Tag Archives: #Crime

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Chicago only thinks it’s the murder capital

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain noted the good mayor of the Windy City, and what had happened to the homicide rate in that toddlin’ town:

Stupid City, Stupid Mayor: Homicide Increases 55% in Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago

January 3, 2021

Remember, dead people are still eligible to vote in Chicago:

A 41-year-old man was shot and killed early Friday morning in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, marking the city’s first homicide of 2021 and following a year of spiking crime rates there and around the nation.

According to Chicago police data, the city recorded 769 homicides in 2020, a 55% increase over 2019.

The increase, reversing a three-year trend, is among the highest in city history, The Chicago Tribune reported Thursday.

Fatal shootings rose by 53%, with December shootings totaling 50, compared with just 19 a year earlier.

According to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, 78% of the gun violence victims were Black.

So that’s about 600 black people shot dead in Chicago last year, a Democrat-run city in a Democrat-controlled state with some of the strictest gun-control laws in the country. If Black Lives Matter actually cared about saving the lives of black people, they’d be rioting about this, but the truth is the Black Lives Matter is just a propaganda operation with only one goal, to help Democrats win elections.

It would be wrong to say to describe this as a “tragedy,” because it’s so predictable. When you elect Democrats, people get killed as a result. If you’re too stupid to understand this, that’s not my fault.

There’s more to the story. The 2020 Census numbers aren’t in yet, but, according to Wikipedia, Chicago’s population was guesstimated at 2,693,976 for 2019. Since crimes rates are calculated by 100,000 population, 769 homicides works out to a murder rate of 28.54.

That’s pretty high, but but Philadelphia laughs, and says, “Hold my beer.”

Philly’s violent year: Nearly 500 people were killed and 2,200 shot in 2020

by Chris Palmer | January 1, 2021 | 5:00 AM EST

For just the second time in its history, Philadelphia’s annual homicide total threatened in 2020 to reach 500, another grim marker in a year where the city has been wracked by the coronavirus pandemic, economic strife, and social unrest over racial inequity.

The number of people killed this year — 494 as of Tuesday — is 40% higher than last year, and more than in all of 2013 and 2014 combined. The only time more people were slain in the city was in 1990, when police reported 500 homicides as violence surged alongside an intensifying crack-cocaine epidemic.

It’s obvious that Chris Palmer, the author, had been working on this story for a couple of days. Though further down in the article he noted that the reported total was 498, he had written this when the reported number was slightly smaller.

The Philadelphia Inquirer noted in a different story that at least one person was murdered on New Year’s Eve, which would bring the total to 499. The population of Philly was guesstimated to be 1,584,064 in 2019. That gives Philly a murder rate of 31.50, leaving Chicago in it’s rear-view mirror. The Philadelphia Police Department should release its final number on 2020 homicides on Monday.

The spike in shootings was even more pronounced. More than 2,240 people were shot since Jan. 1, 40% more than police have ever recorded. Those statistics only date back to 2007, when the department began keeping track of shooting victims separately from the broader category of assaults involving a gun.

As in most years, the vast majority of victims were young, Black men — many from impoverished neighborhoods lacking resources and long afflicted by gun violence. But shots also killed and wounded children playing on the street. A pregnant woman was struck by a stray bullet — forcing the early delivery of her baby. Some gunmen fired indiscriminately into block parties. A witness was shot dead near City Hall in what police believe was a targeted hit for his testimony in a murder trial.

Then came the money line:

Still, the city’s crime picture continued to show uneven and unusual signs: As homicides and shootings soared, overall violent crime — which also includes rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults — remained near decades-long lows, while overall property crime was also lower than last year.

Are there really fewer other crimes? That’s what the statistics say, but there’s an unforgotten factor. Murder is a crime of evidence; dead bodies are very difficult of which to dispose or hide, and they get found. But rape, assaults which don’t result in hospitalization, robberies, etc, are crimes of reporting; if the victims don’t report them, then as far as the police, as far as the statistics are concerned, they didn’t happen.

And with Larry Krasner’s refusal to prosecute seriously the ‘little’ crimes, with the black community hating the police, and with conviction rates so low, it is more probable that other crimes are simply being reported less frequently than it is that fewer crimes are being committed. When your city is stuck with a District Attorney like Mr Krasner, who doesn’t believe in prosecuting criminals, or sentencing them harshly when they are prosecuted and convicted, what reason is there to report that you were robbed?

From the District Attorney’s Wikipedia biography:

During his tenure, Krasner has sought to spearhead criminal justice reform by ending bail payments for low-level offenders, reducing supervision for parolees, and seeking more lenient sentences for certain crimes. Prior to his government service, Krasner had a 30-year career as a criminal defense and civil rights attorney and public defender. He aggressively pursued police misconduct.

Why would anyone go through the hassle of reporting a crime, and perhaps having to testify in court, when the city isn’t going to give the criminals more than a slap on the wrist?

Murder is not normally a criminal’s first crime; the bad guys tend to start out small, and work their ways up to the really bad stuff. But with all of the ‘social justice’ bovine feces, all of the hatred of the police, and the frustration that comes with crimes not being solved, what’s the point of someone in Kensington or Nicetown calling the cops when they get mugged?

Krasner said summer could have been the moment when the near-total shutdown of social services and alternatives to gun violence collided with warmer weather and other traditional drivers of violence, such as long-simmering feuds — suddenly allowed to play out on streets where witnesses, like everyone else, stayed home in the pandemic lockdown.

Really? The Police Department reported that, as of 11:59 PM on October 23rd, there had been 399 homicides in 297 days in the city. That works out to 1.34 killings per day. But with 498 homicides in 365 days, the average is slightly higher, at 1.36 per day; cooler weather didn’t seem to stem the tide of killings. And in the last 68 days, there were 99 killings, or 1.46 per day, a higher rate, around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Mr Palmer’s article concludes with the usual platitudes about not enough legitimate opportunities for young black males growing up in the City of Brotherly Love, and Mr Krasner and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw saying that they are trying to put in programs that involve more than just (the barely existent) law enforcement. But what no one will do is admit the truth, because the truth is so very, very politically incorrect: the only solution to bad behavior by teenagers and young adults, regardless of race, is better parenting and better communities. The parents of young black males need to rear them better, and that has to mean both parents. If their fathers are absent, boys are crippled in a way that is easy to quantify:

Children brought up in single mother homes are:

  • 5 times more likely to commit suicide,
  • 9 times more likely to drop out of high school,
  • 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances,
  • 14 times more likely to commit rape,
  • 20 times more likely to end up in prison,
  • 32 times more likely to run away from home.

But if that’s easy to quantify, current political realities prohibit us from noting the quality that’s a problem, namely that children need both male and female role models when they are growing up, and they need fathers and mothers who show love and respect for each other, something that cannot happen when they are not living together.

District Attorney Krasner and Commissioner Outlaw can’t do anything about fathers in West Philadelphia not being married to or living with the mothers of their children.

The solution to Philadelphia’s crime rate, to any city’s crime rate, does not come from Mayors or District Attorneys or Police Commissioners. Yes, Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s (R-New York City) “broken windows” policing policies tamped down on serious crime somewhat, but the real solution has to come from parents being married and staying together, and rearing their children properly. Mr Giuliani’s stricter policing may have prevented some bigger crimes, but holding crime down is eventually a losing proposition; only by bringing up kids who don’t want to commit crimes, not because they are afraid of getting caught, but because it’s the right way to live, can society improve.

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Killadelphia * Updated!

The Philadelphia Police Department only updates its Current Crime Stats page on normal business days, so the numbers are current as of 11:59 PM on Wednesday, December 23rd, where they show that 482 souls have gone to their eternal rewards due to homicide in the City of Brotherly Love in 2020. Uncharacteristically, The Philadelphia Inquirer has told us the tales since then. Yesterday, there was this:

Shootings leave two young men dead on Christmas Eve, police say

by Catherine Dunn | December 24, 2020 | 9:11 PM EST

A 20-year-old man who was shot multiple times died Thursday morning, Philadelphia police said.

The shooting occurred in the city’s Overbook section, on the 1800 block of Wynnewood Road, about 11:30 a.m., according to police. The man was taken to Lankenau Medical Center, and pronounced dead at 11:46 a.m.

In a statement, police said that a preliminary investigation indicated the victim was outside recording on social media when another man approached him, started a verbal altercation, and then shot the victim. When police arrived, authorities said, they found the victim lying in the grass, with multiple wounds to the torso. . . .

Hours later, at 1:42 p.m., a shooting in Philadelphia’s Kensington section led to the death of another young man.

The victim was about 20 years old, police said. He was shot five times on the 3200 block of G Street, according to information provided by police.

In neither case was an arrest made or weapons recovered. The Inquirer noted that no motive was determined in the first shooting.

Assuming those were the only two homicides on Christmas Eve, well 482 + 2 = 484.

Today is Christmas Day, a day of peace and love and brotherhood, right?

Philly police fatally shoot gunman accused of shooting into a crowd, killing teen and injuring another

by Diane Mastrull | December 25, 2020 | 2:51 PM EST

Christmas morning got off to a grim start in Philadelphia when a street fight escalated to one man firing a gun into a crowd, striking two teenagers in the neck before officers fatally shot him, according to police.

A 15-year-old male whose identity was not released was pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital, where a 17-year-old remained Friday in stable condition, police said.

The alleged gunman, 43, was shot in the torso and pronounced dead at Temple, police said. Police did not disclose how many times he was hit, just that two officers fired at him about 12:30 a.m. on the 3300 block of Emerald Street in the city’s Kensington section.

The officers had responded to a call about a disturbance or fight at that location. They were attempting to defuse the situation, police said, when additional family members of the feuding people came out of their houses and gathered on the sidewalk and in the middle of the street. Pushing and punching ensued between the original combatants, police said, when a man pulled a gun from his right rear waistband and fired it, hitting both teenagers.

The officers immediately pulled their service weapons and shot the “alleged” gunman, and I have to wonder if we’ll see protests such as the ones following the shooting of Walter Wallace, because the police killed a violent criminal.

484 + 2 = 486. Yes, the dead criminal counts as a homicide, even though it was obviously justified.

And Christmas Day isn’t even over yet.

Philly’s record is 505 killings in 1990, with 1989 coming in at second place with 489. With six more days remaining in 2020, the city has a very good chance to make second place.

By the time the Philadelphia Police Department updates its figures, on Monday, December 28th, the city might have already moved into second place!

The left will cry for more gun control, as though the guns somehow killed people by themselves. But the 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun used was reported stolen from Virginia. Shockingly, it appears — though I hate to judge a thing like that before all of the facts are in — that a criminal misguided gentleman broke the law in obtaining his weapon.

Updated: December 26, 2020 | 8:45 AM EST

Well, how about that? It turns out that the Christmas Day shooter, Jesus Perez, killed his own son, and wounded a nephew. From the updated version of the Inquirer story:

The family of the man, identified by CBS3 as Jesus Perez, denied that he was armed or would have fired at his own child. “He would obviously never do that,” his brother, Noris Cueva-Nova, said in an email. “He was a respectable, hard-working man who cared deeply for his family.”

The family denied that the guy, from whose warm, dead fingers the police pulled a 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun, was armed. I guess it was just imaginary bullets which killed the guy’s son.

Pretty soon we’ll hear that the police shot the two boys, then planted the stolen 9mm in Mr Perez’s hand.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer asked for “radical new thinking” and “radical realism” I'm guessing that they won't like my "radical new thinking" and "radical realism"

About fifteen years ago, I worked for a ready-mixed concrete company in suburbs of Philadelphia, and one of my responsibilities was driver recruitment. The biggest problem? More than half of potential recruits couldn’t pass the drug test!

The greatest anti-poverty program is a job, and a huge percentage of those in poverty in Philadelphia have made themselves ineligible for decent jobs through their own choices to use drugs. Reducing poverty cannot come from the top down, from boards and commissions and charities. It must come from the bottom up, from a community which refuses to use drugs and will not tolerate those who sell drugs.

I know, I know, it’s just horribly politically incorrect to say this, but poor people are poor primarily due to their own choices.

Solving Philly’s poverty problem requires radical thinking — and realism | Editorial

The Inquirer Editorial Board | November 22, 2020 | 6:00 AM EST

One of the great challenges of living in a city with the high poverty rate that has long dogged Philadelphia is how to remain optimistic that the proposals designed to alleviate it can work.

The past few decades have seen many attempts to “solve” the poverty problem, both nationally and locally. Mayor John Street launched a $300 million anti-blight program called the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. In 2013, Mayor Michael Nutter launched the Shared Prosperity program, designed to streamline and maximize available aid to people. Both had their successes, but change in the poverty rate was incremental.

The latest effort, a “Poverty Action Plan” was released in early March from City Council and a committee including Darrell Clarke, Maria Quiñones Sanchez and Allan Domb. Last week, Council announced the creation of a new nonprofit to implement the plan, funded with a $10 million grant from the city.

The plan, originally described as a “moonshot” designed to lift 100,000 people out of poverty by 2024, offers a set of sweeping actions: seven strategies that range from providing a basic income to individuals and wage tax refunds to adult education and job training stipends. It creates a Poverty Commission, described as a public-private partnership including city and state government, philanthropies, universities and civic institutions like the United Way. In addition to a fund, it creates a dashboard to measure progress.

The commission also assembled a staggering number of people: five co-chairs, 19 full committee members, and 57 additional people spread over three separate committees.

So, 81 people, probably none of them truly poor themselves, involving government employees, philanthropies, universities and civic institutions. Philadelphia is going to have yet another anti-poverty program put together and run by the elites, most, and possibly all of whom have never been poor, have never, to use the expression of Robert E Howard, had their lives nailed to their spines, trying to put together a program for people who are not like them.

Many are familiar names who have been at the front lines of fighting poverty for years, if not decades. While it will take a large, all-hands-on-deck effort to make inroads, it is of concern that, especially in this town, many people means many politics, and many often-conflicting agendas. And the last eight months have complicated things further, since many organizations will be fighting for their own survival.

Translation: the same people who have “been at the front lines of fighting poverty for years, if not decades,” and failed, will be at it again. Is there any reason to expect different results?

Part of leadership is setting goals that are slightly out of reach. But leadership must also recognize that there needs to be a possibility of success, especially confronting complicated problems like poverty. Lifting 100,000 people out of poverty will take vision and optimism. But it will also take a lot more than $10 million – and a lot longer than four years. Solving this crisis requires a capacity for radical new thinking as well as radical realism.

“Radical new thinking as well as radical realism”? I can provide the Inquirer Editorial Board with that, but I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t like it. But perhaps, just perhaps, some actual plainspokenness is needed here.

There are three things which have to be done to reduce poverty in Philadelphia, and they need to come from within the poorer, primarily black, communities.

  1. People have to stop using drugs! The Philadelphia Police can only do so much to find, stop and arrest drug dealers. Drug dealers exist because people want to use drugs, and they will continue to exist as long as people are willing to buy and use drugs. But drugs lead to lost employment opportunities as employees in a lot of fields are subject to pre-employment, random and post-accident drug tests, as well as lowered productivity when on the job even if applicants get past the drug screens. Drug use leads to other poor lifestyle decisions, and syphons money from people’s earnings into useless spending which does not improve their situations or enable them to save.The neighborhood has to take action that the police cannot, to drive out the drug dealers and give them no shelter or security. The dealers need to be shunned as the neighborhood cancers they are.
  2. Neighborhood women and girls need to step up and take leadership roles. Most of the bad behavior, from petty crimes all the way up to Philadelphia’s exploding murder rate, comes from young males, and, if we are brutally honest about it, young black males. But there is one thing that young males value more than anything else: sex. Young women in poor neighborhoods need to stop rewarding the bad behavior of young males with sex. The guys who stay in school, the ones who try to make something of themselves, they are the ones that young women in the neighborhoods should date.This is something that their mothers, and the other older women in the neighborhoods, need to stress to younger women as they grow up.

    This point will be denounced as horribly sexist, but I am far beyond caring about that. You may think it sexist, but it is true nevertheless.

  3. Fathers in the neighborhood must step up and take responsibility. Almost every negative social statistic, for suicides, for criminal behavior, for dropping out of school, and for out-of-wedlock childbearing, is much higher for people who grow up without their fathers present in the home. Young women should not date young men who are unlikely to stick around if the woman gets pregnant, and young women should not let themselves get pregnant by men to whom they are not married. Single parenthood is very often a one-way ticket to poverty, at far greater rates than are the case for two-parent homes.Again, that point will be condemned as sexist, but there is one incontrovertible fact: pregnancy and child rearing put a much greater burden on women than men, and if the man is absent, 100% of the burden falls on the woman. Men who impregnate women and then refuse to step up and do their duty as fathers need to be shunned in the neighborhoods.

There are many other behaviors that only people in the neighborhoods can fix, only the individuals involved can change, but they are all part of the three points made above. The various ‘civic leaders’ the Editorial Board mentioned can stress these things, but only the people on the ground in their neighborhoods can actually change behavior.

Readers can denounce me as sexist or racist or whateverist, but it doesn’t matter to me; I am retired, living out in the country, and I can’t be fired for writing something some people will find uncomfortable. Because uncomfortable or not, the points I have made are true, and any rational examination of the facts will bring the reader to the same conclusions.

This is the “radical new thinking” and “radical realism” the Inquirer’s Editorial Board wanted. That it is not #woke, nor sufficiently sparing of the feelings of some, that it is horribly politically incorrect does not mean it should not be examined for whether it is true or not. That it puts much of the blame for poverty on the behavior of the poor will be seen as unjustifiably harsh, but harsh or not, it is still true.

Poor behavior leads to unfortunate consequences, consequences which are often far beyond what people would like to believe. No well-intentioned committee of 81 committed fighters against poverty, no brilliant Mayor of perfectly good motivations, and no priest nobly absolving parishioners of their confessed sins can change the consequences of poor and economically inefficient behavior.

The solution to poverty can be encouraged by all of those people, but the implementation of the solution has to come from the people in poor communities themselves.
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Cross-posted on RedState.