Tag Archives: #LarryKrasner

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What good are gun control laws when Larry Krasner won’t enforce them? The 'racial justice' advocate doesn't like locking up criminals

Sometimes even the innocuous jargon used in government documents can tell a large truth, From the Philadelphia City Council’s 100 Shooting Review Committee Report:

There appears to be a trend in the criminal justice system where gun cases are treated more leniently than in earlier years. It is particularly concerning that the reoffending rate for another gun offense during a VUFA (Violations of Uniform Firearm Act) open case has increased, when the bail posting percentages have increased and overall sentences have become lighter. The current analysis was limited to arrested offenders; it is important to also take into account the network of criminals; they communicate. Criminals see and hear from their peers.[i]

While the office of the George Soros-funded District Attorney, Larry Krasner, did participate in the committee and its findings and recommendations, the document noted that “all of these recommendations are not unanimous,[ii] a rather curious grammatical construct, which I think means that none of the recommendations was unanimous. It’s difficult to believe that Mr Krasner and his stooges would have agreed to that finding. Specifically, the quote is from the section entitled “Last 100 Shooting Data Analysis: Analysis Result by PPD (Philadelphia Police Department)”, so the District Attorney and his office would very much not like that point.

Comprehensive gun violence strategies should have equally balanced elements of enforcement, intervention, and prevention. As for enforcement, classical deterrence theory suggests three elements for deterrence: severity, swiftness, and certainty. Enhanced sentencing will not be the sole solution; however, being lenient against gun crimes at the time of the gun violence crisis should perhaps be scrutinized. Swiftness of the criminal justice system has always been a limitation to deterrence, but court closures during the pandemic as well as increasing number of gun cases coming in (an average of 7 VUFA arrests per day in 2021) will only aggravate this, unless dedicated and increased resources are allocated. Simply increasing the frequency of stops in hopes for strengthening the (perceived) certainly of arrests is not the solution either. Deterring illegal firearm possessions should be holistically addressed by implementing changes in policing, prosecution, and courts, as discussed in the recommendation section of this report.[iii]

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that the DA’s office won’t like that!

The Police Department put together a graphic which showed just what the shooting victims and alleged shooters were like, and it isn’t pretty.[iv] The chart specifically excluded those charges the District Attorney chose not to pursue, and previous charges were limited to the year 2000 and more recently.

Note the obvious: two thirds of the shooting victims had criminal records, most with violent felony records, most with prior firearms charges. The majority of the arrested shooters had violent felony records, had prior firearms charges, and PWID – possession of drugs with the intent to distribute – charges.

These are people who do not obey gun control laws, these are people to whom firearms are simply the tools of their trade, and who are going to carry weapons because, to them, they need those weapons. That most have prior criminal records demonstrates what ought to be obvious to anyone with any common sense: that their actions are illegal doesn’t bother them in the slightest, other than the possibility of getting caught.

There is another graph, on page 21[v] of the report: since District Attorney Krasner took office, the percentage of firearms charges resulting in convictions has dramatically decreased. In Mr Krasner’s first year in office, 2018, 57% of VUFA only arrests resulted in convictions, with 35% having the charges dismissed. Those trend lines crossed the following year, with a larger percentage of charges dismissed, 47%, than resulting in convictions, 43%, and only got worse in 2020 and 2021, 49%/42%, and 62%/36% respectively. In their attempts to get illegal firearm possessions off the streets, the Philadelphia Police Department increased the number of VUFA arrests each year, and each year Mr Krasner’s office let the (alleged) malefactors off the hook in increasing numbers.

 

Of course, the analysis by the District Attorney’s Office (DAO) didn’t look at it the same way at all.  The DAO’s opening statement was:

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.[vi]

This is very much in line with Mr Krasner’s statement:

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.[vii]

That sounds fairly typical for a ‘social justice’ and ‘racial justice’ warrior, someone more concerned with keeping people out of jail than locking up the bad guys.

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[viii] (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.[ix]

I am one who believes that the Second Amendment means what it says, that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and that requiring a permit to carry a weapon ought to be considered wholly unconstitutional. It is, however, a statement wholly at odds with the Democratic Party’s insistence on gun control legislation.

As for ‘racial justice,’ there isn’t much such justice by the demographics:

Offender and victim demographics resemble each other: for the arrested shooters, 94% were male, 95% were people of color (74% Black Male), and the peak age was in late adolescence and young adulthood (18-30 years old). Similarly, for victims, 86.5% were male, 88.5% were people of color (61.5% Black Male), and the peak age was in young adulthood to mid-thirties (21-35 years old).[x]

It is the black population, primarily young black males, who are both the shooters and the victims. In Mr Krasner’s zeal to establish racial justice in the City of Brotherly Love, those who are paying the price for that are primarily black people.

“The role of the District Attorney’s Office is to vigorously, justly, and accurately prosecute people who commit serious and violent crimes,” the DAO wrote.[xi] No, the role of the District Attorney’s Office should be to vigorously, justly, and accurately prosecute people who commit all crimes, not just the ones a particular person believes to be serious. At the point at which the District Attorney and his minions decide that certain crimes are not serious, and should not be prosecuted, they have assumed the function of the state legislature, and declared certain crimes, determined through the constitutional process of legislation and gubernatorial assent, to not be crimes at all.

 

It’s actually pretty simple: even if someone has no previous record, and is committing only the crime of possessing a firearm without a license, 18 Pa.C.S. § 6106, he is knowingly committing a felony, and he must have a reason for that, normally not a very good one. By not prosecuting such people, Mr Krasner and his minions are allowing them to not have criminal records, which means that when they do shoot someone, they’ll have no priors.

As we have previously noted, the Philadelphia Police have charged Steven Thompson, who shot and killed a man trying to steal the catalytic converter from his car, with a firearms violation. I guess that we’ll see if Mr Krasner’s office will prosecute Mr Thompson for ridding the city of yet another criminal.

 

There’s a lot more to the report than I have included here, and much of it is liberal pablum, from the Defender Association of Philadelphia, a group of defense attorneys who represent the indigent and who want to get the accused off, and from the Department of Public Health, which sees the shootings and killings as a public health situation rather than what they actually are, crimes committed by criminals. Access to the document, 196 pages in the .pdf file, is free at this link.

The simplest way to reduce crime is to convict and lock up actual criminals when you catch them; Mr Krasner and his stooges don’t like doing that, and they have helped produce a Philadelphia which saw 353 homicides in 2018, Mr Krasner’s first year in office, an increase of 38 killings, up 12.06% from the previous year, followed by 356 in 2019, then 499, a 30.17% jump, in 2020, just one short of the all-time record of 500 set in the crack cocaine wars of 1990, and finally 562, a 12.63% increase in 2021. As of 11:59 PM EST on Thursday, January 27th, the city has seen 39 people bleeding out their life’s blood in the cold, mean streets.

How many of those people would be alive today if Mr Krasner and his office had done the job that they were supposed to do, actually prosecute criminals, rather than deciding that some crimes were just not serious and turned people actually in custody loose?

We can’t know that, but we do know that Samuel Collington and Philadelphia Police Corporal James O’Connor IV would still be with us.
______________________________________

[i] – 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 17 of the document, page 19 of the .pdf file.
[ii] – ibid, page 9 of the document, page 11 of the .pdf file.
[iii] – ibid, page 17 of the document, page 19 of the .pdf file.
[iv] – I was unable to copy the internal chart, and had to reproduce it via Microsoft Excel.
[v]  – op cit, page 21 of the document, page 23 of the .pdf file.
[vi] – ibid, page 30 of the document, page 32 of the .pdf file.
[vii] – Original citation: “‘A terrible crisis’: Krasner discusses Philly’s gun violence after officer’s son gunned down”, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Monday, January 24, 2022.
[viii] – 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 most 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. Footnote copied from footnote 16 on page 31 of the document, page 33 of the .pdf file.
[ix] – op cit, page 30-31 of the document, page 32-33 of the .pdf file.
[x] – ibid, page 20 of the document, page 22 of the .pdf file.
[xi] – ibid, page 31 of the document, page 33 of the .pdf file.

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The incomparable genius of Larry Krasner! Albert Einstein supposedly said, "The definition of a fool is someone who does the same thing over and over again expecting different results."

Murder is not normally an entry-level crime. When someone goes out armed and shoots someone else, the odds are very high that the shooter previously had ‘encounters’ with the police, and often a significant rap sheet.

Rudy Giuliani knew this, and that’s why, as Mayor of New York City, he instituted what’s known as ‘broken windows policing,’ cracking down on the minor crimes, to try to get the little guys on the path to becoming bad guys straightened out before they became major bad guys, and to end the social norms that allow crime. If one window is broken out in a building, and left unrepaired, the theory states that the rest will soon be broken as well, because it becomes acceptable for punks to throw rocks to break out the other windows.

Well, George Doros-funded, cop-hating District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) doesn’t believe in that!

    ‘A terrible crisis’: Krasner discusses Philly’s gun violence after officer’s son gunned down

    Homicides in the city have already hit 38 this year, two more than at the same time last year, Krasner said. “This is truly a terrible crisis that we are suffering through,” he said.

    by Mensah M Dean | Monday, January 24, 2022

    The son of a Philadelphia police officer was shot and killed early Monday morning in North Philadelphia, the 38th homicide already this month and one reflecting “a terrible crisis” for the city, District Attorney Larry Krasner said.

    The 23-year-old man, whom police identified as Hyram Hill, was shot in the 1400 block of West Allegheny Avenue at 4:38 a.m. in what appeared to be a robbery. Paramedics rushed him to nearby Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:01 a.m.

    Hill had been shot multiple times in his left chest, right arm, abdomen and back, police said Monday afternoon. In the morning, Joanne Pescatore, Krasner’s newly appointed supervisor of the Homicide and Non-Fatal Shooting Unit, said he had been shot nine times. . . . .

    “This is a slight increase from terrible to terrible,” Krasner said. “That’s where we are with homicides. This is truly a terrible crisis that we are suffering through.”

    The district attorney said the gun-violence toll ― which accounted for the majority of 562 homicides last year, a record ― has convinced him that his office should focus on such violent crimes rather than lesser crimes such as prostitution and marijuana possession.

    “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,” he said. “We cannot continue to waste resources and time on things that matter less than the truly terrible crisis that we are facing.”

Really? Perhaps, just perhaps, if law enforcement, from the police through the prosecutor, would treat the crimes that “matter less” than homicide seriously, people like the cretin who gunned down Hyram Hill would have been behind bars Monday morning, not out robbing someone, and not putting nine bullets into an apparently innocent victim.

Remember Cody Allen Arnett, the multiply-convicted felon who was let out early by the Kentucky state Parole Board, who then went out and forcibly raped a Georgetown College coed? Now he has a life sentence, but if he’d been kept behind bars when he should have been, if he hadn’t been treated leniently, his victim would never have been raped.

Remember Vincent Pinkney, who could have been behind bars, if he had been treated seriously, and instead was out on the street to murder a Columbia graduate student? How about Latif Williams, who (allegedly) murdered Samuel Collington near Temple University, in a botched carjacking? He had been released by a soft-headed judge on an unsecured bond, but could have been in custody when Mr Collington was killed.

Then there was Hasan Elliot, 21, a known gang-banger, whom Mr Krasner treated leniently:

  • Mr Elliott, then 18 years old, was arrested in June 2017 on gun- and drug-possession charges stemming after threatening a neighbor with a firearm. The District Attorney’s office granted him a plea bargain arrangement on January 24, 2018, and he was sentenced to 9 to 23 months in jail, followed by three years’ probation. However, he was paroled earlier than that, after seven months in jail.
  • Mr Elliot soon violated parole by failing drug tests and failing to meet his meetings with his parole officer.
  • Mr Elliott was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine on January 29, 2019. This was another parole violation, but Mr Krasner’s office did not attempt to have Mr Elliot returned to jail to finish his sentence, nor make any attempts to get serious bail on the new charges; he was released on his own recognizance.
  • After Mr Elliot failed to appear for his scheduled drug-possession trial on March 27, 2019, and prosecutors dropped those charges against him.

On Friday, March 13, 2020, Mr Elliot shot and killed Philadelphia Police Corporal James O’Connor IV. Had Mr Krasner’s office treated Mr Elliot seriously, he would have been behind bars on that Friday the 13th, and Corporal O’Connor would still be alive.

Philadelphia Police Officers and FOP members block District Attorney Larry Krasner from entering Temple University Hospital to meet with slain Police Corporal James O’Connor’s family.

The Philadelphia Police saw that as well, and a group of police officers blocked the entrance to the emergency room at Temple University Hospital to deny Mr Krasner and his entourage entrance to visit Corporal O’Connor’s family.

Yet Mr Krasner, who just hates locking up the bad guys, wants to continue with the same policies which have contribute to Philadelphia’s huge homicide rate. Philadelphia’s daily average inmate population was 6,409 when Mr Krasner took office, and was down to 4,849 on August 31, 2019. As of January 23, 2022, the jail population was even lower, 4,519 inmates. Mr Krasner sees this as a good thing; I see it as 2,000 more punks out on the street victimizing law-abiding people.

It ought to be obvious even to the densest person: a criminal who is in jail is not out on the streets committing more crimes. But District Attorney Krasner would leave the lower-level bad guys out, walking around free when he could have them behind bars, and then be shocked, shocked! when one of them blows away the son of a police officer.

An intelligent man, which Mr Krasner purports to be, ought to have learned from what treating Hasan Elliot leniently did, and changed his policies accordingly; a stupid man would have just continued with the failed policies of his own, and others, that have let violent crime fester and grow.

There’s really only one conclusion: Larry Krasner is one stupid man!

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Law enforcement in the City of Brotherly Love

Screen capture of tweet from Danielle Outlaw. Click on image to go to original.

The main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website was rather amusing on Thursday morning. The Inquirer referred to an article from just before the end of last year, on a date when the city recorded its 555th homicide, on its way to the record of 562 for 2021,[1]It’s early in the year, but things haven’t gotten any better. As of 11:59 PM EST on Wednesday, January 12th, there had been 20 homicides reported by the Philadelphia Police Department, up … Continue reading which told us, “Philly ranks No. 3 on a list of trendy and affordable cities: The Realtor.com report cited Philadelphia’s culture, history, and “quaint” neighborhoods.” I suppose that, based on median home prices and major urban amenities, it is. We’ve noted how aging hipster — can you really be a hipster at age 44? — Amanda Marcotte sang the praises of her new South Philadelphia neighborhood, saying that “Philly’s food scene is the hotness,” but if she’s ever written more about her new hometown, I’ve missed it. The Inquirer article touted the city’s “world-class food scene, and its many small businesses, shops and nightlife, walkability, and something-for-everyone offerings as reasons the city deserves its ‘trendy’ title.”

Yet, on Wednesday evening, the seemingly-appropriately named Police Commissioner for the City of Philadelphia, Danielle Outlaw, has tweeted out her advice to victims of carjackings. While there are some reasonable safety tips, one, “Make it a habit to start your car and drive away immediately,” is horrible: your engine needs a few seconds to pump the motor oil from the oil pan through the engine, so starting the engine and driving away immediately increases the wear-and-tear on it. But the Commissioner’s main advice was simply that, if someone attempts to steal your car, let him.

“Your vehicle can be replaced. You are irreplaceable!” the Commissioner tells Philadelphians, which is true enough, in the abstract sense, but for the people who live in the city’s more crime-ridden neighborhoods, their insurance might not replace that vehicle; having their car stolen means having no car, not just the inconvenience of having to get Flo from Progressive buy you a new one. Philadelphia has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation, but so many of the city’s liberals are wholly insulated from it.

Of course, many of the comments on the Commissioner’s tweet were along the lines of this one, “Buy a legal firearm, get you concealed carry permit. When these thugs attempt to ‘jack you, introduce them to your two friends, Smith & Wesson,” but let’s tell the truth here: if you had a legally-possessed weapon, and you used it against a carjacker in Philadelphia, District Attorney Larry Krasner would charge you for defending your property with deadly force. If you did the city a favor and insured that yours was the last vehicle that the carjacker attempted to steal, Mr Krasner would charge you with murder.

However, the two points I’ve mentioned, Philly’s trendiness and its awful homicide rate, are easily explained by one simple fact: as the Inquirer itself reported, less than three months ago, “Philly remains one of the most racially segregated cities in America: People from different racial and ethnic groups live in different neighborhoods, and the pace of desegregation has slowed.” Miss Marcotte and her ‘partner,’ Marc Faletti, can walk around South Philly in reasonable safety and security, and enjoy the food scene:

Our South Philly neighborhood, on the other hand, is a blast for those who spend way too much of their income on dining out. Local breweries are abundant, as well as experimental restaurants like Bing Bing, which serves a modern American spin on dim sum. And unlike New York, where you often have to travel an hour by subway to find good places to find more traditional Mexican or Asian cuisines, we’re in walking distance of one of the best taquerias on the East Coast and a tiny but magnificent Indonesian place.

For vegetarians like myself, Philadelphia’s restaurant scene is particularly amazing. It’s not just the nearly limitless number of excellent vegan restaurants, either. Nearly every place you eat out at here has a substantial number of vegetarian or vegan dishes, in contrast to New York, where some restaurants don’t even bother.

It’s no skin off her nose, but not that far away, in West Philadelphia,[2]West Philadelpha and South Philadelphia are not separate cities, but simply the names of neighborhoods and areas. Philadelphia has a lot of named neighborhoods. trying that is an attempt at avoiding darker corners, the open ends of alleys, and where some black residents are opposing physical improvements to sidewalks and streets because that might bring more white people into the neighborhood.

Miss Marcotte, and Inquirer urbanism writer Michaelle Bond can write about the trendiness of Philadelphia, because they have insulated themselves from the grittier neighborhoods, they have segregated themselves away from most of the city’s crime.

Commissioner Outlaw needn’t have bothered with her tweet: the areas in which carjackings are more likely to occur already know what they need to do, and the less crime ridden neighborhoods, which are, to be brutally frank about it, the whiter neighborhoods, where the liberals and the #woke don’t see the crime close up, can close their eyes to the things happening in Kensington and Strawberry Mansion.

References

References
↑1 It’s early in the year, but things haven’t gotten any better. As of 11:59 PM EST on Wednesday, January 12th, there had been 20 homicides reported by the Philadelphia Police Department, up from ‘just’ 13 on the same day in 2021’s record-setting year.
↑2 West Philadelpha and South Philadelphia are not separate cities, but simply the names of neighborhoods and areas. Philadelphia has a lot of named neighborhoods.
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The powers that be in Philadelphia continue to blame each other for a problem about which they cannot tell the truth

There are times when I worry about being a bit of a broken record on the homicide rate in Philadelphia, and I skipped some recent stories, but the blame game in the City of Brotherly Love has gotten both hysterically funny and monumentally tragic.

Mayor Kenney acknowledges Philadelphia has ‘a gun crisis’ but sidesteps questions about DA Larry Krasner’s crime comments

District Attorney Larry Krasner drew criticism Monday when he said: “We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence.”

By Anna Orso | Wednesday, December 8, 2021 | 5:26 PM EST

Two days after District Attorney Larry Krasner stirred outrage by insisting the city isn’t in the midst of a crime or violence crisis, Mayor Jim Kenny and the city’s police commissioner sought Wednesday to gingerly wade into — or away from — the issue.

During their scheduled biweekly news conference, one that began this year in direct response to the rising number of shootings, Kenney and Commissioner Danielle Outlaw both said they do believe the city has a gun violence problem.

Both also declined to say more about Krasner’s comments or the ensuing pushback, including a blistering statement from Kenney’s predecessor, former Mayor Michael Nutter, who called Krasner’s remarks “some of the worst, most ignorant, and most insulting comments I have ever heard spoken by an elected official.”

Kenney on Wednesday said while he agrees “we’re in a gun crisis,” he would not “get involved in a back-and-forth between a former mayor and the DA.”

There’s more at the original.

Michael Nutter wasn’t the best mayor Philadelphia ever had, but, during his eight years in office, his Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey, and he presided over a significant decrease in killings in the city. The city saw 391 homicides in Mayor John Street’s last year of 2007; that number was down 60, to 331, in Mayor Nutter’s first year in office, and though tied again in 2012, the numbers were generally down. In their last three years, 2013, 2014, and 2015, the city saw fewer than 300 murders, 246, 248, and 280, respectively.

Though that number dropped slightly, to 277 in Mayor Kenney’s first year, by the following year the numbers were above 300 again, at 315, 353, 356, and then last year’s whopping 499.

District Attorney Krasner, one of the George Soros-funded stooges who took office in some of our major cities with the explicit promise to reduce prosecutions, tried to tell people that yes, crimes with firearms had increased, but other crimes were down. That, of course, was bovine feces.

This is where the Inquirer truthfully reports the statistics, but never questions them. Murder is not normally an entry-level crime.

There are two different types of crime, crimes of evidence, and crimes of reporting. Murder is a crime of evidence, because it leaves a dead body, and dead bodies get found. It’s hard to dispose of 100 to 300 pounds of dead and decaying flesh and bone and muscle and fat unless someone has carefully planned how to do it.

But assaults, or robberies, or rapes? Assaults and rapes can be crimes of evidence, if the victim goes to the hospital for treatment. But if the victims is not seriously enough injured to seek medical care, or if the rape victim chooses not to report it, then those crimes become crimes of reporting, and if they are not reported to the police, then as far as the police are concerned, as far as the statistics measure, the crimes never happened. Yet, while the statistics vary, it seems that fewer than half of all “violent victimization” are reported to the police, and rape appears to be the least reported crime. According to the survey, only 32.5% or rapes or sexual assaults were reported in 2015, and that dropped to 23.2% the following year.[1]See Table 4. In a city, in communities, in which the vast majority of crimes which are known about go unsolved, why would people who are already distrustful of the police, people who have low expectations that the crimes will actually be solved, even bother reporting the crimes? Why would residential burglaries be down 22% but non-residential burglaries up 15%? Same crime, just different targets, but different conditions for the owners. Commercial owners who find their businesses burgled[2]Though “burglarize” is apparently a real word now, I refuse to use it. have a far greater possibility of getting an insurance recovery, while residents do not, so of course the victims of commercial burglaries are more likely to report the crimes. Residential burglaries? With so many unsolved crimes, and distrust of the police high, reporting such a crime must seem mostly useless to people.

And in the City of Brotherly Love, both Mr Krasner, and the nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper, have been working as hard as they can to undermine the police!

Of course, all of the politicians, all of the politically correct, want to talk about “gun violence,” as though those inanimate objects somehow levitate and shoot people all by themselves, all to push stricter gun control laws. In their own stories, the Inquirer noted that Latif Williams, the (alleged) killer of Samuel Collington, was a juvenile, with a criminal record, and could not be legally carrying a gun . . . but he was. They reported that Donavan Crawford, charged with the murder of Sykea Patton, was “charged overnight with murder and multiple counts of illegally carrying a gun.” Somehow, some way, the highly educated and experienced editors and reporters for the Inquirer never noticed that the people committing crimes with guns are almost never holders of firearms permits, almost never carrying firearms legally, and, shockingly enough, aren’t that interested in obeying the law in the first place.

This is the problem that the left simply cannot see, because they are unwilling to see it. It is not a matter of guns, but the people using the guns. Since the people using guns to kill others are disproportionately black, to admit that it’s the people who are the problem is to recognize that homicide in our major cities is primarily a black problem, and that the #woke[3]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading just cannot do.

But if you cannot admit what the problem is, you can never hope to solve the problem. And the left, including Mayor Kenney, including Commissioner Outlaw, would rather ignore the truth than deal with the truth.

References

References
↑1 See Table 4.
↑2 Though “burglarize” is apparently a real word now, I refuse to use it.
↑3 From Wikipedia:

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

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Philly ties for 3rd place!

It wasn’t really that much of a stretch to guess that 475 wouldn’t be the final homicide number for Thursday, and it wasn’t: the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page shows that 476 Philadelphians have been murdered so far this year, up from ‘just’ 428 on the same day last year. Last year being a leap year, the gang bangers had an extra day to hit that 428 number.

The numbers are ugly: 476 homicides in 315 days works out to 1.5111 per day, or a projected 551.5555, rounding up to 552 for the year.

With 50 days left in the year, and ‘only’ 24 murders needed to tie the all-time record of 500, set in 1990, the homicide rate would have to drop to slightly less than a third of what it is right now, and, at this point, only God could make that happen. At the current rate, the city should tie the all-time high in just 16 days, or Saturday, November 27th.

Mayor James Kenney (Democrat-Philadelphia), District Attorney Larry Krasner (Soros stooge-Philadelphia), and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw (Kenney Puppet-Philadelphia) have certainly done a fine, fine job, haven’t they?

But hey, Philadelphians must like all of those bodies stacked up like cordwood, because they just re-elected George Soros stooge District Attorney Larry Krasner. No one can say that they didn’t know what they were getting.

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Killadelphia! Philadelphia's homicide rate has increased dramatically since Joe Biden was elected

Mayor Jim Kenney (Democrat-Philadelphia), District Attorney Larry Krasner (Soros-Philadelphia), and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw (Puppet-Philadelphia) haven’t quite won the Bronze Medal for annual homicides for the City of Brotherly Love for the year, but they aren’t far away. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page reports that there have been 471 homicides in the city so far this year, through 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, November 7th. With 471 killings over 311 days elapsed in the year, that works out to 1.5145 per day, or a projected 552.7814 for 2021. Since there’s no such thing as 0.7814 of a homicide, that works out to a projected 553.

As of November 7th in 2020, there had been 422 killings in the city. Due to the counting problems in the 2020 elections, that Joe Biden had defeated President Trump on November 3rd wasn’t certain until November 5th. Since the Philly Police don’t report the homicide numbers on the weekend until the subsequent Monday, this is the first day I could make this comparison, but since the evil reich-wing Donald Trump was defeated, and the all sweetness-and-light Joe Biden elected, there have been 548 homicides in the city, over 367 days.

Yet from November 7, 2019 to November 7, 2020, Philly saw ‘only’ 474 murders. It seems as though the killing rate in Philly has been significantly higher, as in 15.61% higher, since Mr Biden was elected! And remember: the vast majority of the COVID-19 lockdowns occurred when Mr Trump was President, so you can’t blame it all on the pandemic.

No Bronze Medal yet, but Miss Outlaw and Messrs Kenney and Krasner need just five more to tie for third place, and at the current rate, they ought to get that by Wednesday or Thursday.

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Killadelphia

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page reported that the City of Brotherly Love — and yes, I have been using that title sarcastically for a long time — has suffered through 412 homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, September 30th. 412 murders ÷ 273 days = 1.509157509157509 killings per day x 365 days = 550.8425 homicides projected for the year.

The 2020 census reported that 1,603,797 live in Philly. With 499 homicides in 2020, that gives the city a homicide rate of 31.11 per 100,000 population. With a guesstimated 2021 population of 1,607,667, and the city on track for 551 murders, the city’s homicide rate has jumped to 34.27 per 100,000 population.

Former Mayor Michael Nutter produced a chart of Philadelphia homicides per year from 1960 through 2020. It was rather self-serving, as he added the name of the Mayor of Philadelphia, given that it showed there were fewer homicides per year under his regime than under other recent mayors, but, in fact, there was no year in which murders reached the 400 mark under Mr Nutter and his Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey. I have reproduced the chart for all of the years with 400 or more homicides, and sorted it by the number of killings. Note that with 412 killings, 2021 is 16th out of 18 years with more than 400 homicides, having passed 1994 and 2006, and there are still three full months left in the year!

Since the end of the Labor Day weekend, 24 days ago, there have been 49 murders reported in Philadelphia, or 2.0417 per day. If that rate continues for just one more week, the total would jump to 426, jumping up five more spots.

Then there’s this:

    Philly’s top cop says she and DA Krasner ‘just don’t agree’ on how to reduce shootings

    “Fundamentally, there are very key disconnects there,” Outlaw said, “as far as which crimes we prioritize, and who believes what are the main drivers of the violent crime that we’re seeing.”

    by Anna Orso | September 30, 2021

    Philadelphia’s top law enforcement officials don’t agree on which crimes they should prioritize while seeking to address the city’s record-setting gun violence crisis, a notable disconnect made public yet again this week.

    The Philadelphia Police Department is focused on arresting people for dealing drugs and illegally carrying guns, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said this week, but top brass don’t see the District Attorney’s Office prioritizing the prosecution of those crimes.

    During a biweekly news conference with Mayor Jim Kenney on Wednesday, the city’s top cop said she and reform-minded District Attorney Larry Krasner “just don’t agree” on whether illegal gun and narcotics charges can reduce violent crime, making it hard to progress in slowing the bloodshed.

    ”Fundamentally, there are very key disconnects there, as far as which crimes we prioritize, and who believes what are the main drivers of the violent crime that we’re seeing,” Outlaw said.

    Jane Roh, a spokesperson for Krasner’s office, said violent crimes “have always been the top priorities” and said all law enforcement should be squarely focused on shooting and homicide investigations. She pointed to low clearance rates, saying that so far this year, police have made arrests in just 29% of homicides and 15% of nonfatal shootings.

    “No public official should be defending that, much less spinning it,” she said in a statement. “Our communities and our neighbors who have been wounded or killed by gun violence deserve real leadership and action.”

There’s more at the original, but both are right: the Commissioner should not be throwing shade at the District Attorney when their clearance rates are so low, but the DA’s office should not be minimizing arrests for dealing drugs and illegally carrying firearms, because drug dealers and gang bangers are the number one perpetrators of shootings. Mr Krasner, whom The Philadelphia Inquirer actually endorsed for renomination, has more of a history of letting thugs go free so that they can then go out and murder people:

    In June 2018, Maalik Jackson-Wallace was arrested on a Frankford street and charged with carrying a concealed gun without a license and a gram of marijuana. It was his first arrest.

    The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office recommended the Frankford man for a court diversionary program called Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) that put him on two years’ probation. His record could have been expunged if he had successfully completed the program.

    But Jackson-Wallace, 24, was arrested again on gun-possession charges in March in Bridesburg. He was released from jail after a judge granted a defense motion for unsecured bail. And on June 13, he was arrested a third time — charged with murder in a shooting two days earlier in Frankford that killed a 26-year-old man.

It seems that in his eagerness to keep Mr Jackson-Wallace out of jail, the District Attorney did him no favors. Instead of a potential sentence from 2½ to 7 years in the clink, Mr Jackson-Wallace faced the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

It’s true enough that the city’s police are not closing homicide cases at a satisfactory rate, but there are homicide cases which would not have occurred at all if Mr Krasner were more interested in locking up the bad guys than he is at attacking the police.

The left have, for years, decried “mass incarceration,” but lenient law enforcement has proven to be a bad idea even for the criminals. We have previously noted how John Lewis, AKA Lewis Jordan, who slew Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, and Nikolas Cruz, accused of the mass murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were given every possible break. Had they been in jail at the time they committed their murders, yeah, they might have served a year or three, but Mr Jordan wouldn’t be on death row today, looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in prison, and Mr Cruz wouldn’t have the same kind of sentence looking him dead in the eye.

Are Messrs Jordan and Cruz somehow better off today because lenient law enforcement kept them out of jail? Is Andrew Brown, with his 180-page-long rap sheet, better off today because, despite many criminal convictions, he was out of jail the day he decided to start a gunfight with several Pasquotank County, North Carolina, deputies trying to serve a couple of warrants? Was 21-year-old Hasan Elliot better off on that Friday the 13th when he should have been in jail, and would have been in jail had not Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office declined to have him locked up on a serious parole violation, and he had a shootout with police?

Treating the petty criminals seriously is better for everyone in the long run. It’s better for society, as it gets the bad guys off the street, and lowers the overall crime rate, and it’s better for the criminals themselves, because when they are locked up for crimes that leave them with hope of eventually getting out of prison, they don’t have as much time on the streets, usually in their prime crime committing ages, they are likely to commit the big crimes which will have them locked up for the rest of their miserable lives.

And so, after finishing 2020 in second place all time for homicides, the thugs of Philadelphia have basically said, “Hold my beer,” and are looking to not just break, but completely shatter the record number of murders.

There are three more months in 2021, and at the current annual rate, the gang bangers are poised to break the city’s murder record on Thanksgiving day. Lenience in law enforcement has not worked, and the price that has been paid is measured in the blood on Philly’s streets.

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Pennsylvania Attorney General cuts Philly DA out of the loop

Pennsylvania state Attorney General announced that his office has charged over five dozen bad guys with carrying guns and selling drugs in West Philadelphia.

    Philly Police and state prosecutors made 65 arrests for guns and drugs in West Philly

    Those arrested face charges ranging from conspiracy to illegal gun possession and drug violations, Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office said Monday.

    By Chris Palmer | Monday, September 13, 2021

    Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said Monday that his office has charged 65 people over the last six months with carrying guns and selling drugs in West Philadelphia as part of a new initiative with city police.

    At a news conference in the neighborhood, Shapiro cast the effort as an example of how law enforcement agencies can work together to address the city’s violence crisis. Philadelphia is on pace to record more homicides in 2021 than in any other year in its history; 372 people have already been slain this year, by far the highest year-to-date total in decades.

    “This is an important part of making a difference,” said Shapiro, flanked by residents and officials including Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw and State Sen. Anthony Williams. “Talking, finger-pointing — that ain’t enough, and that’s not going to get the job done.”

    The news conference was spare on details about those arrested. Shapiro did not name any defendants or specify what charges any were facing.

There’s more at the original, in which Mr Shapiro credited cooperation and communication between the state Attorney General’s office and the Philadelphia Police Department. What the article doesn’t say is that, by having the state prosecute what would normally be a city case, Philadelphia’s odious District Attorney Larry Krasner has been cut out of the loop, so hopefully we won’t see slap-on-the-wrist plea deals or cases dropped by George Soros’ stooge.

Danielle Outlaw, Mayor Jim Kenney’s puppet Police Commissioner was there, so Mr Kenney was involved. How much Mr Krasner was kept in the dark, we don’t yet know. He could have been fully informed, but told by the Attorney General to sit down and be quiet.

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The unintended (?) consequences of being #woke

The left have been slamming police departments across this country ever since the death of George Floyd while he was resisting arrest in Minneapolis. Had Mr Floyd just gotten in that police car when he was arrested, he’d be alive today, or at least he would be if he didn’t overdose on the fentanyl he was using at some point. The left and the #woke and antifa all led Mostly Peaceful Protests™ against the police and doing radical things like obeying the law.

In the City of Brotherly Love, the rioters burned and looted:

Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?

That’s the question that has been raging on the streets of Philadelphia, and across my architecture-centric social media feeds, over the last two days as a dark cloud of smoke spiraled up from Center City. What started as a poignant and peaceful protest in Dilworth Park on Saturday morning ended up in a frenzy of destruction by evening. Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire.

Their chances of survival are slim, which means there could soon be a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia, in one of its most iconic and historic neighborhoods. And protesters moved on to West Philadelphia’s fragile 52nd Street shopping corridor, an important center of black life, where yet more property has been battered.

The very first line by Inquirer architecture writer Inga Saffron asked whether the destruction of buildings in the riots in the city after the killing of George Floyd mattered. She claimed that the anger of the protesters was justified, but also noted that yes, those buildings did matter, too.

“People over property” is great as a rhetorical slogan. But as a practical matter, the destruction of downtown buildings in Philadelphia — and in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and a dozen other American cities — is devastating for the future of cities. We know from the civil rights uprisings of the 1960s that the damage will ultimately end up hurting the very people the protests are meant to uplift. Just look at the black neighborhoods surrounding Ridge Avenue in Sharswood or along the western end of Cecil B. Moore Avenue. An incredible 56 years have passed since the Columbia Avenue riots swept through North Philadelphia, and yet those former shopping streets are graveyards of abandoned buildings. Residents still can’t get a supermarket to take a chance on their neighborhood.

The “Buildings Matter, Too” headline got Stan Wischnowski, then Executive Editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer fired to resign, with published Elizabeth Hughes writing that she’s transforming that once-great newspaper into “an anti racist news organization,” and telling readers that the Inquirer was now:

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

Translation: the Inquirer would censor the news if it might show black or ‘brown’ people committing crimes. We noted the Sacramento Bee’s description of their policy:

Publishing these (booking) photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

As we have pointed out, Representative Ilhan Omar Mynett (D-MN) and state Attorney General Keith bin Ellison (D-MN) are supporting a ballot measure to eliminate the Police Department in Minneapolis, and while Philadelphia hasn’t been that stupid — at least not yet — it’s clear that the chickens are coming home to roost:

Police struggle to hire officers and 911 dispatchers as homicides and shootings increase

The Police Department is struggling to find enough officers and 911 dispatchers to hire, amid a surge in violence that is on pace to make 2021 the deadliest year in history.

by Mensah M Dean | Sunday, September 5, 2021

An Overbrook man called 911 last week after hearing breaking glass outside his house and looking out to see a teen breaking into his next-door neighbor’s car, then running off.

Realizing he had just witnessed a burglary in progress, the man raced to his car to give chase. Along the way, he said, he repeatedly called 911 for help — and the phone rang and rang with no answer.

Far from unique, his experience of reaching for help by dialing 911 — to no avail — is being played out across the city as the Philadelphia Police Department grapples with a vacancy crisis among officers and 911 dispatchers.

Finding enough officers and dispatchers has been a challenge, according to department officials, as interest in such jobs declines amid calls for police reform and the national racial reckoning sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. In Philadelphia, city and police union officials say, the decline in interest in policing can also be attributed in part to District Attorney Larry Krasner’s stepped-up prosecution of police misconduct.

There’s more at the original

The Philadelphia Police Department, authorized to have 6,380 officers, is 371 officers below strength. There are only 252 dispatchers, out of an authorized strength of 353, 101 vacancies, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw stated that the city has imposed mandatory weekend overtime for 911 dispatchers to make up the shortfall. The story notes that Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Soros’ stooge Larry Krasner, has made prosecuting police ‘misconduct’ a priority.

Would you want to be a police officer in the City of Brotherly Love, with far-left idiots like Mr Krasner just salivating at the chance to catch a mistake and prosecute yet another police officer?

It seems that Philadelphia doesn’t even need to dismantle the Police Department, the way the #woke are trying to do in Minneapolis; instead they’ve inflicted a festering wound of a hundred cuts, one which is slowly dismantling the department, because the #woke simply do not believe in law enforcement.

At least, not until one of them is the victim.

The real divide in America is not between Republicans and Democrats, conservative and liberals, or even urban and rural. No, the real divide is between civilized and barbarian. The problem for the left is that, as barbarians, they have surrendered to the wants and mercies of the strongest, and most of them are weaklings.