Tag Archives: #Killadelphia

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Philadelphia sports writers might just explain Philly’s murder rate The Inquirer wants to influence the city's culture, but their sportswriters might be going about it the wrong way.

In the city that booed Santa Claus, and which piled heaps of scorn and abuse on Carson Wentz and Ben Simmons after every bad game, Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer Marcus Hayes wants to blame 76ers point guard Ben Simmons and (former) Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz for wanting to leave.

    Ben-edict Simmons, Carson Wentz deserve Philadelphia’s fury as they abandon Eagles, Sixers

    They should have spent the summer on their knees, begging forgiveness, promising to improve. Instead, they sabotaged their trade value and put your teams in peril. They completely warrant your wrath.

    By Marcus Hayes | September 4, 2021

    Philly can be an angry place. Just ask Santa.

    Sometimes that anger is misplaced, as Jayson Werth can attest. But, in this moment, every ounce of Philadelphia’s fury directed at Ben Simmons and Carson Wentz is justified.

    Wentz forced a disastrous trade this spring to the Colts after logging one of the worst seasons in NFL history. Simmons, gun-shy in the playoffs, is trying to trump that unholy departure by strong-arming the Sixers, according to an Inquirer report Wednesday.

    They should have returned to the Eagles and Sixers, rehabilitated their images, and enhanced their trade values. They could not, and cannot. They fear competition. They abhor accountability. They see themselves as victims. So, instead, they sabotaged their trade values, which crippled the Eagles, and which probably will cripple the Sixers. That, on its own, should infuriate fans, even if the pair’s dismissiveness didn’t.

    Wentz and Simmons should have spent the summer of 2021 down on their knees, begging for your forgiveness, working on their flaws, willing to accept whatever role their bosses decided would best help the team. They should have apologized to their teammates for their shortcomings and for the distractions they caused. They should have pledged to, in the future, actually earn the millions of dollars that you lavish upon them — paying to watch them on TV, online, or in person; parking your cars and buying beers at the stadiums; purchasing their jerseys and shoes online.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Simmons grew up in Australia, where people aren’t treated the way Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, treat sports stars. Mr Wentz grew up in North Dakota, where people aren’t, you know, [insert plural slang term for the rectum here], yet somehow, some way, people there expect them to have Philly thick skins.

Of course, there are a lot of Philadelphians who don’t have such thick skins, which is why people keep getting shot in the City of Brotherly Love, but I digress.

Mr Simmons is an incredible athlete, but he has one glaring weakness as a basketball player: he just can’t shoot. So, with all that he can do, Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, had to jump on his biggest weakness, and forgot about all of the good things he can do. Philly fans, and sports writers, wanted him to play beyond his skill set, and trashed him when he couldn’t. Even before the playoffs, there were plenty of articles in the Inquirer about him taking very few three point shots. (I remember one in which it was noted that, at the time, Shaquille O’Neal had more career three-pointers than Mr Simmons.)

The pressure got to Mr Simmons, and he had a terrible series against the Atlanta Hawks, shooting just 33.3% . . . from the free throw line! Then, with just 3:30 left in the game, and the 76ers trailing by two, Mr Simmons, who is 6’11” tall, passed up a wide-open dunk over 6’1″ Trae Young. The game, as the announcer said, had gotten in his head.

Mr Simmons was rightly criticized, but Philly fans, and sports writers, went way, way overboard.

Mr Wentz? He was well appreciated, until last season, when he played behind a destroyed-by-injuries offensive line, had no rushing game, and second-quality receivers. His top target, Zach Ertz, was out for five games, yet Philly fans, and sports writers, expected Mr Wentz to be Superman anyway. I wasn’t a particularly good football player, but even in high school I knew that there were eleven guys on the field, all of whom are necessary to make plays, and it doesn’t matter how good your quarterback is, if his receivers aren’t getting open, and his line isn’t keeping the defensive rush off of him, he’s not going to have a good game. Even Tom Brady can’t make great plays when he’s underneath a 260 lb blitzing linebacker.

The article was all about Messrs Simmons and Wentz having no loyalty to their Philadelphia teams, but, in reality, Philly fans, and sports writers, had no loyalty to those players. Mr Hayes is like the abusive husband who gets all urinated off and blames his wife for filing for divorce.

When I think of the homicide rate in Philly, which actually has been coming down of late, it seems to me like the Inquirer sports writers, writ large. People getting pissed off, for reasons that really aren’t that important, and overreacting in the extreme. Mr Hayes, of course, is being paid to overreact, even by the very #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 Inquirer, but, in his own small way, he is contributing to the attitude which so frequently spills out onto the city’s mean streets. Through the end of August, 357 people had been murdered in Philly, which means that there were more murders there than any entire year from 2008 through 2019.

Is that fair to Mr Hayes? He might not think so, but the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love is, in the end, an issue of culture, and the Inquirer is, and wants to be, both an element of, and contributor to, the culture of the city. When published Elizabeth Hughes wrote that the newspaper was trying to become “an anti racist news organization,” she was saying that she wanted her newspaper to become a leader in the community, to make the city a better place in which to live. Thus, it has to be asked: do columns like Mr Hayes’, in which he wrote of Messrs Simmons and Wentz, “So yes, this pair warrants your wrath,” lower the rhetoric, dampen down the anger, reduce the tendency to violence? When he wrote, “Ben-edict Simmons and Ginger Jesus are Philly sports’ version of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,” wasn’t he asking for an extreme reaction? If players like Messrs Simmons and Wentz, who have virtually nothing to do, personally, with the vast, vast majority of people in Philly, deserve the “wrath” and “fury” of Philadelphia fans, then doesn’t the guy down the block, who stole your girl, or dunked in your face on the playground, or cut you off in trying to grab a parking space, or sold drugs on your corner, deserve your “wrath” and your “fury” even more?

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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Haven’t the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer noticed the numbers? Homicides and shootings in the city have dropped significantly

We have previously noted the recent decrease in the number of homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. We noted, on July 9th, that there had been 291 killings as of 11:59 PM on July 8th. 291 ÷ 189 days in the year, = 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. If I recall correctly, that 562 number was my highest projection for the year.

But then, as of the 221st day of the year, 325 homicides had been recorded. 325 ÷ 221 days in the year, = 1.4706 homicides per day, for a projected 537 for the year. That number stayed fairly consistent, as a week later, with ‘just’ 339 homicides in 228 days, Philadelphia was seeing ‘only’ 1.4868 homicides per day, which works out to ‘just’ 543 over the course of 2021.

As of 11:59 PM on Sunday, August 22nd, the Philadelphia Police Department reported that there had been 345 homicides in the city. 345 ÷ 234 days = 1.4744 per day, or 538 projected for the year. The big news is that, over the past 31 days, a full month, if not a calendar month, there have been ‘just’ 31 homicides, ‘just’ 1.00 per day. With 131 days remaining in 2021, if that rate could be maintained, there would be ‘only’ 476 killings in Philly for the year. If The Philadelphia Inquirer has noticed that decrease, I haven’t seen it mentioned. It certainly doesn’t seem as though their Editorial Board has noticed.

    In Philly, someone has been shot every day since Jan. 2 as multiple crises plague the city

    January 2nd was the only day in 2021 in which no person was shot in Philadelphia.

    by The Editorial Board | August 23, 2021

    If you’re looking for ways to quantify the depths of the gun violence crisis in Philadelphia, there may not be many bleaker statistics than this: There’s only been one day so far this year — Jan. 2 — when not a single person was shot in the city.

    Since then, nearly 1,500 people have been shot in Philadelphia, including 295 fatalities. At least 50 other people were murdered by an assailant who used a weapon other than a gun.

    Gun violence drives Philadelphia’s murder rate, which is on pace for a record this year, but it’s essential that the city also address three other factors if officials hope to stem a seemingly unrelenting tide of killings — increasing the rate at which murders are solved, fostering more cooperation from witnesses in criminal prosecutions, and rooting out corrupt officers whose bad practices later lead to convictions being overturned.

    In Philadelphia, murderers have a better chance of winning a coin toss than being arrested. Last Wednesday, during the most recent briefing on the city’s response to gun violence, the police presented data showing that through Aug. 15, only 43% of homicides this year led to an arrest. That homicide clearance rate, or the percentage of killings that lead to an arrest, is on par with recent years.

Am I wrong in thinking that the Editorial Board ought to be noting that fewer people are being killed?

But it’s not just that fewer people are being killed. According to data provided by the city, there were 272 shootings during the 31 days of July, and ‘only’ 145 through the first 22 days of August. If that rate of 6.59 shootings per day holds up for the rest of the month, there would be 204 total shootings in August, a 33.33% decrease.

There’s more at the original, but, if you remember when publisher Elizabeth Hughes said she was going to make the Inquirer “an anti-racist news organization“, you won’t be surprised that the Editorial Board turned quickly to a Larry Krasneresque condemnation of the Philadelphia Police Department, noting Mr Krasner’s ongoing attempts to overturn what they claim are false convictions.

    These exonerations, as well as recent reporting by The Inquirer, have shed light on the coercive and illegal tactics detectives used to get false confessions. This month, Krasner charged three former homicide detectives for lying in the 2016 retrial of Anthony Wright, whose murder conviction was vacated due to DNA evidence.

    Also this month, Krasner asked a judge to hold the Philadelphia Police Department in contempt for failing to turnover police misconduct records.

    Philadelphia’s twin crises of gun violence and homicides are multilayered and intertwined. To reduce the number of unsolved murders in the city, the homicide clearance rate needs to go up. For the homicide clearance rate to go up, witnesses need to have faith that the system is actually seeking justice — not simply trying to improve its statistics by throwing another person in prison.

I’m trying to figure out how the Editorial Board are trying to give witnesses “faith that the system is actually seeking justice” by continually slamming the performance of the Police Department, and so far, I’ve got nothing. When the Board say that the Police Department needs to be “rooting out corrupt officers,” the impression the #woke at the Inquirer are giving — and, I suspect, trying to give — is that most of the city police officers are corrupt.

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The decrease in the homicide rate in Philadelphia It's still way, way, way too high, but some progress has been made. Will it last?

We recently noted that the gang bangers have slowed down their rates of murders in the City of Brotherly Love. With ‘just’ 339 homicides in 228 days, Philadelphia is seeing ‘only’ 1.4868 homicides per day, which works out to ‘just’ 543 over the course of 2021.

That would still shatter 1990’s record of 500, and 2020’s 499, but it’s a far cry from the 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year, that the homicide numbers for July 8th yielded.

But, with 314 homicides reported as of July 22nd, the 203rd day of the year, and 339 reported on August 16th, the 228th day of the year, Philly has seen ‘just’ 25 homicides in the last 25 days, ‘only’ 1.00 per day. If that rate were to be maintained for the rest of the year, Philly would see ‘only’ 476 murders in 2021.

Screen capture from the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, August 17, 2021, 11:33 AM. Click to enlarge.

Of course, that’s still a lot, more than any year between 2007 through 2019. And, with 339 so far this year, 2021 has already exceeded the homicide totals for any full year from 2008 through 2017.

We’re still in the long, hot summer, and will be for another month, but it has to be noted: the decline in homicides in Philly occurred during this long, hot summer.

Screen capture from the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, August 17, 2021, 9:00 AM. Click to enlarge.

But there’s a sad part to this post. I began it around 8:50 AM, and a screen capture taken right at 9:00 AM showed ‘only’ 337 homicides. The electricity went out here at 9:11 AM, due to a limb falling on a power line somewhere. When the sparktricity came back on, at 10:52 AM — something I didn’t notice for a few minutes, because I was out on the screened in porch, reading a history of the Tudor monarchs in my Kindle — I saw that the Philadelphia Police Department had to update it a second time this morning, to report two more homicides as of 11:59 PM yesterday.

It’s a great thing that the homicide rate has taken a drop over the last almost four weeks; it would be nice to know what has led to that.

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Have the bad guys run low on ammo in Killadelphia? The homicide rate has dropped dramatically in the last three weeks

As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, July 22nd, the bad guys, thugs and gang bangers of the City of Brotherly Love had killed 314 people. At the end of Tuesday, August 9, 2021, “only” 325 people had been murdered. That’s “only” 11 dead bodies in 18 days! We noted, on July 9th, that there had been 291 killings as of 11:59 PM on July 8th. 291 ÷ 189 days in the year, = 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. If I recall correctly, that 562 number was my highest projection for the year.

Now, as of the 221st day of the year, 325 homicides have been recorded. 325 ÷ 221 days in the year, = 1.4706 homicides per day, for a projected 537 for the year. Yeah, that’s still a record-setting number — there were 500 homicides recorded in 1990, and 499 last year — but it’s a significant decrease in the past few weeks.

Have the gangs called a truce? Have most of the ‘scores’ been settled? Are the bad guys running low on ammo?

If The Philadelphia Inquirer has noticed this, I have managed to miss the stories.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer proves my point

We have said, umpteen times, that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t really care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an innocent, a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl.

    Two young athletes were fatally shot this week, leaving West Philadelphia school communities shattered: ‘This can’t be normal’

    “This can’t be normal, this can’t be accepted,” a Boys’ Latin football coach said he told his players. “You have a victim, but you also have a family behind them that are left to pick up the pieces.”

    By Anna Orso | Friday, July 23, 2021

    It had been just a few weeks since K.J. Johnson got his driver’s license. He picked up friends, including his childhood pal Tommie Frazier, and headed to play basketball on Wednesday, a sunny afternoon in West Philly.

    The ride ended in tragedy. Johnson, 16, and Frazier, 18, were fatally shot just after noon while seated in a car on the 200 block of North 56th Street in West Philadelphia, after unidentified gunmen fired into the vehicle. Another 16-year-old was wounded by the bullets fired in broad daylight near a day care and a bus stop.

    As of Friday, no one had been arrested and homicide investigators were still searching for video and witnesses. Police said they found 17 shell casings at the scene.

There’s plenty more at the original, but it all boils down to the same thing we’ve written about before: the victims were good high school athletes, the victims were somebodies.

A previous story noted that:

    The shooting happened at 12:10 p.m. on the 200 block of North 56th Street, when unidentified gunmen opened fire on the teens as they sat in a car, said Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Naish.

    Two males, ages 16 and 18 — whom police did not identify — were pronounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center after each was struck several times. The other teen, a 16-year-old boy, was taken to Lankenau Medical Center in stable condition, police said.

Seated in a car, each struck several times, and the police recovered 17 shell casings at the scene. This wasn’t random; these victims were deliberately targeted.

Was Mr McCain telling me that I’ve been too much of a broken record on Philadelphia murders? 🙂

Next came another story:

    He ‘didn’t deserve to die this way,’ says family of the 22-year-old killed outside Pat’s Steaks

    Police have charged a Reading man with murder in connection with the killing of David Padro Jr., a 22-year-old from Camden.

    by Anna Orso and Mensah M. Dean | Updated: July 23, 2021

    David Padro Sr. expected to spend this weekend like he did the last one: surrounded by family and hanging out by his pool in South Jersey with his 22-year-old son.

    Instead, he’s planning his son’s funeral.

    David Padro Jr., 22, was fatally shot early Thursday morning in South Philadelphia outside Pat’s King of Steaks, the famed cheesesteak joint where he had stopped for a bite. His father said Padro, of Camden, was in Philadelphia with his girlfriend to go to a nightclub when they stopped to eat and an argument broke out among patrons.

    Then, police say, Paul C. Burkert, a 36-year-old from Reading, pulled a gun. Padro was shot in the shoulder and abdomen and transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 1 a.m. Police said Burkert fled the scene and then turned himself in to National Park Police at Independence Mall.

Burkert faces murder and weapons charges. Court records show he pleaded guilty to a felony drug charge in Berks County in 2019 and was prohibited from possessing a firearm. No attorney for him was listed in court records Friday.

Gee, a convicted druggie, probably a drug dealer, carrying a handgun while out to buy a cheesesteak. He may have been from Reading, but that was real Philadelphia of him!

The Inquirer reported that, despite previous rumors that it was an altercation between Eagles and Giants fans, it was an altercation over a parking space. A photo accompanying the story shows just how crowded Philly’s narrow streets are in that area.

But both cases show what the Inquirer does. They pick some unusual aspect, high school basketball players, or out-or-towners who didn’t know each other, while the typical murders, one bad guy shooting another bad guy, get ignored, and they get mostly ignored because the city doesn’t want to face the real problem: it’s not guns, but a culture which says it’s perfectly reasonable to pull out your Glock and blast someone else.

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If the news doesn’t fit Teh Narrative, the left try to ignore it to death.

At some point, people have to admit that Amanda Marcotte is simply not a serious writer. Now, it could be said that I am not, either, given that no one is paying me to write, and I certainly do not have her audience, but for a political writer, living in Philadelphia, to not have mentioned — did she even notice? — that her adopted hometown had just hit, and then quickly passed, 300 homicides for the year, seems pretty unusual. Heck, even The Philadelphia Inquirer noticed! The image to the right, on which you can click to enlarge, is her Salon article archive, and, two days short of half a year after President Trump left office, it’s pretty much all Donald Trump, all the time.

But, her pain is understandable, because it has been shared by so many other leftist writers. The COVID-19 restrictions, on which so many on the left blamed the surge in homicides, are now almost all in the past, and the evil reich-wing Mr Trump is out of office. The Democrats control the White House, the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. In Pennsylvania, the Governor is a Democrat, as is the Mayor of Philadelphia, as is the City Council, and as is the city’s District Attorney, a man who greatly resists “mass incarceration,” and is so soft-on-crime that it ought to embarrass those who are soft-on-crime. The city’s only serious newspaper is an “anti-racist news organization,” and, let’s face it, virtually every liberal municipal policy imaginable has already been put into force in the City of Brotherly Love.

And yet, and yet, the good people of Philadelphia continue to shoot each other at a prodigious rate. At least 303 murders through 198 days yields a homicide rate of 1.5303 per day, and that works out to 558 or 559 (558.56, to be exact, but you can’t kill half a person) projected homicides for 2021. The record is 500 set in the crack cocaine wars of 1990, with last year’s 499 taking second place.

With all of the liberal policies that one could reasonably imagine being enacted, being in force, in Philadelphia, Miss Marcotte’s fellow city residents are still gunning each other down at appalling rates.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Mindless carnage continues in Chicago

The Windy City has seen more total murders. The Chicago Tribune listed 364 homicides as of July 6th, while the Chicago Sun-Times listed 33 more people bleeding out their life’s blood in the city streets between July 7th and July 17th. That’s 397 homicides in 198 days, 2.0051 per day, on pace for 732 for the year. Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s very liberal policies, combined with the completely Democrat controlled state government, don’t seem to have helped much.

However, if Chicago has seen more homicides than Philadelphia, with a population of 2,679,080, Chicago is 68% bigger than Philly, with 1,591,034 souls. Using the projected killings, Chicago projects to a homicide rate of 27.32 per 100,000 population, while Philly basically says, “Hold my beer!” 558 projected murders divided by 15.79 yields a homicide rate of 35.34 per 100,000!

But, pointing that out doesn’t fit Teh Narrative[1]Not a typo: “Teh Narrative” was intentional. for the left, does it?

So, what is Teh Narrative? That this is a gun control issue, that it’s all about too many guns available, and so we must restrict the rights of law abiding citizens, as though the gang bangers are going to obey such laws.

But, if they tell the truth, that this isn’t a gun control problem, but a cultural problem, a specific cultural problem, virtually everything the left say about ‘racial justice’ and ‘systemic racism’ just falls apart.

References

References
↑1 Not a typo: “Teh Narrative” was intentional.
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300

One of the movies that frequently shows up on television is 300, the very much fictionalized account of King Leonidas and a band of 300 Spartan warriors, at the Battle of Thermopylae, and yeah, I frequently tune in.

Well today in the City of Brotherly Love, the 300th homicide victim lost his life, and the movie’s bloody logo seems pretty appropriate. The Philadelphia Inquirer actually took notice of the milestone:

    Philly just hit 300 killings this year, as its record pace continues

    This is the earliest in the year that the city has even approached 300 killings since at least the early 1990s. And shootings have topped 1,200.

    by Chris Palmer and Mensah M. Dean | July 16, 2021

    Late Thursday night, someone opened fire on a North Philadelphia street and shot three people. One died: the city’s 300th homicide victim of 2021.

    Police did not identify the man who died, and released few details about the crime, which they said happened on the 1800 block of West Susquehanna Avenue around 11:30 p.m. The other victims, authorities said, were a 14-year-old girl shot in the chest and a 24-year-old man struck in the shoulder. Both were hospitalized Friday, the girl in critical condition.

    The fatal shooting meant that the city had reached 300 killings more quickly in a single year than any since at least the 1970s. And it kept Philadelphia on pace to top not only last year’s 499 homicides, but also its all-time record of 500 slayings in a year, set in 1990.

Top the record? How about smash it, smash it to smithereens? Assuming the 300th killing is counted among yesterday’s totals — it wasn’t as of the 8:00 AM revision by the Philadelphia Police Department — that’s 1.5306 homicides per day in Philadelphia, on pace for 559 for the entire year.

    Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said in a statement that “the brazenness with which these assaults are carried out is appalling. The lack of regard for human life is affecting innocent bystanders and our children are being caught in the cross fire.”

    Outlaw said that officers were continuing to seize illegal guns in record numbers, and that police remained “laser-focused on enforcing the law while deterring crime,” while pledging that police would continue to seek partnerships with other agencies and community members “to effect long-term and sustainable change.”

Further down:

    Leroy Muhammad, an activist with the Black Male Community Council,[1]Hyperlink added by DRP; the Inquirer couldn’t be bothered. was among those speaking out Friday. He told those listening that they as community members needed to step up to help stop the violence and help the authorities catch those committing violent acts.

    “We don’t come out here as a follow-up response. We’re out here every day, this is what we do. We’re out in the streets every day and we’re looking for others to come out with us,” Muhammad said. “I woke up this morning, only to find that there had been 300 homicides in Philadelphia. Totally ridiculous. Unacceptable.”

Heaven forfend! It’s almost as though the local community, and the Inquirer, are realizing that the tremendous homicide rate in Philly isn’t a “gun violence” problem, but an inner city black culture issue.[2]Also see: Robert Stacy McCain on The Other McCain: Yet Another Aspiring Rapper Update. When a city has a substantial portion of its teenaged to thirty-something population glamorizing killing their … Continue reading The BMCC website even has a slogan, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” -James Baldwin, on its main page, and perhaps, just perhaps, a few Philadelphians are actually facing the problem.

Those 300 homicide victims? They weren’t like King Leonidas and the brave Spartans fighting heroically to the death. They have been mostly thugs killed by other thugs, though there have been some innocent victims, primarily among the bystanders.

References

References
↑1 Hyperlink added by DRP; the Inquirer couldn’t be bothered.
↑2 Also see: Robert Stacy McCain on The Other McCain: Yet Another Aspiring Rapper Update. When a city has a substantial portion of its teenaged to thirty-something population glamorizing killing their enemies in rap “music,” perhaps the city leaders shouldn’t be mystified as to why the ‘gangstas’ are shooting other ‘gangstas.’
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With just half the year gone, Philadelphia has already topped yearly homicide totals for 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 In promising to become "anti-racist," The Philadelphia Inquirer has become racist

We noted, just three weeks ago, that the City of Brotherly Love’s terrible homicide rate had topped the entire year’s total for 2013 and 2014:

    According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, as of the end of Tuesday, June 15th, the city hit what could wryly be called a milestone, it’s 250th murder. The math is pretty bad: 250 homicides ÷ 166 days = 1.506 per day, × 365 = 549.70 murders for the year. The evil, reich-wing Donald Trump has been out of office for just five days short of five months now, the very liberal, opposed to mass incarceration District Attorney Larry Krasner has been renominated, the pandemic restrictions have (mostly) been lifted, and Philly’s murder rate is increasing.

Well, as Mickey East, formerly a political science professor at the University of Kentucky used to say, to encourage students to get their work done, tempus is fugiting, and now, three weeks later, the Philadelphia Police Department is reporting 285 homicides as of 11:59 PM on Monday, July 5th. 285 homicides ÷ 186 days = 1.532 per day, putting the city on schedule for 559.27 for the year. Those 285 homicides now top the year’s totals for 2015 and 2016, 280 and 277 homicides, respectively. At least as of 5:15 PM, The Philadelphia Inquirer had taken no notice of that fact, at least on its website’s main page.

In just 20 days, the murder rate has increased enough to add 9 or 10 more dead bodies on Philly’s mean streets, but, as already noted, The Philadelphia Inquirer, “an anti-racist news organization” according to publisher Elizabeth Hughes, doesn’t care unless one of those killed was an ‘innocent,’ or a ‘somebody,‘ or a cute little white girl.

What did Miss Hughes say the Inquirer would do to make itself into that “anti-racist news organization” she wanted it to be?

    A month after the (Buildings Matter, Too) headline was published, the newsroom began a comprehensive process to examine nearly every facet of what our journalists do. Almost 80 staffers, more than a third of the newsroom, have convened every week since. In working groups, they discuss complex issues and make recommendations that are then considered by a steering committee made up of managers and frontline staffers. To date, all have been adopted.

    Here’s a sampling of what has been done or is close to being launched:

    • Producing an antiracism workflow guide for the newsroom that provides specific questions that reporters and editors should ask themselves at various stages of producing our journalism.
    • Establishing a Community News Desk to address long-standing shortcomings in how our journalism portrays Philadelphia communities, which have often been stigmatized by coverage that over-emphasizes crime.
    • Creating an internal forum for journalists to seek guidance on potentially sensitive content and to ensure that antiracism is central to the journalism.
    • Commissioning an independent audit of our journalism that resulted in a critical assessment. Many of the recommendations are being addressed, and a process for tracking progress is being developed.
    • Training our staff and managers on how to recognize and avoid cultural bias.
    • Examining our crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media.

And the result of all of that? Other than to criticize “gun violence,” a term which makes it sound as though inanimate firearms somehow levitate and shoot people all by themselves, the Inquirer almost never personalizes the actual shooters, never blames the people who pick up the guns and start firing.[1]A notable exception to that would be Keith Gibbson, but he is accused of killing an ‘innocent,’ Christine Lugo. Even saying that, the stories stopped after just two articles. In their great desire not to be racist, the Inquirer has become the racists they decry, examining everything through the prism of race, and deciding what to print, and not to print, based on its effects on race. That is, quite literally, discriminating on the basis of race! In “examin(ing) nearly every facet of what (their) journalists do,” they have become not journalists, but journolists![2]The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term … Continue reading

As I previously noted, I ran across a photo of the masthead of The Philadelphia Inquirer from February 25, 1953, and noticed the ‘taglines’ that it used: “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. By Public ledger, the Inquirer was setting itself up as Philadelphia’s newspaper of record, which Wikipedia defines as “a major newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative.” That Wikipedia article named four newspapers of record for the United States: The New York Times (Founded 1851), The Washington Post (1877), The Los Angeles Times (1881) and The Wall Street Journal (1889). First printed on Monday, June 1, 1829, the then Pennsylvania Inquirer is older than any of them. “An editorial in the first issue of The Pennsylvania Inquirer promised that the paper would be devoted to the right of a minority to voice their opinion and ‘the maintenance of the rights and liberties of the people, equally against the abuses as the usurpation of power.’”

The newspaper, by its publisher’s own admission, no longer cares about anything as radical as the ‘public’s right to know,’ because knowing the truth, the unvarnished truth, might perpetuate stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.[3]That quote is specifically from the Sacramento Bee, and forms the basis of the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, but it is clearly a reflection of what the Inquirer does as well. But, at least the publisher has admitted what she wants to do; I, for one, will continue to point that out.

References

References
↑1 A notable exception to that would be Keith Gibbson, but he is accused of killing an ‘innocent,’ Christine Lugo. Even saying that, the stories stopped after just two articles.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 That quote is specifically from the Sacramento Bee, and forms the basis of the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, but it is clearly a reflection of what the Inquirer does as well.
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Killadelphia At least five people murdered in the City of Brotherly Love on the Fourth of July

I have said before that The Philadelphia Inquirer isn’t interested in covering homicides in the city unless the victim was an ‘innocent,’ or a ‘somebody,‘ or a cute little white girl.

Well, a somebody was killed, and the Inquirer published 815 words about him:

    A West Philly fashion designer and a state senator’s relative killed at a cookout are among 20 shot over the July 4th holiday

    Sircarr Johnson Jr., 23, was a father, a fashion designer, and the owner of Premiere Bande clothing store in West Philly.

    by Stephanie Farr | July 5, 2021

    Sircarr Johnson, Jr. From his Instagram account. Click to enlarge.

    Sircarr Johnson Sr. sat hunched in a chair in front of his son’s clothing store, Premiére Bande, in West Philadelphia on Monday morning, proudly dressed head-to-toe in an outfit designed by his 23-year-old son.

    The glass door to the store behind him was shattered by a bullet, one of dozens fired on the street less than 12 hours before.

    Johnson, who held Sircarr Johnson Jr. in his arms as his son died in the hail of gunfire Sunday night, was shattered, too.

    “How the bullet don’t hit me? How it don’t hit me?” he sobbed.

    Johnson’s son and namesake was one of two men killed when gunmen opened fire during a Fourth of July cookout that Johnson Jr. was having Sunday night at his store on 60th Street near Walnut.

    The second victim was identified as 21-year-old Salahaldin Mahmoud in a news release from State Sen. Sharif Street Office’s Monday afternoon. The release said Mahmoud was a first cousin of Street’s wife, April.

There’s a lot more at the original.

The article is primarily about Mr Johnson’s death, but did have some bare information about other murder victims. Besides Mr Mahmoud:

  • A 21-year-old man who was shot several times in his stomach and thigh on the 5900 block of Hazel Avenue in West Philadelphia at 1:53 a.m. Monday;
  • An 18-year-old man who was shot in his chest at 11:21 p.m. Sunday on the 2100 block of West Sedgley Avenue in North Philadelphia; and
  • A 21-year-old man who was found with a gunshot wound to his chest at 3:11 a.m. Sunday on a driveway along the 1300 block of Westbury Drive in Overbrook Park.

The Philadelphia Police reported that twenty people were shot between 1:53 AM on Sunday, July 4th, and 4:25 AM Monday morning; five of the twenty died.

    Four other shooting victims remained in critical condition, with the rest being listed as stable, including a 15-year-old boy who was shot in his leg and foot on the 6000 block of Walton Street in West Philadelphia at 10:36 p.m. Sunday.

    Two teenage boys were shot shortly before 5:30 p.m. Monday near North 33d Street and West Oxford Street in Strawberry Mansion. A 14-year-old boy was shot once in the head and listed in “extremely critical” condition, police said, and a 15-year-old boy was shot once in the foot and in stable condition.

The odious District Attorney, Larry Krasner, is going to address the issue, but, if the killers are actually caught — and odds are, they won’t be — it would surprise absolutely no one if the killers turn out to be someone who could and should have been in jail, but was treated leniently by the city’s softer-than-soft-on-crime District Attorney.

    Street’s office said the state senator will hold a news conference Tuesday morning at City Hall, along with Mahmoud’s family; District Attorney Larry Krasner; community leader Bilal Qayyum, president and executive director of the Father’s Day Rally Committee Inc.; and other elected officials and community leaders to “speak on this tragedy and the investigation.”

Of course, these people will blame ‘gun violence’ in general, as will the Inquirer, with barely a harsh word for the actual people who fired the shots that took so many victims. After all, talking about the people who pulled the triggers “disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community,” and we can’t have that, now can we?