Tag Archives: #Killadelphia

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The useful dead

Five people were murdered, with another 18 wounded, in a mass shooting in a Colorado Springs nightclub which catered primarily to homosexuals, and it’s a crisis unlike any we’ve ever seen before! Horrors! A mass shooting! “LGBTQI+ people are under attack! They’re not safe!”

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is a homosexual male, so naturally this is on his radar, just like it is for all of the left who will never let a “crisis” go to waste.

In the meantime, as of 11:59 PL EST on Monday, November 21st, 464 people had poured out their life’s blood in the mean streets of the City of Brotherly Love, and nobody says a damned thing, because the vast majority of the victims, and of their killers, are black. According to the Philadelphia Shooting Victims Dashboard, out of 2,746 fatal shootings in the city from 2015 through November 18, 2022, 2,114, or 76.79%, of the victims were black males, with another 153 (5.56%) being black females. That’s 82.35% of all fatal shooting victims over an almost eight-year period being black, in a city which is only, when Hispanics are counted as a separate category, 38.3% non-Hispanic black.

Hispanic males were the victims in 282 fatal shootings (10.24%), while 31 (1.13%) Hispanic females were shot to death. Using the formulation so loved by The Philadelphia Inquirer, that means that “Black and brown” people were the victims in 93.72% of all fatal shootings, and, other than when an “innocent” is killed, nobody really cares.

And while to-date homicides are actually down 6.45% from 2021’s record-shattering numbers, shootings are up, 1.16%. The Philadelphia Police Department’s “scoop and scoot” policy, of getting shooting victims into patrol cars and rushing them to the hospital rather than waiting on an ambulance appears to have had a significant effect in reducing the percentage of those shot expiring.

I guess that I have to give Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw credit for something, anyway, though I don’t give her credit for much.

But I have to ask: why are the five people killed in Colorado Springs more important than the 464 slaughtered in Philly? For every person killed in that nightclub, 93 were murdered in Philly!

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Crazy People Are Dangerous: No Motive Yet in Colorado Springs Shooting

Of course, the nightclub gunman can be demonized as someone who hated homosexuals — despite the fact he had a previous criminal incident which had nothing to do with them — and will be charged with a “hate crime”, while the Philly killers are mostly indistinguishable from their victims as far as race or ethnic group is concerned; there are no political points to be gained by demonizing the people who killed them. For the left, the nightclub victims are somehow deader than the people slaughtered in Philadelphia.  At the very least, they are far more useful dead than ordinary people in Philly.

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Maybe Larry Krasner ought to consider the possibility that not all of the juveniles he treats leniently will turn out to be good guys?

Given that the Philadelphia Police Department already had mugshots of the fine young men who committed the Roxborough High School shooting, the following story from The Philadelphia Inquirer isn’t that much of a surprise. Since juvenile records are normally sealed, we’ll probably never get the story as to for what those young gentlemen were first arrested, unless some good person who can get access to those records leaks the information.

Three teens suspected in the Roxborough shooting committed another murder the day before, police say

Police believe three of the teens responsible for the Roxborough High School shooting committed a separate, unrelated fatal shooting the day before.

by Ellie Rushing and Chris Palmer | Friday, November 4, 2022 | 9:43 AM EDT

Three of the teens accused of shooting five young football players, killing one, outside Roxborough High School in September are expected to be charged with murder in connection with another fatal shooting the day before, police said Friday.

Troy Fletcher, 15, and Zyhied Jones, 17, could face the new murder charges as early as Friday afternoon for the killing of 19-year-old Tahmir Jones in North Philadelphia on Sept. 26, said Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore.

Police also expect to charge Dayron Burney-Thorne, 16, who is wanted in the Roxborough case but remains a fugitive, with an additional murder charge once he is caught.

Around 2 p.m. on Sept. 26, police say, Tahmir Jones was walking in front of his father’s home on the 600 block of North 13th Street when three shooters jumped out of a car and shot him more than 20 times. He was rushed to Jefferson Hospital, where he died a short time later.

Jones had just earned his GED and was working in a construction apprenticeship program, his mother Theresa Guyton has said.

Police stated that the only known connection between the murder of Mr Jones and the Roxborough shootings is the identity of the suspects, and that it is possible that Mr Jones murder was a case of mistaken identity. The Inquirer report stated that shell casings recovered at Roxborough have been forensically linked to three weapons used in “other events.”

It is possible, of course, that the gang members cliques of young men[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading in the Roxborough shootings were using weapons which they had obtained from other street groups in some sort of trade.

Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News reported via Twitter about what was apparently a gun battle in the Frankford neighborhood. By the time was all said and done, over 170 shell casings were found by police.

This is the culture of the combat zones of Philadelphia! 170 or more shell casings found, but “far outnumbered” by orange needle caps.

To fix the violence, you have to fix the drug problem, and the cultural problem that enables people to use drugs, and think that blowing away your enemies, or even just someone who has pissed you off in the moment, is a good idea.

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia 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“
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Killadelphia: If your refuse to define the problem, then you can never find the solution!

I noted yesterday that the homicide problem in Philadelphia is not one of too few police, or even a ‘progressive’ District Attorney, but a problem of culture, in which some idiot thought that the best way to handle an argument was to just shoot the guy. Yeah, he “won” the argument, I suppose, but if he’s caught he might just spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars. The idiot who ‘settled’ his argument on Hallowe’en by shooting another man in the chest could, under Pennsylvania Title 18 §2502 be charged with Murder of the first degree, though third degree seems more probable. First degree murder is punishable by life in prison without the possibility of parole, or even a death sentence, though District Attorney Larry Krasner refuses to pursue capital sentences, while third degree murder, a first degree felony in the Keystone State, carries a sentence of ten to twenty years in prison.

So, about what were the two men arguing that is somehow worth ten to twenty years in the state penitentiary? Was the one man blocking access to the street as he was helping a lady move from the 2500 block of Carroll Street? Did the two men have a previous beef with each other?

The Philadelphia Shootings Victims Database details, in an awkward format, the people shot and killed in the City of Brotherly Love. There are times that I wonder if that awkwardness is deliberate, because you have to import the .csv file, and open it in Microsoft Excel, alter some of the column widths, and then hide data columns which are mostly meaningless. The data column for whether the victim is Latino or not is stupidly placed, and the fatality column is at the far right hand side. Someone more easily frustrated than me would have given up!

But one thing is obvious: the cultural problems which have led to the huge murder rate in Philly are not evenly spread among the residents of the city. The 2020 census as reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer shows just 38.3% of city residents as being non-Hispanic black, and in the October shootings chart above, all but one of the Latino victims listed are listed as white Latino, not black Latino. Black male Philadelphians have been the victims of shootings in 61.31% of the cases, and overall blacks have been the victims in 72.36% of shootings.

Non-Hispanic whites have been the victims in ‘only’ 5.53% of the cases in October, despite being 34.3% of the city’s population. There were no reported incidents of Asians being shot.

The shootings database reported 199 people shot in Philly in October of 2022; the same database, if you scroll farther down, shows 181 reported shooting victims for October of 2021. As we have previously noted, the number of homicides is slightly lower this year as opposed to last, but with the number of shootings being 9.94% higher in October alone, and 2.45% (2004 this year vis a vis 1954 through October in 2021) higher than 2021, I see that attempted murders — and I count every shooting as an attempted murder — have increased. The Philadelphia Police Department’s scoop-and-scoot policy of taking victims directly to the ER rather than waiting for an ambulance, even more experience in dealing with shooting victims by the hospitals’ emergency staff, and perhaps even lower shooting accuracy by the gang-bangers “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,”[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading blasting away at their rivals.

The city’s elected leadership want to blame guns, as does the Inquirer and practically every other group around. But, last time I checked, guns were completely inanimate objects, and didn’t care who held them or carried them or owned them. If the problem was guns, we ought to see the shootings and killings rates closely match the demographic percentages in the city, and we should see the homicide rates in Philly fairly similar to the rates throughout Pennsylvania; we don’t.[2]As we have reported previously, Pennsylvania’s firearms control laws are pretty much uniform across the Commonwealth; state law prohibits municipalities from imposing restrictions which are … Continue reading

No one will address the real numbers, and no one will conclude that yes, this is primarily a cultural problem among the black and Hispanic communities of Philadelphia, because that would be raaaaacist.[3]The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer managed to admit that people’s race determined how safe they feel, but had a not-so-subtle undertone that white people make places safer. I will … Continue reading I can say it because I’m retired, have no job from which I can be canceled, and no employer who can somehow be punished. But if the problem of homicides in our cities — more cities than just Philadelphia — cannot be honestly recognized for what it is, then that problem can never be addressed, never be solved.

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia 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“
↑2 As we have reported previously, Pennsylvania’s firearms control laws are pretty much uniform across the Commonwealth; state law prohibits municipalities from imposing restrictions which are stricter than those provided for under state law. In 2020, there were 1,009 murders in the Keystone State, 499, or 49.45%, of which occurred in Philadelphia. According to the 2020 Census, Pennsylvania’s population was 13,002,700 while Philadelphia’s alone was 1,603,797, just 12.33% of Pennsylvania’s totals.

It got worse last year: with 562 homicides in Philly, out of 1027 total for Pennsylvania, 54.72% of all homicides in the Keystone State occurred in Philadelphia. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, was second, with 123 killings, 11.98% of the state’s total, but only 9.52% of Pennsylvania’s population.

The other 65 counties, with 78.11% of the state’s total population, had 33.30% of total murders.

↑3 The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer managed to admit that people’s race determined how safe they feel, but had a not-so-subtle undertone that white people make places safer. I will confess to having thought that the Editorial Board were less concerned about how unsafe ‘black and brown’ Philadelphians feel than they were that white people felt too safe.
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Killadelphia: the problem is the culture!

I suppose I wrote too soon! I noted yesterday morning that Philadelphia was seeing a real and noticeable decrease in the murder rate, with ‘just’ 441 people murdered through 11:59 PM EDT on October 30th. Sadly, Hallowe’en turned out to be deadly:

3 people killed in separate Philly shootings

A 27-year-old man was fatally wounded in a triple shooting around 8:15 p.m. in North Philadelphia that left two other victims in critical condition.

by Robert Moran | Hallowe’en, October 31, 2022

Three men were killed in separate shootings Monday evening in Philadelphia, police said.

Around 8:15 p.m. in North Philadelphia, three people were shot outside on the 200 block of West Ontario Street by an unknown attacker, police said.

A 27-year-old man shot multiple times in the body was transported by medics to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:45 p.m.

A 26-year-old man shot five times in the body was taken by police to Temple and was listed in extremely critical condition.

There’s more at the original, but the number killed is not three; as both Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News and the Philadelphia Police Department report, there were four murders on Hallowe’en night, bring the total dead to 445 for the year.

We’re far enough into the year, 304 days, that four killings yesterday moves the averages just a little. From 1.4554 per day, and a projected 531.2376 as of yesterday, the City of Brotherly Love is up to 1.4638 murders per day, which works out to 534.2928 projected homicides for 2022. I’m tempted to say, big deal, so what, just three more killings, right? It’s not like anyone really seems to care!

Just before 5:45 p.m. in Southwest Philadelphia, a 47-year-old man was cleaning out a building on the 2500 block of Carroll Street when he was shot once in the chest by an unknown assailant, police said. The man, whose name was not released, was pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

NBC10 reported that the man, who lived in Darby, was working as a mover to help a woman. An argument erupted between the victim and an unidentified man before the fatal shooting.

I have to wonder: about what did someone argue with a man, not from the neighborhood, helping a lady move argue that was worth pulling a gun and killing him, and risking going to jail for the rest of his miserable life?

Kitchen in 2639 Carroll Street. Click to enlarge.

Carroll Street is not the worst neighborhood in Philly, but it’s hardly the best: a look through Google Maps shows a street of typical rowhomes, which have the look or some lower-end remodeling by one contractor sometime a couple of decades ago, fixing porch facias and second-story bay windows. SEveral of the homes show what were old porches now enclosed to create additional inside space. A rowhome at 2605 Carroll Street is listed as being a three-bedroom, one bathroom, 960 ft² home for sale for $180,000, and the photos show an interior which looks like a typical lower-priced flip: grey laminate floors, new paint and appliances throughout. Just down the street, at 2639 Carroll Street, is another rowhome being flipped, though the flipper put less money into it, for $125,000. Before the flipper got to it, the home sold for just $47,000 on July 22, 2020.

Maybe the orange kitchen cabinets aren’t helping get the place sold? 🙂

This is a cultural issue in Philadelphia. For whatever reason, the shooter felt the need, or the desire, to walk down Carroll Street while carrying a firearm. Then, for whatever reason they argued, the armed man thought it was serious enough to pull out his weapon and shoot the victim in the chest. Apparently little enough thought was given to just saying, “F(ornicate) you!” and walking away.

The Philadelphia Police Department is shorty hundreds of officers, but adding hundreds of police officers won’t solve the problem. More police officers might help in catching the bad guys who’ve already shot or killed someone, and perhaps, if ‘progressive’ District Attorney Larry Krasner could change his mind and start prosecuting criminals seriously, perhaps a few shootings and killings could be prevented by having the bad guys already locked up.

The problem is a culture, an attitude, a mindset that tells people that attempting to kill other people is a great solution to whatever problems they believe they have. The problem is an attitude that being a tough gang-banger is a real status symbol, proves your manhood, and is someone young girls want to f(ornicate). And the problem is a culture and an attitude that tells people it’s perfectly acceptable to use drugs, which creates the drug dealers who are responsible for much of the violence.

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Killadelphia: the numbers are slightly better!

I had previously speculated that it was possible that the City of Brotherly Love would have fewer homicides this year than last. The reason was simple: at the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend in 2021, the city was on a path fort 532 homicides, but then saw a huge spike in the rate of killings, and finished the year with 562 people pouring out their life’s blood in the city’s mean streets.

It’s Hallowe’en, almost two months past the Labor Day weekend, almost half of the way to the end of the year, and city homicides have fallen by 3.71%. At the current rate of murders, 1.4554 per day, Philly is on a pace for 531.2376 homicides, a horrible number, easily second-place all time, but still 31 fewer people killed than last year.

But if the numbers have improved slightly over last year, the city has still already reached 6th place on the all-time list, with 62 days left in the year. It should only be a few more days until Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw top the high under former Mayor Frank Rizzo, and get into Mayor Wilson Goode — he of the MOVE bombing fame — territory. Given that Philly’s top three still have another year in office together, they could actually hold first, second, and third place, gold, silver, and bronze, when Mr Kenney, and I have to presume, Commissioner Outlaw, leave office at the end of 2024.

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Killadelphia: Black Lives Don’t Matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer * Updated! *

Friday morning’s Current Crime Statistics page by the Philadelphia Police Department indicated that there had been 433 homicides in the city as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, October 20th. Since the police only update that page Monday through Friday during normal business hours, we don’t get individual daily reports, but just the one on Monday morning, updating Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

And over those three days, the homicide total increased by four, up to 437.

Naturally, I checked The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, and neither their main page nor specific crime page had a story, not a single story, on any of those four murders, as of 9:32 AM EDT on Monday, October 24th. I already knew that two murders had occurred Friday, via Twitter, but with the Philadelphia Phillies winning the National League pennant, not a whole lot of other news seems to have been covered in the city’s media.

My guess? All four of the homicide victims, some of which could have been people shot earlier but who had not died until a couple of days later, are all young black males killed by other young black males in gang-related attacks or gun battles, because those black lives don’t matter to the Inquirer.

The city’s shooting victims database is normally updated around noon; I’ll see then if my guess is right.
____________________________

Update at 11:26 AM EDT: The shooting database statistics are in, and the four murder victims are:

  • 44-year-old black male, fatally shot in the chest at 3:18 AM EDT on Sunday, 3600 block of Oxford Avenue, PPD district 2, Wissinoming
  • 26-year-old black male, fatally shot in the abdomen at 4:54 PM EDT on Saturday, 1500 block of West Clearfield Street, PPD district 39, Upper North Philadelphia, near Broad Street
  • 26-year-old white Hispanic male, fatally shot in multiple places, at 5:06 AM EDT on Saturday, 4300 block of North American Street, PPD District 25, North Philadelphia
  • 23-year-old white Hispanic male, fatally shot in the arm, at 2:25 PM EDT on Friday, 3900 block of Kensington Avenue, PPD district 24, Harrowgate

Well, the victims were not all young black males, but they were all male, all ‘persons of color,’ and all in the less desirable neighborhoods. None of the deceased were of people shot days earlier, who didn’t expire until the weekend, so yes, there were four murders committed over that three-day span, and the Inky covered none of them.

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Hold them accountable! It won't happen, but Larry Krasner should be jailed right along with the other Roxborough High School shootings defendants

It is, I suppose, not a surprise that this article in The Philadelphia Inquirer is marked For Subscribers Only. They actually did the journalism, but perhaps they didn’t want too, too many non-liberals to see how bad District Attorney Larry Krasner and his minions really are. But I subscribe that so you don’t have to!

Why the accused Roxborough gunman was out on bail at the time of the shooting, despite his conviction for another crime

“Obviously, with hindsight, it is a truly awful situation,” District Attorney Larry Krasner said.

by Ellie Rushing | Wednesday, October 19, 2022 | 5:34 PM EDT

Yaaseen Bivins. Mugshot via Philly Crime Update, because you know the Inquirer would never print it. Click to enlarge.

Yaaseen Bivins was free on bail when police say he shot five teens outside Roxborough High School last month, eight weeks after he was convicted of plowing his car into a pregnant woman and killing her unborn baby while drag racing.

Bivins, 21, was found guilty in August of aggravated assault by vehicle, illegal racing, and causing an accident involving death while unlicensed, but he walked out of the courtroom because prosecutors didn’t ask the judge to revoke his bail and jail him while he awaited sentencing.

You know, it was that subtitle in the inquirer which really got to me: “‘Obviously, with hindsight, it is a truly awful situation,’ District Attorney Larry Krasner said.” Just why does it take hindsight to realize that a man convicted of an Accident involving Death or Injury While Not Licensed, a Third Degree Felony in Pennsylvania (Title 75 §3742.1 §§A1), which under Title 18 §1103(3) has a maximum sentence of seven years in prison, is going to jail, and should be sent directly to jail, do not pass Go, even while awaiting sentencing? Just why does it take hindsight to realize that a man convicted of Aggravated Assault by Vehicle, another Third Degree Felony in Pennsylvania (Title 75 §3732.1) is going to jail, and should be sent directly to jail while awaiting sentencing?

There should have been no question that Mr Bivins was going to go to jail; not requesting the revocation of his bail was an invitation for him to flee or commit other crimes.

After five paragraphs describing the frequent criticism of Mr Krasner, including by the Philadelphia Police Department and Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, we get to Mr Krasner’s excuses:

Krasner said in an interview that, in hindsight, he wishes his office had asked for Bivins to be jailed after his conviction. But he said the prosecutor assigned to the case could not have known that Bivins — who had no criminal record and never missed a court date — would go on to commit other crimes.

“Obviously, with hindsight, it is a truly awful situation,” he said. “I’d love to be able to tell you we asked for it. I’d love to be able to tell you the judge did it. But we can’t go back in time.

“The picture of the defendant that was available to the court, and was available to the attorney… was a very different picture than what we know now,” he said.

The picture available to the Assistant District Attorney was one of a man who killed someone, one who was going to go to jail, and the ADA didn’t realize that leniency was not called for at that point. An ADA with any common sense, any at all, would have realized that, with Mr Bivins then in hand, the sensible thing to do was revoke bail and send him to prison to await sentencing, rather than take the chance that he’d flee.

But we already know: if you have any common sense at all, you are not going to work for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office while George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating Mr Krasner is in charge.

I’ll put it very bluntly: Larry Krasner and whatever idiotic Assistant District Attorney didn’t ask for the revocation of bail are responsible for the death of Nicolas Elizalde! They should be held accountable for 14-year-old Mr Elizalde’s death, but, of course, they won’t be.

Mr Bivins was the one who purchased the ammunition used in the guns which killed Mr Elizalde, and wounded four others, as is documented by this photo of him doing so, five days before the gang hit — I’m sorry, not “gang” hit, but simply a “rival street group” action, according to the District Attorney’s Office[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading — targeting another “rival street group” member, and which wound up killing Mr Elizalde as collateral damage.

Prosecutors routinely ask for bail to be revoked after a conviction if they intend to ask for jail time, former prosecutors said, so the defendant can start serving the sentence immediately.

“I don’t know why you wouldn’t ask to revoke bail if you believe this person actually deserves to be incarcerated,” said Chris Lynett, who worked as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia for five years before going into private practice in 2020. “You want him to serve his time and get out.”

Does this mean that Mr Krasner’s office and the ADA in the case did not intend to ask for jail time for Mr Bivins after his convictions? We don’t know that, and Mr Krasner and the ADA in question aren’t likely to tell us; that “hindsight” thing, you know? Since they charged Mr Bivins with two First Degree Felonies[2]Under Title 18 §1103(1), a First Degree Felony carries a twenty year maximum sentence. — Judge Charles Ehrlich acquitted him of those in a non-jury trial — the DA’s Office must have believed him to be a pretty bad guy.

We have long known that Mr Krasner and his defense-attorneys-as-prosecutors minions have been extremely lenient on criminals, and the result has been a tremendous spike in violent crime, but it’s rare that we get one so time-compressed and nearly immediate. Other people, closer to the situation and better at this than me might be able to put more of those cases together, and I hope that they do. Personally, I’m surprised that the Inky reported on this at all, because they cover for Mr Krasner all that they can.

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia 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“
↑2 Under Title 18 §1103(1), a First Degree Felony carries a twenty year maximum sentence.
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Danielle Outlaw is disgusted, and Larry Krasner is disgusting.

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw released a statement after three SWAT Team officers were shot and wounded, though none fatally, while attempting to serve a warrant in the Richard Allen housing projects on North 10th Street Wednesday morning:

Today, shortly after 6 AM, while serving a warrant on a murder suspect, members of our SWAT unit were fired upon. As the officers were knocking and announcing the warrant, without warning, this suspect fired through a window and door. Three of our brave officers were shout by the assailant, but were still able to return gunfire.  By the grace of God, it appears our officers will physically recover from their wounds.

The suspect was killed in the exchange.

Although I am currently in Dallas, Texas, for the Major Cities Chiefs’ Conference, I was grateful to be able to speak with the officers involved, and thank them for their remarkable service to our city.

While our SWAT officers are highly-trained professionals, this is yet again another cold reminder of the dangers involved in the work they do. Warrant service is always a high-risk assignment; particularly when the suspect is wanted in connection to violent crime.

That, of course, is why the SWAT Team officers were wearing body armor and helmets; they knew that the “suspect,” Raheem Lee, was armed and willing to kill people.

But let me make sure something is perfectly clear: it is NOT the job of our officers to be shot at.

Well, it shouldn’t be, but apparently a fairly sizable segment of the city’s population do believe that it is the job of police officers to be shot at. The Philadelphia Inquirer tried to make a hero out of young Thomas Siderio, who shot at police. And District Attorney Larry Krasner wants to try for murder officers who shoot back and kill offenders.

The Commissioner then, without naming his name, begins her criticism of Mr Krasner, the anti-police defense attorney who, thanks to $1.45 million from George Soros, was elected District Attorney.

It is not their job to be stabbed, spat upon, accosted or attacked in any way. And this type of violence towards our police — towards anyone — cannot continue to be normalized.

We are tired of arresting the same suspects over and over again, only to see them right back out on the street to continue and sometimes escalate their criminal ways.

We are tired of having to send our officers into harm’s way to serve warrants on suspects who have no business being on the street in the first place.

No — not everyone needs to be in jail. But when we repeatedly see the extensive criminal histories of those we arrest for violent crime, the question has to be asked as to why they were yet again back out on the street and terrorizing our communities.

A whole lot more people do need to be in jail, but the voters of the City of Brotherly Love first elected, and then, by a landslide margin, re-elected Mr Krasner, who not only made the promise to drastically reduce the number of criminals locked up, but kept his promise.

I am beyond disgusted by this violence. Our entire department is sickened by what is happening to the people that live, work, and visit our city.

Residents are tired of it.

Business owners are tired of it.

Our children are tired of it.

We are long past “enough is enough.”

As your Police Commissioner, I can promise you this: Our officers will not be intimidated, and we will continue to do everything we can to make Philadelphia a safer place to live.

Philadelphians keep saying that they want the violence to stop, but at the same time, they keep voting for the public officials who let the bad guys go, who won’t take responsibility for the results of their policies,

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Killadelphia: another 13-year-old (probable) gang-banger wannabe bites the dust * Updated! * If the Philadelphia media don't step up, don't start telling the unvarnished truth, they will not have done everything they can to reduce the carnage

That the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page showed that seven people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards over the four days since the last report — the PPD does not issue updated reports on the weekend or holidays — wasn’t exactly a surprise: not only had I heard of five killings via Philly Crime Update, but seven killings over a weekend is simply not uncommon in the City of Brotherly Love.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

13-year-old boy killed in West Oak Lane shooting

The boy was outside on the corner of 65th Avenue and North Smedley Street when he was shot just before 6:50 p.m.

by Robert Moran | Monday, October 10, 2022

A 13-year-old boy was fatally wounded in a shooting Monday evening in the city’s West Oak Lane section, police said.

The story was originally entitled 13-year-old boy critically wounded in Philadelphia shooting, so reporter Robert Moran began it before he was notified that the victim had died.

Just before 6:50 p.m., the boy was outside on the corner of 65th Avenue and North Smedley Street when he was shot at least one time in the face, said Chief Inspector Scott Small.

The boy was rushed by police to Einstein Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 9:12 p.m., Small said.

The boy, who lived about four blocks away, was believed to have been visiting friends in the area when he was shot by possibly two assailants who then ran from the scene, Small said.

There’s your first red flag: if the young victim was shot “by possibly two assailants” who then fled, you’re getting the first clue that this wasn’t a tragic accident, but a gang killing, though the Inky would apparently prefer a term like “cliques of young men.”[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading Nevertheless, Mr Moran continued with a bit more, setting the stage for another heart-wrenching story:

Jerry T. Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, issued a statement identifying the boy as a student at Wagner Middle School.

“Our city is once again reeling from the murder of a child — a thirteen-year-old boy in West Oak Lane whose life was stolen from him, robbed of his future dreams and aspirations, never to even graduate eighth grade. My heart breaks for all who knew and loved him: his family, his friends, his neighbors, the entire Wagner Middle School community; the impact of such a tragedy is measureless,” Jordan said.

While the Inquirer hadn’t identified the victim as of 5:35 PM EDT, Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News did, via a tweet. Sure seems like the beginning of a new story telling us what a great kid he was, and how his life was ended before he ever lived it.

That, however, might be jumping the gun. People knew who this victim was, and knew enough to check his social media accounts. Will B Late tweeted:

These photos are from what appears to be his tiktok account. If it is indeed him, he can be seen in the video with a gun, drugs and making signs. Horror at a 13 year old being murdered is founded. The question becomes, how is a 13 year old being enabled to live and die like this?

Mr Late added three photos as evidence. Mr Late stated that he blurred the faces, because many of the boys pictured are probably minors.

The Philadelphia media, other than Fox 29 News, really don’t cover most of the murders, because most of the killings in the city involve members of one “rival street group” shooting members of another “rival street group,” and a whole lot of people see these things as public service homicides. If some gang-bangers are wiping out other gang-bangers, well, that’s the risk you take when you become a member of a “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families“.

But while the boys who are susceptible to joining such “groups”, who see a glamorized “gangsta life“, probably hear that it’s dangerous, the media need to put out the facts, the brutal, uncensored, tell-it-like-it-is truth, a truth which might make some of them think twice, and more than twice, and strengthen the parents to keep a much closer eye on their kids.

For the family of young Jeremiah Wilcox, assuming that the identification of his name and social media are accurate, it’s too late. There are, I assume, parents and grandparents and siblings and neighbors who are saddened, are crying, that Mr Wilcox is dead. But if the Philadelphia media, especially the Inquirer, which has the space to really delve into and publish the facts, something television news doesn’t really do that well, don’t step up, don’t tell the unvarnished truth, they will not have done all that they can to reduce the number of Jeremiah Wilcoxes bleeding out their life’s blood in Philly’s mean streets.
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Update! Tuesday, October 11, 2022 | 7:53 PM EDT

The previous was published at 5:47 PM EDT. I hadn’t expected it quite so soon, but yup, the Inquirer is here to tell us what a wonderful boy young Mr Wilcox was:

‘He was just a baby’: The family of a 13-year-old who was fatally shot remember him as a loving, protective boy

Jeremiah Wilcox, 13, was fatally shot Monday evening in West Oak Lane, just a block from his middle school. “He was just a baby,” cried his aunt Jamillah Patterson. “He didn’t deserve this.”

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, October 11, 2022 | 6:26 PM EDT

It was 6:36 p.m. Monday when Jasmine Wilcox spoke on the phone with her 13-year-old son, Jeremiah, for what she did not know would be the last time.

“Jeremiah, you OK?” she asked.

“Yes, Mom, I’m outside talking to my friends,” Wilcox recalled her son saying. “And I said, ‘OK it’s a school night. Be home by 8.”

Twelve minutes later, Jeremiah was shot twice, struck in the head and body, police said, as he stood outside his friend’s house in West Oak Lane.

Sure sounds like a good kid, huh?

Jeremiah Wilcox, aka “Jay” or “Jerry,” was a sweet, funny boy, who was protective of his family and loved his mama, (Jasmine Wilcox, his mother) said. He had a bright smile and loved to make his family laugh, they said, but wasn’t afraid to speak his mind if something was bothering him. He liked football and basketball, and played casually with friends. In his free time, he watched anime and played video games like Fortnite and Call of Duty with his cousins.

Cheesesteaks were his favorite food, and he got his sweet tooth from his mom, she said.

He kept the waves in his hair fresh, his family said, and he knew he was handsome, always talking to and flirting with girls.

Jeremiah was an eighth grader at Wagner Middle School, just a block from where he was shot. He and his mom had started looking at high schools for next year, she said, and he was interested in attending Roxborough High for its engineering program and football team.

There’s a lot more at the original, all of it letting us know what a fine, upstanding young man he was. What was not in the story was any mention at all of the allegations in social media that young Mr Wilcox might have been a wannabe gang-banger, including no refutation of those claims.

So, are the claims true? We don’t know yet, but those allegations are definitely out there. It’s going to be an interesting development, to see whether the Inky rushed forward with one of their “innocents” killed, without checking it out, or whether the claims that young Mr Wilcox was a gang-banger wannabe flashing guns and gang signs are the false ones. If, as Chief Inspector Scott Small stated, the police believe that he was shot “by possibly two assailants who then ran from the scene,” turns out to be true, then this was a targeted killing.

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia 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“.