a 28-year-old man who was shot multiple times shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday on the 100 block of North 53rd Street in West Philadelphia. The man was rushed by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 12:32 a.m. Friday.

As of Friday evening, the city had not yet named the victim. Fox 29 reported that his family had identified him as Bryheem Barr.

The reporter, Robert Moran, followed the Inquirer’s practice of deleting the victim’s race from the story, even though the Philadelphia Police Department provide it. Of course, the tweet Mr Moran embedded in the story told readers that Mr Barr was black. I wonder if, by disclosing that kind of information, whether Mr Moran will get in trouble!

By March 10 last year, Philadelphia had 92 homicides. The city had a total of 562 homicides in 2021, breaking the previous record of 500 killings reported in 1990.

For comparison, New York City had 488 homicides for all of last year. As of last weekend, the city reported 67 killings so far in 2022.

Chicago this week also reached 100 homicides for the year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Mr Moran might have made a better comparison had he noted the populations of New York and Chicago, compared to Philly. The Big Apple had 8,804,190 residents, while the Windy City had a population of 2,746,388; the City of Brotherly Love had 1,603,797 souls in the 2020 census. Chicago is 71 percent larger than Philly, with the same number of killings, while New York City is 5¼ times Philly’s size, and has a third fewer total killings.

There had been ‘only’ 96 homicides on March 11, 2021, a jump from 92 the previous day, which means that Philly’s 100th murder is ‘only’ a 4.17% increase over last year; had the homicide been counted on Thursday, when Mr Barr was shot, it would have been an 8.70% increase.

How does this work out? There are different ways to do the statistics, the simplest being the number of homicides divided by the number of days in the year, 70, to come up with a homicide pace of 1.4286 per day, multiplied by 365, projecting to 521.42 homicides for the year. A more complicated way is to take the number of homicides on the 70th day of the year in 2021, and find that 17.08% of 2021 homicides had occurred by March 11, 2021, and, using that number, project that 2022 will see 585.48 killings.

Bryheem Barr, from Kelly Rule, Fox29. Click to enlarge.

I started this article Friday evening, but, as I was running the numbers through my head, I realized that I was doing what others have done: I had reduced Bryheem Barr to a number. Fox29 had a story on him:

‘He didn’t deserve this’: Man slain in Philadelphia’s 100th homicide was “hardworking” father, fiancé

Published March 11, 2022 | 6:30 PM EST

PHILADELPHIA – Authorities believe a Philadelphia father and soon-to-be husband was shot and killed during an attempted robbery Thursday night to become the city’s 100th homicide so far this year.

Family members say 28-year-old Bryheem Barr was walking to his car to go to work just before 11 p.m. near the intersection of North 53rd and Arch streets when the deadly shooting happened.

According to police, Barr was found shot multiple times and driven to Penn Presbyterian Hospital by officers where he died.

A police source told FOX 29’s Kelly Rule that they believe the deadly shooting happened during a robbery and the shooter took Barr’s legally-owned firearm.

One thing we know: if Mr Barr had a “legally-owned firearm,” he was not a convicted felon, and he had gone through the hassle of getting a permit in Philadelphia. This was not a case of one gang banger offing another, the way so many murders in the city happen.

Another is that he was going to work, obviously night shift somewhere.

Barr was a father of three and was soon to be married. His family said he was studying to become a nurse.

“Hardworking, bothers nobody, will give you the shirt off his back will do anything for his family, he wouldn’t hurt a soul,” Lorriane Barr, Bryheem’s aunt said.

There’s a bit more at the original, and that bit more is more than the Inquirer had on its website.

What did the Inquirer have? Yet another story on Thomas Siderio, Jr, the 12-year-old punk kid to took a shot at the Philadelphia Police, and paid the ultimate price for it. Even as sympathetic to young Mt Siderio as the Inquirer could be, the story couldn’t help but disclose that:

  • In 2021, police “were searching a house where he was living after receiving a tip that he’d pulled a gun during a large fight at Second and Porter Streets in South Philadelphia. They found clothes matching a photo taken at the scene, but no gun.”
  • “In recent Instagram posts, TJ could be seen in a ski mask, and there are several references to guns and drug use.”
  • “’He had a tendency to follow the wrong kind of kids,’ said Terry Elnicki-Varela, who works in special education and started helping TJ at school three years ago. ‘He was no angel. Far from it.’”
  • Young Mr Siderio had been failed by both parents. His father who is currently in prison, and “previously spent at least a year in prison in Philadelphia” on a prior conviction, while his mother, Desirae Frame, also has a criminal record, with two drug cases and other arrests for theft, forgery, contempt of court, and receiving stolen property. The son is noted, in the article, as primarily living with a grandmother, but also living with a great-aunt.

Yes, he had a rough life, and little chance of improving it, but he was still a punk.

Mr Barr? If the Inquirer is working on a story to humanize the victim of the city’s milestone homicide, at least as of 8:49 this morning, it hasn’t been published. Instead, the paper is trying their best to excoriate the Philadelphia Police Department, something which can only lead to more killings in the city.

Mr Barr, at least as far as we know — there’s always a risk in taking just the family’s word for things — was a working man, and a law-abiding Philadelphian. For the Inquirer, his story isn’t an important one, save that he hit a certain number in the liquidation lottery. No, the paper would rather spend time and money trying to make a martyr out of a young punk.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer tries to make a 12-year-old punk who shot at police some kind of martyr.

Thomas J Siderio Jr

I have previously noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t like reporting on the not good guys who get gunned down in the City of Brotherly Love, but when an ‘innocent,’ a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl gets killed, the paper is full of stories. I noted when the Inquirer and reporter Anna Orso tried to make an innocent victim out of young Marcus Stokes. In her story on the impact that the murder of Marcus Stokes had on E Washington Rhodes School, Miss Orso wrote, very specifically, that young Mr Stokes “was fatally shot in North Philadelphia on his way to school“, but the evidence, as printed in the Inquirer, indicates that he was not actually on his way to school. He was sitting, with five other young people, in a parked, and possibly disabled, car, many blocks away, fifteen minutes after he was supposed to be in his homeroom at school.

Miss Orso knew those facts; she is listed as either the sole or one of two authors in each of the articles I have cited. Did no one, including she, ever ask themselves any questions about why these young people, “including other Rhodes students“, were sitting in that car, ask themselves what they were doing there?

Miss Orso isn’t a stupid woman. She was graduated from Pennsylvania State University, a highly selective college, that doesn’t accept dummies. She isn’t inexperienced, having worked in journalism for seven years now, including four with the Inquirer.

Now, the Inquirer is trying the same thing with Thomas Siderio, Jr, the 12-year-old shot by the police after Mr Siderio opened fire on them:

    South Philly community mourns TJ Siderio, 12-year-old fatally shot by Philadelphia police officer

    Friends and family mourned mourned TJ this week, holding each other up as the waves of grief often took them off their feet.

    by Rodrigo Torrejón | Thursday, March 10, 2022

    Some would call him Tommy. Others Tom Dog. But most in Thomas Siderio’s tight-knit constellation of friends and family just knew him as TJ.

    A name was important, Pastor Mandell Gross said Thursday morning at Lighthouse Baptist Church in South Philadelphia. It was important during TJ’s short life. And it was important as dozens of TJ’s loved ones gathered at his funeral to say their final goodbyes.

    One by one, Gross asked the young people there, TJ’s friends, to say their names. Though he lamented the reason the community had gathered, Gross told the young people there to mourn the loss that they must try to come together in brighter days too. In TJ’s name.

At that point, the paper included a photo of Mr Siderio, one obviously taken several years earlier.

Four plainclothes officers were in the area, due to the high crime rate in the neighborhood. When they spotted Mr Siderio, who was visibly armed, they illuminated their unmarked car, the boy then shot at the officers, and took off running. One officer was injured in both eyes from flying glass, one remained in the vehicle with him, and two others got out to pursue the perp.

    A lawyer for TJ’s father previously disputed the accusation that the child fired the gun, calling it “egregious speculation” that has not been confirmed by evidence. Video and audio recordings analyzed by The Inquirer show that the gun that police say TJ tossed after shooting into the police car was found five doors down — or roughly 60 feet — from where he was fatally shot.

Sixty feet equals twenty yards, a distance a physically fit 12-year-old boy, who was already at a dead run, could cover in two seconds, but the Inquirer does not mention that.

The sappy article concluded:

    Next to his casket was a sign with a final, loving message from his parents, Thomas Siderio and Desirae Frame.

The elder Mr Siderio, inmate number NS5455, is behind bars at the State Correctional Institute Coal Township, three years into a sentence with at least two more years to serve on gun charges stemming from a murder in 2017. He has prior convictions for resisting arrest, assault, and the attempted theft of a motorcycle. He wasn’t there to have kept his son from running with a bad crowd and carrying a weapon, but, then again, as a convicted felon, he might not have been the best role model.

    “Rest In Peace TJ my son. Love Daddy and Mommy always and forever.”

    After the short sermon finished Thursday morning, the pallbearers gathered to carry TJ to his final resting place at Fernwood Cemetery. Most of the pallbearers were young, just a few years older than TJ.

    They were the friends that became TJ’s family on the streets of South Philadelphia. And with TJ’s face on their chests, the friends gathered for one last picture together, holding the young boy’s memory in their hearts.

An alleged but unconfirmed photo of Thomas Siderio Jr.

Give me a break! Young Mr Siderio was armed, with a stolen laser-sight equipped 9mm Taurus semiautomatic handgun, and he responded to the police lights by raising the weapon and firing it at the cops. This is not the sweet little angel the Inquirer has tried to make him out to be!

What was 12-year-old Mr Siderio doing out on the street, armed and ready to kill? Where was his mother, that she allowed him to have a stolen firearm, that she allowed him to go out into the streets armed? The newspaper’s Editorial Board has already opined that the killing of a young, gun-toting punk who opened fire on police young Mr Siderio should “should make every Philadelphian outraged,” blaming the city for not having safer and saner recreational outlets for boys like Mr Siderio, and blaming the state government for not passing virtue-signaling gun control laws that infringe on the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens but do absolutely nothing to stop criminals, blaming everybody but his father, who provided such a poor role model, and his mother, who didn’t supervise her son, and the boy himself, who knew he was breaking the law, and who took a shot at the police.

Let me be plain about this: had young Mr Siderio gotten away, he’d still be out on the streets, still be carrying a firearm, and still be a menace to every law-abiding citizen in the city. In just two days, March 8th and 9th, 13 people were shot in the city, and three of them died, all of them black males, but the Inquirer didn’t care enough about any of them to have a single story on any of them. I guess there wasn’t anything there out of which the newspaper could portray the victims as somehow innocents or heroic.

Young Mr Siderio is no hero, and he is no martyr. He was a young punk who thought he was a big, tough man, and had he escaped, would almost certainly amassed a long and violent criminal record. It is unfortunate that the manner of his death will cost a good police officer his job, and possible criminal charges, but the odds are high that Philadelphia is better off with Mr Siderio having gone to his eternal reward.

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The cause of death was stupidity

No, not that the victim was stupid — though he might have been — but that the man who (allegedly) killed him was stupid.

We noted, Saturday afternoon, Lexington’s sixth homicide of the year. Lexington Herald-Leader reporter updated her story at 4:02 PM on Monday, giving us more details:

    Juan Carlos Linares, Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record., Click to enlarge.

    An arrest citation says a verbal altercation with Linares and two other people led to a physical altercation with Linares’ family and two others. At the end of the fight, Linares shot one of the victims, who was laying defenseless on the ground, according to court records.

    Court records also say Humberto Saucedo-Salgado, who resides in Phoenix, Az., caused physical injuries to one of the victims with his hands and feet. That victim was taken to the emergency room and intubated due to his injuries.

You can read more here.

In other words, Juan Carlos Linares had won his fight, had beaten the still unidentified victim into defenselessness, and then decided, heck, why not, might as well just shoot the guy, right? That’s just plain stupidity.

The other two members of his ‘side’ of the fight, Oziel and Humberto Saucedo-Salgado, were charged with first degree assault, and released on $10,000 bail each. Mr Linares bond has been set at $750,000, and he’s still locked up. Even so, bail can be denied in Kentucky for persons charged with offenses for which capital punishment is possible.

Mr Linares’s record at the Fayette County Detention Center indicates that the only charge against him, as of 5:10, when I accessed the information, is murder, though it’s obvious the first-degree assault could be added.

Under KRS §508.010, Assault in the first degree is a Class B felony, punishable by no less than ten years and up to twenty years in the state penitentiary, along with a $1,000 to $10,000 fine. Under KRS §507.020, murder is a capital offense, though the penalty can be less than death. Under KRS §532.030, the penalty can be death, life without the possibility of parole, life with the possibility of parole after a minimum of 25 years in prison, or a twenty to fifty year sentence.

Mr Linares act of stupidity, (allegedly) murdering an already beaten foe, could, and should, have him locked behind bars for the rest of his miserable life. If he had just stopped with the beatdown, he’d have been looking at getting out of prison when he was 43 years old, at worst, certainly a long time behind bars. Now, he’s looking at spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Unless, of course, Fayette County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Ann Red Corn decides to let him plead down to a lesser offense, as she has done so many times recently. Such would not surprise me in the slightest.

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Killadelphia 2021 set a new record for killings in Philadelphia; 2022 is well ahead of last year's pace.

I had already known that this was a bloody weekend in the City of Brotherly Love, thanks to this tweet from former United States Attorney and Republican Gubernatorial candidate Bill McSwain:

I replied:

    Of course, the @PhillyInquirer, the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and supposedly the region’s newspaper of record, will ignore most of this.

I was only partially right, as the Philadelphia Inquirer did have one story on the killing:

    Three killed in West Oak Lane shooting

    Police responded to reports of gunfire at the intersection of Cedar Park Avenue and Haines Street on Saturday night.

    by Jenn Ladd | Sunday, March 6, 2022

    Three men were killed in a shooting in the city’s West Oak Lane section late Saturday, police said.

I normally quote the first four paragraphs of a story, but had I done so this time, I would have quoted the entire story. Three lives taken, two men in their twenties, and a third in his thirties, all shot multiple times, all dead at the scene, none named, and their lives, and deaths, reduced to four paragraphs in the Inquirer.

Though the Philadelphia Police Department specified that all three victims were black males, the Inquirer’s story only told us that the victims were male. I would say that I wonder why that is, but I really don’t.

That was just three of the killings. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is normally updated only Monday through Friday, during normal business hours, so I was surprised to find, on Saturday morning, that it had been updated, to indicate 88 homicides as of 11:59 PM on Friday, March 4th, up one from the previous day. It was not updated on Sunday, but this morning showed the seven more, 95 lives cut short by bullets or blades, on the 65th day of the year. On the same date in 2021, ‘only’ 86 people had been murdered, and ‘just’ 67 in 2020.

To put that in perspective, 2020 saw 499 homicides, which was, at the time, the second highest total ever, topped only by the 500 homicides in 1990, in the midst of the crack cocaine wars. 2021 blew those records out of the water, hitting 500 murders on the day before Thanksgiving, and finishing the year with a staggering 562.

And 2022 is now 9 killings ahead of last year’s bloody pace. What a fine job Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw have done!

As a bit of a numbers geek, I did the math, and if the current rate of increase over 2021 is maintained over the rest of the year, Philadelphia is on track for 622 homicides this year! Donald Trump has been out of office for well over a year, COVID-19 restrictions are almost gone, the economy is doing well enough that workers are in demand, all of the excuses that the left used to blame the homicide rate on anything other than bad people doing bad things are gone.