You in a heap ‘o trouble, boy! Larry Krasner didn't do Quadir Humphrey any favors

We noted, on Thursday evening, that the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, softer-on-crime-than-Charmin District Attorney, Larry Krasner, wants to get Act 40, establishing a special prosecutor for crimes committed on or near SEPTA property, declared unconstitutional, because, in my opinion, he wants to cripple the law enforcement arm of Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins’ plan to shut down the infamous open-air drug market and clean up the homeless — read: junkies — encampments on the city’s streets in the Kensington neighborhood.

And here we go!

Two teens charged with shooting 16-year-old at City Hall SEPTA platform

Prosecutors said they intend to charge a 18-year-old and 16-year-old with the shooting.

by Ellie Rushing | Friday, January 12, 2024 | 9:31 AM EST | Updated: 3:44 PM EST

Two teens have been arrested and will be charged with shooting a 16-year-old boy in the head after police said they fired into a crowd of young people waiting for the subway at City Hall’s SEPTA station on Thursday night.

Around 9:25 p.m. Thursday, as a group of teens stood on the westbound platform of the Market-Frankford Line, prosecutors said, 18-year-old Quadir Humphrey, with a 16-year-old, fired multiple times as the train approached. As the crowd fled in a panic, police found the teen lying on the ground, shot in the head.

Continue reading

Run her out of town on a rail! Rather than the $425,000 to which her $75,000 raise boosted her, Leslie Richards needs a $425,000 pay cut, and a SEPTA train ticket out of town.

If you were apprehended after shooting at a crowd of people in a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority station, would you expect to simply be let go, even if you had missed everyone? I wouldn’t, but, then again, I’m not a 16-year-old girl.

A 16-year-old girl is facing arrest for a SEPTA subway shooting at the 15th and Market station

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office issued a warrant in the Nov. 19 shooting at the 15th and Market Street station.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Monday, November 27, 2023 | 1:00 PM EST

A 16-year-old girl who police say shot at a group of juveniles inside the SEPTA station at 15th and Market Street earlier this month — but struck no one — will be arrested for that crime, authorities said Monday.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said an arrest warrant had been issued for the teen in connection with the Nov. 19 shooting on the station concourse. The girl, whom authorities did not identify because she is a juvenile, is expected to face charges of aggravated assault and firearms violations.

The teen had been detained at the 11th Street station on the day of the shooting because she was wanted on a family court bench warrant for theft, the district attorney’s office said.

She is expected to be arrested for the shooting by the end of the week, authorities said.

The language on this story is unclear, to say no more. Was she already locked up on the bench warrant? Will she be arrested while already behind bars, or is she out on the streets? Normally, one would expect an apprehended shooter to have been arrested on the assault and firearms charges right away. Were the police waiting to see if uber-permissive District Attorney Larry Krasner would want to take any action since the shooter was a 16-year-old girl?

The teen girl opened fire on a group of juveniles who were following her out of the station and up the exit stairs, the district attorney’s office said in a statement. Video obtained by investigators shows the teen shooting from the steps, fleeing, and then throwing a backpack into a trash can in the concourse, the statement said.

A handgun was recovered from the trash can and matched the live rounds and shell casings found at the scene of the shooting, the district attorney’s office said. When the teen was detained on the bench warrant, authorities said, she was wearing clothing that matched what the shooter was seen wearing on surveillance footage.

There’s more at the original, but it’s about SEPTA’s negotiations with the Fraternal Order of Transit Police Lodge 109, who have been working without a contract since March 31st. The union postponed a strike date of November 20th, until a decision on December 13th:

The transit police officers are asking for a pay increase amid a staffing shortage and a rise in antisocial behaviors — like smoking and turnstile jumping — but not violent crimes.

Is shooting up a subway station not a violent crime if the shooter never hit anyone?

But I have to laugh at that last quoted paragraph for other reasons: reporter Rodrigo Torrejón listed “smoking and turnstile jumping” as the antisocial behaviors, but for some reason declined to mention the biggest “antisocial behavior” plaguing not just SEPTA stations but the city itself: drug addicts littering the stations and the tracks with used needles, and junkies passed out on the streets and in the stations and even the train cars.

The (supposed) marathon bargaining session scheduled to begin on October 23rd obviously didn’t solve anything, and SEPTA has only been surviving on federal deficit spending aid due to the COVID-19 panicdemic.[1]No, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly how I see the government response to the virus. Now CEO Leslie Richards, who has presided over worsening service yet got a $75,000 raise earlier in the year, a plethora of bus and trolley accidents, and train stations littered with the homeless and drug needles, with the transit service plagued by delayed service and accidents, with chronic shortfalls in essential staff wants more money from the taxpayers to subsidize SEPTA passengers. Just yesterday, a day in which SEPTA had a whopping forty routes cancelled or delayed due to ‘operator shortages,’ a man on the system stabbed three people at the Walnut Locust station before being shot by a SEPTA police officer.

But, things have improved today: only 21 routes cancelled or delayed due to ‘operator unavailability.’

The Philadelphia Inquirer, not exactly an evil reich-wing site, described the SEPTA trains:

The Market-Frankford Line has its own incense: a combination of cigarette, weed, or K2 smoke. People in the throes of opioid addiction are sometimes frozen in a forward lean in train cars and on platforms. People experiencing homelessness might use a couple of seats or a station to seek rest away from the cold and the heat.

To me, that’s a bit more serious than “smoking and turnstile jumping,” but yeah, I’m an evil reich-wing Republican! I’m the kind of man who would have used the word “junkies” rather than “people in the throes of opioid addiction,” and “vagrants” rather than “people experiencing homelessness.”

Miss Richards will have to somehow hammer out a contract with the SEPTA police officers, and will have to do it in the face of reduced revenues, from a lower number of riders and the loss of Federal dollars as the Covidiocy spending ends.

At a time when the left want to push people out of their cars and onto public transportation, Miss Richards has overseen a real decrease in the quality and service of one of our nations larger public transportation systems. Rather than the $425,000 to which her $75,000 raise boosted her, she needs to get a $425,000 pay cut, and a SEPTA train ticket out of town.

References

References
1 No, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly how I see the government response to the virus.

Is justice in Philadelphia a matter of the color of your skin?

We reported, on October 5th, on the charges against Cody Monroe Heron, 26, the (alleged) numbskull who road raged against a delivery driver, who jumped on the trunk of her car, stomped out the rear window, showering kids in the back seat with shattered safety glass. Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News reported that the police-hating, George Soros-sponsored District Attorney, Larry Krasner asked for a whopping $5,000,000 bail to be set for Mr Heron, which certainly seemed excessive for the charges he faced. We pointed out that Mr Heron was a man of relatively modest, working class means, and that a $5,000,000 bail was likely impossible for him to meet.

The judge reduced Mr Krasner’s request, setting Mr Heron’s bail at $2,500,000.

As it turned out, Mr Heron was unable to meet that amount either. We then reported, on October 16th, that Mr Heron’s attorney sought a bail reduction for his client, but that, instead, Common Pleas Court Judge Vincent Furling instead increased his bail amount to $4,000,000. If Mr Heron was unable to make the $2,500,000 bail, raising it to $4,000,000 seemed to me to be an obvious attempt to keep Mr Heron, who is accused of serious crimes, but nevertheless has a clean previous record, locked up before his trial. The evidence against Mr Heron is pretty convincing, but he is, nevertheless, innocent until proven guilty.

And so we come to Michael Henry. Mr Henry has, allegedly, been a not-very-nice young man! Continue reading

Larry Krasner and the equal application of the law

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States specifies:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Larry Krasner, the George Soros-sponsored, police hating defense lawyer who is currently serving as Philadelphia’s District Attorney says, in his brief Twitter bio, that he “fights for equal justice for the great people of Philadelphia. A fair and effective criminal justice system makes us safer.” Remember that: Mr Krasner is telling us that he seeks fairness. Continue reading

Charges against police officer dismissed, so the Usual Suspects riot

Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, “restorative justice” District Attorney, Larry Krasner, and his army of inept minions, in their eagerness to prosecute city police officers, nevertheless failed in court on Tuesday:

A Philadelphia judge on Tuesday dismissed all charges against former city Police Officer Mark Dial, ruling that prosecutors had not presented enough evidence to show that his fatal shooting of Eddie Irizarry while on-duty last month was a crime.

The result? The Usual Suspects decided that a riot was in order! Continue reading

Will Larry Krasner send this case to juvenile court?

We previously reported on the identification of 15-year-old Rasheed Banks, Jr, as the alleged killer of Michael Salerno during a carjacking attempt, and pointed out that The Philadelphia Inquirer had not covered that story. A check of the newspaper’s website shows that they never did catch up to reporting on that.

However, now that young Mr Banks has been captured, the Inky has covered it:

15-year-old suspect arrested in fatal attempted carjacking in South Philadelphia

On July 12, Michael Salerno, 50, attempted to prevent a carjacking of his vehicle on the 1100 block of Porter Street when he was shot in the head.

by Robert Moran | Monday, August 7, 2023

Authorities on Monday arrested the 15-year-old boy wanted in the fatal shooting of a 50-year-old man during an attempted carjacking last month in South Philadelphia.

Rasheed Banks Jr. was apprehended in Camden by Philadelphia agents of the U.S. Marshals and members of a regional New York and New Jersey fugitive task force, the U.S. Marshals Service Philadelphia announced.

Naturally, the Inquirer did not publish the photo that Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News used in his tweet, nor young Mr Banks’ mugshot, which the Philly television media had and published.

Why not? Remember: publisher Elizabeth Hughes has mandated that the newspaper will be an “anti-racist news organization,” and would censor the news if the news happened to be too politically incorrect.

But what, exactly, is the Inky trying to hide? Yes, they did not publish young Mr Banks’ photo, but let’s tell the truth here: simply publishing his first name, Rasheed, tells every reader that the suspect is black. The newspaper isn’t fooling anyone!

The real question now is: will the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating ‘progressive’ Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Krasner, charge Mr Banks as an adult? I have heard that Mr Krasner has never offered up a juvenile for an adult charge, though I can’t document that. But if young Mr Banks is indeed the murderer — and he is innocent until proven guilty — and is charged as a juvenile, the longest he could be held in juvenile confinement is until he reaches age 21; then he would have to be released, and his juvenile record sealed.

That’s six years, six years for wanton, willful murder.

Philly District Attorney who doesn’t enforce existing gun laws wants “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation” He wants gun laws that impact law-abiding citizens, not the criminals

I have seen the image at the left used many times, though a site search on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website for “We do not believe that arresting people” yielded zero returns. However we did document something very similar:

District Attorney Larry Krasner, who has reduced prosecutions for illegal firearms possession when the police have made the arrests, said[1]100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30 of the document, page 32 of the .pdf file.:

The urgency of Philadelphia’s crisis of fatal and non-fatal shootings will not be met by looking away from shootings. As noted above, City Council has led a valuable “100 Shooter Review,” a title that makes clear what we already know: that shootings are the primary issue. Our efforts must be focused on preventing shootings and holding people who commit shootings accountable, and we should not accept arrests for gun possession as a substitute.

And:

This office believes that reform is necessary to focus on the most serious and most violent crime, so that people can be properly held accountable for doing things that are violent, that are vicious, and that tear apart society. We cannot continue to waste resources and time on things that matter less than the truly terrible crisis that we are facing.

And[2]100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30-31 of the document, page 32-33 of the .pdf file.:

Gun possession arrests that involve no violent acts present a secondary and important frontier in curbing gun violence, but must be targeted to distinguish between drivers of gun violence who possess firearms illegally and otherwise law-abiding people who are not involved in gun violence. On the one hand, the cases of people charged with 6105[3]There are two main categories of illegal gun possession cases in Philadelphia: Possession of a firearm by a person who has been prohibited from carrying gun due to a past serious conviction or other … Continue reading (prohibited person in possession of a firearm) are carefully scrutinized to do individual justice, which will usually look like vigorous prosecution. On the other hand, another criminal charge that applies to people who have no felony conviction (carrying a gun in Philadelphia without having obtained a permit in Philadelphia) is only a felony in Philadelphia. The exact same offense in every other county in Pennsylvania (carrying a firearm without a permit to carry) is only a misdemeanor offense.

Why do I bring this up? The District Attorney was in Harrisburg today, shilling for “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation.” The obvious question arises: if Mr Krasner and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office is not going to prosecute the gun control laws already on the books, when the malefactors are already in custody, just what good would “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation” do?

Fortunately, the state Senate is controlled by Republicans, and the state House of Representatives, which had a bare 102-101 Democratic majority, is now down to a 101-101 tie, after a Democratic Representative resigned. Under House rules, the Democrats will retain parliamentary control, but they can’t run roughshod over the GOP as long as Republicans stay united.

The state House has begun its summer break, and is not scheduled to reconvene until September.

As I write this, The Philadelphia Inquirer has not yet reported the story, so whatever Philly’s George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, former defense lawyer now serving as chief prosecutor means by “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation” is unclear, but these things usually boil down to one thing: making it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to buy firearms, while the criminals, who don’t obey the law in the first place, won’t be stymied by new legislation.

Mr Krasner and his office believe that the real problem isn’t bad people, but “systemic racism:”

shootings are far more associated with systemic racism and the disinvestment and poverty that it has caused in Philadelphia than they are any particular criminal profile of a person.[4]100 Shooting Review Committee Report, Appendix 7, page 137 of the document, page 139 of the .pdf file.

That, of course, is pure bovine feces: everybody knows, but no one will admit in public, what “particular criminal profile” the bad guys fit. But to admit that would mean, for the left, the complete invalidation of everything they’ve been pushing for the last several decades.

References

References
1 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30 of the document, page 32 of the .pdf file.
2 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30-31 of the document, page 32-33 of the .pdf file.
3 There are two main categories of illegal gun possession cases in Philadelphia: Possession of a firearm by a person who has been prohibited from carrying gun due to a past serious conviction or other prohibition (18 Pa.C.S. § 6105), and possession of a firearm without a license (18 Pa.C.S. § 6106). The former is generally viewed as the more serious illegal gun possession statute, while the latter is generally viewed as less serious than possession by a prohibited person. Both are non-violent offenses only related to illegal possession of a gun.
4 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, Appendix 7, page 137 of the document, page 139 of the .pdf file.

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

A major loss for ‘progressives’? Philly Democrats nominate a (supposedly) tough-on-crime mayoral candidate

Chart from The Philadelphia Inquirer. Click to enlarge.

Let me be clear here: I don’t live in Philadelphia, I don’t work in Philly, and, since July of 2017, I haven’t even lived in Pennsylvania. A victory by Helen Gym Flaherty in the Democratic primary for mayor in the city was never going to affect me personally. But a victory for ‘progressives,’ which William Teach has called ‘nice fascists,’ would have had repercussions nationwide, emboldening the dumbest people in our electorate, and that she lost makes me very, very happy.

What makes me unhappy is that the race was determined mostly by race! Former City Councilwoman Cherelle Parker Mullins won because she won the heavily black districts, and the heavily Hispanic ones, and she was the only black ‘major’ candidate; there was no serious Hispanic candidate in the race. Former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff[1]It is interesting, and sad, that none of the major female candidates respected their husbands enough to have taken their names. won the majority white areas, but she wound up splitting that vote more evenly with Allan Domb and Mrs Flaherty. Mrs Flaherty, who is ethnically Korean, won one demographic group, which The Philadelphia Inquirer listed as “AAPI,” meaning Asian-American/Pacific Islander.

Even there, however, she took only a plurality, 41.1%, not a majority. But the notion that skin color is a determining factor doesn’t speak well for a ‘diverse’ city.

Chart from The Philadelphia Inquirer. Click to enlarge.

The Inquirer also worked out, though taking some assumptions based on precinct populations, larger political groups, and Mrs Flaherty won a plurality, 42.7%, among ‘younger white progressive voters,’ but even there, Mrs Mullins and Mrs McDuff together outpolled her, with 45.5% of the votes. Mrs McDuff, who had been endorsed by the Inquirer, carried both ‘working class white moderate voters’ and ‘wealthy white liberal voters.’

But what really sunk the progressives?

Areas that have seen the most gun violence supported Parker the most

Chart via The Philadelphia Inquirer. Click to enlarge.

A strong majority of residents rated crime as the top issue in pre-election polls, and the city remains in a years-long crisis of gun violence. But gun violence doesn’t affect residents equally: Some neighborhoods have far more shootings than others.The choice of those areas closest to gun violence is clear: They picked Parker.

Precincts that had seen more than 175 shooting victims within 2,000 feet of their boundaries since 2015 gave Parker half of their vote. By contrast, neighborhoods with the fewest shooting victims gave a disproportionately high share of their vote to other candidates.

Notably, Parker has espoused some tough-on-crime policies, including a willingness to revisit the policy of stop-and-frisk, citing a “crisis” of public safety.

It has been said before that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, and while calling Philly voters ‘conservatives’ would certainly be wrong, it seems that the ‘progressive’ candidate saw her share of the vote steadily decline as neighborhoods were exposed to more shootings.

There is, however, a major disconnect in the City of Brotherly Love when it comes to crime. While Mrs Mullins won at least in part based on her tough-on-crime campaign, wanting to put more police officers on the streets — Mrs Flaherty had previously supported ‘defund the police’ efforts, though she kept it out of her campaign this year — rather than deploy social workers and mental health professionals as Mrs Flaherty wanted, the city also re-elected the very much soft-on-crime, police-hating defense lawyer Larry Krasner as District Attorney in 2021, the year in which Philly set its all-time record for homicides. Mr Krasner actually is fairly tough on actual murderers; it’s just that he’s not just a marshmallow, but makes marshmallows look tough when it comes to ‘lesser’ crimes. The thugs and gang-bangers — and the Inky once told us that there were no actual gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” and the newspaper’s apparent, if unpublished, stylebook has substituted “street group” for gangs — mostly get a pass, or just a slap on the wrist for illegal gun possession from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, right up until they up their crimes to rape and murder. The apparently odd notion of locking up the bad guys before they become worse guys is wholly outside the paradigm for Mr Krasner, and his voters as well. Mr Krasner being a separately elected official means that Mrs Mullins’ policy preferences don’t have any controlling authority over him.

Mr Krasner has been elected through the end of 2025, which means two full years in office after Mrs Mullins becomes mayor. Technically, she still has to win the general election against Republican David Oh, but in Philly, that’s almost a formality; the city hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Harry Truman was President! How much pushback he will give to Mrs Mullins remains to be seen, but I suspect it will be a lot.

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw? Mrs Mullins said that she wasn’t going to take personnel decisions during the campaign, but, as Commissioner, Miss Outlaw has been unable to prevent a steady stream of retirements and resignations, coupled with smaller new recruit numbers, and case closure numbers have dropped. For Mrs Mullins to be tough on crime, she’ll need a Police Department that can actually do the job.

References

References
1 It is interesting, and sad, that none of the major female candidates respected their husbands enough to have taken their names.