Tag Archives: #LarryKrasner

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In Killadelphia, the beat goes on!

Just twenty-one days into the year, it’s a little bit early to tell. Checking the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page has been all over the board. Some days, 2021 has been behind the running total of homicides from 2020’s disastrous year, and some days ahead.

Philadelphia finished Inauguration Day with 32 homicides, 3 ahead of the same date in 2020, for a rate of 1.60 per day. That’s slightly higher than how Philly finished up in December, 1.45 per day.

I wrote earlier that Philadelphia had 502 homicides for 2020, but the Police Department revised its figures, coming up with a total of 499 for the year. What, did three people recover from death or something?

Is the City of Brotherly Love getting ready to leave 2020’s 499, and 1990’s 500 killings in the dust? It’s a little bit early to make a statement like that, with just twenty days gone and 345 days remaining in the year. But one thing is certain: Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw have failed, failed, failed in their jobs.

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Why should Philadelphia spend money keeping drug addicts alive?

I’m enough of an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to ask: why do we want to keep junkies alive?

They have to steal from innocent people to support their habits, they cannot keep jobs to support themselves, and are nothing but a burden on society. And, heaven forfend! they probably don’t even wear their facemasks properly! Trying to get them off of drugs, so that they can become responsible members of society might make sense, but Safehouse simply enables them to keep shooting up.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A federal appeals court rejects plans for a supervised injection site in Philly

by Jeremy Roebuck and Aubrey Whelan | Updated: January 12, 2021 | 5:36 PM EST

In a setback to advocates who had hoped to open the nation’s first supervised injection site in Philadelphia, a federal appellate court ruled Tuesday that such a facility would violate a law known as the “crack house” statute and open its operators to potential prosecution.

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit lauded the goals behind Safehouse — the nonprofit that, in an attempt to stem the city’s tide of opioid-related deaths, has proposed the site to provide medical supervision to people using drugs.

But, Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote for the majority, “Safehouse’s benevolent motive makes no difference.”

“Congress has made it a crime to open a property to others to use drugs,” he added. “And that is what Safehouse will do.”

There’s more at the original, and the Usual Suspects in Philadelphia have supported Safehouse: Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner and former Mayor, and Pennsylvania Governor, Ed Rendell, all Democrats.

United States Attorney William McSwain, who brought the suit for the Department of Justice and argued the case himself in court, an unusual move, was pleased with the victory, so if he doesn’t resign by January 20th, will probably be fired by Joe Biden. That would hardly be unprecedented: President Clinton fired all 93 US Attorneys in one day, and President Trump, after a couple months delay, told the 46 remaining Obama Administration appointees to tender their resignations. Given that Mr McSwain was a strong critic of Mr Krasner, the George Soros-financed District Attorney will want him gone, gone, gone!

As a lower-case “l” libertarian, but not a Libertarian, I should be perfectly happy with recreational pharmaceuticals being legal. And if the only damage that drug abusers did was to themselves, it would be fine with me.

But that’s not the case: drug abusers damage, and financially burden, society in a major way. Junkies can’t hold jobs, and thus burden our welfare rolls. Junkies can’t support their habits, and wind up stealing from innocent people to support their habits. And, most importantly, drug addicts usually wind up being, at some points, responsible for children.

My wife was a pediatric nurse, and she has told me that she has never seen a case of child abuse — and they had to be pretty bad, hospitalization bad, before she saw them — in which drugs or alcohol, usually drugs and alcohol, were not involved. Here in eastern Kentucky, drugs are a scourge, and my nephew, formerly an Emergency Medical Technician, has told me that at least half of the ambulance calls on which he went were drug related. He worked in Lee and Owsley counties; Beattyville, which CNN called the poorest white town in America, is wracked with poverty and drug abuse:

Rugged explorer Daniel Boone made this part of Kentucky famous in the late 1700s around the time of the Revolutionary War. The rolling hills and forests are still as picturesque as when Boone found them. Rock climbers come from all over the world to tackle the area’s peaks and natural bridges.

But today it’s also easy to come by heroin and cocaine in Kentucky’s hills. Almost every family CNNMoney met in Beattyville had been impacted by drugs.

(Barbara) Puckett and her husband are currently raising a great niece and nephew because their biological parents are drug addicts. The situation is so common in Beattyville that the local elementary school runs a support group for grandparents raising grandkids.

(Chuck Caudhill, the general manager of the local paper, The Beattyville Enterprise) estimates that 40% of kids in the area don’t live with their birth parents because of drugs.

“We need help. Eastern Kentucky is beautiful, but it needs help,” says Patricia “Trish” Cole. Her son died of an overdose when he was 27. Pictures of him are all around her living room. She’s normally quick to smile, but she gets choked up when his named is mentioned. She has a tattoo on her chest that reads: “Can’t keep your arms around a memory.”

Cole saves lives as an EMT for the local ambulance company. She estimates 80% of the ambulance runs she makes now are for drug-related issues. The day after her son died, she had to go get a young man who overdosed out of a closet.

The slow death of the coal industry has strangled many counties in eastern Kentucky, and drugs are destroying the rest. It’s hard to hold that recreational pharmaceuticals ought to be legalized when they are destroying our society around them. Kentucky has the nation’s highest rate of grandparents or other relatives raising children— with 9 percent of kids being raised by a relative compared with the national rate of 4 percent, according to Kentucky Youth Advocates.

Eastern Kentucky ought to be a dream location for industry: a beautiful landscape plus a population with, let’s be honest here, fewer options, ought to leave a potential employer with a more stable workforce, with less employee turnover. But with illegal drugs being rampant, what decent employer would want to come here?

This is what drugs have done to Kentucky! So why, I have to ask, should Philadelphia spend money keeping drug addicts alive?

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Prosecutor who sought to end cash bail imprisonment is bemoaning lower bail for violent offenders

Every once in a while, I’ll come across a story that has me both laughing my butt off and shaking my head in disbelief. As we’ve noted before, 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 cost of Mr Krasner’s victory 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 Hasan 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 mate 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.

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

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 Philadelphia 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.

And now — and it’s difficult not to laugh about this — the esteemed Mr Krasner is lamenting that judges are not imposing high enough bail!

Amid rising gun crime in Philly, DA Larry Krasner blasts low bail

by Mensah M. Dean and Chris Palmer | January 11, 2021 | 7:21 PM EST

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner on Monday blasted bail commissioners for setting lower bails than his office routinely seeks for those charged with gun crimes at a time when the city is besieged by near-record gun violence.

While his office often has asked for million-dollar bails for those charged with violent gun crimes — with suspects typically having to pay 10% of that amount — the median bail last week for those arrested for possession of a gun was just $110,000, and $150,000 for those arrested for a violent offense involving a gun, Krasner said during a news conference in West Philadelphia with community leaders and anticrime activists.

“I’m not saying that’s a tiny amount of money, but what I am saying is for people who have resources, including criminals who are deriving substantial profit from illegal activity, this is not a hard thing to pay,” he said. As a result, he said, many of those accused of gun crimes are back on the street while awaiting trial.

Within 60 days, his office will release a report that will explore the impact bail amounts are having on crime, Krasner said during the first of what he said would be weekly press conferences to keep the public apprised on his offices’ efforts to combat violence.

He campaigned on ending cash bail imprisonment, and now he’s shocked, shocked!, that bail commissioners are setting lower bail amounts. In asking “for million-dollar bails for those charged with violent gun crimes,” is he not seeking to keep those charged, but not yet convicted, suspects in jail, in “cash bail imprisonment”?

This is the type of thing that “social justice,” rather than real justice, law enforcement gets you. By not seriously pursuing the little crimes, when the bad guys get a bit older and are graduated to bigger and badder things, they have less of past criminal record, which naturally means lower bail amounts. More, it means that some of those “charged with violent gun crimes” could have been locked up in jail, on the lesser offenses, on the days that they committed worse crimes. As documented above, Hasan Elliot was one of those criminals who could have been in prison, not just on his original sentence, but on parole violations, had Mr Krasner treated him seriously. Police Corporal James O’Connor IV is stone-cold graveyard dead because Mr Krasner and his office didn’t treat him seriously.

From the Inquirer:

(Mr Krasner’s spokeswoman Jane) Roh responded (to Mt Nesby’s statements) on Friday saying it was “frankly ghoulish that anyone, much less an authority figure, would choose to spread lies for personal or political gain in response to this tragedy.”

On Monday, McNesby shot back, contending that police again “are under attack from the district attorney’s rogue staff.” Calling Roh a “Krasner henchman,” McNesby wrote in a statement that Roh was using “O’Connor’s murder as a reason to attack ALL Police as ‘ghoulish,’” and contended that the “vicious” attack was “tacitly approved and supported by Krasner.”

On Twitter Monday night, Roh said McNesby’s language in the aftermath of the shooting was filled with “Trumpian, deliberately inflammatory falsehoods.” She said he should be “working 24/7 to protect the health & safety of his members” during the coronavirus outbreak.

As opposed to protecting them from the bullets of street thugs Mr Krasner allowed out of jail? COVID-19 is serious, but bullets fired by criminals appear to be a deadlier danger. You can check out Miss Roh’s Twitter feed to see how much of a whacked-out leftist she is; it’s no wonder she is Mr Krasner’s spokesidiot.

Larry Krasner has brought this on himself, through his idiotic, social justice policies. Under his ‘leadership,’ Philadelphia jumped from 315 homicides before he took office, to 353, then 356, and then 2020’s whopping 499. Mr Krasner isn’t all of the reason behind those huge jumps, but he’s definitely part of it. He may be bemoaning the lower bail, but it’s the result of his policies. Thing is, he’s not paying the price for his failures, the good citizens of Philadelphia are.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Killadelphia reaches the milestone I didn't think they'd make it, but they did: 502 homicides in 2020.

This is part of the penitential rite at the beginning of Mass:

I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.

And I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, because, as Philadelphia was approaching 500 homicides for 2020, I was, morbidly enough, rooting for the city to reach the milestone of 500 homicides. And, according to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, that ghastly goal was achieved, with 502 people bleeding out their lives in the city’s mean streets.

I noted, only a few days ago, that the City of Brotherly Love had, under the great leadership of Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, won the Silver Medal, with 489 homicides, tying the second place mark set in 1989, but that 1990’s 505 number seemed out of reach.

I had used an article in Wikipedia as my source, which gave that number. But, as of just a couple of days ago, the article changed, stating that 1990’s total was 497. And The Philadelphia Inquirer’s old website, philly.com, has interactive data which gives that same 497 number for 1990.

That may not be the last word, because the Inquirer’s Chris Palmer reported, on New Year’s Day:

The number of people killed last year — 499 as of late Thursday — is 40% higher than in 2019, and more than in all of 2013 and 2014 combined. The only time more people were slain in the city was in 1990, when police reported 500 homicides as violence surged alongside an intensifying crack-cocaine epidemic.

With that 505 number stuck in my brain, I had thought that Mr Palmer was simply using 500 as an approximation, but with the change in data from my source — now two sources — I have to wonder, is the 500 number an approximation, or precise?

Because, if it is precise, and the Police Department’s 502 number is accurate, Messrs Kenney and Krasner, and Miss Outlaw, have won the Gold Medal!

That’s a pretty sad award.

At any rate, a site search for 502 homicides on the Inquirer’s website, at 5:40 PM EST did not turn up any stories noting the ‘achievement.’

Now, I’m something of a math geek, and I do really radical things like run the numbers. It wasn’t so long ago, October 22nd, that I noted in an article entitled We need to stop pretending that #BlackLivesMatter, because in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s very apparent that they don’t, that the math said Philly was on track for 485 homicides.

And that had been a huge jump, because on August 18th, the daily averages led to a number of 439.

Of course, in mid-August, there was still a lot of warm weather left, and violent crimes tend to increase in the long, hot summer.

But by October 22nd, we were a month into autumn, cooler weather had prevailed, and supposedly, so would cooler heads. As I wrote then, the math was 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.

But 502 killings in 366 days? That works out to 1.372 people being slaughtered, every single day of the year. In the last two months of autumn, and the first two weeks of winter, Philadelphia saw 1.563 homicides per day. The rate of death increased in the cooler months. December’s 48 homicides in 31 days works out to 1.548 per day, during what is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. December, after President Trump had been defeated for re-election, and COVID-19 vaccines had been developed and approved, yet the things on which the left would like to blame the increased crime rate now being diminished didn’t do much to lower the homicide rate.

I have been profuse in my criticism of Mayor Kenney, District Attorney Krasner and Commissioner Outlaw, and I do not take back a single word of it. But the real blame lies with not just the killers, but the parents who reared them. Yes, a no-nonsense “broken windows” policing and prosecution regime would reduce crime, the way Mayor Rudy Giuliani (D-New York) accomplished it, but the real key is reducing criminal thought in the minds of the people. If the kids are reared right, they won’t commit the crimes, regardless of the policing regimen.

Political leaders cannot rear our children for us; that’s up to parents and grandparents. But the Mayor and the District Attorney can look at what Mayor Giuliani accomplished, and if they don’t like his methods, they can at least appreciate his numbers. Philadelphia’s previous Mayor, Michael Nutter, and his Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey, might not have been full on “broken windows” in their policies, but, as Robert Stacy McCain pointed out, there were more killings in Philly last year than in two consecutive years, 2013 and 2014, under Messrs Nutter and Ramsey.

Mr Krasner’s Twitter biography states, “District Attorney Larry Krasner fights for equal justice for the great people of Philadelphia. A fair and effective criminal justice system makes us safer.”  The one thing Mr Krasner’s policies have not done is to make Philadelphians safer.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Congratulations to Philadelphia! 2020 has won the silver medal!

In 1989, the City of Brotherly Love set a new record for homicides, at 489 souls. The record didn’t last long, as 505 people gave up the ghost in Philadelphia’s streets the following year, but, after that, the number of murders started declining, and 1989 still holds the silver medal.

Well, not anymore: as of 11:59 PM on Sunday, December 27th, Philadelphia tied that 489 number, with four days left to go in 2020. With a current average of 1.3508 homicides per day, Philly ought to easily move past that number, and end up with 494 or 495 homicides. Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw ought to be really proud of the jobs that they have done.

Really, it wasn’t easy for them. When Mayor Michael Nutter (D-Philadelphia) and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey retired in first week of January, 2016, they left a city which saw 280 homicides in their last year. The year before Messrs Nutter and Ramsey took office, 2007, Philly had suffered through 391 killings. In their first year in office, the number of homicides dropped by 60, to 331.

In 2007, the homicide rate was 27.3 per 100,000 population. By 2013, it was down to 15.9. A bad spike in 2015, their last year in office, saw the murder rate jump to 17.9, as there were 280 killings that year, up from 248 the previous year.

In 2017, it jumped to 21.1, and then to 22.2 in 2018 and 2019. All of the progress under Messrs Nutter and Ramsey had been undone.

Now, at the end of 2020, projecting 494 homicides, and with the city’s population last guesstimated at 1.556 million, the homicide rate figures out to 31.75 per 100.000. Even if the last four days of the year pass with no more killings, the rate works out to 31.43. Either would be the highest number since 1997. Mr Krasner has accomplished what he set out to do, with his cockamamie social justice version of law enforcement.

Everyone hears about Chicago, where murders have skyrocketed under laughable Mayor Lori Lightfoot. According to The Chicago Tribune’s Tracking Chicago Homicides page, last updated following Sunday, December 20, 2020, the Windy City had seen 753 murders. That’s a lot of blood running into the gutters. But with a population of 2.706 million, the homicide rate there is 27.83, pending, of course, the final blood tally for the year. That’s a lot lower than Philadelphia’s! If Philly had Chicago’s murder rate, there’d be about 60 fewer people murdered in the streets. That’s how bad Philadelphia has become.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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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.
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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.