Tag Archives: #DanielleOutlaw

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At what point does it have to be asked: “Jim Kenney, Larry Krasner, Danielle Outlaw, have you no shame?” They have not just failed, but failed spectacularly

We have previously noted how the government of Mexico has used street scenes from Kensington in ads to warn the Mexican people about the dangers of using drugs, and asked the very politically incorrect question: why should we spend money to keep junkies alive?

Now comes London’s Daily Mail:

Inside Philadelphia’s tranq hellscape: Disturbing new footage shows devastating scale of drug crisis in Kensington neighborhood – with addicts crowding filthy sidewalks and shooting up in broad daylight

By Will Potter for DailyMail.com | Saturday, May 27, 2023 | 12:43 PM EDT | Updated: 8:37 PM EDT

Shocking footage has revealed the scale of Philadelphia’s untamed ‘tranq’ epidemic, which has transformed the city’s streets into a drug-infested hellhole.

The Kensington neighborhood – known as ‘ground zero’ for the city’s drug crisis – is seen littered with zombie-like addicts, with many shamelessly shooting up in broad daylight.

Gruesome scenes in the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ show droves of homeless addicts aimlessly staggering through the streets, surrounded by tents and scattered trash.

There’s a lot more at the original; hat tip to @DawnStensland. Since this article has an embedded video, the rest is off the front page. Continue reading →

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The Philadelphia Police Department: does sloppiness in the little things lead to sloppiness in the bigger issues?

We reported on Wednesday about the terrible job that Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has done, not on the crime numbers, though those are certainly important, but on managing and leading the Department.

But while leaders are normally called into account for the big things, it’s the little things that frequently don’t get noticed, but are indicative of a general attitude of sloppiness in an organization. While I, and others, have frequently taken screen captures of the Current Crime Statistics page, both others and I have normally taken only a restricted image, because by the time they get tweeted out or put in a website article, the entire page gets reduced to a size too small for people to read or appreciate the numbers; an example would be this image I posted previously.

I open the Current Crime Statistics page almost every morning, and yes, I’m gratified to see that homicides are down this year, on a daily basis, to 2021 and 2022, though they are ahead of 2020, the last year the city was under 500 homicides, though 499 isn’t under by very much, and we have noted, several times, the change in the Philadelphia Police Department’s statistics, down from the 502 homicides initially reported for 2020, down to 499, one short of the then-all-time record of 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, under the ‘leadership’ of then-Mayor Wilson Goode, he of MOVE bombing fame. I made a totally rookie mistake, and failed to get a screen capture of that, but a Twitter fellow styling himself NDJinPhilly was apparently smarter than me that particular time, took the screen shot, and then tweeted it to me.

But I noticed, just this morning, something that I’ve completely cut off from most of my screen captures, the statement, “Annual percentage change compared to same day in 2021.” Uhhh, it’s now 2023, almost a third of a way into the year, and no one has changed it to “Annual percentage change compared to same day in 2022”? 2021 being the record, 562 murders, I wanted to do the math, and yes, the annual percentage change, obviously done byy the computer, is from the previous year, 2022, and not 2021.

That might seem to be a little thing, but it indicates a sloppiness in the Philadelphia Police Department.

Then there’s this:

That’s difficult to read, but you can click on it to enlarge it to full size. What it states is pretty simple:

The homicide statistics represent the daily count (statistics reflect the accurate count during normal business hours, Monday through Friday) and year-to-date total for victims of homicide and are subject to reclassification according to the rules and regulations of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) guidelines. The homicide statistics for years 2007 – 2018 have been submitted to the FBI as the final UCR numbers for the City of Philadelphia.

Is the Department really telling us that the last year in which they have submitted the final Uniform Crime Reports to the FBI was 2018, five years ago? The Current Crime Statistics page tells us that the last annual homicide report available is the one for 2016, though the weekly reports are available through last year.

These errors are easy things to fix; a high school kid could fix the Current Crime Statistics page — it’s very obviously a standard format, which need only to be fixed once a year — but somehow, some way, the Philadelphia Police Department have not done so yet.

The clearance rate on homicides in Philly was a pathetic 42% in 2020, the Commissioner’s first year. The clearance rate was just 36.7% for fatal shootings.[1]This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will … Continue reading

2022’s homicide clearance rate was up to almost 47%, but that is still below the national clearance rate.

In major organizations, sloppiness in the little things both leads to, and reflects, sloppiness in the big things. Yesterday’s story about homicide detectives missing appointments and not returning phone calls had the commander of the Homicide unit, Inspector Ernest Ransom, blaming in part the “crushing workload” on the failures, but if they are sloppy on the little things, how can we expect that they won’t be sloppy on bigger stuff? Inspector Ransom, who got that job just a couple of months ago, has a lot of work ahead of him, and certainly deserves some time to get things straight. But getting the little things straightened out is a good way to start getting the bigger problems fixed.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

References

References
↑1 This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will suspect political motives behind her report.
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Danielle Outlaw and the Peter Principle

The First Street Journal has, including this article, 28 articles tagged #Danielle Outlaw, the Police Commissioner of foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia. A site search for Danielle Outlaw returns 13 pages of articles mentioning her. We have mentioned that, under her leadership, the Philadelphia Police Department is in complete disarray, and, concerning her future as Commissioner, she’s not just toast, but toast which has fallen on the floor, buttered side down.

In some ways, it’s not her fault. She was hired by Mayor Jim Kenney, chosen for her reputation for trying to hire more women and minorities and that “she has been trying to change the perception of policing nationwide.” Things like being an actually good chief of police? Not so much. She was essentially Peter Principled, promoted to the level of her incompetence.

And now there’s this, from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

When homicide victims’ families can’t get ahold of police, some investigate the cases themselves

In Philly, homicide detectives can be difficult to reach, causing families anguish and leading someone to take matters into their own hands.

by Ellie Rushing and Jessica Griffin | Wednesday, April 26, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Kathi Camp called the Philadelphia Police Department’s homicide unit almost every day for four months before the detective assigned to investigate her son’s murder finally called her back.

Camp was desperate to know whether police were any closer to locating Marcus Whitehead, the man wanted for killing her 26-year-old son, Diniar, in August. She felt as if her persistence had paid off when the detective said he would visit her South Philadelphia home with an update.

So on that Monday in February, Camp stayed home from work. She moved all calls and appointments, and waited for him.

But the detective never showed. Camp hasn’t heard from anyone in the unit since, she said, and her calls continue to go unreturned.

There’s a lot more at the original, telling readers whose responsibility it is to communicate with victims’ families, and how meetings and phone calls are promised, but rarely fulfilled. It’s not a new problem, as columnist Helen Ubiñas noted in October of 2018, before Miss Outlaw arrived in the City of Brotherly Love, but it is one that the Commissioner has failed to address.

The clearance rate on homicides in Philly was a pathetic 42% in 2020, the Commissioner’s first year. The clearance rate was just 36.7% for fatal shootings.[1]This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will … Continue reading

2022’s homicide clearance rate was up to almost 47%, but that is still below the national clearance rate.

Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, commanding officer of the Homicide Unit, acknowledged that many families haven’t gotten the communication they deserve. He said he is working to finally address it, and is in the early stages of setting communication standards for detectives and their supervisors.

In just his first few months in this role, Ransom said he received numerous emails from families complaining about the issue, and realized “this has to stop.” A concrete procedure will ensure greater accountability, he said.

It’s a “work in progress,” he said, and although families’ frustrations may never be fully resolved, “if we can minimize it, that’s a start.”

But he also said that amid the ongoing homicide crisis, detectives are shouldering a crushing workload that often leaves them little time to speak with families, and that loved ones often don’t understand how much work is being done behind the scenes on their case.

Chart from The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 5, 2023.

Inspector Ransom took command of the Homicide unit just a couple of months ago, and he’s now in charge of addressing the problem, but the Commissioner has been in her position since February of 2020; why is this just now being addressed? If the detectives are too busy, and have a “crushing workload,” couldn’t the Department hire a couple of civilians to handle something as simple as calling and updating victims’ families?

Philadelphia has a very high homicide rate, and is short several hundred officers; the Commissioner hasn’t done a very good job in retaining existing personnel or attracting new recruits. However, there are some real misuses of officers in jobs which could be handled by civilians[2]The referenced source citation, another Inquirer article dated October 4, 2022, is restricted to subscribers only.:

Nearly 900 positions within the Philadelphia Police Department that are currently held by sworn police officers could be filled by civilians, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania who last year studied the department’s makeup.

The review, which the city authorized in 2020, found that these officers perform duties that in other cities are done by civilians, who typically earn less, have no arrest power, and don’t carry firearms.

Researchers found that hundreds of sworn officers primarily work at front desks, perform data entry, or issue permits. Dozens are court liaisons, office managers, or human-resources officials. Six transport mail between police districts. Eight manage graphic design work, and a handful are grant writers.

In total, about 11% of Philadelphia’s 7,000-employee department are civilians, the researchers found. That’s fewer than in most large departments — civilians make up nearly a quarter of total staff among agencies nationwide that serve jurisdictions with more than 1 million people.

If the Philadelphia Police Department are using police officers in jobs which could be handled by civilians, is that not the Commissioner’s responsibility to address? As the former Chief of Police in Portland, Oregon, didn’t Miss Outlaw see some jobs which were held by civilians there which are handled by officers in Philly? There were union issues involved in this, but the Commissioner seems to have taken no real action to address the problem until last year.

There will always be headwinds in dealing with an organization as large as the Philadelphia Police Department, and the union environment in a union town only makes things more difficult, but Commissioner Outlaw has proven herself remarkably unable to deal with those issues. Mayor Kenney, in his zeal to be all progressive and inclusive, hired someone for the job who has been unable to handle the job.

References

References
↑1 This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will suspect political motives behind her report.
↑2 The referenced source citation, another Inquirer article dated October 4, 2022, is restricted to subscribers only.
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Danielle Outlaw isn’t just toast She's toast that has fallen on the floor, buttered side down

Even though I read The Philadelphia Inquirer every day, I don’t normally do so expecting something humorous. But this time reporters Anna Orso and Chris Palmer provided some really belly laughs!

Police commissioner Danielle Outlaw has unwittingly become a ‘political football.’ The mayor’s race could decide her future.

If history is a guide, the next mayor is likely to pick a new top cop — a decision that would shake up one of the nation’s largest police forces.

by Anna Orso and Chris Palmer | Wednesday, April 19, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Philadelphia’s mayoral candidates have faced repeated questions in recent months about the fate of one city employee: Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.Their answers have ranged from tepid support to accusations that Outlaw has “done a bad job” amid a gun violence crisis. Most have offered noncommittal responses on whether they’d stick with her if elected.

But if history is a guide, the next mayor is likely to pick a new top cop — a decision that would shake up one of the nation’s largest police forces and influence how its 6,000 officers and employees engage with city residents.

I’m not sure how Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw leaving her job would really “shake up one of the nation’s largest police forces,” considering she’s not actually at her desk all that much.

The last two mayors to be sworn into office have appointed new commissioners. And such turnover has also been common in other big cities: In Chicago last month, the police chief resigned the day after the mayor’s reelection bid fell apart. And New York City Mayor Eric Adams hired his own chief last year — and even considered Outlaw for the role.

An obvious point here that Mr Palmer and Miss Orso neglected to tell readers: Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown resigned after incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot missed out on the mayoral runoff election, coming in third with just 16%[1]Edited: I had misgoofed and typed 61%, and reader 370H55V I/me/mine caught it for me. of the vote, because not only did the two candidates who advanced to the runoff, Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson, but all of Miss Lightfoot’s opponents “vowed to fire Brown on day one of becoming mayor.”

Interestingly enough, Mr Brown took the reins of the Chicago Police Department in April of 2020, just two months after Miss Outlaw became Police Commissioner of Philadelphia. And both have failed just as spectacularly.

Outlaw, who was appointed in 2020, has been out recently while recovering from a car accident. In an emailed statement, she said: “I do not think anyone particularly enjoys having their name positioned as a political football.”

Hey, you want to play in the big leagues, you have opened yourself up to criticism, but remember, Philly is the city in which Eagles’ fans booed Santa Claus and pelted him with snowballs. Rough crowd.

But, as we noted here, the Commissioner says that she has a back injury from an incident in which another driver struck her chauffeured vehicle, but a truly dedicated Police Commissioner, someone who has a desk job, would be working, even if it had to be from home and in a recliner, unless she was completely bed-ridden or seriously doped up on pain medication. Neither of those things has been reported to be the case.

When your city has been suffering from a 500+ a year homicide rate, a dedicated Police Commissioner wouldn’t take any days off.

While noting that ethics rules bar her from speaking to candidates about their plans, she said she’s focused on issues including crime prevention, improving clearance rates, and implementing policy reforms.

If those are the issues on which she has focused, she has clearly failed. Clearance rates have dropped. While the Philadelphia Police Department is the nation’s fourth largest, with an authorized strength of 6,500 officers and 800 civilian personnel, the department is seriously undermanned, and anticipated retirements significantly outnumber potential academy graduating classes.

In 2021, following criticism of her tenure, the Commissioner fought back:

“Am I enough? Absolutely, and some,” she said. “Do I deserve to be here? Absolutely, and some. Did I lead this department in the last year? Absolutely, and some. No police commissioner, chief, superintendent has ever had to deal with what we’ve dealt with in the past year.”

She just doesn’t get it. When your team isn’t winning, excuses don’t matter. When people are pointing out that you haven’t done your job well, then you haven’t done your job well. People who do their jobs well don’t have to tell people about it; everyone already knows.

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References

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↑1 Edited: I had misgoofed and typed 61%, and reader 370H55V I/me/mine caught it for me.
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“Claims she has a bad back”

Her job is riding a desk. Is she bed-ridden? Is she hospitalized? Is she too doped up on pain meds to work from her La-Z-Boy? Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is off of work with a back injury.

Police Commissioner Outlaw is out for a month with a back injury after a car crash

Outlaw suffered a back injury in a car accident on March 29. She’s been out of work since and hopes to return in about two weeks, officials said.

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is expected to be out of work for about a month after suffering a back injury in a motor-vehicle crash two weeks ago, the department said Tuesday.

Outlaw was injured on the afternoon of March 29, after her police SUV collided with an Uber driver at 15th and Race Streets.

The commissioner suffered “injuries to her back” during the collision and has been out of work since, said department spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp.

“She is recovering and hopes to be back to work in approximately two weeks,” he said.

There’s more at the original.

Back injuries are no fun, to be sure, but can’t Miss Outlaw do some of her work from a recliner? If she can’t sit at her desk, is there no hospital-type desk that she could use? Are there no phones that she could use, no computers that she could access?

The cop-hating incoming Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, will have to select a new Police Superintendent now that David Brown has resigned; he was going to be fired anyway. May I suggest that Miss Outlaw get the job? Anything, just get her out of Philly!

The City of Brotherly Love is in the middle of a four-year-long crime wave, but the Commissioner, and perhaps you could read this with the same voice and inflection Tony Joe White did in Polk Salad Annie, “claims she has a bad back.”

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Killadelphia: Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has a Department in complete disarray

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page shows 54 homicides through 11:59 PM EST on Monday, February 13th, three more than the previous day, which is actually more than Broad + Liberty’s homicide tracker.

As we previously reported, there was a decline in the rate of homicides in Philadelphia that began last November, and that had continued into early this year, but the number of killings had begun to exceed the 2020 total, and 2020 finished with an ‘official’ 499 murders. Now the total, while lower than in 2021 and 2022, is 20.0% higher than 2020. It’s a bit too early to derive any strong statistical trends, because even though this winter has been mild, homicides normally increase significantly in the summer.

Naturally, The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t have any stories on these on their website main page, but on their specific crime page I was able to find Hit-and-run drivers killed two people after the Super Bowl and 4 dead, 5 injured in shootings during a violent (Saturday) overnight in Philly.

From the 2023 Mummer’s Parade in Philadelphia. Click to enlarge.

But the Inky did note the disarray in Commissioner Danielle Outlaw’s Police Department. Yes, a very large grain of salt has to be taken with this, given that the newspaper and its Editorial Board absotively, posilutely hate the police, there’s nothing I’ve seen which tells me that their reporting is false.

Lacking accountability, some Philly cops follow checkered path to high-ranking positions | Editorial

Apparently, one way to get ahead in the Philadelphia Police Department is to first get fired. No wonder some officers act as if they are above the law.

by The Editorial Board | St Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2023 | 6:00 AM EST

As Philadelphia endures record numbers of shootings and murders, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw implemented a second department shake-up in less than a year, which included promoting several dozen officers and transferring others.

Whether her actions result in safer streets remains to be seen. Given some of the officers who were commended, let’s hold the applause for now.

One of the promoted officers was fired in 2020 after allegedly supervising a meeting where officers were instructed to falsify reports in drug cases. He was also accused of attacking a female officer, hurling racist insults, and hiding information from the District Attorney’s Office. Last year, an arbitrator found the officer’s dismissal violated policy and reinstated him with back pay.

A second officer who was promoted had been dismissed in 2013 after he was charged with aggravated assault and stalking his girlfriend. The charges were dropped after a witness failed to appear in court, and the officer was reinstated.

A third officer who was promoted had been suspended for three days in 2011 after he lost his gun. Three years later, he was suspended for six days after improperly releasing three shooting suspects without questioning them, confiscating their weapons, or entering their information into police records.

Further down:

The message to many who are already wary of the police — as well as to many young officers learning the ropes — is that apparently, one way to get ahead in the Philadelphia Police Department is to first get fired. For that, you can thank the Fraternal Order of Police, which protects all cops, even the rotten apples.

Indeed, when it comes to being a Philly cop, fired rarely means fired. About 70% of officers disciplined in incidents from 2011 to 2019 had their cases overturned or reduced, The Inquirer found.

Of course, the Inky loves unions, at least unions other than the FOP and their own News Guild of Greater Philadelphia. The police officers’ union is doing what a union is supposed to do, protect its members. If the Philadelphia Police Department has been disciplining or firing officers without proper procedure, that’s on the Department and the city.

But promoting such officers? That doesn’t look so good. This is the Commissioner’s second top brass reorganization in half a year.

Then there’s this:

Eight more Philly cops were benched amid widening probe into a city antiviolence program

The officers’ guns were taken after an Inquirer investigation found they were improperly paid $76,000 in city funds to coach boxing. Children of police also got thousands of dollars to participate.

by Max Marin, Samantha Melamed, and Jeremy Roebuck | St Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2023 | 6:00 AM EST

Eight Philadelphia police officers have been placed on restricted duty and stripped of their service weapons — and the FBI is investigating — after an Inquirer report revealed that the officers had improperly received tens of thousands of dollars in city antiviolence grant money.

A police spokesperson confirmed the reassignments of the officers as well as a civilian police staffer. Together with a police captain who resigned last week, they pocketed more than $75,000 from a $392,000 city grant issued to Epiphany Fellowship Church for a program called Guns Down Gloves Up, city records show. City employees are not allowed to be paid from such grants.

The captain who resigned? He was scheduled to be another of the officers promoted, but resigned over other issues, including chronic absenteeism. Why would Commissioner Outlaw plan on promoting a district captain who was frequently absent? Did she not know that he was offnot on duty a lot?

In addition, children and relatives of police officers collected at least one third of funds paid to participants in the youth boxing program — more than $5,000 in prepaid debit cards, records obtained by The Inquirer show.

The program, according to its grant application, was supposed to use those debit cards to attract young people in North Philadelphia’s 19121 zip code who are at risk of becoming involved in gun violence, thereby improving police-community relations in the neighborhood. Yet, public records indicate that several of those teens and young adults reside in Delaware County or in the city’s Mount Airy neighborhood.

The program made its first payments in December of 2021, which was almost two years into Commissioner Outlaw’s watch. And she is responsible for whatever happens on her watch.

The Commissioner serves at the pleasure of the Mayor, and Mayor Jim Kenney, who brought Miss Outlaw in from the left coast in February of 2020, will be out of office at the end of the year, and Commissioner Outlaw will be out with him; none of the serious mayoral candidates will want to retain a police commissioner with her record.

The Philadelphia Police Department is in obvious disarray, with shake-ups, suspensions, firings, and a failure of the Commissioner to have her officers’ backs. She is hardly the only failed Philadelphia official, but she’s certainly very prominent among the failures.

There was, of course, very little reason to think that she’d actually be a success. When she was hired to be Police Chief in Portland, Oregon, this fawning tribute was written about her by Oregon Public Broadcasting, including this tell-tale line:

“She is the personification … [of] a current 21st-century mindset in police and policing in the community,” said Derald Walker, president of Cascadia Behavioral Health. . . . .

“When she left the room, there was an audible collective sigh that represented an incredible impression,” Walker said. “I think it’s going to be very hard to see her negatively, and for those people who have an ax to grind with police, to vilify her.”

Translation: Mr Walker thought that the incoming Police Chief wouldn’t offend the people who already didn’t like the police, then he thought her someone who would soft-peddle enforcement of the law.

Well, soft-peddling law enforcement just plain doesn’t work! And Miss Outlaw’s tenure as Commissioner has been an utter, utter failure, with officers leaving in droves, the Department hundreds of officers undermanned, and enough of a lax atmosphere that some officers think that it really doesn’t matter if they cheat the taxpayers.

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Nice guys will never solve Kensington’s problems Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here] to get things done

The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer is, since publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes took over, and the firing resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski, has been the wokest of the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading, so it’s rare for me to see them get something even half-right, but half right they got it:

It’s going to take more than $20 million to help the people of Kensington | Editorial

Without a comprehensive plan to clear the open-air drug markets and help those struggling with addiction and homelessness, the city will be throwing good money after bad.

by The Editorial Board | Sunday, January 15, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST

The city’s plan to steer millions of dollars to Kensington to combat the opioid crisis is a much-needed welcome start. But without a comprehensive plan to address the rampant open-air drug markets and homelessness lining the main business corridor there, the city will be throwing good money after bad.

Mayor Jim Kenney announced plans to distribute $20 million to community groups in Kensington to fund a variety of efforts, including overdose prevention, home repairs, and improvements to parks and schools.

The money is part of the $200 million Philadelphia expects to receive over 18 years as part of a national settlement with Johnson & Johnson and three drug distribution firms that helped fuel the opioid crisis.

Overall, Pennsylvania expects to receive $1.6 billion as part of the settlement negotiated by then-Attorney General (and now Gov.-elect) Josh Shapiro.

To their credit, Kenney and District Attorney Larry Krasner initially balked at the city’s portion of the settlement, given the scale of the opioid epidemic in Philadelphia, which has resulted in more than 1,100 deaths annually since 2017.

Philadelphia is ground zero in the state’s opioid crisis and should receive more funding. But the city ultimately went along with the settlement, figuring it was better than nothing.

The challenge now is to not waste the opportunity — or the money. For far too long, the city has allowed Kensington to devolve into an infamous drug bazaar.

That blurb above? That was in the online version of the editorial itself. It pretty much pegs the irony meter having the Editorial Board telling us about the “opioid crisis” and the Hellhole Kensington has become, and then link an OpEd which implores making illegal drug abuse safer!

As for the “infamous drug bazaar” mentioned? That’s a link to the Inky’s story about the Mexican government using videos of Kensington’s homeless and junkies in an ad campaign to scare Mexicans away from drug use!

The scene along the main business corridor is dystopian. Homeless encampments line the trash-strewn streets along with used needles, human feces, and vomit. There are scores of people smoking, drinking, sleeping, sitting, standing, and stumbling in different states of addiction.

Those unfamiliar with the jaw-dropping sight should google videos of Kensington, as words can’t capture the daily horror. It is an appalling and embarrassing blot on the city that no leader should accept.

Let’s tell the truth here: Mayor Jim Kenney has accepted it! Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has accepted it. And District Attorney Larry Krasner has accepted it. Oh, they’ll never say that, not out loud, but the fact that they haven’t actually done anything about it speaks volumes.

I don’t particularly like copying photos from the Inquirer, but the one on the right, which you can click to enlarge, illustrates the problem, and I thought that photographer José Moreno captured it well. An unidentified junkie, passed out on litter-strewn Kensington Avenue, just a few steps from the SEPTA Market Street/Frankford rail line station, by security roll-down shutters marred by graffiti, with someone trying to see if he’s just passed out or maybe dead, while the police look on. Are the police doing anything about it? Has an ambulance been called?

Another photo can be found here.

Near the end of the editorial:

Past efforts to clamp down on drug dealing and homelessness have been successful, but short-lived. In 1998, then-Police Commissioner John Timoney launched Operation Sunrise, a major effort designed to retake control of Kensington’s streets.

In 2017, the city cleared a large heroin encampment that existed for years in a gulch along the Kensington rail line. In 2021, the city cleared two homeless encampments along Kensington Avenue.

Really? The Editorial Board could reference just three major efforts in twenty-five years? Well, perhaps there were more, and the newspaper simply didn’t have all of the information, or the Board believes that more links would make poorer prose. But I did notice that after a major story in the Inquirer on August 17, 2020, there’s no referenced story about the police making a major raid that year.

The Editorial Board noted that the l;aw abiding residents in Kensington want the police to “crack down” on the open air drug markets, on the crime and the homelessness, but one particular paragraph stands out:

“If the drug dealers are not here then the drug addicts won’t be here,” Darlene Burton, a Kensington resident and community activist, told the Editorial Board. “You have to cut off the head of the snake.”

The Board let that statement stand without challenge, but let’s tell the truth: as long as there are drug addicts, there will be people willing to sell drugs to them. And that is where all of the proposals to attach the dealers fail: the city needs to crack down on the addicts as well.

The addicts need to be arrested and charged for using illegal drugs, and they need to be kept locked up at least long enough for the drugs to get out of their systems, and go through detoxification. You can’t just offer the junkies drug rehabilitation, you have to get them through detox, and force them to go through rehab, or you are just wasting your time and money. You need to convict them of crimes, so that they can, at the very least, be put on probation with frequent, mandatory drug tests.

Why haven’t Mayor Kenney, Commissioner Outlaw, and District Attorney Krasner done anything about Kensington? Because, deep down, they know that what I wrote in the previous paragraph is necessary, and none of them are willing to invest the time or money or political capital to do that. But if the city doesn’t do that, doesn’t treat not only the drug dealers but the drug addicts seriously, then the current situation in Kensington will continue. Oh, a police action of sorts could move the junkies out every so often, but without taking care of the addicts, all that can be done is push them into Fairhill, Harrowgate, or Hunting Park.

The truth ought to be obvious: you can’t be a nice guy and solve the problems. Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here].

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Killadelphia: It’s the last update of 2022 But The Philadelphia Inquirer is still trying to obscure the truth.

The Philadelphia Police Department have released their last ‘official’ homicide report for the year, showing that 514 people have spilled out their life’s blood in the city’s mean streets. Oh, there’ll be another report tomorrow, generated by computer to update past year’s daily numbers, but the current year’s numbers are updated only Monday through Friday, meaning that Friday’s numbers won’t be included on Saturday’s report, now will New Year’s Eve’s numbers on the Sunday report.

We might not even get the yearly total on Monday, because New Year’s Day, a government holiday, occurs on Sunday, and whomever in the Philadelphia Police Department updates the statistics will be allowed to take his holiday on Monday; that’s what happened on December 26th, the Monday after Christmas Day.

In 2021, there were five total murders on December 30th and 31st.

Of course, with a final number which will fit within the range I projected three days ago, 514 to 521, there’s no particular reason to fudge the numbers the way that some have alleged happened at the end of 2020, where an initial report of 502 was downgraded to 499. With the second-place number being an even 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, and the record of 562 set last year, this year’s 514 to 521 will be securely in between those two, so there’d no advantage to any downgrade.

If anything, a homicide or two committed early enough on New Year’s Day might as well be added to 2022’s statistics, in the hope that 2023 can come in under 500; that’s something I can easily see happening.

But, regardless of what the final number is, there’s no escaping one simple fact: under Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the City of Brotherly Love have averaged 525 homicides per year, assuming that the current 514 is the final number for this year. Assuming that 514 is the end number for 2022, for the Kenney-Krasner-Outlaw triumvirate to average under 500, the city would have to see a homicide number for 2023 down to 421. Of course, for every homicide added to the 2022 total, that 421 number decreases by one.

It’s so bad that even The Philadelphia Inquirer noted this year’s numbers, though, of course, they never did the real math to note the average that the law enforcement triumvirate have racked up.

Philly’s gun violence remained at record levels for the third straight year

Philadelphia had recorded 512 homicides this year through Tuesday, police said, and nearly 1,800 people were shot and survived.

by Ellie Rushing and Chris Palmer | Thursday, December 29, 2022

When Taneesha Brodie’s eldest son turned 8, she moved her family out of North Philadelphia to Upper Darby, seeking a safer community away from the city’s gun violence.

She was proud of the people her children became, especially her eldest, Quenzell Bradley-Brown. A married father of four, the 28-year-old spent four years in the National Guard reserves, then worked two jobs and often performed hip-hop, poetry, and comedy at open mic nights.

In February, Bradley-Brown and his family moved back into the city, to Overbrook Park, for more affordable housing and to be closer to his elderly grandmother.

Brodie worried at first, but considered the area to be relatively safe.

Seven months later, her son was dead.

Quenzell Bradley-Brown was apparently a victim of a mistaken identity killing, and remains unsolved, as are hundreds more. With a mostly uncooperative public who hate the police, a police department around 600 officers undermanned, and a probable next mayor who hates cops, who can reasonably expect that number to get better?

Many subsequent paragraphs give us some of the statistics and references, before article authors Ellie Rushing and Chris Palmer go off the reservation:

Arguments and drug-related feuds remained the predominant motives in homicides, according to police statistics. But authorities also pointed to ongoing gang conflicts, social media posts, retaliation or revenge, and domestic violence.

We have several times mocked the Inquirer for recently claiming that there were no real gangs in the city. We were reliably informed by the Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups.” But, the embedded link led to another article, from just 11 days ago, in which Miss Rushing was one of the authors, along with Rodrigo Torrejón, telling of the violence not of gangs, but “West Philadelphia street groups.” They did use the word “gang” one time, but it appears to simply have been a matter of prose, because they’d already used “street group” in the sentence:

Lacey-Woodson and Mickens, affiliated with the street group “02da4,” were targeting a member of the rival gang “524″ and opened fire on the party, said Jeffrey Palmer, an assistant district attorney with the Gun Violence Task Force, which headed the investigation.

Unless I missed it, which is always possible, that was the only use of the word “gang” in the article. There were plenty of subsequent references to “street groups” and “groups” in the article.

Obviously, there was some editorial ‘guidance’ in this. While the article headline and subheading are “West Philly street group members charged for their roles in five different shootings: The rash of violence was part of ongoing feuds between feuding West Philadelphia street groups, authorities said,” the original article title, visible by hovering your cursor over the article tab, was “West Philadelphia gang members arrested in Sircarr Johnson Jr., Salahaldin Mahmoud fatal shooting”, and the article url is https://www.inquirer.com/news/sircarr-johnson-west-philadelphia-gang-arrests-july-4-shooting-20221219.html.

Translation: what I have often referred to as The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. is, I assume to follow Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes directives to be an “antiracist news organization“, the word “gang” is apparently racist. Perhaps, for Miss Hughes, the word “gang” draws into the minds of readers an image of black gangs, or perhaps it’s simply that, for her, the truth is racist.

The Enquirer, oops, sorry, Inquirer really doesn’t like investigating the truth. The paper will never report the numbers I use, all from documented sources, to note how the current law enforcement triumvirate have failed, nor have they, at least as far as I could find, mentioned what Ben Mannes reported on Broad + Liberty, that the homicide numbers are obvious fudges, given the high number of obvious homicides that remain classified as ‘suspicious,’ and not counted in the official homicide statistics.  When the Lenfest Institute, which owns the Inky, sends out begging letters which state that “It is impossible to have a democratic society without a free press that informs citizens,” and “Reporters at The Inquirer are dedicated to speaking truth to power and delivering you news that makes Philadelphia a better place,” one ought to expect that the reporters who are dedicated to speaking truth to power would do something really radical and investigate what that truth really is.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Let’s tell an obvious truth here: Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw will be out of a job in a year. An appointee of Mayor Jim Kenney, the mayor elected in 2023 to replace Mr Kenney, who is term-limited, will want someone, anyone! other than Miss Outlaw in that job. Even if the next mayor likes Miss Outlaw, and agrees with every single thing the Commissioner has done, no one is going to want to be saddled her record. At this point, the Commissioner needs to just woman up, and reveal the whole truth:

Questions about the accuracy of Philadelphia’s homicide statistics

Philadelphia reports an eight-percent year-to-date decline in homicides, but police sources again raise concern over how some deaths are classified in the city’s federally required crime reporting statistics.

by Ben Mannes | Thursday, December 8, 2022

At the time of the writing of this article, the Philadelphia Police Department reports a year-to-date homicide total of 482, a decline of 41 murders from this date last year. Normally, a eight percent decline in murders would be great news in a city that desperately needs some. However, ranking police sources have sent Broad + Liberty a photo from inside Police Headquarters concerning “Other” or “O Job” classification — leading many to question whether the eight percent decline was valid.

You can click on the photo to enlarge it, but to simplify it for you, I’ll tell you: the photo is (allegedly) of a whiteboard in Police headquarters, supposedly the homicide unit, indicating that, at the point the photo was taken, there had been 465 murders, 101 ‘suspicious’ deaths, and 76 ‘other’ cases. In 2021, the numbers were the 562 homicides reported many times, plus 190 suspicious deaths. The ‘other’ is a new category, one which does not involve the finding of a dead body.

In contrast with the daily reporting and real-time tracking of reported crimes in television and social media, many are left to wonder if the questions of 2020, when the city ended the year with just one homicide short of their all-time record, was being repeated. Broad + Liberty reached out to the police department and talked with Capt. Jason Smith of the Homicide Unit to clarify these issues.

We have noted, several times, the change in the Philadelphia Police Department’s statistics, down from the 502 homicides initially reported for 2020, down to 499, one short of the then-all-time record of 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, under the ‘leadership’ of then-Mayor Wilson Goode, he of MOVE bombing fame. I made a totally rookie mistake, and failed to get a screen capture of that, but a Twitter fellow styling himself NDJinPhilly was apparently smarter than me that particular time, took the screen shot, and then tweeted it to me.

Capt. Smith confirmed that they are both things, but there are no deaths or “bodies” associated with O-jobs. He clarified that “M-jobs” are murder investigations while “S-jobs” are deaths that may not be classified murders. Smith estimated that of the 103 S-jobs so far this year, at least twenty may be deemed self-defense, and thus not result in a homicide charge. Numerous others, according to Smith, are awaiting toxicology and brain samples from the medical examiner to determine whether or not they are homicides, vs. overdoses or accidental deaths, which could take months to get back from them.

Smith said that “The Homicide unit would be conducting an audit of all S-jobs in the next week,” which should reconcile numbers by year-end. Smith said that his unit tries to conduct such an audit every two to three months, which could result in an increase in homicides by two to three cases as a result. More relevant to the questions presented by the 2020 year-end homicide total, says Smith, is the issue of “delayed death investigations”, in where a victim dies later from injuries first reported as an assault, or when S-jobs are later reported as murders due to delayed results from toxicologists and/or medical examiners.

That’s all well and good, but Mr Mannes did not follow up with the obvious question: if there were “S” cases at the end of 2020 and 2021, which hadn’t been resolved into homicides or not homicides when we were given the end-of-year homicide totals, why, when they were finally resolved — surely at least some of them have been — did the year-end homicide totals for 2020 and 2021 never change? Are we expected to believe that, out of 190 ‘suspicious’ deaths in 2021, not a single one was revised to be a homicide? The odds of such would seem vanishingly small!

Smith told Broad + Liberty that a detailed breakdown of S-job classifications would be available after the audit and would be available for further updates. However, popular podcast host and former judicial warrant squad Sergeant Mark Fusetti reports some of his sources showed “S-jobs” that are obvious homicides, but remain outside the homicide statistics for various reasons; “Last year had a guy shot in the head in a van, but because the weapon wasn’t found, they have it as an S job” said Fusetti. “Sometimes its a clear murder, but the Medical Examiner sends back questions so it gets an S Job” continues Fusetti. “It then sits on the desk while the Detective has to work newer cases, and it never gets reported on the homicide stats.”

Also see: The OK Corral: The PPD Has Been Lying To Its Officers

The city shouldn’t have to rely on a retired Police Sergeant, or on an anonymous officer who tweeted out that photo of the whiteboard, a photo that you can bet your last euro that the city did not want to see released. Right now, Philly needs a homicide detective to put this information together and leak it to media who will report on it.

Of course, it would be preferable that, rather than having it leaked, if Commissioner Outlaw would realize that her career in Philly has no more than 12½ months left to run, that her job performance in the City of Brotherly Love means that she’ll never get a top police job in any city with a six-figure number of residents, and just go ahead and tell the whole truth herself. The end is coming; she might as well be honest about things, and rat out Mayor Kenney if he ordered her to massage the numbers.

Going out still lying about things won’t help her reputation anywhere she searches for another job, because, now that this story has broken, people will keep hammering down and hammering down and hammering down on it; it will eventually become completely public.