Tag Archives: #LarryKrasner

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Killadelphia: I check Bluesky so you don’t have to! The last thing the criminal-loving and police-hating Larry Krasner wants is more law enforcement

According to the Census Bureau, the population of Philadelphia was 1,573,916 as of July 1, 2024, while the Philadelphia Police Department reported that there had been 269 homicides in the city during all of 2024. According to my precise calculations[1]269 ÷ 15.73916 = 17.091128116112931058582541889148, that meant the City of Brotherly Love had a homicide rate of 17.09 per 100,000 population. Apparently, District Attorney Larry Krasner thinks that’s just hunky-dory, a perfectly acceptable figure.

In a skeet on Bluesky, the city’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney, Larry Krasner, posted a bit from an interview with CNN, saying:

The 10th Amendment says he cannot take over the Philadelphia Police Department as he is doing in D.C. D.C. is different. It’s not a state. Pennsylvania is a state, and Philadelphia is its biggest city. Our police department is controlled by the mayor. And oh, trust me, this mayor does not work for Donald Trump, and neither do we.

So, we will stand on this constitutional right that has been there forever. We will stand on the reality that you cannot claim, It is an emergency, when Philadelphia, as of today, has the lowest number of homicides in over 50 years. We may set the record, the record, for lowest crime overall in Philadelphia for more than 50 years, and at the same time we have some of the lowest incarceration. That’s not an emergency. Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 269 ÷ 15.73916 = 17.091128116112931058582541889148
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Poor, poor Larry Krasner is tearfully upset that he couldn’t lock up another cop for longer

Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney, recently renominated for a third term, as the city’s chief prosecutor, is just spittle-flecking angry that he cannot keep a former Philadelphia Police Officer in jail any longer, and, of course, the denizens at The Philadelphia Inquirer have been outraged all along. Columnist Helan Ubiñas waxed wroth when the charges against former Officer Mark Dial were initially dismissed, because Mr Krasner’s minions didn’t do their jobs properly. The Inquirer’s long-time columnist, Helen Uniñas, waxed wroth that the charges were dismissed, calling it a “welcome and rare reminder that police are not above the law when Officer Mark Dial’s bail was revoked” last week, to jail him before trial, and yesterday was pissed because “prosecutors apparently did not present evidence that (Officer Dial) had committed a crime.” Shouldn’t her ire be reserved for the District Attorney and his minions, who failed to “present evidence that he had committed a crime”? Does Miss Ubiñas believe that all criminals should be held behind before bars before they are tried and convicted? How else can one interpret that revocation of bail was a “welcome and rare reminder that police are not above the law”?

The District Attorney was able to get the charges reinstated, but not the First Degree Murder charge he wanted. In Pennsylvania, a defendant can be held without bail is the charge carries a potential term of life imprisonment. The DA refiled on Title 18 §2502, “Murder generally,” but Third Degree Murder usually does not result in a life sentence. Mr Krasner still wanted Mr Dial kept in jail before he was tried and convicted of anything, and succeeded to the tune of ten months behind bars.

Former Philadelphia Police Officer Mark Dial sentenced — and immediately paroled — for killing Eddie Irizarry

Continue reading →

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Larry Krasner beclowns himself Once again, his spittle-flecked hatred for Republicans comes to the fore

Oddly enough, I couldn’t find anything in The Philadelphia Inquirer on this story, despite paying $5.49 per week for my digital subscription. But not to worry, several other news organizations carried it:

After January 6th pardons, DA Larry Krasner looks to state charges

Continue reading →

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To the surprise of no one, The Philadelphia Inquirer again endorses softer-than-Charmin-on-crime Larry Krasner Virtually nothing they wrote has to do with actual crime on the city's streets

Philadelphia Police Officers and FOP members block District Attorney Larry Krasner from entering the hospital to meet with slain Police Corporal James O’Connor’s family, because it was the District Attorney who had not kept Cpl. O’Connor’s killer in jail when he could have.

I wrote, on May Day, that I would be “completely unsurprised if The Philadelphia Inquirer in general, and far-left columnist Will Bunch individually endorse(d)” the city’s George Soros-sponsored, police-hating and criminal-loving District Attorney, Larry Krasner, for re-nomination. Well, I am completely unsurprised! Continue reading →

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Man, that Larry Krasner and his office are really stupid!

This site has previously noted the charges against former Philadelphia Police Officer Mark Dial. Officer Dial shot and killed criminal Eddie Irizarry when he believed that Mr Irizarry was reaching for a weapon.

The city’s George Soros-sponsored, police-hating and criminal-loving District Attorney charged Officer Dial with “first-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, and related offenses,” though, as you can see from Pennsylvania Title 18 §2502 above, first-degree murder was never an appropriate charge.

An at least reasonable case could be made for charging PA Title 18 §2503 Voluntary Manslaughter, a first degree felony, but there’s a high bar for the prosecution to surmount.

  • 18 §2503(b) Unreasonable belief killing justifiable. — A person who intentionally or knowingly kills an individual commits voluntary manslaughter if at the time of the killing he believes the circumstances to be such that, if they existed, would justify the killing under Chapter 5 of this title (relating to general principles of justification), but his belief is unreasonable.

Mr Krasner would have to prove that Officer Dial had an “unreasonable” belief that he was justified in shooting Mr Irizarry. Mr Irizarry had been driving erratically, and when he finally pulled over, he kept the car window up, was non-compliant, and raised his hand while holding a knife.

A Philadelphia judge dismissed all charges against Officer Dial, ruling that the prosecution had not presented evidence that a crime has been committed, so naturally the Usual Suspects decided that a riot was in order. Naturally, Mr Krasner refiled the charges, including first degree murder, and Mr Dial was rearrested, and denied bail.

Now, after nearly a year in prison, without having been convicted of anything, the former Officer is once again free on bail.

Mark Dial was released on bail after the Philly DA’s office dropped his first-degree murder charge

Dial had been in custody since last fall after he was charged with fatally shooting Eddie Irizarry in a traffic stop in Kensington.

by Chris Palmer, Ellie Rushing, and Rodrigo Torrejón | Thursday, August 9, 2024 | 10:50 AM EDT

The District Attorney’s Office has withdrawn a charge of first-degree murder against former police officer Mark Dial, a decision that prosecutors were effectively forced to make by a judge after failing to tell Dial’s attorneys about a key piece of evidence they intend to use against him at trial.

The decision, made Thursday, allowed Dial to be released from jail on bail to await a new trial date, now with a lead charge of third-degree murder. His case — which had been scheduled to begin in September — will now go before a jury in May 2025.

Dial’s bail was set at $200,000, and he paid the required 10% to secure his release shortly after noon Thursday, court records show.

The development served as the latest twist in the high-profile case, one that has taken an unusually circuitous path through the courts. Dial is accused of fatally shooting Eddie Irizarry during a traffic stop in Kensington last year, and his prosecution has now been tossed out, reinstated, and downgraded over the last 11 months.

Just what kind of ineptitude infests the District Attorney’s Office that they first made a mistake which got the charges dismissed, and now, if the first paragraph in the Inquirer’s story is accurate, they f(ornicated) up again. “(A)n unusually circuitous path”? That’s a polite way of saying that the DAO has been completely inept.

What was this whole charade other than an effort by Mr Krasner to punish Mr Dial pre-emptively, in case he couldn’t actually win a conviction?

Prosecutors months ago had hired an expert to prepare a report on whether Dial violated Pennsylvania’s use-of-force law for police when he shot Irizarry, a question that goes to the heart of the case and will determine whether Dial should be convicted. But prosecutors told Dial’s attorneys about the expert’s report only this week — something Dial’s lawyers said was unreasonable, and didn’t give them enough time to prepare a rebuttal.

Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn B. Bronson agreed, and said he did not want to delay the case and keep Dial incarcerated for months over an issue that prosecutors had effectively created.

“Why didn’t you tell them you were hiring an expert?” he said in court this week, later adding: “You sat on this for 10, 11 months.”

Judge Bronson offered the compromise, to reduce the top charge to third degree murder, which made Mr Dial eligible for bail. Prosecutors then urged the judge to restrict Mr Dial to house arrest, to punish him further, but the defense noted, to the judge’s satisfaction, that Mr Dial did not pose a flight risk.

All of the charges should be dropped, and Mr Dial compensated for the time he spent behind bars unjustly, and that compensation should come from Mr Krasner’s personal wealth.

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Could Daniel Pearson be a conservative? Whether he realized it or not, he was pushing "broken windows" policing

I have said that my good friend Daniel Pearson — OK, OK, I think he knows who I am, but we’ve never met other than in debates on Twitter — is an editorial writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and that makes him a liberal, but he’s not a far left whacko, and conservatives can actually talk to him. And, other than the fact that he appears to be holding a disgusting Philly cheesesteak in his Twitter biography photo — a hot, freshly baked Philly pretzel would be more than acceptable, but cheesesteaks are vile — I pretty much like him.

But this morning, I had to consider that, Heaven forfend!, he might actually be a conservative! He tweeted:

The idea that people skip fares because they don’t have the cash isn’t supported by any evidence.

People skip fares because they are entitled jerks. Period. That’s why so many fare evaders are also smoking and assaulting people on transit.

Then:

And:

Honestly, Penn and Drexel should crack down on these students. There’s no excuse for disrespecting your host city.

I could have written that, and as both of our regular readers know, I’m as evil a reich-wing conservative as they come!

OK, OK, I know: Mr Pearson is no conservative, but if he’s a Democrat, he’s at least a moderate Democrat, the kind of people conservatives could respect, even if we disagreed with him on some issues. He, or at least the Editorial Board for which he does most of the writing, clearly despises former President Trump, and there’s the problem that even moderate Democrats supporting other Democrats enables the far-left of that party — Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema and perhaps even John Fetterman, I’m referring to you — but if we’ll never get the moderate Democrats to become Republicans, at least their existence within a party which sometimes seems to have gone completely off the rails of the sensibility train somewhat restrains the hard left impulses.

The Philadelphia Daily News article Mr Pearson linked:

SEPTA: Felonies down after crackdown on fare-evaders

New stats from SEPTA show that an increased focus on busting fare-jumpers has helped curb crime in the subways.

by Vinny Vella | February 5, 2015 | 3:01 AM EST

MICHAEL, a Frankford teen, is a poster boy for all the wrong reasons.

Last year, Michael – a pseudonym, because most of his offenses were committed as a juvenile – was cited 15 times in six months for hopping onto a SEPTA train without paying, law-enforcement sources said.

It got so bad, one SEPTA Transit Police officer told the Daily News, that the cashiers at his most frequently visited stations began to recognize him and would tip off police before he even approached their windows.

In November, six days after his 18th birthday, Michael was hit with his first fare-evasion citation as an adult. Three weeks later, he was cited again, this time with an added charge of resisting arrest, according to court records.

Did “Michael” do something really radical like go to jail for his (alleged) crimes? We know that District Attorney Larry Krasner and his minions would almost certainly not do anything like that to him, but reporter Vinny Vella’s article was written in 2015, when Michael Nutter was Mayor, Charles Ramsey was Police Commissioner, and Seth Williams was District Attorney. Under those three gentlemen, Killadelphia’s homicide total in the previous year was 248, and if it spiked to 280 the next year, it had steadily come down during their tenure.

Now, he’s seemingly straightened up and flying right: He hasn’t been arrested since.

And to hear SEPTA tell it, cracking down on fare-evaders like Michael – who authorities say also has been involved in at least two cellphone thefts – has done wonders for reducing felonies committed on the city’s subways.

“People jumping turnstiles are not heading to the library or going to see grandmom,” said Chief Thomas Nestel, head of SEPTA’s Transit Police. “They’re getting on the system to engage in activity that is either criminal or disorderly.”

There’s more at the original, but this is just more evidence that “broken windows” policing works. We don’t know if “Michael” stopped using SEPTA, or just started paying the fare to keep the Transit Police away from him. But the crime numbers dropped overall, and that does follow the greater enforcement of fare evasion.

More, “Michael’s” fare evasion as a juvenile didn’t seem to do much to him, but once he became an adult, and got a resisting arrest charge added to his offenses, his behavior changed. And this shows just how badly Mr Krasner’s leniency has affected the City of Brotherly Love. We have previously noted the Burholme SEPTA bus stop shooting, and how at least three of the four (alleged) shooters — three did the shooting, while a fourth drove the stolen getaway car — had previous juvenile offenses which could and should have had them already behind bars, but did not. Harsher treatment might not have mentally and morally reformed them, but at least putting criminals behind bars means that they are not out on the streets committing crimes! Had Mr Krasner and his office treated the three Burholme (alleged) shooters more seriously, there might have been eight fewer people shot in Philly twelve days ago.

Who knows? Perhaps Dayemen Taylor, deliberately targeted and murdered at another SEPTA bus stop just two days previously, would still be with us. We don’t know that yet, there’s no public information on the Ogontz shootings perpetrators has been made public, and we don’t know if they were previous offenders, but I’d bet euros to eclairs — my version of dollars to doughnuts — that yup, they have previous records.

Mr Pearson? Whether he realized it or not, he, too, was advocating “broken windows” policing, going after the small-time, first time, ‘lower’ offense level malefactors, before they reached the level of shooting, and sometimes killing, other people. Murder, and attempted murder, are not normally entry-level crimes. It doesn’t always work, individually, because prison isn’t something which normally makes people better, but it can be something that at least encourages them not to do the stuff that would send them back to prison.

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This is what happens when you don’t lock up criminals! At least three of the Burholme shooters were previously treated leniently, and learned the lesson that they'll always get away with crime.

As we reported in this comment, the Philadelphia Police had identified the fourth suspect in the Five Points mass shooting, and gave that suspect, a 17-year-old juvenile, until Wednesday morning to surrender to police, or they would release his name and photo. He didn’t surrender, and federal marshals did what they said they’d do.

 

Marshals identify 4th suspect in Burholme bus stop shooting that wounded 8 teenagers

Asir Boone, 17, is wanted on attempted murder and related charges in the March 6 shooting at Rising Sun and Cottman Avenues.

by Jesse Bunch | Wednesday, March 13, 2024 | 2:12 PM EDT | Updated: 4:53 PM EDT

U.S. Marshals released information Wednesday about the fourth suspect in the Burholme shooting that left eight high school students injured last week, as law enforcement officials urged the teenager to turn himself in.

Asir Boone, 17, is wanted on attempted murder and related charges, according to a statement from the U.S. Marshals Service.

A $5,000 reward is being offered for information leading to Boone’s arrest. The Marshals Service said that Boone frequents the Olney neighborhood and that his last known address was in Germantown.

Shockingly enough, the tweet with the suspect’s name and photo was published on the newspaper’s online story.

I stated three days ago:

The two identified suspects are just 18 years old, and no one has exposed any adult criminal records on them, but no one would be surprised if there are sealed juvenile records.

It was hardly a difficult prediction to make!

The photo of Mr Boone is a police mugshot, dated last year, so this fine young gentlemen had been arrested at least once previously.

Well, my good friend, Sgt Mark Fusetti did some digging!

Note that Sgt Fusetti only identified two of the accused, and only as Suspects #1 and #2. That leads me to suspect that these juvenile records were not officially released, but leaked by someone. I don’t know that, but it’s a reasonable assumption. And now we know that the fourth suspect, young Mr Boone, was also, to use the euphemism, ‘known to the police.’

So, “Suspect #1” had a 2021 charge, for which he received a diversionary judgement, so no criminal conviction. The following year he was caught with a stolen car, and received probation. Then, at some later point, he was charged with receiving stolen property, for which he has not yet been tried.

“Suspect #2” was arrested for receiving stolen property and a firearms charge, and was put on probation just six days before the Burholme bus shooting. It would seem rather obvious that District Attorney Larry Krasner and his minions’ lenient treatment of arrested juveniles hasn’t worked to, as he claims in his Twitter bio, “make us safer.”

We noted, about three weeks ago, that The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to two activists, who claimed “Locking teens up won’t make our city safer. It will have the opposite effect, and here’s why.” Well, at least three of the four suspects were not locked up, after committing serious crimes, with two of them having possessed firearms illegally, and they (allegedly) worked together to shoot up a SEPTA bus stop, apparently targeting at least one person, and wounding eight, one very seriously. At least three of the four (alleged) Burholme shooters were not locked up when caught previously, and the police recovered at least one Glock with an extended magazine and a full auto switch modification.

And yet, too many people assume that the only solution to stop youth crime is to lock children up long term.

While there are times when detaining teenagers is warranted, it cannot be the first and only response if we really want to end violence, because it doesn’t address the reasons so many kids are committing crimes in the first place.

Actually, it can. The criminal who is incarcerated or not incarcerated is not the only one who is learning a lesson here. The criminal, teenaged or otherwise, who is not incarcerated, who is treated as leniently “suspects #1 and 2”, and Asir Boone, were, learns the lesson that he’ll always get cut a break; that’s not a lesson the article authors have contemplated.

It’s also the people around the malefactors who learn a lesson, the lesson being either that, hey, these guys got busted, but were let go, so I’ll get let off, too, or the lesson that, dang, my buddies got busted and drew ten years in the state pen. The teenaged delinquents the authors contemplate getting whatever services and education that they expect might get that, were they to get their way, but the kids around the leniently treated criminals won’t; they’ll only see that their buddies got away with it.

Mr Krasner and his liberal minions are responsible for the (alleged) shooters being out on the streets, but the District Attorney and his office are not the only ones responsible. The leftists like the two activists just cited, and thousands of other Philadelphians who excuse crimes — at least when those crimes don’t affect them! — and who voted for Mr Krasner are also responsible.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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This is what happens when you are soft on crime!

Italian soldiers on guard near the Arch of Constantine, Roma, June 19, 2016. Photo by D R Pico; may be freely used, with attribution.

In response to the huge surge in crime, and the extremely lax prosecution of it by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed, and Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, signed into law, Act 40, which created a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute crimes “occurring within a public transportation authority that serves as the primary provider of public passenger transportation in the county of the first class.” Philadelphia is the only First-Class City/County in the Keystone State.

This was a clear and obvious attempt to bypass Let ’em Loose Larry, whose lenient prosecution has led to outrage, and we continually hear of violent crimes committed in the city by people who could and should have already been in prison, were it not for the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating and softer-than-Charmin-on-crime Mr Krasner.

Act 40 required, in §1786(a), the state Attorney General to appoint said special prosecutor, “Within 30 days of the effective date of this section,” but that appointment has not yet been made, with the 30 day period long having elapsed. And SEPTA, “the primary provider of public passenger transportation” in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, has seen an unfortunate surge in violent crime in recent weeks, including two mass shootings as public school students were at SEPTA bus stops for their rides home.

Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) was seeing a similar issue in the New York City subway system, and she took the radical action of deploying 750 National Guard troops to the subways to deter crime. From The Wall Street Journal:

Armed Troops on the New York City Subways

Gov. Hochul would do better by firing New York’s progressive DAs and restoring the successful anticrime policies of the 1990s and 2000s.

by The Editorial Board | Saturday, March 9, 2024 | 5:50 PM EST

Here’s a poser to consider for 2025: What if Donald Trump is elected again and decides to send the military to prevent crime or control riots in America’s streets? Wouldn’t half of America lose its collective mind about the supposed threat to democracy?

That’s a rhetorical question, of course, because President Trump did offer to send federal marshals to help cities provide order during the 2020 summer of hate following the unfortunate death-while-resisting-arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled career criminal George Floyd, and the Democratic mayors of our major cities didn’t want anything to do with that.

Yet that’s essentially what New York Gov. Kathy Hochul did this week in dispatching the state National Guard to patrol New York City’s subways to reduce crime. The Democratic Governor is sending 750 troops and 250 state police officers to guard subway trains and platforms amid a spike in violence and robbery against passengers.

No doubt many New Yorkers will be relieved at the sight, even if it will be somewhat disconcerting to see men in military fatigues on the trains. We know from experience it’s reassuring to see NYPD blue in a subway car when a homeless man is harassing passengers for money or because he’s drugged up.

Ms. Hochul is also calling for judges to have more authority to ban people from the subways if they’ve assaulted commuters or subway workers. She wants to add security cameras, and Mayor Eric Adams said this week he’s asked New York police to expand bag searches on the subways.

Israeli police, near the fourth Station of the Cross, Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem, November 2022, photo by D R Pico, may be freely used, with attribution.

The editorial included a photo of two National Guardsmen, one of whom was holding a semi-automatic rifle, complete with the magazine in place. Rather than use that, I included a photo I took — no copyright problems there! — of armed Italian Carabinieri, outside of the Arch of Constantine, near the Coliseum. We were not somehow unnerved by the sight, but it was an uncomfortable reminder that Italy has seen more than its share of terrorism.

Less pleasant was the vista of three armed Israeli policemen by the fourth Station of the Cross, but Israel has far worse terrorism problems than anyplace else. As a civilized people, we don’t like the thought that there are uncivilized barbarians out there, barbarians who think nothing of theft, violence, and murder. The George Soros-sponsored far-left prosecutors, like Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg and Mr Krasner, are simply too stupid to recognize that there really are barbarians out there, and there are hard-left liberals like the late Jen Angel of Oakland who think that all the barbarians need is some love and hugs.

Back to the Journal:

This is progress after the denial that has prevailed for years among the city’s ruling Democrats. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio and progressives started the downhill slide when they waged political war on cops, on stop and frisk policing, and on the enforcement of offenses against civilized norms.

Yet sending in the military to protect mass transit is also in some sense a sign of societal and political surrender. It means that New York has concluded that it can’t protect its citizens with a normal police presence, or with the laws against vagrancy that once prevailed, or with prosecutors who used to put people in jail for crimes against public order. So send in the guys with assault rifles.

Governor Shapiro has stated that he has no intention of sending the National Guard to help defend SEPTA, so that’s not an issue in Philly yet. But New York City did show the way, in the 1990s, with Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a no-nonsense, “broken windows” policing program. The NYPD arrested, and the prosecutors charged, the wannabe goons who were just starting out in their lives of crime, meting out strict punishment for the little stuff with the idea that strict punishment for the ‘little’ stuff would educate the prospective criminals that crime does not pay.

And, even those wannabes who were too stupid to learn were off the streets, and no danger to the public. Then, when they went back on the streets, if they resumed breaking the laws, they already had criminal records, which meant longer sentences for subsequent crimes.

Governor Hochul took an action which, let’s be plain about this, reeks of desperation. She simply had to Do Something, because the criminal class and their families, along with the untouched liberals in Central Park West, are so f(ornicating) stupid to understand that treating criminals leniently simply leads to more criminals.

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Hold them accountable! Larry Krasner is at least indirectly responsible for Dayemen Taylor's murder. The only question is: is he directly responsible?

Shootings and homicides have decreased in the City of Brotherly Love over the past two years, with 55 murders as of the end of March 5, as compared to 79 on the same date last year. But, as the aggregate numbers decrease, more attention gets paid to some of the individual cases. No one really cares all that much when one gang-banger kills another gang-banger, but when a seemingly innocent kid gets targeted and murdered, even The Philadelphia Inquirer takes notice.

The newspaper had a fairly long story, by reporters Ellie Rushing and Kristen A. Graham, on the apparently deliberately targeted Dayemen Taylor, a 17-year-old student at Imhotep Charter, an African-centered school with a science, technology engineering and mathematics (STEM) focus.

About 3:45 p.m. Monday, as a group of students boarded SEPTA’s No. 6 bus to head home, police say, two young men in hoodies and masks ran up from behind, guns in hand.

They fired indiscriminately at close range at least 40 times, police said, spraying bullets among the crowd of kids and through the bus windows. In total, five people were shot, including a 14-year-old boy and a 71-year-old woman.

As the shooters closed in on the group in Ogontz, in North Philadelphia, police said, they strode toward Dayemen Taylor, a 17-year-old Imhotep student, and shot him multiple times. He died minutes later — targeted, police said, for reasons detectives don’t yet understand. Taylor, they said, was a respected student with no prior contact with law enforcement. And while investigators are looking into whether a fight at Imhotep earlier in the day may have led to the shooting, the motive remained unclear and no arrests had been made, said Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore.

There’s plenty more in the story, much of it telling readers what a good kid young Mr Taylor was, which sadly reminded me of past Inquirer stories in which the innocent victims was, in the end, not quite as innocent as depicted. But I’ve grown cynical in my elder years, and I’ve heard no evidence that Mr Taylor was anything other than the innocent victim portrayed.

But what struck me the most were these two paragraphs:

The case brought District Attorney Larry Krasner to tears on Tuesday, and he vowed swift justice.

“This is an absolute outrage. It will be solved, and those responsible will be vigorously prosecuted,” he said.

Oh, Mr Krasner was crying, was he? He was outraged, and he vowed swift justice, did he? That stupid piece of [insert vulgar term for feces here] is responsible for much of the killing on Philadelphia’s mean streets, because he has refused to take ‘lesser’ crimes seriously. He doesn’t like to prosecute crimes involving firearm possession, his minions and he allow very lenient plea deals, especially to juveniles, and he’s proud that the incarcerated population has dramatically declined on his watch. He delights on getting previously convicted criminals released, and on charging Philadelphia Police Officers whenever he can. He is at least indirectly responsible for this homicide, because he has done more than anyone else in Philadelphia to enable a culture and climate in which crime has been enabled.

Is he directly responsible? We don’t know yet, because the killers have not yet been identified. But it would surprise no one if, when the murderers are identified, they are individuals ‘known to the police,’ guys who have been arrested before and given lenient treatment by the city’s softer-than-Charmin-on-crime District Attorney. It would surprise no one if it turned out that the two gunmen both could and should have been behind bars on Monday afternoon.

And if it turns out that they could and should have been locked up on Monday, then Mr Krasner is directly responsible for young Mr Taylor’s murder. When will he be held accountable?