Tag Archives: #Crime

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Murder in Lexington

We have expended considerable bandwidth reporting on the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love, which has seen 408 homicides in 272 days, an even 1.500 homicides per say, for a projected total for the year, assuming the current rate remains constant, of 548 souls sent untimely to their eternal rewards.

But what about Lexington, Kentucky, the closest large city to me, and where I lived from 1971 through 1984. According to the Lexington Police Department, there have been 28 murders in the city thus far in 2021, 28 in nine months of the year. If the rate continues, the city would be projected to see 37 homicides for the entire year. Compared to Philadelphia’s current 408, that doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider that 2019 set a city record with 30, which was then topped by 34 killings in 2020, it’s a lot.

Of course, like so many other places, the bad guys are lousy shots. All 28 homicides so far were committed by firearms, which makes the relationship with the city’s reported shootings a tight one. Thus far, the police have reported 101 non-fatal shootings. Looks like the bad guys manage to actually kill their intended targets 21.71% of the time![1]With the last reported shooting being on September 19th, the LPD is a bit behind on keeping the data up to date. The Herald-Leader reported a shooting as having occurred “just be fore … Continue reading

The Lexington Police Department keeps statistics strangely. The shootings data include the race of the victims while the homicide chart does not. Of the 101 shootings reported as of September 19th, 77 of the victims were black, 16 were white, and 8 were listed as Hispanic. According to the 2020 Census, the city’s population was 323,152, and was 74.9% white, 14.6% black, 7.2% Hispanic and 3.8% bi- or multi-racial; the white, black and multi-racial percentages include Hispanics, and while the figures note that 71.0% are non-Hispanic white, the figures do not report the non-Hispanic black percentage.

So, with black Lexingtonians being 14.6% of the population, why have they been the victims in 76.24% of the shootings? And why does the city not show the information on how many murder victims were black? I suspect that it is, in the words of the Sacramento Bee, such would be “perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.”

Sadly, the Lexington Police Department hasn’t been doing too well in solving the homicides. In only 11 of the 28 killings has a suspect been identified. That’s a clearance rate of 39.29%. They did better in 2020, with arrests in 28 out of 34 murders, one of which only resulted in arrests this week.

Lexington’s homicide rate in 2020 was 10.52 per 100,000 population, which doesn’t in any way compare to Philadelphia’s but it’s still way too high. With a guesstimated 2021 population of 324,604, if the city does see that projected 37 homicides, it would mean that the homicide ticked up to 11.40 per 100,000. That’s not a good thing.

References

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↑1 With the last reported shooting being on September 19th, the LPD is a bit behind on keeping the data up to date. The Herald-Leader reported a shooting as having occurred “just be fore midnight” on Tuesday, September 21st.
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The Lexington Herald-Leader on mugshots again!

As we noted previously, the Lexington Herald-Leader does not like publishing mugshots of accused criminals. Nevertheless, they did print the picture of Randolph Morris, a former University of Kentucky basketball player, in the story reporting that he had just been acquitted of three counts of wire fraud and eight counts of making false statements in his income tax returns.

Now, there’s this:

    Two charged with murder in 2020 killing of Lexington teenager

    By Christopher Leach | September 28, 2021 | 11:19 AM EDT

    Tayte Patton, Fayette County Detention Center.

    Two suspects have been charged with murder in the 2020 killing of teenager Mykel Waide, court documents show.

    Tayte Patton, 22, and Antonio Turner, 19, were both booked into the Fayette County jail as of Monday evening and charged with murder, according to the jail’s website. Both are being held with a $750,000 bond.

    According to court records, Waide was shot and killed after an altercation at the Residence Inn on Newtown Court in August 2020. During the investigation, a witness spoke to police and said they observed Patton and Turner shooting into the crowd of people out of the back of a vehicle.

Antonio Turner, Fayette County Detention Center.

There’s a little more at the original. While what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal does not print mugshots, The First Street Journal does. They are public records, freely available through the jail website. The reporter, Christopher Leach, noted that he accessed the jail’s website, and opened the booking records there, so he had their mugshots available. That, after all, is where I got them!

This was not Mr Patton’s first time at the Fayette County Detention Center; his ‘page’ included a previous mugshot, from November 11, 2020.

The paper did not have much information on the death of Mr Waide. The internally referenced story stated that officers were called to the Newtown Pike area at about 1:30 AM on Sunday, August 16, 2020, on a report of a large disorder with shots fired. Mr Waide died at the scene, while three others were wounded with non-life threatening injuries. A subsequent story on uncooperative witnesses mentioned Mr Waide’s killing, but offered no further details on why he was shot.

Messrs Patton and Turner were fingered by a witness, information which the Lexington Police Department corroborated with other evidence prior to their arrests. Mr Leach’s report, however, that “The witness account matched evidence compiled by the police, such as surveillance tapes and electronic evidence in reference to Patton and Turner, according to court records,” is just terribly written. “(S)uch as” is not an accurate description of anything; was the evidence compiled “surveillance tapes and electronic evidence,” or was it something else?

The Herald-Leader needs to do better. I get it: the McClatchy Mugshot Policy is opposed to printing the photos of those accused of crimes, but not yet convicted, but the paper thought nothing of splashing Mr Morris’ photos all over its website[1]I am a digital only subscriber to the Herald-Leader, in part because they don’t deliver the dead trees edition out in the sticks where I live! when he was accused of crimes, and even in the story in which it was noted that he was acquitted of the charges.

References

References
↑1 I am a digital only subscriber to the Herald-Leader, in part because they don’t deliver the dead trees edition out in the sticks where I live!
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The Lexington Herald-Leader and photos of accused criminals They withhold mugshots of convicted felons, but publish those of men acquitted of crimes.

We have previously reported on the Lexington Herald-Leader and its adherence to the McClatchy Mugshot Policy of not publishing photos of criminals booked, because it might harm them unfairly at some future point if they are acquitted. Thus, there were no mugshots accompanying this article:

    Officer saw two cars shooting at each other near Versailles Road. Pursuit ends in arrests.

    By Christopher Leach | September 27, 2021 | 11:56 AM EDT

    William Rutherford, Fayette County Detention Center, September 27, 2021, 2:17:09 AM

    Two adult males, one of which is an 18-year-old, are behind bars after allegedly getting into a shootout with another vehicle near Versailles Road and Alexandria Drive, police say.

    William Rutherford, 18, and Bryan Anicasio-Miranda, 20, were occupants of one of the vehicles involved according to police. They have both been charged with possession of a stolen firearm and possession of marijuana, per jail records.

    Police also said there were three juveniles in Rutherford’s vehicle that have been charged as well.

    According to police, an officer witnessed two cars that appeared to be shooting at one another near Versailles Road and Alexandria Drive late Sunday night. The officer was able to get behind Rutherford’s vehicle but Rutherford fled, according to the arrest citation.

    Lexington police Sgt. Daniel Burnett was unsure how long the ensuing pursuit lasted but said it ended with Rutherford pulling over. Court documents show that the officer recovered a stolen firearm, 35 grams of marijuana and beer inside Rutherford’s vehicle.

    Along with the stolen firearm and marijuana charges, Rutherford has also been charged with first degree fleeing or evading police, possession of an open alcohol beverage container in a motor vehicle and having no operator’s license and registration plates, per jail records.

There’s more at the original. The article did not, of course, include young Mr Rutherford’s mugshot, to which the reporter, Christopher Leach,[1]Chris Leach is a breaking news reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He joined the newspaper in September 2021 after previously working with the Anderson News and the Cats Pause. Chris graduated … Continue reading had access, given that he noted that he checked Fayette County Detention Center records. Interestingly, the jail website had two mugshots of Mr Rutherford, a previous one dated April 6, 2021. Looks like he might not be the nicest guy around.

Bryan Anicasio-Miranda, Fayette County Detention Center, September 27, 2021, 3:08:22 AM.

That, of course, is second to Mr Anicasio-Miranda, who had three mugshots, one each in June and August of 2020 as well as the current one. One of his charges is possession of firearm by a convicted felon, so he’s definitely a bad guy. What my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal didn’t publish his mugshot either, despite him being a previously convicted felon.

However, despite the McClatchy Mugshot Policy stating that “The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever,” the paper has been willing to publish the photo of a former University of Kentucky basketball player in a story noting that he was just acquitted of the charges against him:

    Federal jury acquits former Kentucky basketball star of tax crime charges

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | Updated: September 24, 2021 | 2:26 PM

    A federal jury on Thursday acquitted former University of Kentucky and NBA basketball player Randolph Morris of several tax crimes.

    Morris was charged with three counts of wire fraud and eight counts of making false statements after he failed to report millions of dollars of foreign income while he played professional basketball in China from 2010 to 2017. Morris didn’t deny that he left the income off his taxes, but a jury ultimately ruled he didn’t intentionally defraud the United States.

    “This is a huge relief for his family,” said Whitney True Lawson, one of Morris’ attorneys. “We’re happy with this outcome. We think it was the right outcome.”

    Morris said he left the income off his taxes because he didn’t understand his tax responsibilities. The team Morris played for at the time, the Beijing Ducks, had a provision in Morris’ contract that stated his income was “net of tax.” The team was responsible for paying taxes on Morris’ behalf to the Chinese government, according to the contract.

    But the team was not paying taxes to the U.S. government.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Morris, being a former UK player, has had his photo in the Herald-Leader dozens, if not hundreds, of times. UK basketball is wildly popular in the Bluegrass State, and, let’s be honest about things, the only reason for some people to pay for subscriptions to the paper. But the very reason that the McClatchy policy stated for not having mugshots published, a person charged with a crime but not convicted, would absolutely apply to Mr Morris.

The Herald-Leader also had a story about charges being dropped against six UK football players, and if the paper didn’t print their photos, the article linked to all of the players individual biography pages, which did have photos. The article noting that a grand jury had declined to indict the players included a description of the events which led up to prosecutors wanting to file charges in the first place, to taint the players’ reputations. Kind of a far cry from the policy designed to protect the reputations of those accused of crimes but not convicted.

Of course, the story of a federal trial over “three counts of wire fraud and eight counts of making false statements” would probably not have made the paper at all were the accused not a UK basketball player or some other person of local note. The paper has very limited resources, and limited staffing as well.

The Herald-Leader is wracked with hypocrisy when following the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, but I’ve grown to expect nothing else from them.

References

References
↑1 Chris Leach is a breaking news reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He joined the newspaper in September 2021 after previously working with the Anderson News and the Cats Pause. Chris graduated from UK in December 2018.
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Judge Emmet G Sullivan needs to recuse himself from all cases involving the Capitol kerfuffle He has just, in open court, shown himself to be thoroughly biased against the defendants

As we noted Monday, Dawn Bancroft, 59, of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was going to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building, the penalty for which is a maximum of six months in jail and a fine of $5,000.[1]40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G).

    A Doylestown woman who said she wanted to shoot Pelosi ‘in the friggin’ brain’ pleaded guilty to Capitol riot charges

    Dawn Bancroft said she didn’t mean to threaten the House Speaker and called her remark a “stupid comment.” A federal judge questioned whether she was getting off too lightly with a misdemeanor plea.

    by Jeremy Roebuck | Tuesday, September 28, 2021

    A Bucks County gym owner who recorded herself during the storming of the Capitol saying she was looking for Nancy Pelosi “to shoot her in the friggin’ brain” pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor Tuesday, making her the latest Pennsylvanian to admit her role in the Jan. 6 riot.

    Dawn Bancroft, 59, of Doylestown, told a federal judge she didn’t mean to threaten the House speaker and described her remark in hindsight as a “stupid, juvenile comment” made in the heat of the moment.

    Yet, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan expressed concern about Bancroft’s statements and questioned why prosecutors had agreed to let her plead to a misdemeanor count of illegally demonstrating, picketing, or parading inside the Capitol — which carries a maximum sentence of six months in prison — instead of pursuing more serious charges of threatening a member of Congress.

    “It’s very troubling to hear that the reason [she] was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was essentially to murder the speaker of the House,” the judge said.

How can that be considered the statement of an unbiased judge? Would any of the Capitol kerfufflers who appeared in his court for an actual trial get a fair shake?

    His remarks came on a day that saw two other Pennsylvania residents admit that they took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Also pleading guilty Tuesday was Diana Santo-Smith, 32, of Bucks County, who traveled by train with Bancroft to Washington and who appeared in the background of her incriminating selfie video.

    Sullivan ultimately accepted the misdemeanor pleas from both women despite his reservations. But he warned them he would have much more to say about their conduct when it came time for sentencing in January.

    He marveled at just how many otherwise law-abiding citizens had “morphed into terrorists” that day and said he agreed with recent comments from former President George W. Bush alluding to the Capitol riot as an act of domestic terrorism on par with the Sept. 11 attacks.

Former President Bush, for whom I twice voted, was being stupid when he said that. Comparing what was, in effect, an out of control college keg party in which the only people who died were the partiers, one of whom was shot in the head by a Capitol policeman, with four hijacked airliners, used as weapons, to kill thousands of people. The Inquirer reported that:

    (Mrs Bancroft and Mrs Santos-Smith) broke into the building through an already shattered window and spent less than a minute inside, prosecutors said, before making their way back out again.

    It was while they were trying to push their way back out through the crowd that Bancroft filmed herself and Santos-Smith.

    “We broke into the Capitol. We got inside. We did our part,” she said. “We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain. We didn’t find her, but all is good.”

They spent less than a minute, according to prosecutors, but Judge Sullivan wanted Mrs Bancroft charged much more harshly. The prosecution noted that Mrs Bancroft’s remark was made as they were leaving the building, and there is no evidence that either of them was armed.

Every defense attorney for any of the kerfufflers assigned to Judge Sullivan’s court should be ready with a demand that Judge Sullivan recuse himself in the event of anything more than a guilty plea under 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G), because His Honor has proven himself not to be honorable, proven himself to be thoroughly biased against the defendants.

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Another Capitol kerfuffler pleads guilty

I have long called the January 6th ‘insurrection’ what I believe it to be, the Capitol kerfuffle.

On Monday, Gary Edwards, 68, of Churchville in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty to a single count of “parading, demonstrating, or picketing in the Capitol,” 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G) a charge which could result in probation or a sentence of up to six months in jail. Mr Edwards became the 8th out of 55 Pennsylvanians charged in what amounts to a fraternity keg party getting out of control to plead guilty.

Two more suburban Philadelphia residents are expected to join those ranks this week. Dawn Bancroft, 59, and the owner of a CrossFit gym in Doylestown, and Diana Santos-Smith, of Fort Washington, are scheduled to plead guilty Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.

The Feds identified Mrs Bancroft and Mrs Santos-Smith from a selfie taken during the kerfuffle; does it look like they were engaged in a major operation, a serious attempted coup d’etat, against the United States?

Social media posts have played a large part in helping the Feds identify the kerfufflers. Mr Edwards’ wife found out just who the family’s friends really are.

There was little on his own public-facing Facebook account to suggest what brought him to Washington in January.

But his wife, in her own posts, described how her husband had followed a “small group of young men dressed in military garb” into the building after watching them break down police barricades, smash a window to climb inside, and then break furniture on their way toward storming the upper floors.

She claimed her husband spent his time in the building helping to flush tear gas from the eyes of other rioters, chatting amicably with police and singing “The Star Spangled-Banner.”

“These were people who watched their rights being taken away,” she wrote. “Their votes stolen from them, their state officials violating the constitutions of their country.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that it was one of Mrs Edwards Facebook friends who took a screenshot of the post, and forwarded it to the FBI.

Yeah, I’d unfriend that bitch!

But it’s interesting how the Inquirer, which normally doesn’t run mugshots of accused criminals, posted that photo of Mrs Bancroft and Mrs Santos-Smith. The credentialed media, who really don’t want to make life harder on actual criminals, have been very free with the photos of the kerfufflers.

These are the typical charges placed against the vast majority of the kerfufflers:

  • 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1) – Knowingly Entering or Remaining in any Restricted Building or Grounds Without Lawful Authority. Since the Munns are not accused of harming anyone or carrying a deadly weapon, the maximum punishment under (b)(2) is a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, in any other case.
  • 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(2) – Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds. Since the Munns are not accused of harming anyone or carrying a deadly weapon, the maximum punishment under (b)(2) is a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, in any other case.
  • 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(D) – Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building: utter loud, threatening, or abusive language, or engage in disorderly or disruptive conduct, at any place in the Grounds or in any of the Capitol Buildings with the intent to impede, disrupt, or disturb the orderly conduct of a session of Congress or either House of Congress, or the orderly conduct in that building of a hearing before, or any deliberations of, a committee of Congress or either House of Congress; The penalty for violating 40 U.S.C. §5104(e)(2) is a misdemeanor conviction punishable by a maximum fine of $5,000 fine or up to six months in prison, or both.
  • 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G) – Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building; The penalty for violating 40 U.S.C. §5104(e)(2) is a misdemeanor conviction punishable by a maximum fine of $5,000 or up to six months in prison, or both.

It’s simple: hammer down on charges, to ‘encourage’ the kerfufflers to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor. After all, if convicted on all four charges, and with judges who have already expressed displeasure that those who have pleaded guilty have done so to such a minor charge, those convicted could be sentenced to three years and possibly crippling fines. That Attorney General Merrick Garland, who hates Republicans because the GOP denied him a seat on the Supreme Court, has allowed his minions to offer pleas on only one misdemeanor charge, is indicative of the fact that this ‘insurrection’ wasn’t much of a much.

Were I to, by some miracle, become President, my first act would be to pardon all of the kerfufflers, and my second to fire Mr Garland in the most humiliating manner I could find.

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Killadelphia passes the 400 mark In the past 20 days, 41 people have been killed in Philadelphia's mean streets

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is only updated “during normal business hours, Monday through Friday,” so it still shows 397 homicides for the City of Brotherly Love. The next ‘milestone,’ so to speak, would be 400, and The Philadelphia Inquirer actually noticed:

    Philly surpasses 400 homicides this year

    “I am heartbroken and outraged that we’ve lost over 400 Philadelphians to preventable violence already this year,” Mayor Jim Kenney said Sunday.

    by Marie McCullough and Chris Palmer | Sunday, September 26, 2021

    Two fatal shootings Saturday night brought Philadelphia’s total number of homicides this year to beyond 400, a tragic milestone reached only twice in the past two decades.

    Last year the city recorded 499 homicides, and in 2006 the total reached 406. Philadelphia has not had back-to-back years with that grisly tally since 1996.

    “I am heartbroken and outraged that we’ve lost over 400 Philadelphians to preventable violence already this year,” Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement issued Sunday morning. “I want all residents to know that our administration takes this crisis very seriously and we’re acting with urgency to reduce violence and save lives.”

    Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner echoed that sentiment in a statement Sunday: “We should all be outraged that senseless, preventable violence continues to claim and break lives here in Philadelphia and in communities across the country that are also experiencing alarming increases in gun violence.”

Sorry, but when I see softer-than-soft-on-crime District Attorney Krasner, who is more interested in keeping criminals out of prison and putting down the police, complaining about the homicide rate, indeed saying anything at all, I know it’s bovine feces. Mary McCarthy once said, concerning Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” The same is true of Mr Krasner; if he told me that 2+2=4, I’d have to check his math.

The Inquirer reported that there have been no arrests in the latest killings.

Two men, 35 and 28, were found shot multiple times in the 2300 block of Jackson Street in South Philly around 9:30 PM, were taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where the younger man died and the older man is in critical condition.

Another fatal shooting was reported, at 11:20 PM at North 26th and West Silver Streets in Strawberry Mansion. The police had not given the paper any further details when the article was published.

    Only 29% of homicides and 15% of nonfatal shootings have resulted in arrests by police so far in 2021, according to an analysis by Krasner’s office.

    If both fatal and nonfatal shootings are included, 1,696 people had been shot through Wednesday, according to police statistics. That is the second-highest total in any year since 2007, the year police began recording “shooting victims” as a separate statistic from the broader category of “aggravated assault with a gun.”

    Experts and officials point to many reasons for the surge in violence, which has been concentrated in neighborhoods with intractable disadvantages, including higher poverty levels, higher blight levels, and lower life expectancies. The reasons include stressors made worse by the pandemic; closures of schools, workplaces, courts, and other institutions that kept people away from feuds; increasing gun sales; and impaired trust in law enforcement after the George Floyd killing and protests.

This is, of course, the usual bovine feces that I expect from the Inquirer. The #woke there all want to blame everything but the culture and the people who live in those neighborhoods. When two men are shot “multiple times,” it was a targeted killing, a planned assassination, something people had time to consider before taking action. When four men were shot during a drive-by shooting in Mantua, “when three people hopped out of a gold or tan SUV at 38th and Aspen Streets at 10:57 a.m. and began firing,” that’s a planned attempt at murder. This photo shows “a detective and an officer looking at evidence under and around a blue SUV” in that shooting, and there are at least 19 evidence markers, normally used to mark the location of expended shell casings, visible.

When the Inquirer blames “impaired trust in law enforcement after the George Floyd killing and protests,” it has to be remembered that the editors of the newspapers deliberately fanned the flames of those protests.

So, what will I find when the police update their Current Crime Statistics page on Monday? The Inquirer article stated that there were “over 400,” which could mean 401 or 403 or 405. The city had been on a two-killings-per-day tear over the past week, so I could easily guess 403, covering Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Former Mayor Michael Nutter published a list of city homicides, noting just who was running the city at the time, and the city has exceeded 400 murders per year only 17 times previously; the record is 500, in 1990, the heart of the crack cocaine wars. With “over 400” murders so far in Philadelphia, this year makes the eighteenth time this has happened . . . but with 97 days, more than three months, more than entire season, left in the year!
______________________________________

Update: Monday, September 27, 2021:

The Current Crime Statistics page shows that there have been 404 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, September 26, 2021, the 269th day of the year. The math is simple, if ugly: 404 ÷ 269 = 1.5019 homicides per day. With 96 days left in the year, that works out to 144 more killings, if that rate remains the same, for a projected total of 548 murders for the year.

We noted, on July 17th, when Philly hit its 300th homicide of the year, that the then-current rate of 1.5306 homicides per day led to a projected 559 murders. That was actually down from eight days earlier, when an average of 1.5379 worked out to a projected 562 homicides for the year.

Then, for some unknown reason, the homicide rate dropped. We reported, on September 7th, that despite a subtitle from The Philadelphia Inquirer stating that “The unofficial end of summer didn’t slow a record year of gun violence. Between Friday and Sunday, at least 13 people were shot in Philadelphia, two fatally,” the murder rate actually did slow down a bit, down to 1.4578 killings per day, with a projected 532 for the year.

    But there’s more. Over the last 1½ months, the murder rate has really dropped. There had been 314 homicides as of July 22nd, the 203rd day of the year. Since that time, 46 days ago, there have been ‘just’ 49 murders, a rate of 1.0652 per day. With 116 days left in 2021, if that rate were maintained, there would be ‘just’ 124 more killings, for a total of 487 for the year, 12 fewer than last year, and 13 fewer than 1990’s all time record of 500. If that number was the final one, it would be 75 fewer homicides than the math had projected just two months ago.

Now, for the first time since the late July through August ‘lull,’ if you can call it that, the rate is above 1.5 again. Since Monday, September 6th, and its reported 363 homicides, there have been 41 murders in Philly, in just 20 days, 2.050 per day!

Are the gang bangers trying to make up for lost time, or something?

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Killadelphia

There are times I begin to feel like a broken record. I noted that the City of Brotherly Love was up to 393 homicides as of 11:59 PM on Wednesday, September 22nd. This morning, the Philadelphia Police Department reported that there have been 397 murders as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, the 23rd. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on three of the killings, but, as usual, I had to dig to find the article; it was not on the Inquirer’s website main page.

    Three men killed in separate Philly shootings in a one-hour span

    Two shootings happened in North Philadelphia and the third in Frankford.

    By Robert Moran | Thursday, September 23, 2021

    Three men were killed in separate shootings Thursday night in Philadelphia, police said.

    Shortly after 7:30 p.m. a 29-year-old man was sitting inside a silver Toyota Camry on the 3500 block of North 21st Street in North Philadelphia when he was shot twice, police said. The man, whose name was not released, was taken by medics to Temple University Hospital and pronounced dead at 8:07. Police reported no arrests.

    2800 block of North Orkney Street, from Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

    Just before 7:45 p.m., two men were outside on the 2800 block of North Orkney Street in North Philadelphia when they were shot. One of the victims, a 31-year-old whose name was withheld, was shot multiple times in the chest. Police took him to Temple, where he was pronounced dead at 8:09.

    The second victim, a 52-year-old man, was shot in the left leg and buttocks. Police took him to Temple, where he was listed in stable condition. Police reported no arrests.

    Around 8:30 p.m., an unidentified young man was outside on the 1300 block of Wakeling Street in Frankford when he was shot several times in the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene by medics. Police reported no arrests.

1300 block of Wakeling Street, from Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

Wakeling Street appears, at least on the Google Maps view, to be a reasonably nice neighborhood.

As usual, Mr Moran’s stories are off of the Inquirer’s website main page by the time the morning rolls around. The newspaper is great on decrying “gun violence,” but, as Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas noted last December, even her paper doesn’t really care:

    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.

    Just weeks before the end of 2020, that number doubled. More than 400 people gunned down.

    By the time you read this, there will only be more.

    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.

Actually, the paper would never say, “A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head,” but just a 21-year-old male. To identify the victims as black or white or Hispanic would, over time, report what everybody already knows: in a city that’s only 38.3% non-Hispanic black, black victims, primarily black male victims, will make up the vast majority of homicide victims in the city. Given that publisher Elizabeth Hughes has vowed to make the paper “an anti-racist news organization,” well, they can’t have the paper, as the Sacramento Bee once put it, “perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.”

As always, I run the numbers: 397 homicides ÷ 266 days elapsed in the year = 1.492 homicides per day, x 365 = 544.76 murders projected for the year.

We had previously reported that the homicide rate in Philly had slowed down, from mid-July through August, but it seems to have picked right back up again.

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The homicide rate ticks up a bit in Killadelphia

We had previously reported on the slowing down of the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love, but things may be going back in the wrong direction again. The Philadelphia Police Department reported 378 homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, September 16th, but their next report, for 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, September 19th, showed 384 people killed.[1]The Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page states that the homicide “statistics reflect the accurate count during normal business hours, Monday through Friday”, so we … Continue reading That’s six people murdered in three days, and twelve people killed over the past week.

    Man killed and 5 others wounded in Fern Rock drive-by shooting

    The shooting happened near the intersection of Broad Street and West Chew Avenue.

    by Robert Moran, Chris Palmer, and Ellie Rushing | Monday, September 20, 2021 | Updated: 6:43 PM EDT

    A 26-year-old man was killed and five other adults were wounded in a drive-by shooting Monday afternoon in the city’s Fern Rock section, police said.

    The shooting happened just before 2:20 p.m. on the 1300 block of West Chew Avenue near Broad Street.

    Five victims were taken by private vehicle to Einstein Medical Center, police said. The man who was fatally wounded was transported by police to the hospital, which is just a few blocks away. He was pronounced dead at 2:55 p.m.

    The five surviving victims, including a 28-year-old woman, were listed in stable condition. No arrests were immediately reported.

There’s more at the original. The story noted that the six victims were just standing on the street when a silver Chrysler 300 pulled up, and someone in the back seat started shooting; a photo in the Inquirer shows the Philadelphia Police putting down evidence markers, normally where shell casings were found, showing evidence marker 19.

We reported, just two weeks ago, that over the last 1½ months, the murder rate has really dropped. There had been 314 homicides as of July 22nd, the 203rd day of the year. Since that time, 46 days ago, there have been ‘just’ 49 murders, a rate of 1.0652 per day. With 116 days left in 2021, if that rate were maintained, there would be ‘just’ 124 more killings, for a total of 487 for the year, 12 fewer than last year, and 13 fewer than 1990’s all time record of 500. If that number was the final one, it would be 75 fewer homicides than the math had projected just two months ago.

Now, the city has seen 12 homicides in 14 days, ticking the homicide rate up from 1.458 per day to 1.466, and a projected 535 for the year.

The next ‘milestone’ will be 391 homicides, which is the full year’s total for 2007. The city will probably pass that next weekend.
———————-
Update: Tuesday, September 21, 2021 @ 8:30 AM EDT

The Philadelphia Police Department reported 386 homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT yesterday.

References

References
↑1 The Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page states that the homicide “statistics reflect the accurate count during normal business hours, Monday through Friday”, so we don’t get the totals for Friday, Saturday and Sunday until Monday morning.
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Why does Solomon Jones want mostly white prison guards, but not disproportionately black inmates, tested for #COVID19?

I get it: Solomon Jones, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, really doesn’t like law enforcement, and doesn’t particularly care for white people. Looking at his Inquirer author file, you’ll find columns like this:

So this morning’s column came as no surprise to me:

If Pennsylvania corrections officers don’t want the vaccine, they should look for new jobs

The only people risking the health and safety of union members are the union members themselves.

by Solomon Jones | Wednesday, September 15, 2021 | 9:00 AM EDT

Solomon Jones, from his Twitter biography.

From the outset, COVID-19 exposed America as a society that is more than willing to sacrifice its most vulnerable people. Now, as workers challenge vaccine mandates meant to protect those relegated to the bottom rungs of society, the most vulnerable people will suffer once again.

Last week, the union representing correctional officers in Pennsylvania’s state prisons became one of the latest groups to officially oppose a vaccine or testing mandate. On Friday, they filed a complaint in Commonwealth Court seeking a preliminary injunction to stop an order put in place by Gov. Tom Wolf — a Democrat — requiring prison guards and other state workers to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. The guards say they should not have to be tested weekly unless inmates and prison vendors are, too.

Why, I have to ask, was it important for Mr Jones to point out, in the manner he did, for emphasis, that Governor Wolf is a Democrat? He is, but that’s hardly germane to the story. After all, aren’t unions primarily Democratic, politically?

The lawsuit spells it out this way: “The commonwealth’s failure to apply the ‘vaccinate or weekly test’ rule to all individuals in the congregate setting unnecessarily increases the risk to the health and safety” of union members.

Interesting argument, but I’m not buying it. I believe the only people risking the health and safety of union members are the union members themselves.

By refusing vaccination, and then fighting to skip out on COVID-19 testing, these state employees are not only risking their own health. They’re imposing the consequences of their decisions on a vulnerable population. Testing prisoners and vendors doesn’t stop unvaccinated guards from contracting COVID-19. It simply allows those guards to sidestep a vaccination mandate the president of the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association derided as “a slap in the face” while members expressed their strong opposition. More importantly, it allows them to continue to contract and spread COVID-19 among a population of incarcerated people who are unable to leave the facilities, and thus are particularly vulnerable.

Do these three paragraphs even go together? Mr Jones states that the “only people risking the health and safety of union members are the union members themselves,” but then goes on to claim that the union members are concomitantly harming the prisoners.

There are those who believe that as convicted criminals, state inmates deserve any condition, no matter how bad, that comes from their imprisonment. I don’t, especially after watching 26 wrongfully convicted Philadelphians get released since December of 2016. Twenty-four of those innocent people were Black, which makes sense, since 47% of the state’s 37,000 prisoners were Black as of July 30, even though Black people make up about 12% of Pennsylvania’s population.

Nowhere does it seem to occur to Mr Jones that 47% of the incarcerated prisoners have committed somewhere close to 47% of the crimes. He just throws those numbers out there as though readers will see them as obviously unfair. The Philadelphia Tribune, a black community newspaper, reported that about 86% of the city’s 2020 499 homicides were black, while 84% of Philly’s 2,236 non-fatal shootings were black. And, as is always the case, the shooters are around 90% probable to be the same race as their victims.

That means this is not just a major health issue. It is also an issue of racial justice. In a criminal system where Black people are disproportionately imprisoned, and wrongfully convicted far more often than their white counterparts, I’m forced to ask a simple question: How many more wrongfully convicted Black prisoners are sitting inside, waiting to be infected with a virus that could very well give them a death sentence for a crime they didn’t commit?

Why, then, does Mr Jones object to the union’s claim that the guards shouldn’t be singled out, but that everybody, the inmates and vendors, should also be tested? It would take only one vendor bringing in supplies or food, making contact with one prisoner, to pass on the virus to the incarcerated population. We already know that vaccination, while it may reduce the probability of contracting the virus, and apparently does lessen the severity of symptoms in infected persons, can still be transmitted from one vaccinated but infected individual to another person, vaccinated or not. The Centers for Disease Control stated, on August 26, 2021:

    Vaccines are playing a crucial role in limiting spread of the virus and minimizing severe disease. Although vaccines are highly effective, they are not perfect, and there will be vaccine breakthrough infections. Millions of Americans are vaccinated, and that number is growing. This means that even though the risk of breakthrough infections is low, there will be thousands of fully vaccinated people who become infected and able to infect others, especially with the surging spread of the Delta variant.

Yet Mr Jones just waves off the union’s concerns, as though they cannot be real.

Everyone who works with a vulnerable population should be vaccinated. From teachers who work with students who are not yet eligible for vaccination, to hospital workers who are exposed to those with compromised immune systems, to prison guards who work with incarcerated people in a closed environment.

If Mr Jones feels that way, why does he not agree that the vendors who serve the prison ought to have to be vaccinated or subjected to frequent testing? Indeed, since we know that the vaccinated can still contract and spread the virus, and if his concern is really the spread of COVID-19, why wouldn’t he support mandatory frequent testing to the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike? With his greatly stated concerns for black prisoners, why isn’t he concerned that the areas with the highest concentration of black residents are also the areas with the lowest vaccination rates?

The prisoners? They can’t be forced, because that would constitute assault. But Mr Jones should want them all vaccinated and frequently tested.

If our prison guards want to work without getting vaccinated, they are well within their rights to do so, but they should be prepared to find employment somewhere else.

The truth is simple: Mr Jones would love to see the number of prison guards cut, and cut dramatically, to force the cutting of the number of prisoners.

Mr Jones sees this whole issue through the lens of ‘racial justice,’ but, in fact, racial justice is a contradiction in terms. Justice, to be justice, must be handled without regard to race, and Mr Jones does not like that concept at all.