Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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The peasants are revolting!

Apparently, at least in liberal-speak, if you are a member of an Accredited Victim Group™, you do not have to do anything really radical like obey the law or behave like a civilized human being.

The City of Brotherly Love — a pretty appropriate nickname right now — has gone all out on the homosexual “Pride” month, something our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper has been very eagerly covering, and as you might have guessed, the party atmosphere has not led to orderly behavior.

15 arrested as police response to Gayborhood Pride festival spurs criticism from some in LGBTQ+ community

Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said officers had responded “to a growing number of public safety concerns.”

by Jesse Bunch | Monday, June 8, 2026 | 7:06 PM EDT

Fifteen people were arrested at a Pride celebration in the Gayborhood on Sunday, authorities said, and the response drew criticism from some LGBTQ+ residents over how police handled crowd control at the event.

Images of police officers engaging with attendees in Center City circulated widely across local social media feeds on Monday, featuring criticisms of what some considered to be an outsized and aggressive law enforcement presence.

In one image shared on X, a police officer on a motorcycle appears to push against a woman’s chest, and in another photo, pushes the woman against a garage door while arresting her.

Others videos showed police on horseback dispersing young people from a sidewalk, as well as officers physically struggling with a man outside of the gay bar Woody’s.

Sounds like crowd control to me, efforts by the Philadelphia Police to keep things safe and orderly, among a crowd in which some partygoers might have consumed mood-or-judgement-altering substances.

And in yet another clip, a row of police officers — two of whom were wearing face coverings — formed a line to clear a barricaded Gayborhood street while officers on motorbikes rode along the sidewalks.

Joshua Stokem, a New Jersey resident who regularly attends the city’s Pride celebrations, said he has never seen that large of a police presence during such festivities.

“They were definitely getting more and more aggressive” as the gathering stretched into the early evening, said Stokem, who works as a promoter for LGBTQ+ events at city bars.

Councilmember Rue Landau, herself a member of the LGBTQ+ community, said in a statement Monday that LGBTQ+ constituents had reached out to her office in “outrage” and that she was working to better understand the department’s strategy.

It’s really simple: police officers in those situations are trying to keep things orderly and safe, while ‘revelers’ are not always inclined to behave.

Considering the size of the crowds, at least to judge by the coverage that The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philly television stations have provided, fifteen people being arrested, mostly for disorderly conduct, but at least one person “was arrested for aggravated assault of a police officer.”

Can I blame that on the newspaper’s encouraging attitude when it comes to citizens ‘resisting’ law enforcement when it comes to immigration? To me, those things are related. If someone has no respect for law enforcement in one area, would it be any particular surprise that such a person might have less respect for law enforcement in other areas?

Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said in a statement that the celebration was “by all accounts, a successful event attended and enjoyed by thousands of people.”

Still, “as crowd sizes increased in the Gayborhood, officers responded to a growing number of public safety concerns, including fights, disorderly behavior, blocked roadways, and the challenges associated with safely managing large crowds in a confined area,” Bethel said.

What? Fights? Among our peaceful, leftist communities? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!

Let’s face it: Commissioner Bethel, all of the supervisors, and really every police officer in the City of Brotherly Love know that Philly is very supportive of the homosexual community, and they would certainly not be going out of their way just to beat up the revelers; that’s very much a career-limiting move, and with the city’s asinine, far-left, police-hating District Attorney, any cop would know that if he stepped over the line, Larry Krasner would want to throw him in jail. I’m not going to give any credit to the special pleaders for this particular Accredited Victim Group.™

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No matter how much you hate the credentialed media, you do not hate them enough! It's far more important to protect criminal suspects than it is to protect law-abiding people.

Русский? Я никогда не знал русского по имени Саидахмад.

I saw this tweet from Northeast Philly Degenerate, and of course I snarked, “Russian? I’ve never known a Russian named Saidakhmad.” As it turns out, the Philadelphia Police came to the same conclusion, that they are probably of central Asian descent.

At 4:52 PM EDT, two hours and twelve minutes later, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s after hours reporter, Robrt Moran, published the newspaper’s own story on the crime:

6 men rob, commit assaults at massage business near Chinatown, police say

One of the six men who fled from the roof of the business on the 400 block of North Ninth Street was arrested, police said.

by Robert Moran | Monday, April 27, 2026 | 4:52 PM EDT

Six young men robbed at gunpoint and committed sexual assaults at a massage business just north of Chinatown early Saturday, Philadelphia police said.

The men forced their way into the business on the 400 block of North Ninth Street about 4:40 a.m., police said Monday.

When police arrived, the men “fled from the roof,” the police department said.

One suspect was caught on the roof, police said.

Saidakhmad Bakiev, 18, of Northeast Philadelphia, was charged with rape, robbery, aggravated assault, criminal conspiracy, burglary, false imprisonment, sexual assault, indecent assault, and related offenses.

In keeping with the newspaper’s policy of not publishing mugshots, Mr Moran did not include one of the accused. But Mr Moran did include two hyperlinks which did lead to such. One wonders if he’ll be called on the carpet for that.

The link to the Philadelphia Police Department’s press release included photos of the five suspects on the lam. The remaining suspects “are described as white males, late teens into their 20’s, dark hair, possibly Russian/Central Asian descent.” No information on their immigration status was included, but if Mr Bakiev is an immigrant, I’m sure that Will Bunch will defend him at all costs.

The 400 block of North Ninth Street is no great place, a neighborhood of low rent businesses, ill-kept sidewalks, and vacant lots with overgrown grass behind chain link fences. “Massage parlors” are not usually considered high-class businesses.

One would think that the newspaper of record for not only the city but the metropolitan area as well, my unlimited digital subscription for which is $6.99 per week, $363.48 per year, would be more concerned with the safety of the decent people in the City of Brotherly Love, be more willing to include the photos of the (alleged) malefactors, to get the aid of the public in identifying them and helping the Philadelphia Police to capture the suspects, but apparently if one did think that, he’d be wrong, wrong, wrong! It’s far more important to protect criminal suspects than it is to protect law-abiding people.

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People whose jobs are to enforce the law band together to not enforce the law Unless it's against cops. They want to throw law enforcement officers into jail!

We reported on Wednesday how the Democrats in the Philadelphia city government apparently believe that illegal immigrants are above the law. Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney Larry Krasner, who even got one of his office’s lawyers disbarred from the federal court system for deliberately lying in trying to get a convicted murderer off death row even though he’d never actually be executed.

Now the distinguished Mr Krasner wants to keep criminals from being arrested:

DA Larry Krasner forms coalition of progressive prosecutors committed to charging federal agents who commit crimes

Krasner was joined by eight other prosecutors from U.S. cities — including Minneapolis DA Mary Moriarty — to announce the initiative.

by Ellie Rushing and Anna Orso | Wednesday, January 28, 2026 | 10:00 AM EST | Updated: 4:07 PM EST

District Attorney Larry Krasner on Wednesday announced the formation of a new coalition of progressive prosecutors committed to charging federal agents who violate state laws.

Krasner joined eight other prosecutors from U.S. cities to create the Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach, a legal fund that local prosecutors can tap if they pursue charges against federal agents.

The abbreviation for the group, FAFO, is a nod to what has become one of Krasner’s frequent slogans: “F— around and find out.”

The move places Krasner at the center of a growing national clash between Democrats and the Trump administration over federal immigration enforcement and whether local law enforcement can — or should — charge federal agents for actions they take while carrying out official duties.

Note that last sentence, which reporters Ellie Rushing and Anna Orso couldn’t ignore: Mr Krasner wants to find ways to charge federal officers for “carrying out their official duties”!

What are their official duties? The apprehension of people in the United States illegally. Mr Krasner does not want law enforcement to actually enforce the law. Then again, he never has.

The tactic is simple: Mr Krasner and his fellow travelers want to try to intimidate Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, agents from carrying out their duties. With the public resistance of the left, there has been considerable chaos as protester Eenee Good, who tried to run down an ICE agent with her vehicle, and Alex Pretti, an out-of-control rager looking for a fight and who attacked ICE agents were killed as they tried to interfere with legitimate arrests.

Mr Krasner and the rest don’t like that ICE has had to be aggressive in some apprehensions? The solution is simple: have the local police assist in keeping protesters back, and supporting the arrests. Have state and local authorities honor ICE detainers, so those illegals already arrested for another crime can be handed off to immigration rather than having ICE having to track them down and arrest them at their homes or on the streets.

But what about actual violent crime in the City of Brotherly Love?

Woman charged with pepper-spraying conservative influencer on SEPTA bus

A video allegedly showing the Jan. 19 altercation went viral on right-wing social media accounts. The case will be led by the state attorney general’s mass transit prosecutor.

By Michael Tanenbaum, PhillyVoice Staff | Thursday, January 29, 2026

A woman who was filmed pepper-spraying a right-wing influencer during an argument on a SEPTA bus earlier this month now faces charges after the clip went viral and garnered national attention from conservative groups on social media.

Paulina Reyes, 22, was charged Thursday with simple assault, harassment, disorderly conduct and possession of an instrument of crime, the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General said. The case will be prosecuted by the attorney general’s mass transit prosecutor, a role that was created in 2023 to oversee some crimes that occur on SEPTA property.

On Jan. 19, Reyes was riding a SEPTA bus when she got into a heated argument with Frank Scales, the conservative influencer who runs the website Surge Philly and frequently posts clips of himself interviewing people at protests in the city. Scales has been an especially outspoken critic of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat now in his third term who’s been a steadfast opponent of the Trump administration.

My good Twitter friend, Philly Crime Update, said that the state had to charge the lovely Miss Reyes because Mr Krasner would not. The charges will be prosecuted by the special prosecutor position, created in 2023 to pursue crimes committed on SEPTA, a position Mr Krasner filed suit to challenge the law that created it, claiming that it was it was unconstitutional and stripped his office of authority, even though the prosecutor only rarely exercised his authority to protect decent people on SEPTA.

Translation: if the District Attorney had his way, Miss Reyes would not face any charges at all, because the special prosecutor’s office wouldn’t exist, despite the fact she was angered by the fact that Mr Scales did exactly the things Mr Krasner said ought to be protected for the demonstrators in Minneapolis!

 

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Philly Dems say “Illegal immigrants are above the law!”

It is to the surprise of absolutely no one that Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney Larry Krasner wants to “hunt down” Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, agents for daring to do something really radical like enforcing the law.

Wackjob Philly DA Vows To “Hunt Down” ICE Agents

By William Teach | Wednesday, January 28, 2026 | 7:00 AM EST

He’s really skirting the line of being a criminal threat to federal law enforcement. Maybe he should worry more about Philly’s crime rate, which is a 1 (100 is best), with violent and property crime rates over 3 times the Pennsylvania average and well over double the US average

Soros-backed Philadelphia DA vows to ‘hunt’ down ICE agents: ‘We will find you’

Philadelphia’s top prosecutor, a George Soros-backed district attorney, is facing scrutiny and backlash after vowing to “hunt” down federal immigration agents as city leaders move to curb ICE operations.

Speaking during a morning event outside City Hall tied to newly unveiled “ICE OUT” legislation, District Attorney Larry Krasner sharply criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

“This is a small bunch of wannabe Nazis. That’s what they are,” Krasner said. “In a country of 350 million, we outnumber them. If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities. We will find you. We will achieve justice.”

I heard about this yesterday, but didn’t write about it. I expected our nation’s third-oldest, continuously-published daily newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, to have more on this than they did, but this was all I could find in a search Wednesday morning:

On the other end is District Attorney Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s most prominent progressive, who has on several occasions threatened to file criminal charges against ICE agents who commit crimes in the city.

“There will be accountability now. There will be accountability in the future. There will be accountability after [Trump] is out of office,” Krasner said Tuesday. “If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities.”

The article concerns the responses of Democratic officials to enforcement of our immigration laws, and is about more than Mr Krasner.

As we have previously noted, the distinguished Mr Krasner has also threatened to file state charges against the January 6th Capitol Kerfufflers after they were pardoned by President Trump, even though most of them had already served their federal sentences, but hasn’t actually done anything, perhaps because there was nothing which he could find which occurred in his jurisdiction, which is limited to the City of Brotherly Love.

The Inquirer reported, on Inauguration Day, that there were about 47,000 illegal aliens living in the city, but the currently cited article uses a different source to guesstimate an “unauthorized population” of 76,000. With a July 1, 2024 estimated population of 1,573,916, that would put Philly’s illegals at 4.83% of the total. And the Democrats want more than to tone down the enforcement of immigration laws: they want to protect the illegals from everything:

Philadelphia officials said the best way they can prepare is by limiting the city’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, of the progressive Working Families Party, and Councilmember Rue Landau, a Democrat, were joined by dozens of activists and other elected officials during a news conference Tuesday to unveil a package of legislation aimed at codifying into law the city’s existing “sanctuary city” practices.

Those policies, which are currently executive orders, bar city officials from holding undocumented immigrants in custody at ICE’s request without a judicial warrant.

So, the Democrats want to protect the illegals who are caught breaking other laws as well.

Landau and Brooks’ legislative package, expected to be introduced in Council on Thursday, goes further, preventing ICE agents from wearing masks, using city-owned property for staging raids, or accessing city databases.

Erika Guadalupe Núñez, executive director of immigrant advocacy organization Juntos, said the legislation “goes beyond just ‘We don’t collaborate.’”

Juntos gets regular calls about ICE staging operations at public locations in and around Philadelphia, and people have been worried, despite official assurances, whether personal information held by the city will be secure from government prying.

What happened to “no one is above the law”? The Democrats proclaimed it, loudly and clearly, when they were trying to throw then-former President Trump in jail, and we’re hearing it — sort of — from Mr Krasner, as he wants to ‘hunt down’ ICE agents, for as many years as it takes, even if it takes ‘decades,’ because they are charged with enforcing our immigration laws.

When former Philadelphia Police Officer Eric Ruch, Jr, was tried, convicted, and sentenced for killing an unarmed suspect following a police chase, Mr Krasner filed an appeal to reconsider the 11½-to-23 month sentence as too lenient. Instead Mr Ruch was released after nine months, the same amount of time former state Attorney General Kathleen Kane spent locked up for her 10-to-23 month sentenced for perjury. If that angered Mr Krasner, so much the better.

In the meantime, we have documented how the city’s scumbag of a prosecutor has the criminals’ backs, while he hates the cops.

But is that really a surprise? The Democrats in city government are all supporting those who have broken our immigration laws, not only entering illegally or overstaying a visa, but who must commit felonies, must break our employment laws every day to live in the United States. But to the Democrats, illegals really are above the law.

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Crazy People Are Dangerous: At least this guy is going to be locked up for a long, long time

The First Street Journal has previously reported on Kimbrady Carriker, the fine young gentleman who murdered five people in the City of Brotherly Love. Now, 2½ years later, we finally have a conviction in the case, and Mr Carriker actually might not spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.

Man who killed five people in the Kingsessing mass shooting pleads guilty, is sentenced to decades in prison

Kimbrady Carriker walked through Kingsessing dressed in body armor and armed with an AR-15-style rifle, then shot and killed five people at random on July 3, 2023.

by Ellie Rushing | Thursday, December 18, 2025 | 2:34 PM EST | Updated: 4:17 PM EST

The man who walked through the streets of Kingsessing and shot people at random in 2023, killing five and wounding five others in one of Philadelphia’s deadliest mass shootings, pleaded guilty Wednesday to multiple counts of murder and was sentenced to decades in prison.

Kimbrady Carriker, 43, admitted that on the evening of July 3, 2023, he calmly walked through a Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood dressed in body armor and wearing a ski mask, and pointed his AR-15-style rifle at seemingly random passersby — then pulled the trigger.

What is an “AR-15-style rifle”? Was it an ArmaLite-15, or was it something else?

No, of course The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t publish a photo of Mr Carriker, but instead had a five-picture montage of his victims. Mr Carriker has already pleaded guilty, so it’s not as though the newspaper has to somehow protect him prior to trial. But, of course, the most frequently circulate image of Mr Carriker on that internet thingy that Al Gore invented depicts him in drag, and, Heaven forfend! the newspaper wouldn’t want to have people jump to the conclusion that the transgendered are Just Plain Nuts.

There is nothing in reporter Ellie Rushing’s story to indicate that Mr Carriker was actually transgender or perhaps just an occasional cross-dresser; she does tell readers that his attorneys had prepared an insanity defense, and the District Attorney’s Office feared that he might actually be acquitted by reason of insanity. He is pretty much bonkers.

He killed five people: DaJuan Brown, 15; Lashyd Merritt, 21; Dymir Stanton, 29; Ralph Moralis, 59; and Joseph Wamah Jr., 31.

Five others were injured: a 13-year-old boy he shot multiple times in the legs, and a mother who was driving with her 2-year-old twins and 10-year-old niece when he fired more than a dozen bullets into her car.

Further down:

Prosecutors did not want to risk that a jury might find Carriker not guilty by reason of insanity, Wainwright said. So they offered Carriker the opportunity to plead guilty to five counts of third-degree murder, five counts of attempted murder, and gun crimes. They asked a judge to sentence him to 37½ to 75 years in prison.

Mr Carriker is 43 years old, and he’s already spent 2½ years in custody. In theory, he would be eligible for release when he is 78 years old. He should never see the outside of prison walls.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boys! Apparently, no one told them that you can't get away with crime outside of Philly!

It is of absolutely no surprise to me that a site search of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website for “Polk County” turned up exactly nothing on these eight fine but misunderstood young men from the City of Brotherly Love being so unjustly arrested in Polk County, Florida. But, Alas! the newspaper’s lack of coverage was not able to keep the story from Philadelphians, as both 6ABC and NBC10 News did cover it:

8 Philadelphia youth football players face charges in Fla. theft case

By Corey Davis | Tuesday, December 9, 2025 | 9:05 AM EST

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Eight teenagers from the Philadelphia area are facing felony charges in Florida after authorities say they stole more than $2,000 worth of merchandise from a sporting goods store.

Neither 6ABC nor the NBC 10 News story named or showed mugshots of the arrested teens, but the Polk County Sheriff’s Office did. Sheriff Judd is rather famous for naming and shaming criminals arrested in Polk County, something this website absolutely supports. You can click on the image to the right to enlarge it to fill screen. The video of Sheriff Grady Judd’s news conference on this is embedded below, below the fold. Continue reading →

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Will these bad guys finally do some serious time?

Will the left be mad about this as well? They’ve been defending drug runners since President Trump has ordered action to sink their boats in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of America, so this ought to get them grinding their teeth as well. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

How law enforcement built a sprawling case against a longstanding Kensington drug gang

Philly police and federal authorities used wiretaps, cameras, and confidential informants to target dealers on Weymouth Street.

by Chris Palmer and Jesse Bunch | Tuesday, November 25, 2025 | 5:00 AM EST

Ramon Roman-Montanez knew the police were watching.

One day last April, as Roman-Montanez prepared to hand out free drug samples to users on Weymouth Street — a common tactic that dealers use to attract customers — he stood in the middle of the Kensington block and spotted a problem.

The cops had put up a pole camera.

Using binoculars, Roman-Montanez scouted out the new device at the end of the block, prosecutors said in court documents. But he had a business to run — and so, after talking with a few associates in the street, he decided that giveaway day would move forward as planned.

Clearly, Mr Roman-Montanez and his “associates” — is that the new euphemism for gang-banger? — did not see it as very much of a problem, not in a city in which George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police hating Larry Krasner is the District Attorney. If caught, what would they get, a slap on the wrist?

Whatever their thought processes, they (allegedly) went ahead and did it.

The camera, however, was just one hint of what authorities now say was a sprawling, multiyear investigation into the gang Roman-Montanez helped lead — a group that sold thousands of doses of heroin, fentanyl, crack, and cocaine over the course of more than a decade, and effectively took over a residential block in a neighborhood that has long suffered from crime, open-air drug dealing, and neglect.

The results of the probe came to light last month, when FBI Director Kash Patel came to Philadelphia to announce that 33 people, including Roman-Montanez, had been indicted for drug crimes. Patel called the case a model for law enforcement across the country, and an example of how to take out a drug gang terrorizing a community.

The most important part of this? This is a federal case, so Mr Krasner can’t deal out lenient plea bargains!

In August, for example, Roman-Montanez was charged in state court with drug possession and related crimes after police found fentanyl, crack, and $20,000 in cash in his house — the result of a raid on Weymouth Street that was part of the investigation into his gang.

But a few weeks later, his attorneys persuaded a Philadelphia judge to reduce his bail and he walked out of jail. The 40-year-old — who federal prosecutors now say was the de facto chief operating officer of one of the city’s biggest drug conspiracies — was only taken back into custody this month, when federal authorities unsealed his indictment.

No wonder Mr Roman-Montanez didn’t see much downside: in the state prosecution, which means the prosecution under Mr Krasner, nothing happened.

Other interesting paragraphs:

In 2020, Angel Rios-Valentin was convicted in federal court of illegal gun possession after officers found him carrying a loaded handgun that he’d taken from Roman-Montanez’s house. He was sentenced to five years in prison and was on supervised release when he was arrested again last month.

Police found four guns in Rios-Valentin’s house, a discovery that prosecutors said showed his ongoing commitment to the gang.

Roman-Montanez, meanwhile, was arrested twice in the last three years, court documents show — but in both cases managed to avoid significant consequences.

In October 2022, police searched his house and found 96 grams of fentanyl, four loaded guns, and nearly $125,000 in cash, prosecutors said. Roman-Montanez was charged in state court, but the case was withdrawn.

The article continued to tell us that scheduling issues with attorneys and witnesses delayed proceedings for more than a year, and prosecutors — there’s that Mr Krasner again! — withdrew the charges.

The investigation has dragged on for years, and the (alleged) principals managed to distribute tons of drugs into Kensington. There’s a reason that neighborhood is internationally infamous — the government of Mexico has actually used photos of Kensington in ads to discourage drug use in Mexico! — and is simply a waste case, because years and years of law enforcement looking the other way, the city government being oh-so-sympathetic as far as drug use and junkies are concerned, have left the bad guys in charge, the addicts littering the streets, and the decent people living there stuck in their homes, afraid to come out of doors any more often than absolutely necessary. After eight years of neglect under former Mayor Jim Kenney, current Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins has made some moves to do something about the neighborhood, but Mr Krasner has attempted to throw roadblocks into that effort where he can.

The federal investigation dates from the beginning of President Trump’s first term, continued through the Joe Biden years, and finally, nine months into Mr Trump’s second term things are getting done. I only have to wonder how quickly new ‘entrepreneurs’ will replace the 33 gang-bangers now under arrest.

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Killadelphia: It’s a good thing that crime is down!

I saw this tweet earlier, but decided to wait to write about it, waiting for The Philadelphia Inquirer, for which I am paying to subscribe, to have more. Sadly, the Inky didn’t have all that much more:

Police are investigating the death of a Philadelphia firefighter as homicide

The 56-year-old man was found dead in the Holmesburg section early Wednesday morning.

by Nate File | Wednesday, October 15, 2025 | 10:43 AM EDT | Updated: 11:08 AM EDT

A Philadelphia firefighter was killed in the city’s Holmesburg section in the early hours of Wednesday morning, police said.

The 56-year-old man was found dead inside a home on the 4700 block of Shelmire Avenue at 4 a.m. after police were called.

A 27-year-old male suspect is in custody, and detectives are investigating the incident as a homicide. The suspect told police when they arrived that there had been a disturbance in the home, but the circumstances of the incident were unclear.

There’s one more paragraph in the story, but it tells us nothing.

But what interested me is something on which I’ve previously written. The homeowners of 4725 Shelmire Avenue were so afraid of thieves and street criminals that they literally put themselves in jail, adding bars to their front porch to keep them out. They aren’t the only ones on the block who’ve done that, as the row house at 4755 Shelmire has the same barred-in porch.

A look at the 4700 block of Shelmire Avenue via Google Maps Streetscapes shows not a run-down row home neighborhood, but a wide street, with homes at least visually decently kept. Many have been modified to close in their porches to create additional interior space. There’s no garbage strewn around — the images were taken just last July — and the Holmesberg section of Northeast Philadelphia is far from the worst section of the city, yet we can still see residents afraid of crime.

Zillow shows the interior details of 4725 Shelmire, so it was obviously on the market recently, and Zillow guesstimates the value of the three bedroom, two bath, 1,280 ft² home to be $211,800. An affordable home in a clean-looking neighborhood in Northeast Philly!

The newspaper reported, just two days ago, that an increasing percentage of Philadelphians are paying more than 35% of their income on rent, a percentage that the Department of Housing and Urban Development considers to be “cost-burdened.” Looks to me that they should be buying on Shelmire .  .  . if they are not too afraid of crime.

 

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Now this I can support! Let the counties served by SEPTA pay for SEPTA

While there are all sorts of reports on movement in the Pennsylvania General Assembly on additional funding for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), at least as of this Friday morning writing, no funding agreement has been reached. Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins has paid forward some of the city’s $135 million subsidy, to keep city bus service for schools, but that’s only a stopgap for the system’s projected $213 deficit.

But this story from The Philadelphia Inquirer is at least a little bit better than the notion that the taxpayers throughout the Commonwealth should pay for SEPTA:

Philly’s collar counties are only authorized to tax property. Could SEPTA’s budget crisis change that?

County officials have long sought broader taxing authority. Some say the debate over transit funding could force the issue.

by Katie Bernard | Friday, August 29, 2025 | 5:00 AM EDT

Officials in Philadelphia’s collar counties are hopeful that the monthslong impasse over funding for SEPTA may push lawmakers to consider a change to state tax law they have sought for years.

With many of their residents dependent on SEPTA for daily work commutes and other trips into Philadelphia, officials across the suburban counties — Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, and Chester — say they are committed to its success, and they contributed more than $30 million to it last year. But the state’s laws, which allow counties to tax only property, prevent them from doing more to support the agency without raising property taxes.

Officials have long asked state lawmakers to grant them the authority to tax wages, sales, or property transfers. Some wonder if the current debate over the beleaguered transit authority may finally push the issue.

“They’re holding up public transit funding for the entire commonwealth,” said Monica Taylor, a Democrat who chairs the Delaware County Council. “All of these things are piling up and coming together, and they haven’t passed a budget. … This is hopefully pushing for the opportunity for people to come back to the table and start talking.”

There’s much more at the original, but you get the drift: the counties want to be able to wring more and more money out of their people.

My position is simple: the people who use SEPTA should be the ones who pay for SEPTA, through a reasonable fare increase of 75¢.[1]Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the … Continue reading

But, if the government leaders want to keep treating SEPTA not as a public transit system but a welfare agency, frequently welfare for the well-to-do, at least if Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, and Chester counties start taxing their own residents for a system that is available to them, then the people of Carbon, Cameron, and McKean counties, which do not have access to SEPTA, will not.

Chester, Bucks, Montgomery, and Delaware counties are, respectively, the four wealthiest counties in the Commonwealth.

If those heavily Democrat counties — Philadelphia, Chester, Montgomery, and Delaware counties all voted heavily for then Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff, while President Trump carried Bucks County by the slimmest of margins, 291 votes out of 402,349 total votes cast — want to tax their people more heavily to pay for SEPTA, let them!

The fairest system is for SEPTA riders to pay for SEPTA, but what I have suggested is at least the second most fair system.

References

References
↑1 Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the largest portion of daily ridership, with 354,820 unlinked trips, or 50% of the total. With 768,291 unlinked passenger trips every day, and a projected operating deficit of $213 million, how much would fares have to increase to cover the deficit? 768,291 x 365 = 280,426,215 trips per year. A $213,000,000 deficit ÷ 280,426,215 daily trips = 75.96¢ per trip which would need to be collected to completely eliminate the projected deficit. Call it a 75¢ per trip added to the fares, just to male collections simpler, and the budget can be brought under control.