Tag Archives: #LarryKrasner

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Larry Krasner draws a challenger

I have written frequently about District Attorney Larry Krasner, the anti-police crusader that George Soros helped get elected in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia. Mr Krasner ran promising to completely overhaul the prosecutor’s office, to:

  • Stop prosecuting insufficient and insignificant cases
  • Review past convictions, free the wrongfully convicted
  • Stop cash bail imprisonment
  • Treat addiction as an illness, not a crime
  • Protect immigrants while protecting everybody
  • Reject a return to the failed drug wars of the past
  • Stand up to police misconduct

Wikipedia noted of Mr Krasner:

In his first week in office, Mr Krasner fired 31 prosecutors from the District Attorney’s Office, including both junior and career supervisory staff. Up to one-third of the homicide prosecutors in the office were dismissed. Those fired represented nearly a 10% reduction in the number of Philadelphia assistant district attorneys.

In February 2018, Krasner announced that law enforcement would no longer pursue criminal charges against those caught with marijuana possession. That same month, Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop seeking cash bail for those accused of some misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Krasner said that it was unfair to keep people in detention simply because they could not afford bail. He also announced that the DA’s office had filed a lawsuit against a number of pharmaceutical companies for their role in the city’s opioid epidemic. Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop charging sex workers who had fewer than three convictions.

In March 2018, it was reported that Krasner’s staffers were working on creating a sentence review unit–the first of its kind in the country–to review past cases and sentences, and seek re-sentencing in cases when individuals were given unduly harsh punishments. Also in March 2018, it was reported that Krasner instructed prosecutors to: “Offer shorter prison sentences in plea deals. Decline certain classes of criminal charges. And explain, on the record, why taxpayers should fork over thousands of dollars per year to incarcerate people.” He said,

Fiscal responsibility is a justice issue, and it is an urgent justice issue. A dollar spent on incarceration should be worth it. Otherwise, that dollar may be better spent on addiction treatment, on public education, on policing and on other types of activity that make us all safer.

Given the approximately 40% increase in homicides in the city this year from 2019, a year which had the highest number of killings since 2007, it doesn’t seem as though Mr Krasner’s ideas have made anyone safer.

Well, now the District Attorney has drawn a primary opponent for next year’s campaign:

A former Philly homicide prosecutor fired by District Attorney Larry Krasner is challenging him for reelection

by Laura McCrystal | December 11, 2020 | 5:02 PM EST

A former Philadelphia homicide prosecutor who was among the staffers fired when District Attorney Larry Krasner took office will challenge the incumbent in next year’s Democratic primary.

Carlos Vega, who worked in the District Attorney’s Office for 35 years and was the first Latino homicide prosecutor in Pennsylvania, has been a vocal critic of Krasner. He plans to formally announce his candidacy Wednesday.

Vega left the District Attorney’s Office in January 2018, when Krasner fired 31 staffers during his first week. He filed a lawsuit against Krasner last year, alleging that his firing was based on age discrimination. Krasner has denied the firing was related to age, and the lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

Vega said in an interview Friday that his campaign will focus on victims of crime and their families, who have accused Krasner’s office of failing to keep them updated and excluding them from decisions.

Protesters, including Jamaal Henderson of ACT UP Philadelphia, gathered outside Philadelphia City Hall in June and called for allocating funds to community services instead of the police.. Photo by Alejandro Alvarez, The Philadelphia Inquirer,

What? A prosecutor focusing on the victims of crimes and their families, rather than Mr Krasner’s coddling of criminals? That’s kind of what the black community said they wanted, according to Thursday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, but, then again, the same people want cop killer Wesley Cook, who uses the fake name ‘Mumia Abu-Jamal’, released from prison, and want the police department defunded.

Mr Krasner should run on his record: 353 homicides his first year, up from 315 in 2017, 356 in 2019, and now up to 466 so far this year. With 20 days left to go in 2020, Philly has already seen its 3rd highest murder total in history, is on pace to easily break 1989’s 2nd place record of 489, and might just challenge 1990’s all time record of 505. If Mr Krasner is re-elected, after that record, then the City of Brotherly Love will have gotten what it deserves.

George Soros money got another ‘social justice’ district attorney elected, in Los Angeles, and he’s already doing the same stuff Mr Krasner has done.

Black Lives Matter? It sure doesn’t seem that they do in Philadelphia, where black men are being murdered every single day, and the District Attorney is more concerned about the murderers than the murdered.

Would Mr Vega be a better District Attorney than Mr Krasner? We can’t know if he would be much better, but one thing is certain; he couldn’t be any worse. The Inquirer article does have a link to a fund-raising site for Mr Vega, but given that it’s an Act Blue site, I will not link it. The site says that Mr Vega “worked to overturn wrongful convictions,” so he might just be on the social justicey side himself, just not as bad as Mr Krasner. What Philadelphia really needs is a tough, and I mean tough on crime Police Commissioner and District Attorney, people who will do for Philly what Rudy Giuliani did for New York City, catch and prosecute harshly the petty crooks when they are “Johnny Misdemeanor,” before they become “Johnny Felony.”
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Black community in Philly protests against the police, but also complains that police aren’t solving enough killings Black community claim that #BlackLivesMatter, but don't do anything to prove that

I was doing some research, looking for a story I remembered, in which then Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey decried the “no snitchin'” culture in the heavily black neighborhoods of Philadelphia, when I came across a story about his announced retirement.

Philly Police Commissioner Ramsey to retire

by Aubrey Whelan and Claudia Vargas, Inquirer Staff Writers| October 14, 2015

Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey couldn’t stand the thought of burying another one of his own.

It was March, and he had long been thinking of retirement, ever since Mayor Nutter had won reelection. Even then, he had been “95 percent sure.” His career was at an apex – there had been presidential appointments, and prominent positions on national policing boards, and an unprecedented drop in homicides in a city once dubbed “Killadelphia.”

When 2015 ended, there had been 280 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, an unfortunate jump from 248 the previous year, but overall he presided over a sharp drop in murder. In 2007, the year before he became Commissioner, there were 391 bodies laying in the city streets. In Mayor Michael Nutter’s (D-Philadelphia) and the new Commissioner’s first year, homicides dropped to 331, and then to 302 the following year. 2013 saw 246 homicides, the lowest number since 1967.

It seems that the city has re-earned that nickname.

As of December 9th, Killadelphia had seen 465 corpses homicides. That’s good for the bronze medal, 3rd place in all of the city’s long history, under Mayor Nutter’s successor, Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), under ‘social justice’ District Attorney Larry Krasner, the beneficiary of George Soros’ campaign millions, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, who seems to be trying, but is little more than a pawn and tool of Mayor Kenney, and had her own ‘social justice’ history in Oakland and Portland.

What moved me to do that research in the first place? It was this article in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Under Fire

In 8,500 shootings since 2015, suspects have been charged in 1 out of 5 cases and convicted in just 9%.

by Chris Palmer, Mike Newall, Mensah M. Dean and Dylan Purcell | December 10, 2020 | 5:00 AM EST

Every trip outside the house for Jackee Nichols brings a new reminder of the pain.

Nichols is from a part of South Philadelphia that has been embroiled in a shooting conflict for as long as anyone can remember. In October 2018, that violence claimed her 15-year-old grandson. Police believe he was gunned down for living on the wrong block — but, like most shootings in Philadelphia, no one has been charged in the crime.

Now Nichols faces the daily torment of living among the people she suspects killed her grandson, Rasul Benson, leaving trauma to resurface in unexpected moments.

There is, of course, the very #woke notation that this article was “One in an occasional series about Philadelphia’s unchecked gun violence,” as though a gun, an inanimate object, is somehow responsible, and not the criminal mindset allowed to run rampant through Strawberry Mansion and not-so-Nicetown. “Gun violence” is the euphemism used by the credentialed media and the left to avoid blaming actual people.[1]In The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, I noted that “The term “gun violence” is, if you will pardon the pun, a politically loaded one, meant to convey the impression that an … Continue reading

Nichols, 57, a devout Muslim, raced home and cried and prayed for forgiveness, overwhelmed by the feeling that she has been ignored by police, abandoned by some in her neighborhood, and failed by a city she believes has turned an uncaring eye toward unsolved killings.

“It seems to me,” she said, her voice catching, “like you all forgot about my boy.”

Nichols’ pain is one shared by thousands of Philadelphians, because city law enforcement is failing to fulfill one of its most fundamental responsibilities: Secure justice when people are shot.

There are people in her neighborhood who know who murdered her grandson, but unless someone actually tells the police, gives them some clues as to who did it, and why, don’t blame “city law enforcement.” The police depend on the public to help them.

The article goes on to include some grisly statistics:

  • Out of almost 8,500 shootings since 2015, just 21% led to charges, less than 9% have reached a conviction.
  • As of November 1, just under one in six of this year’s nearly 1,900 shootings had led to a suspect in custody.

Then the #woke had to have their say:

What’s more, in a historically segregated city, where Black and brown neighborhoods have long suffered from government disinvestment, institutional racism, and heavy-handed police tactics, The Inquirer found that this system has disproportionately failed these communities.

Since 2015, almost 2,700 young Black men were wounded in shootings, but suspected triggermen were convicted in only 6% of their cases.

White men of the same age were three times as likely to see their shooters convicted.

Uhhh, if white victims of the same age were thrice as likely to see the men who shot them tried and convicted, isn’t it possible, just possible, that it was because a greater percentage of white witnesses cooperated with the police? Of course, the #woke among the Inquirer’s reportorial staff would never even ask that question. Instead, they’d frame the statistic, as they did, by blaming “institutional racism”. Remember, they forced Stan Wischnowski, senior vice president and executive editor of the Inquirer to resign, and the paper to issue an apology, because their precious little feelings were hurt.

Protesters, including Jamaal Henderson of ACT UP Philadelphia, gathered outside Philadelphia City Hall in June and called for allocating funds to community services instead of the police.. Photo by Alejandro Alvarez, The Philadelphia Inquirer,

One has to ask: why, if the black community in Philadelphia are so upset that the police are not solving many of the homicides in black neighborhoods, are so many from that community demanding that the city ‘defund the police’? Would not reducing the resources available to the Philadelphia Police Department be more probable to reduce the number of crimes that they can solve, the number of patrols they can do?

The article does note the ‘defund’ movement, but uncritically states that it’s the fault of the police because the black community do not trust them.

Police say they are embracing reform, developing smarter, more targeted tactics, and trying to overcome the challenge of making cases when so many witnesses don’t want to talk. Within the Philadelphia Police Department, many officers — including Commissioner Danielle Outlaw — have also grown increasingly outspoken about what they view as a criminal justice system and reform-oriented prosecutor’s office that have not cracked down hard enough on illegal guns.

“The criminal community, they’re more emboldened to go out and do more,” Outlaw said in an interview.

Conviction rates for nonfatal shootings and illegal gun possession have fallen since District Attorney Larry Krasner took office in 2018, according to data published by his office. Some police commanders also complain that repeat offenders now routinely get low bail or shorter sentences for gun crimes.

Still, Outlaw acknowledged that the Police Department is primarily responsible for building investigations to get suspected shooters off the street. And the failure to secure justice in the vast majority of gun-violence cases, she said, was “very concerning, for obvious reasons.”

I’ve noted the failures of Mr Krasner’s office previously, but they aren’t failures to him: he wants to see shorter jail terms, he wants to see fewer criminals convicted. And, once again, the “gun violence” trope is used.

Instead, the Inquirer published a sympathetic story, just the previous day, about cop killer Wesley Cook, who calls himself Mumia Abu-Jamal these days, and poor Mr Cook’s 39 years locked up for the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal demand his freedom on the 39th anniversary of his arrest in the death of a Philadelphia police officer

by Mensah M. Dean | December 9, 2020

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981, used the 39th anniversary of his arrest to call for his release from prison on Wednesday, saying he was innocent.

They also condemned the 1985 bombing of the MOVE compound in West Philadelphia and rejected a recent apology Philadelphia city councilmembers offered for the city’s actions that day in starting a fire that killed 11 people.

Well, in one way that apology was worthless: none of the Philadelphia councilmembers were in office thirty-five years ago, and none of them had anything to do with the MOVE action. How can anyone apologize for someone else’s actions?

The group, many of them MOVE members, gathered at the corner of 52nd and Larchwood Streets to demand freedom for Abu-Jamal, 66, a MOVE supporter who lived under a death sentence for two decades before his sentence was overturned by a federal judge in 2001. He’s now serving life without parole for the Dec. 9, 1981, slaying of Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Despite Abu-Jamal’s conviction and numerous failed appeals, his supporters maintain that he is not guilty of killing Faulkner, who was 25, and that his trial was tainted by racism and corruption.

Well, of course they do. There’s no evidence that Mr Cook[2]While I have not changed the fake name used in quoting the article, I will not go along with his ridiculous alias in my own words. did not shoot Officer Faulkner, but that doesn’t matter: they don’t care if he is actually innocent, but are deifying him precisely because he did kill a police officer. Yet the same people are complaining that the Philadelphia Police Department isn’t bringing murderers in their own communities to justice.

In virtually every one of the murders in Philadelphia, there are people who were not involved but who know who the killers are, who have all of the evidence the police and even the stupid District Attorney need to make the arrests and win the convictions, to lock these killers away for the rest of their miserable lives.

Instead, the left pretend that the problem is ‘mass incarceration,’ when the real problem is that not enough criminals are incarcerated, for not long enough.
______________________________________
Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 In The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, I noted that “The term “gun violence” is, if you will pardon the pun, a politically loaded one, meant to convey the impression that an inanimate object was somehow violent all by itself. Sensible writers should use the term “shooting,” to make it clear that a person committed the violent act.” I do not use the term “gun violence,” save in direct quotes or to mock the concept that guns are somehow responsible for murder.
↑2 While I have not changed the fake name used in quoting the article, I will not go along with his ridiculous alias in my own words.
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Things are not just bad in Philadelphia, things are getting worse

According to the Philadelphia Police Department, there have been 463 homicides as of 11:59 PM EST on Sunday, December 6, 2020. That’s 1.358 per day. With 25 days remaining in the year, if the average holds, the city can expect another 40 bodies in the streets by the end of the year. 463 + 40 = 503.

The all time record is 505 homicides, set in 1990. 1989 stands in second place, with 489, and now the City of Brotherly Love has just exceeded 1988’s previous third place finish of 460.

But there’s more. I noted, on October 22nd, just a month and a half ago:

The Current Crime Statistics released by the Philadelphia Police Department note that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on October 21st, 391 souls had been sent to their eternal rewards. That isn’t the record, of course, but 2007 is the base year on the Current Crime Statistics website, and that was the number of people killed that year in Philly. This year has now matched that total . . . with 71 days left in the year.

The math is simple: 391 people killed in 295 days so far equals 1.325 people killed every single day. With 71 days left in the year, at that rate the city should see another 94 people sent to their deaths before the ball drops in New York City.

391 + 94 = 485.

That would not be a new record; 1990 holds that dubious honor with 505, killings, and 1989 comes in second with 489, but 485 would be solidly in third place!

Think about that: in just 46 days, Philly has crept up so that the projected homicide totals have increased by eighteen dead bodies; in just 46 days, 72 corpses have littered the city’s streets . . . and that’s a rate of 1.565 per day. As the weather has turned cooler, a time when homicides are expected to decrease, the killing rate has increased in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia.

On October 22nd, I noted that Philly was headed for a solid third place finish. As recently as August 18th, the projected numbers were for ‘just’ 439 homicides.

Now, it’ll take just a few ‘extra’ murders, and Philadelphia could break the all time record. Go, team, go! You can do it, Philly, you can do it!

I have previously noted that George Soros’ supported District Attorney Larry Krasner has done what he wanted to do. But Mayor Jim Kenney and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw deserve a lot of credit, too. The hapless Commissioner Outlaw has at least criticized Mr Krasner’s soft-on-crime prosecutions, but, coming from Oakland, California and later Portland, Oregon, she, too, is infused with at least some of the left coast attitude toward crime; if she hadn’t been, Mayor Kenney would never have appointed her in the first place.

This is the problem with liberalism! This is the problem with the boneheadedly stupid Social Justice Warriors! In their attempts to Do Good, that are making things worse, because their ideas are so wrongheaded, so out of touch with reality.

Crime exists because people tolerate its existence, and the left, the oh-so-understanding-and-tolerant left, always willing to show sympathy to those less fortunate, are more tolerant of crime than normal people.[1]Yes, I deliberately defined leftists as outside of normal. That is the culture which allowed a city like Portland to tolerate the Mostly Peaceful Protests™ of last summer, and which excuses crime because, well, just because the criminals have had life so tough.

Rudy Giuliani showed the way. He didn’t tolerate crime, and when he was mayor of New York City, he had the police arrest for and the district attorneys prosecute the small, petty crimes that people like Larry Krasner excuse and ignore and forgive. Mr Giuliani showed the punks what the inside of the penitentiary was like before they became more hardened criminals, a lesson lost on Mr Krasner.
___________________________________
Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 Yes, I deliberately defined leftists as outside of normal.
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Philly starts December off with a bang!

I had planned on doing an article on Philadelphia’s prodigious murder rate yesterday, but got involved with other things. I did, however, tweet about it.

So, 454 homicides through the end of November. I checked my go-to site for those statistics, and shazamm! Philly banged off three more corpses on the first day of December.

The math is simple: 457 homicides in 336 days yields 1.36 killings per day. With 30 more days, including today, left in the year, that works out to a projected 40.8 more dead bodies on the streets. 41 + 457 = 498!

In 1990, the City of Brotherly Love saw 505 homicides, up from 489 the previous year, and 460 in 1988. With 457 homicides so far this year, 2020 is already in 4th place, with 1988’s number to be surpassed in just a few days.

The crime rate is supposed to decrease as the year wanes, and colder weather keeps more people inside. But as recently as October 22nd, we noted that the homicide rate was 1.325 per day, and the projected total would be 485 for the year. Now the average has increased to 1.360 dead per day, which might not seem like much, but from October 21st through December 1st, a period of 41 days, 66 people bled to death in the streets, and that’s 1.61 per day. When the weather turned cooler, the homicide rate went up, not down. If the City of Brotherly Love keeps up with 1.61 per day, it could actually tie the 1990 record of 505, though maybe there’d be an * by the number since, being a leap year, 2020 has an extra day in which to kill people.

Of course, ” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>The Philadelphia Inquirer, a proud newspaper from its inception in 1829, and Pennsylvania’s newspaper of record, hasn’t even noticed the increased murder rate this fall. I searched the Inquirer’s website, and while there was a story which noted that shootings were up 53% from last year, I found nothing which indicated that the editors of the newspaper had noticed that the already high murder rate had ticked up a bit. They’ve been great on covering the election and its aftermath, and COVID-19, but when it comes to the daily killings in the city, well, that just isn’t news anymore.

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George Soros is still spending money to destroy responsible civilization Just like with Larry Krasner, he's dumping money into 'social justice' prosecutors

We have previously noted that Larry Krasner, then a Democratic candidate for District Attorney in Philadelphia, received a lot of money from billionaire America-hater George Soros in his 2017 campaign.

Philadelphia had plenty of experience in treating criminals leniently, and then being shocked, shocked! when criminals who could have and should have been behind bars at the time upped their game to shooting police officers.

Larry Krasner won the election to become District Attorney in Philadelphia in 2017, and was the beneficiary of a huge campaign contribution from leftist billionaire George Soros, is a leftist who hates the police and doesn’t pursue supposedly petty offenses, and ran on a platform saying he would:

  • Stop prosecuting insufficient and insignificant cases
  • Review past convictions, free the wrongfully convicted
  • Stop cash bail imprisonment
  • Treat addiction as an illness, not a crime
  • Protect immigrants while protecting everybody
  • Reject a return to the failed drug wars of the past
  • Stand up to police misconduct

The wholly predictable results? In 2018, Mr Krasner’s first year in office, city homicides jumped from 315 to 353, a 12.06% increase. The following year, homicides held almost steady, rising to 356, but this year, 428 people have been murdered in the city, as of 11:59 PM EST on November 12th, a 40% increase over the same day last year, good for 7th place all time in Philadelphia’s homicide history . . . with 49 days left in the year.

But, it seems that some people like lax law enforcement, regardless of how many dead bodies it leaves on the streets. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Retired Philly cops looking to unseat Larry Krasner lose first battle with billionaire George Soros

by Chris Brennan | November 13, 2020 | 5:00 AM EST

A political action committee organized this summer by retired Philadelphia police officers eager to oust District Attorney Larry Krasner next year said it supported 69 candidates in 17 states in last week’s election.

And while Protect Our Police PAC says 38 of those candidates won, it lost its first face-off with billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros.

Soros, who spent almost $1.7 million to help Krasner win the 2017 Democratic primary election, gave $244,000 to a Georgia PAC backing Shalena Cook Jones, who defeated two-term Republican Chatham County (Savannah) District Attorney Meg Heap.

The Protect Our Police PAC took heat in the race, with complaints that a billboard it posted was racist because it made it seem Jones supported violent protest (Jones is Black, Heap is white) and that mailers attacking Soros’ involvement were anti-Semitic. The PAC denounced those as “false accusations meant to discredit and distract” and said, “We unequivocally denounce racism and anti-Semitism.”

PAC president Nick Gerace feels confident about 2021, vowing to “counter George Soros’ efforts to elect weak prosecutors who too often side with criminals rather than victims.”

The PAC gave $50,000 last month to State Rep. Martina White, Philadelphia’s only Republican state legislator and a regular Krasner foe. It also sent mailers to retired cops supporting the reelection of state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, an occasional Krasner foe.

Krasner has shrugged off the PAC so far, dismissing in an August fund-raising email the idea that “no one should ever challenge the thin blue line, no matter the abuse or discrimination that occurs in our communities.”

“(T)he abuse or discrimination that occurs in our communities”? A skyrocketing murder rate, aided by Mr Krasner’s lenient treatment of lower level crimes, doesn’t constitute abuse?

Oh, well, I guess that it doesn’t count as racial discrimination when one black guy kills another black guy, the most common description of murder in the City of Brotherly Love, does it?

Mr Soros was born on August 12, 1930, making him 90 years old now. His mission in life appears to be to destroy responsible civilization by backing ‘social justice’ causes, and Mr Krasner is right there, serving as one of his accomplices.
_________________________________
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This is what ‘Social Justice’ law enforcement gets us

The Philadelphia Police Department Current Crime Statistics page, which is only updated on weekdays, tells us that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, October 25th, there have been 399 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. That’s a 40.99% increase over the same date in 2019, and 2019 saw the most homicides in Philly since 2007. That’s 399 homicides on the 299th day of the year. We had previously noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer took no notice of murders in the black community, and at least as of 11:05 AM, the Inquirer’s website main page showed no articles noting the bloody weekend in the city.

Maybe the editors are waiting to break the 400 killings mark?

Doing the math, 399 homicides in 299 days equals 1.334 per day, up from 1.324 just ten days ago. As the weather cools down, homicide rates normally drop somewhat, but not in Philadelphia. With 67 days remaining in 2020, 89 more homicides would be expected if the current rate continues, for a total of 488, just shy of the second place number of 489 in 1989. I suppose that breaking the record of 505 in 1990 is out of reach by now, but with District Attorney Larry Krasner giving petty criminals slaps on the wrist — if even that much — the thugs are out on the street, able to escalate to bigger crimes, who knows, maybe they can break the record.

Mr Krasner’s Twitter page has his self-declared bio: “District Attorney Larry Krasner fights for equal justice for the great people of Philadelphia. A fair and effective criminal justice system makes us safer.” With city homicides increasing every year that he has been in office — 353 in 2018, up from 315 the previous year, then 356 in 2019, not a terribly big jump, and now 399 so far in 2020, with slightly over two months left to go — how, I have to ask, has the “effective criminal justice system” under the District Attorney made the city “safer”?

I’ve harped about Mr Krasner’s idiocy often enough that it doesn’t bear repeating. So, this time, I’ll quote from his Wikipedia biography:

Lawrence Samuel Krasner (born March 30, 1961) is an American lawyer serving as the 26th District Attorney of Philadelphia.[1] Elected to the position in 2017, Krasner campaigned on a platform to reform elements of the criminal justice system, including to reduce incarceration, and took office in January 2018.

During his tenure, Krasner has sought to spearhead criminal justice reform by ending bail payments for low-level offenders, reducing supervision for parolees, and seeking more lenient sentences for certain crimes.[2] Prior to his government service, Krasner had a 30-year career as a criminal defense and civil rights attorney and public defender. He aggressively pursued police misconduct.[3] . . .

Krasner’s representation of Black Lives Matter and Occupy Philadelphia members led many to call him an “anti-establishment” candidate during his 2017 primary campaign for the Democratic nomination.[10][11] He campaigned against existing policies that had resulted in disproportionately high numbers of minority males being jailed and proposed other reforms in criminal justice.[12] Krasner was a featured speaker at the 2017 People’s Summit.[13].  .  .  .

Shortly before the candidacy announcement, John McNesby, president of Lodge 5 of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police, derided Krasner’s eventually successful run as “hilarious.” McNesby opposed Krasner’s promise to refuse to prosecute defendants whose detainments were illegally performed so arresting officers could earn overtime pay as well as his history of suing police officers who perpetrated corruption and brutality.[16] Krasner received no major newspaper endorsements.[1] Less than three weeks before the primary, a political action committee supporting Krasner’s campaign received a $1.45 million contribution from billionaire George Soros.[17].  .  .  .

In his first week in office, Krasner fired 31 prosecutors from the District Attorney’s Office, including both junior and career supervisory staff. Up to one-third of the homicide prosecutors in the office were dismissed. Those fired represented nearly a 10% reduction in the number of Philadelphia assistant district attorneys.[25][26]

In February 2018, Krasner announced that law enforcement would no longer pursue criminal charges against those caught with marijuana possession.[27] That same month, Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop seeking cash bail for those accused of some misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.[28] Krasner said that it was unfair to keep people in detention simply because they could not afford bail.[28] He also announced that the DA’s office had filed a lawsuit against a number of pharmaceutical companies for their role in the city’s opioid epidemic.[27] Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop charging sex workers who had fewer than three convictions.[29]

In March 2018, it was reported that Krasner’s staffers were working on creating a sentence review unit–the first of its kind in the country–to review past cases and sentences, and seek re-sentencing in cases when individuals were given unduly harsh punishments.[30] That same month, Krasner instructed prosecutors to reduce sentence lengths to defendants making pleas, refuse to bring certain low-level charges, and publicly explain their reasoning for pursuing expensive incarcerations to taxpayers footing the bills.[31] He said,

“Fiscal responsibility is a justice issue, and it is an urgent justice issue. A dollar spent on incarceration should be worth it. Otherwise, that dollar may be better spent on addiction treatment, on public education, on policing and on other types of activity that make us all safer.”[32]

In 2018, some judges rejected the reduced sentences which Krasner’s prosecutors had sought for juveniles who had previously been sentenced to life in prison.[33] In June 2018, Krasner made an unprecedented request for a comprehensive list of police officers who had lied while on duty, used excessive force, racially profiled, or violated civil rights, an unprecedented move in order to spotlight dishonest police officers and check their future courtroom testimony.[34]

In 2019, Krasner filed a motion in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to declare capital punishment in Pennsylvania unconstitutional. He claimed the death penalty was illegal in the state because of the ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the Pennsylvania Constitution, citing the high turnover rates of convictions by appeals, the racially biased number of sentences given to black and Hispanic defendants, and the large number of convictions overturned due to ineffective counsel.[35]

Following the fatal shooting of Philadelphia police officer James O’Connor IV, Krasner faced criticism from William McSwain, a federal prosecutor appointed by Donald Trump.[36] McSwain, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, blamed the shooting on a prosecutorial discretion decision by Krasner’s office to drop drug charges against suspected killer Hassan Elliott. While on probation for a gun possession charge, Elliott was arrested again on January 29, 2019, for cocaine possession and was released on his own recognizance. Nearly a week later on February 6, Elliott took part in the fatal shooting of Tyrone Tyree. Krasner’s office dropped drug charges after Elliott failed to appear in court, choosing to approve an arrest warrant for Tyree’s murder instead.[36] On March 13, as part of a SWAT unit carrying out an arrest warrant, O’Connor was fatally shot and Elliott was charged. Prosecutor spokeswoman Jane Roh responded to criticism by stating that the office believed murder to be a more serious crime than drug possession and charged Elliott accordingly.[37] On the night of O’Connor’s death, John McNesby ordered activist police to form a human chain at Temple University Hospital entrance to prevent Krasner from entering.[37]

In July 2020, Krasner’s office charged Philadelphia SWAT officer Richard P. Nicoletti with simple assault, reckless endangerment, official oppression, and possession of an instrument of crime. Video footage taken during the George Floyd protests showed that Nicoletti pepper sprayed three kneeling protesters. He pulled down the mask of one woman before spraying her in the face, he sprayed another woman at point blank range, and sprayed a man numerous times in the face while he laid on the ground.[38]

Simply put, Mr Krasner, who hated the police from the beginning, installed a form of ‘social justice’ law enforcement; he was tougher on the police than he was on criminals. He was oh-so-concerned that “disproportionately high numbers of minority males” were charged, convicted and incarcerated, without ever thinking to consider that perhaps, just perhaps, “disproportionately high numbers of minority males” were the ones committing crimes.

There are two kinds of crimes: crimes of evidence and crimes of reporting. If a man rapes a woman on the streets of Philadelphia, as far as the police are concerned, if it wasn’t reported, it didn’t happen. It is commonly assumed that most rapes go unreported, with some guesstimates being as high as 90% not reported. Crimes like robbery might go unreported if the victims do not trust the police or think it will do any good, or are fearful of revenge by the criminals. When your city is stuck with a District Attorney like Mr Krasner, who doesn’t believe in prosecuting criminals, or sentencing them harshly when they are prosecuted and convicted, what reason is there to report that you were robbed?

But murder is different: it is a crime of evidence. It isn’t easy to dispose of a dead body in a way that it won’t be found, especially if you haven’t carefully planned things. You’re looking at 100 to 300 pounds of dead meat, bone and fat, and something which will put off a strong and nasty odor after very little time. The vast majority of dead bodies get found.

Of course, in Philadelphia, a whole lot of murders are open and in public: drive up or drive by shootings, essentially public executions, in which the shooters are only concerned with escape, not hiding the fact that someone was killed.

So when I read that most crime had decreased in Philadelphia, I just flat don’t believe it. Murder isn’t normally an entry-level crime; guys who shoot other people have usually been bad guys before that. And if they’ve been bad guys before that, Mr Krasner doesn’t really believe in getting them locked up for long anyway.

So, when we note that 77.86% of fatal shootings in the city since 2015 were of black males and another 5.01% of black females, (as of October 22, 2020), and know that 88.5% of black homicide victims were killed by black assailants, it becomes pretty obvious that, at least when it comes to murder in Murder City, USA, the killings are by a “disproportionately high numbers of minority males.”

But the esteemed Mr Krasner appears to want to have none of that! He’s more concerned with not having racial disparate numbers of minority members convicted as criminals than he is of helping to make the city safer.

This is what happens when “social justice” is one of your driving motivations. The police and the prosecutors need to just find, apprehend, try and convict offenders regardless of racial considerations.  When you don’t do that, you wind up with, well, with Philadelphia.
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Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has done what he set out to do

For the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer, it isn’t brutal criminals or gangbangers or thugs that kill people, but the nonsense term “gun violence,” as though guns magically roam the streets, firing themselves. Oddly enough, I have never seen a gun which just went off by itself, but maybe I’m just not as smart as the editors of what RedState writer Mike Miller laughingly called the Philadelphia Enquirer.

Multiple victims wounded in Strawberry Mansion shooting as gun violence continues in Philly

by Robert Moran and Julie Shaw, Updated: 5:19 PM EDT

Multiple people — possibly six — were wounded in a shooting Tuesday afternoon in the city’s Strawberry Mansion section, police said.

Police received their first report of a shooting just before 4 PM in the vicinity of 30th and York Streets. Victims were taken by private vehicle to Temple University Hospital.

Police were investigating several locations as possible crime scenes.

Earlier Tuesday, two boys were injured by gunfire in separate incidents, and an undercover narcotics officer was fired upon as gun violence continued in the city.

The concluding paragraph:

Over the weekend, 30 people were shot in the city, including five people at a party to honor a victim of gun violence.

I guess the only good news is that the gang bangers are such lousy shots. But at what point do the editors recognize that the problem isn’t guns, but bad people?

Let’s go back to 2017. The editors, surprisingly, endorsed Republican Beth Grossman over Democrat Larry Krasner for District Attorney. Daniel Denvir waxed wroth:

The Philadelphia Inquirer just endorsed mass incarceration

by Daniel Denvir | October 17, 2017

In May, Philadelphians went to the polls and made history, voting by a large margin to back civil rights attorney Larry Krasner in the city’s Democratic primary for district attorney. On Sunday, residents awoke to find that the Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board had endorsed Krasner’s Republican opponent, Beth Grossman, a former top prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office.

Krasner rallied Philadelphians to an upstart, radical campaign calling for an end to the era of mass incarceration and impunity for police misconduct. The city’s struggling paper of record endorsed a candidate who presided over a nationally infamous civil asset forfeiture program through which prosecutors seized homes and other property from city residents, oftentimes poor and working-class, black and Latino. At least, the editorial gushed, she has “a welcome hesitancy to go for the death penalty.”

Philadelphians want change. The Inquirer board ploddingly declared itself for the enervating cause of defending an intolerable status quo that will most likely be defeated on election day.

But points for consistency: Grossman is the second candidate for top prosecutor the paper has endorsed who has also been backed by the city’s Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #5, an unapologetically reactionary officers union headed by a man who recently called Black Lives Matter protesters “a pack of wild animals.” That first FOP-backed candidate the Inquirer endorsed was Rich Negrin, one of Krasner’s primary opponents. Oddly, the board’s praise for Negrin included a note that the “criminal justice pendulum has been swinging in a new direction for some time, away from ‘tough on crime,’” but failed to mention that it was Krasner’s insurgent, movement-based campaign that had swung the primary field to the left.

After a few more paragraphs of such drivel, Mr Denvir wrote:

In reality, the board’s rationale is a pretext to protect an office that has long prized convictions and lengthy sentences regardless of the costs or whether the outcomes comport with any sense of justice. The Inquirer praises Grossman for her career going “after drug dealers, gunslingers, thieves, and blighters” and her “passion for defending the rights of crime victims.” Not a word about mass incarceration. To editorialize in favor of such a brutal status quo is an insult to the Philadelphians on whose behalf the board purports to be writing.

Well, Mr Denvir got his wish: Larry Krasner won the election. And rather than Mrs Grossman going “after drug dealers, gunslingers, thieves, and blighters,” the City of Brotherly Love has a District Attorney who does not do that, who fired a whole slew of veteran prosecutors upon taking office, and who certainly doesn’t believe in “mass incarceration.”

The result? In 2018, Mr Krasner’s first year in office, city homicides jumped from 315 to 353, a 12.06% increase. The following year, homicides held almost steady, rising to 356, but so far this year, 276 people had been murdered in Philadelphia, a 31.43% increase over the same day (August 17th) last year. If the homicide rate of 1.2 killings per day continues, Philly should see 439 murders by the end of the year.

The cost of Mr Krasner’s victory, and the policies Mr Denvir wanted to see put in place, has been written in blood. Philadelphia has seen more murders, many more murders than New York City, which has more than five times Philly’s population.

Philadelphia’s daily average inmate population was 6,409 when Mr Krasner took office, and was down to 4,849 on August 31, 2019.

One of the people who wasn’t in jail on Friday, March 13, 2020, was Hassan Elliot, 21. How did the District Attorney’s office treat Mr Elliot, a known gang-banger?

  • 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 attend 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 that Friday the 13th, Police Corporal James O’Connor IV, 46, was part of a Philadelphia police SWAT team trying to serve a predawn arrest warrant on Mr Elliott, from a March 2019 killing. Mr Elliot greeted the SWAT team with a hail of bullets, and Corporal O’Connor was killed. Had Mr Elliot been in jail, as he could have been due to parole violations, had Mr Krasner’s office treated him seriously, Corporal O’Connor would have gone home safely to his wife that day. The Inquirer reported:

Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 president John McNesby also has criticized Krasner, saying his policies led to the killing of O’Connor. “Unfortunately, he’s murdered by somebody that should have never been on the street,” McNesby said.

McNesby also said FOP members and police officers formed a human barricade to block Krasner from entering the hospital Friday to see O’Connor’s family.

The numbers don’t lie. Under Mayor Jim Kenney, who has managed to make past Mayors John Street and Michael Nutter look great, District Attorney Krasner and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw (who, to be honest, is really just Mayor Kenney’s puppet), Philadelphia has become measurably much worse. Mr Kenney has been in office since the beginning of 2016, and Mr Krasner since the start of 2018, and Philly is now much more dangerous. Their policies were put into governing practice, and, unless chaos and death was the goal all along, they failed miserably.

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What Are Mayor Jim Kenney and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw Doing About Open Air Drug Markets in Philly?

According to Wikipedia, the Philadelphia Badlands

 is a section of North Philadelphia and Lower Northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, that is known for an abundance of open-air recreational drug markets and drug-related violence. It has amorphous and somewhat disputed boundaries, but is generally agreed to include the 25th police district.

Usually, it is widely understood to be an area between Kensington Avenue to the east and Broad Street to the west, and between Hunting Park Avenue to the north and York Street to the south, mostly coinciding with the neighborhoods of Fairhill, Glenwood, Hunting Park, Harrowgate, Stanton, North Central, West Kensington, Hartranft, and Kensington.

The term “The Badlands” was popularized in part by the novel Third and Indiana by then Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez. The neighborhood also was featured in several episodes of ABC’s Nightline. The intersection of 3rd Street and Indiana Avenue was listed number two in a 2007 list of the city’s top ten drug corners according to an article by Philadelphia Weekly reporter Steve Volk.

The term Badlands was first used by Lt. John Gallo, who headed the East Division Narcotics Task Force. Its use spread, with many people attempting to take credit for the moniker. It was Gallo’s work along with ASAC Billy Retton that worked about a dozen long-term investigations in the 25th and 26th Police Districts that preceded “Operation Sunrise”. Ted Koppel, Geraldo Rivera, 20/20 and 48 Hours all rode with Gallo at one time or another, and it was during this time that Gallo was able to make the name stick.

I wrote yesterday about the open-air drug market publicized by The Philadelphia Inquirer. I had thought that maybe, just maybe, the publicity would push Commissioner Danielle Outlaw and the Philadelphia Police to raid the place, to arrest the drug dealers — and hopefully the addicts as well, but I really didn’t expect that — and seize the illegal drugs and guns found there.

So, at 11:40 AM EDT this morning, I did Google searches for police raid drug market and police raid drug market Philadelphia. I found a few stories about law enforcement raids in Missouri and even incompetent Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago:

Feds bust open-air drug market in Humboldt Park, charging 18

Undercover agents allegedly made about 80 purchases from the market during a year-long investigation dubbed “Operation Monticello’s Revenge.”

By David Struett @dstru312 | July 20, 2020 | 5:58 PM CDT

The feds have charged 18 men who allegedly worked at an open-air drug market in Humboldt Park, where undercover agents allegedly made about 80 purchases during a year-long investigation dubbed “Operation Monticello’s Revenge.”

Most of the men were arrested last week on charges of federal drug conspiracy in connection to the drug market in the 1000 block of North Monticello Avenue, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago announced Monday.

According to a criminal complaint, Sam Howard and Kelvin Franklin worked as street-level managers of the market, coordinating the sale of fentanyl-laced heroin, and personally sold drugs to undercover officers more than a dozen times each.

Oops! Sorry, it was federal agents, not the Chicago Police who did that; no credit goes to Mayor Lightfoot.

In Philly? I found this story about a police raid on drug markets . . . last February. Then there was another raid in April:

Police Arrest 60 Buyers/Dealers in Massive Drug Sweep in Philadelphia; Release Mugshots and Names

by: iradioal | started: 04/04/15 8:30 am | updated: 04/04/15 8:30 am

Philadelphia Police have arrested 60 people and seized two dozen vehicles in a massive drug sweep in Fairhill on Thursday. The department’s east division set up in multiple locations in the 25th district near the intersections of Waterloo and West Cambria streets, North Front and West Cambria streets, North Swanson and East Somerset streets, Rosehill and East Cambria streets, and East Tusculum and East Somerset streets. Those arrested ranged in age from 17 to 67. Forty were alleged buyers and twenty were alleged sellers. Out of those arrested about 35% are from the suburbs who came to the neighborhood’s open air drug markets looking to buy or sell a variety of drugs including pills, heroin, crack cocaine and marijuana.

Philadelphia Police Insp. Melvin Singleton wants to close down the drug market and dissuade anyone from coming to the 25th district (which also includes North Philly, Feltonville, Fairhill, and Hunting Park). “If you think it’s a good idea to come to Philadelphia to buy drugs…if you think it’s a good idea to come to Philadelphia to sell drugs, you will be arrested. Your vehicle will be confiscated.” The police say these kind of arrest operations will continue around the city.

The area raided today was only blocks away from other drug hot beds in neighboring Kensington. Neighbors want to see the entire area cleaned up so that children can walk to school, people can feel safe on their own blocks, and the streets no longer are occupied by dealers selling and addicts getting high.

There was even a major raid just before last Christmas in the Fairhill and Kensington neighborhoods, including Allegheny Avenue, mentioned in yesterday’s Inquirer article. But nothing yesterday.

The Philadelphia Badlands exist because the city government and law enforcement allow them to exist. Crime ridden neighborhoods exist because law enforcement doesn’t shut them down. Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg cleaned up New York City with a harsh attitude toward crime and the ‘broken windows’ policing philosophy, but Philadelphia never followed suit, and that’s why the Badlands exists. George Soros poured over a million dollars into getting an anti-police, anti-law enforcement District Attorney, Larry Krasner, elected, and that’s what Philadelphia got: a contracted, weakened Police Department and a soaring crime rate.

As of 11:59 PM EDT yesterday, 276 homicides were recorded in the City of Brotherly Love. That’s a 31% increase over the same day last year, more than the entire year’s murder totals in 2013 and 2014, and just one fewer than the entire year total for 2016.¹

In 230 days, Philadelphia has seen 276 homicides. That’s 1.2 murders per day. With 136 days remaining, if the average holds, that’s an additional 163 homicides, for a projected total of 439 people. There were 280 people murdered in 2015, Mayor Michael Nutter’s and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey’s last full year in office; if their regime could get the murder rate down, as it did, then the blame has to fall on Mayor Kenney, DA Krasner and Commissioner Outlaw.

Well, who knows? Perhaps Commissioner Outlaw is planning a big raid in the Badlands, now that the Inquirer has publicized the problems, and it’s just taking a few days to get the planning and organization done. Mayor Kenney might be very incensed, since the photos in the Inquirer showed the junkies not wearing facemasks!

But the drug raids of the past haven’t done anything; they got a few bad guys off the streets, recovered some drugs and cash and weapons, but all of that is back in place now. Philadelphia needs the law enforcement raids, yes, and a lot more funding for the Police Department, but what it really needs is a change of attitude among the city leadership, a no nonsense, zero tolerance attitude toward crime, toward all crime, and toward illegal drugs. Mayor Kenney was re-elected in 2019, so he still has 3½ years remaining.² He was just great at raising a ‘sugary drink tax,’ to take a bigger bite out of a Big Gulp, but on making Philly safer, not so much.

District Attorney Krasner was elected in 2017, meaning he won’t face the voters until 2021. Wikipedia noted of Mr Krasner:

In his first week in office, Mr Krasner fired 31 prosecutors from the District Attorney’s Office, including both junior and career supervisory staff. Up to one-third of the homicide prosecutors in the office were dismissed. Those fired represented nearly a 10% reduction in the number of Philadelphia assistant district attorneys.

In February 2018, Krasner announced that law enforcement would no longer pursue criminal charges against those caught with marijuana possession. That same month, Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop seeking cash bail for those accused of some misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Krasner said that it was unfair to keep people in detention simply because they could not afford bail. He also announced that the DA’s office had filed a lawsuit against a number of pharmaceutical companies for their role in the city’s opioid epidemic. Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop charging sex workers who had fewer than three convictions.

In March 2018, it was reported that Krasner’s staffers were working on creating a sentence review unit–the first of its kind in the country–to review past cases and sentences, and seek re-sentencing in cases when individuals were given unduly harsh punishments. Also in March 2018, it was reported that Krasner instructed prosecutors to: “Offer shorter prison sentences in plea deals. Decline certain classes of criminal charges. And explain, on the record, why taxpayers should fork over thousands of dollars per year to incarcerate people.” He said,

Fiscal responsibility is a justice issue, and it is an urgent justice issue. A dollar spent on incarceration should be worth it. Otherwise, that dollar may be better spent on addiction treatment, on public education, on policing and on other types of activity that make us all safer.

The statistics seem to indicate that the esteemed Mr Krasner’s policies have not made Philadelphians safer. But that’s what happens when you put a social justice warrior in office.

You might ask: why do I care? After all, I don’t live in Philadelphia, and I moved out of Pennsylvania entirely three years ago. I don’t vote in Pennsylvania and I don’t pay taxes to the Keystone State.

But I worked in the Philadelphia area, traveling all around the city and the suburbs doing quality control work for a ready-mixed concrete company. Even after I left that position and started working further north, I picked up a copy of The Philadelphia Inquirer every day on my way to work.³ Philly is the city in which the Continental Congress met, in which our Declaration of Independence was signed. I want to see good for the city, but good isn’t happening there.

Now, Philadelphia is a warning, a warning for all who love our country, who want to see good for the United States, a warning as to what can and will happen if “progressives” and their cockamamie ideas achieve governing power. Philadelphia is an experiment in liberal and lax government, an experiment gone horribly wrong. I want to publicize what is happening there, to hopefully help others to step back, and see what a nightmare it has become.
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¹ – The statistics in yesterday’s report from the Philadelphia Police were 261 murders; since there wasn’t a 15-man massacre yesterday, I have to assume that a significant update in the statistics occurred in the postings.
² – This being his second consecutive term, Mr Kenney is term limited out.
³ – The men at the plant always complained, saying that I should have picked up the Allentown Morning Call instead, because it was closer to local news for them.
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