Tag Archives: #Crime

Posted on by

Philadelphians are fighting back!

On Thursday morning, we noted Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw’s tweet about what Philadelphians should do if someone attempts to steal their car. Well, on Thursday night, a brave man acted against the Commissioner’s advice. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

    Man, 60, shoots suspected carjacker, 16, in West Mount Airy

    Philadelphia has experienced a dramatic surge in carjackings with 757 in 2021 compared to 404 in 2020.

    by Robert Moran | Friday, January 14, 2022

    Intersection of Sharpnack and Cherokee Streets, from Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

    A 60-year-old man shot and wounded an armed teen during a carjacking Thursday night in the city’s West Mount Airy section, police said.

    The incident occurred around 7:45 p.m. at Sharpnack and Cherokee Streets, where the 16-year-old boy attempted to take the man’s white Pontiac at gunpoint, police said.

    A gun battle ensued and the suspect was shot once in each leg and grazed in the chest. The teen was later apprehended in the area of Germantown Avenue and Slocum Street and taken to Einstein Medical Center, where he was listed in critical condition.

    At the crime scene, police found two firearms — one belonging to the driver on the hood of the Pontiac and the other on the ground in front of the car, as well as 13 spent shell casings.

Fortunately, the teenaged punk was a lousy shot; the car owner was not injured. Also fortunately, the owner had a license to carry a concealed firearm. And the Inquirer story also tells us why Commissioner Outlaw made her ‘don’t resist’ tweet: Philadelphians have been fighting back!

I had not seen those stories previously, and it’s not a surprise: the last three links were not to Inquirer stories, but to stories from the local television stations. Why, it’s almost as though the Inquirer doesn’t want people to know about carjacking victims fighting back. And the Police Commissioner certainly doesn’t want fighting back encouraged.

But law-abiding Philadelphians, people who go through the channels and have obtained permits to carry firearms, are fighting back, because the city and its law enforcement agencies, the Police Department and the District Attorney’s office, have not been fighting against crime very successfully. Commissioner Outlaw wrote:

    Last year, there were 757 reported carjackings in Philadelphia, an increase of 34% over 2020. Out of those 757 reported carjackings, police arrested 150 individuals, clearing 93 investigations through those arrests.

93 ÷ 757 = 0.1228533685601057. The Commissioner has just told people that the Philadelphia Police Department cleared by arrest a whopping 12.29% of carjackings in the city. How many of those 150 people arrested were actually convicted of anything under the George Soros funded District Attorney, Larry Krasner, was not told to us.

Crudely put, if you want to jack a car in the city, you have nine chances out of ten of getting away with it.

The City of Brotherly Love is one of the oldest in America. Founded in 1682 by William Penn, to be the capital of Pennsylvania Colony, if any city in America ought to be civilized, it should be Philly. Instead, it has become Dodge City, because under decades of Democratic rule, under a District Attorney more interested in exonerating criminals and going after police officers, and a Police Commissioner brought up in the soft-on-crime cities of Oakland, California and Portland, Oregon, the city is fighting for “social justice” rather than actual justice.

Posted on by

Black lives don’t really matter in Lexington

James Edward Ragland, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, public record.

Meet James Edward Ragland II, 31, from Detroit, Michigan. Mr Ragland was in Lexington, Kentucky, in Jaunary of 2019, at what Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Linda Blackford euphemistically called a “gentlemen’s club” — quotation marks in the original — when, in what the Lexington Police referred to as a “large disorder”, “a fight between several men and women broke out inside the club and moved outside the building just before the shooting.” In that melee, Mr Ragland shot and killed Iesha Edwards.

Mr Ragland fled the scene, but was arrested a month later in Detroit.

    On Jan. 31, Gaige Phillips, 29, was arrested in Detroit by U.S. Marshals on a charge of criminal facilitation to commit murder in the case, according to Lexington police. Phillips is accused of helping Ragland escape after the shooting.

Iesha Edwards, from her Facebook page. Click to enlarge.

Returned to Lexington, Mr Ragland faced a long list of charges, including murder, being a persistent felony offender, and two wanton endangerment, first degree, charges. But, because black lives really don’t matter, Mr Ragland was allowed to plead down! Fayette County Judge Julie Goodman sentenced Mr Ragland to ten years in prison after he accepted a plea bargain deal:

    Ragland had previously been charged with murder in the case but accepted a plea deal, reducing his charges and his sentence. He also pleaded guilty to two counts of wanton endangerment and one count of assault. He was sentenced to five years for each wanton endangerment charge, but Goodman decided to run those sentences at the same time as his manslaughter sentence.

    His fourth-degree assault conviction carried a sentence of 30 days, but because Ragland already had more than 2.5 years of custody credit while waiting for his case to be resolved, he won’t have to serve any additional time for that charge.

Mr Ragland was transferred to the Bluegrass State from Michigan, and booked into the Fayette County Detention Center on May 22, 2019. That means that he has been locked up in Kentucky for 964 days. With a sentence of 3652 days — 10 years, assuming two leap years — and 964 days already served, Mr Ragland has 2,688 days remaining on his sentence, if he’s not credited for three months in Michigan. That would put him completing his sentence on May 22, 2029, just a hair over seven years from now . . . . when Miss Edwards will still be stone-cold graveyard dead.

Supporting domestic violence survivor at the 2021 DV vigil. Photo from Commonwealth’s Attorney website. Click to enlarge.

So, I have to ask: did the Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney, Lou Ann Red Corn, believe that the evidence against Mr Ragland was shaky enough that he might be acquitted if he went to trial? Or did the life of Miss Edwards, the mother of two, just not matter all that much? Did Judge Goodman have no choice, via the plea deal, but to allow Mr Ragland’s multiple sentences to run concurrently, or did she have the option to have them run consecutively?

Miss Red Corn’s website has a couple of photos streaming through, one of them about domestic violence survivors, and another about helping victims, dominated by smiling white women, but, when the victim, when a murder victim, is a black woman killed outside a “gentlemen’s club,”[1]The natural assumption is that Miss Edwards was an employee of the Fox Club, and a stripper, but I have been unable to locate any confirmation of that, and do not take that assumption myself. well, we haven’t really been given enough information as to why Mr Ragland was offered a sweetheart plea deal which gets him out of jail while he’s still in his thirties, but the optics here aren’t very good.

Let’s face it: I’m a white man, one who has been very unimpressed with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. To me, much of it has been used as a way to excuse crime! But when I look at the attitude of the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Lexington Herald-Leader, and at the prosecutors in Philadelphia and Fayette County, and examine what they actually do, rather than what they say, my conclusion is that #BlackLivesMatter is, to them, nothing more than lip service.

We know one thing: while there is a possibility that Miss Red Corn’s evidence was weaker than that in which she felt confident, in the end, Iesha Edwards’ black life didn’t matter very much.

References

References
↑1 The natural assumption is that Miss Edwards was an employee of the Fox Club, and a stripper, but I have been unable to locate any confirmation of that, and do not take that assumption myself.
Posted on by

I missed one Two murders in Lexington in the first week of the year

On Saturday, I reported on Lexington’s first homicide of the year. The mistake I made was that it wasn’t the first!

    Lexington police investigating city’s first homicide of 2022, coroner confirms identity

    by Christopher Leach | Tuesday, January 4, 2022 | 7:23 AM EST | Updated: 1:49 PM EST

    Lexington police are investigating its first homicide of 2022 after a shooting near Deep Springs Elementary School left one person dead, according to police.

    Police said they responded to the area of Anniston Drive at 8:51 p.m. Monday. A 24-year-old male was found shot inside his residence.

    The Lexington Fire Department responded and advised the victim had died, per police. The Fayette County Coroner confirmed the victim’s identity as D’Andre Green.

There are a couple more paragraphs, but they basically say that the police have released no other information about the crime or suspects, and give contact information for the police for anyone who has information for them.

In an update to yesterday’s story, the Fayette County Coroner identified the victim in Friday’s homicide as Kobby Lee Martin, a 26-year-old man living in Lexington.

In a surprise to absolutely no one, the Lexington Police have not kept their homicide investigations page up to date, and neither killing has been listed. But the 2021 homicide investigation page shows that the first two murders in the city occurred on January 9th and January 21st, so 2022 has seen two killings earlier in the year than the first one in Lexington’s record-setting 2021.

Out of last year’s 37 homicides, the investigations page lists 13 as having been solved. That’s 35.14%.

Only nine days into the New Year, with ‘just’ two homicides, there is not enough information on which to justify any conclusions, but I will point out here that January of last year saw six murders, although one victim lingered on until early February and another late February before he expired.

Posted on by

Happy New Year! Lexington picks up where the city left off last year!

On December 30, 2021, Lexington recorded its 37th murder of the year, as 14-year-old Larry Perez-Morales was gunned down on Betsy Lane near the Lexington Cemetery. The 37 killings set a new annual record, topping the old number of 34 in 2020, which was, itself, a then-new record, topping the old record of 30 in 2019.

With 37 homicides in 365 days, Lexington was seeing one killing every ten days.

    Shooting victim found in Lexington street dies at scene Friday night

    by Karla Ward | Saturday, January 8, 2022 | 12:25 AM EST

    Lexington police were investigating after a person with a gunshot wound died after being found lying in the street Friday night.

    Police and the Lexington Fire Department were dispatched to a report of a person down on the 1700 block of Cantrill Drive, off Eastland Parkway, at 9:09 p.m., said Lexington police Lt. Brian Martin.

    When they arrived, (they) found the victim, who was suffering from a gunshot wound, in the street.

    The person, whose identity has not been released, was pronounced dead at the scene, Martin said. He said the shooting happened within “a short time frame” of when police were called.

The city’s first murder of 2021 was on January 9th, so a killing on January 7th of this year is pretty much right on schedule.

Friday was bitterly cold in the area, and temperatures Friday night in the city were around 10º and 15º Fahrenheit. Following Thursday’s 9.9 inches of snow,[1]My younger daughter measured 6½ inches on the backyard table, and claims that is the Official Snow Measurement Station for Lexington. the streets and sidewalks had snow and ice on them, but such did not keep the victim, and his killer, off the streets.

We have to realize something: we treat crime as an event, but it really isn’t. Rather, crime is a culture, one we measure, grossly, through events. Whether it’s Philadelphia, and its 562 homicides last year, or Chicago and the 797 murders there in 2021, or much smaller Lexington, and its 37, crime exists because the culture which accepts it and enables it exists.

References

References
↑1 My younger daughter measured 6½ inches on the backyard table, and claims that is the Official Snow Measurement Station for Lexington.
Posted on by

Dear Helen Ubiñas: if you want to see the reason why, look to your own newspaper

I have previously noted Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas, several times, based primarily on column from December of 2020, “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.” She wrote:

    The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

    By the end of 2020, that number more than doubled: 447 people gunned down.

    Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

    At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

      “A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

    That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

That was thirteen months ago. What brings it to my attention again? Her column on Friday, and its subtitle:

    For two mothers touched by gun violence: ‘Pray, pray, and pray some more.’

    Numbers tend to attract attention around here; the people behind them, not always so much.

    by Helen Ubiñas | Friday, January 7, 2022

    At 12:55 p.m., on the eve of the new year, a 17-year-old died from a gunshot wound he suffered a day earlier.

    He was the 562nd person to be killed in Philadelphia in 2021.

    And, as it would turn out, the last homicide victim of the year.

    His name was Nasheem Choice, and three days later, on Jan. 3, he would have celebrated his 18th birthday.

There’s much more at the original, a good column which you should read.

But it’s that subtitle, noting that “around here” it’s the numbers which get attention, not the individuals who were killed. What do I see in the Inquirer, a newspaper which publisher Elizabeth Hughes vowed to make “an antiracist news organization”? I see that the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s five separate stories, a whole lot more than the two or three paragraphs most victims get.

Then there was the murder of Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student approaching graduation. Mr Collington was a white victim, allegedly murdered by a black juvenile in a botched robbery. The Inquirer then 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 Inquirer 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.

Compared to the coverage the Inquirer gives concerning black victims, that’s some real white privilege there!

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.

Did the newspaper’s editors think that no one would notice this? Or is it that the editors have so internalized their own biases that they didn’t realize it themselves?

I’ve said it dozens of times: black lives don’t matter to the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer, regardless of what they say, because their actions, their editorial decisions, speak far more loudly, and clearly, than their words.

Can Miss Ubiñas change that? Can she bring it to the editors’ attention? I have tried, but I’m just a nobody, and the editors seem to need a Somebody to point out what the readership can clearly see.

References

Posted on by

Will James White come back to life in 8½ years?

Even in a conservative state like Kentucky, we have some soft-on-crime prosecutors!

    ‘Remorseful about what happened.’ Lexington man facing murder charge takes plea deal

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Thursday, January 6, 2022 | 10:04 AM EST

    Dontate Burruss, photo by Fayette County Detention Center.

    A Lexington man has accepted a plea deal in a 2020 deadly shooting which will see him serve 10 years behind bars.

    Dontate Lamont Burruss, 48, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after previously being charged with the murder of James White outside the Motel 6 on Newtown Court in June 2020. Burruss was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison without the possibility of probation.

    “Mr. Burruss has been from the very beginning, day one, remorseful about what happened,” Burruss’ attorney, Bonnie Potter, said in court Thursday. “ … He has accepted responsibility.”

There’s more at the original, though the photo of this convicted killer was not part of it.

Mr Burruss had been locked up for 527 days since his arrest on August 28, 2020. With credit for time already served, Mr Burruss will be back out on the streets in a shade more than 8½ years, just before his 56th birthday.

According to the Fayette County Detention Center records, Mr Burruss was charged with first degree manslaughter, first degree robbery, and a probation violation, which means he had been convicted in the past. The jail record on Mr Burruss shows six previous mugshots, dated January 10, 2020, August 21, 2019, January 4, 2019, November 9, 2017, February 8, 2017, and July 7, 2015. This is not a guy who simply made a very bad mistake; this is a man who has been a career criminal! Yet Fayette Circuit Judge Thomas L. Travis requested ‘mediation’ in this case due to ‘complex issues.’

What’s ‘complex’ about it? He shot a man, and the man died! Yet this career criminal is going to see daylight, as a free man, sometime around July 29, 2029, while James White will still be stone-cold graveyard dead. Mr Burruss made a self-defense claim at some point, but his self-defense occurred as he was robbing his victim. That’s murder during the commission of a felony!

There is no reason to have any confidence that someone with Mr Burruss’ record will ever be not a criminal upon his release; why would anyone, Judge Travis included, want to give him a lenient sentence?

Posted on by

Has the Lexington Herald-Leader abandoned the McClatchy Mugshot Policy?

We have noted, dozens of times, how the Lexington Herald-Leader, in going along with the McClatchy mugshot policy, has declined to print mugshots of accused defendants, even when those defendants are already convicted felons, and even when the subjects are accused of murder and are still on the loose.

But now, the Herald-Leader is doing the community a service, with an accused murderer on the loose. Can you spot the difference?

Kenneth Strange, photo via Nicholasville Police Department. Click to enlarge.

Police: Central KY murder suspect on the run, ‘considered armed and dangerous’

by Jeremy Chisenhall | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 | 4:48 PM EST | Updated: Thursday, January 6, 2022 | 7:58 AM EST

Nicholasville police were looking for a local man who they believe killed a woman, the police department announced Wednesday.

Kenneth Strange, 54, was wanted for the alleged murder of a woman who was found shot dead at Strange’s residence on Lauren Drive in Nicholasville in the early-morning hours Wednesday, police said. Police have obtained warrants for Strange’s arrest, they said.

“Strange is currently on the run and should be considered armed and dangerous,” Nicholasville police said in a Facebook post. “We are currently working with several jurisdictions across the commonwealth in an attempt to locate him. If anyone knows where Strange might be please contact your local law enforcement agency.”

There’s more here.

Can you think of anything, anything at all, which makes publishing Mr Strange’s photo different from say, that of Jo’Quon Anthony Edwards Jackson, or Juanyah J Clay?

Posted on by

How new District Attorney Alvin Bragg will reduce crime in Manhattan

In January of 2023, The New York Times will publish a major article noting how crime has dropped in Manhattan under new District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Manhattan DA to stop seeking prison sentences in slew of criminal cases

By Larry Celona, Tamar Lapin, Tina Moore, Reuven Fenton and Bruce Golding | January 4, 2022 | 11:32 AM EST

Who needs soft-on-crime judges when the district attorney doesn’t even want to lock up the bad guys?

Manhattan’s new DA has ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for hordes of criminals and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies and drug dealing, according to a set of progressive policies made public Tuesday.

In his first memo to staff on Monday, Alvin Bragg said his office “will not seek a carceral sentence” except with homicides and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence felonies, some sex crimes and public corruption.

“This rule may be excepted only in extraordinary circumstances based on a holistic analysis of the facts, criminal history, victim’s input (particularly in cases of violence or trauma), and any other information available,” the memo reads.

Assistant district attorneys must also now keep in mind the “impacts of incarceration,” including whether it really does increase public safety, potential future barriers to convicts involving housing and employment, the financial cost of prison and the racial disparities over who gets time, Bragg instructed.

In cases where prosecutors do seek to put a convict behind bars, the request can be for no more than 20 years for a determinate sentence, meaning one that can’t be reviewed or changed by a parole board.

There’s more at the original.

The cited article is from not The New York Times, our nation’s newspaper of record, not the one with All the News That’s Fit to Print proudly emblazoned on its masthead, but the New York Post. Site searches of the Times website failed to turn up any stories on this. New York magazine, the Gothamist, amny and Fox News covered it, but it simply wasn’t news that the Times saw as fit to print, at least not if their site search engine works. Fox noted:

In a stunning reversal of traditional law enforcement procedures, Bragg sent a memo stressing “diversion and alternatives to incarceration,” in pursuing prosecutions … by not sending criminals to jail. The no-jail time exceptions are murder, a crime that involves someone’s death, or a felony. And several serious crimes, like armed robbery, are being reduced to misdemeanors, which could mean dangerous thugs will end up back on the streets without seeing the inside of a jail cell.

And even if you murder someone, Bragg says his office will limit sentences to 20 years. He is refusing to seek the state-mandated “life without parole” for murderers, which would include terrorists, cop killers and even serial killers.

It’s easy to see what will happen: people who are victims of crime will be far less likely to report those crimes, because Mr Bragg has just told everyone that he’s not going to prosecute crimes seriously. After all, why bother, if you know that your assailant will end up right back on the street, with zero punishment, and just might be in a position to seek retribution for reporting the crime in the first place?

Philadelphia voted in a “social justice”, George Soros-supported prosecutor in Larry Krasner, and the result has been 499 homicides in 2020, just one short of the record set in 1990, during the crack cocaine wars, and then blew past that with 562 killings in 2021. Mr Krasner claims that crime is down, overall, statistically speaking, but the probability is that fewer crimes that actually occur are being reported. After all, why bother?

So, Mr Bragg, like Mr Krasner, will report that his policies have reduced crime in Manhattan, when, in reality, they will have reduced the reporting of crime. That’ll make the numbers look better, but for the victims, perhaps not so much.

Posted on by

Morbid math

The flood waters are finally starting to drop. The crest was 30.15 feet, which did not bring it close to our house, so we’re fine, if still stranded; the only road out is still underwater.

The highest water ever recorded, the 41.00 feet (guesstimated, since the river gauge failed), got into the crawlspace of our home last March, and into the garage, but did not get into our house itself.

As of 9:10 AM EST, the Philadelphia Police Department has not updated its Current Crime Statistics page; the image to the left, on which you can click to enlarge, is a screen capture. Since the page is supposed to be updated “during normal business hours, Monday through Friday,” I have to wonder what has happened. Perhaps the responsible person is taking his New Year’s Day holiday today?

The homicide number for 2021 is still stuck on 559, even though The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that “at least 560 people in Philadelphia were murdered, a bigger tally than in more heavily populated cities including New York and Los Angeles”. If the homicide total is 560, using Philly’s 2020 census figure of 1,603,797, the homicide rate works out to 34.92 per 100,000 population, and a couple more increase it only marginally.

The Philadelphia Shooting Victims Dashboard, which claims to be accurate through the end of the year, stated that there had been 2,327 recorded shootings in the City of Brotherly Love, 486 of which were fatal, and 1,841 in which the victim survived. That means that the gang bangers are pretty poor shots, given that only 20.89% of attempted murders by gunfire were successful, but that’s an ‘improvement’ on the 18.44% success rate in 2020.[1]414 homicides by shooting, out of 2,245 total shootings. Yeah, I know: my math is kind of morbid sometimes.

We have previously reported that KSDK, Channel 5, the NBC affiliate station in St Louis, crowed about the Gateway City having reduced its homicide numbers back to “pre-pandemic levels.”

Experts said the 2020 spike in violence was driven largely by the pandemic and high tensions following civil unrest. More lock downs, people losing jobs and strained relationships between communities and law enforcement all led to more murders University of Missouri – St. Louis Criminology Professor Richard Rosenfeld said.

Yet, if it was the COVID-19 pandemic — and I hate the word pandemic — and the killing of George Floyd, then why did shootings increase in Philadelphia by 3.65%, and total homicides by 12.22%?

We noted that the homicide numbers in Philly had increased by 15.61% since it became apparent that Joe Biden had defeated President Trump in the election. Why, it’s almost as though the evil reich wing Mr Trump had nothing to do with the homicide rates!

Philadelphia is still plagued by the same government, of Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, District Attorney Larry Krasner, a George Soros-funded stooge more interested in slapping down the police than prosecuting criminals, and the appropriately-named Police Commissioner, Danielle Outlaw, a bureaucrat appointee of Mr Kenney’s, who couldn’t lead a two-car parade. Philadelphia’s last Republican mayor left office on January 7, 1952, when Harry Truman was President, and George VI was still King of England. It has been three generations since Philly was led by a Republican!

George Floyd died a year and a half ago, and Donald Trump left the White House 348 days ago. The city leadership surrendered to the mob, and the coronavirus panic and shutdowns did not slow down the rate of violent crime in the city.

That was almost two years ago, and since then we’ve had vaccines, no cost vaccines, against the virus, and many — certainly not all in Philly — of the pandemic restrictions lifted, yet the rate of killing in Philly has only increased. At some point, maybe even leftists ought to be asking why the policies of an unbroken for generations Democratic leadership in Philadelphia haven’t worked.
————————–
Updated: 11:55 AM EST

It looks like someone has been trying to update the Current Crime Statistics page, but just isn’t very good at it. It now shows 562 homicides for 2021, which puts the homicide rate above 35, at 35.04 per 100,000 population.

References

References
↑1 414 homicides by shooting, out of 2,245 total shootings.