Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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Once mayoral candidates wanted to bypass Larry Krasner, The Philadelphia Inquirer leapt to his defense

Yup, I expected this.

Despite the tremendous rise in crime, the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed District Attorney Larry Krasner for re-election on Monday, May 9, 2021, a day in which the City of Brotherly Love was reporting 183 homicides thus far that year, 46 more than the same day the previous year, and 1.4186 per day. The Editorial Board wrote at the time:

The Democratic primary for Philadelphia district attorney has been drawing national attention, and understandably so. Aside from its colorful main characters — an incumbent DA who’s a national icon in progressive circles, opposed by a former assistant DA whom he’d fired when he took the job — the race hinges on a powerful question: Is dramatic criminal-justice reform possible in a time of rising gun violence and murder rates?

No one can dispute the numbers: Philadelphia experienced the most homicides in 2020 in nearly 60 years, and 2021 is off to an even worse start. The first-term incumbent district attorney, Larry Krasner, notes that this spike parallels a national trend, and he insists it isn’t connected to his programs aimed at curbing mass incarceration. But his opponent, Carlos Vega, argues that Krasner’s approach to prosecuting gun offenses is too lenient — citing recent reports on low conviction rates for such crimes — and that the “bad guys” all know it. . . . .

A complex, relatively recent spike in gun violence isn’t a reason to return to the mass incarceration regime of yesteryear, but a challenge to do better.

It’s all that you need to know: the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Editorial Board supported Mr Krasner’s very effective efforts at reducing “mass incarceration.” That criminals who could have been in jail but were not behind bars because of Mr Krasner’s policies, such as Hasan Elliot, were killing people just didn’t seem to matter to the Board.

Now, three current mayoral candidates, three Democratic mayoral candidates, have said they will find ways to circumvent the George Soros-sponsored District Attorney, to get those accused of violent crimes prosecuted by the United States Attorney, under federal law, rather than state law under Let ’em Loose Larry.

As we previously reported, the Editorial Board are perfectly aware that Philadelphians don’t feel safe in the city, and that the “percentage of Black and Hispanic Philadelphians who feel unsafe in their neighborhood is double the percentage of white Philadelphians.” Of course, teh Board blamed that not on crime, not on criminals, but the internal segregation in the city.

And now it seems that the Board are aghast that some politicians, some Democratic politicians want to cut the District Attorney out of the loop:

Circumventing DA Larry Krasner is not the answer to city’s gun woes | Editorial

A consistent theme that emerges in conversations on public safety in Philadelphia is, some say, how difficult Krasner makes it for others to work with him. It is critical they keep trying.

by The Editorial Board | Thursday, February 16, 2023 | 8:07 AM EST

Gun violence is one of the defining challenges facing Philadelphia, and whoever wants to be the next mayor must have answers on how to ensure public safety. But while there is room for debate on solutions, securing long-term results will require a coordinated effort across city government — no matter how difficult some agencies are to work with.

LOL! I find it interesting that the Editorial Board have restricted this to paid subscribers only.[2]Though the Inquirer does have a paywall, non-subscribers can usually get around five ‘free’ articles a month, with the website tracking IP addresses to determine that. You could, and I … Continue reading Given that the Lenfest Institute, the non-profit organization which owns the Inquirer sent out yet another begging letter to subscribers on February 12th, you’d think that they’d want a wider audience for their editorial, if they thought it would express a popular sentiment.

That includes the office of District Attorney Larry Krasner, who — to the consternation of his critics — has questioned the efficacy of pursuing charges against those who are carrying guns without a permit.

The Inquirer very much supports increased gun control, yet it does not seem as though the Board are questioning Mr Krasner’s reluctance to enforce an existing gun control law. How does that work?

Skipping down a few paragraphs, in which the Board note that yes, under Mr Krasner, there has been a significant decrease in convictions under the Violation of the Uniform Firearm Act, and that many people, including Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw believe has led to increased crime. The Board itself recognized that “convictions on gun cases have mostly declined since Krasner took office in 2018.”

The District Attorney has blamed the decrease in convictions on poorer cases brought by the Philadelphia Police Department, but that doesn’t explain why there were more convictions previously on cases brought by that same Department.

The embattled district attorney, who was impeached last year by the Republican-controlled state House, told The Inquirer that any effort to circumvent his authority was an attempt to undo the will of the voters and compared it to the politically motivated impeachment.

“Some of the candidates for mayor are not in touch with Philadelphians,” he said. “This office has never enjoyed more love and support than it enjoys right now.”

That may be the case, but what love and support Krasner has is a result of his focus on restorative justice, not his often abrasive and condescending professional demeanor.

And there it is: the Board love Mr Krasner’s ideas about “restorative justice.” We recently noted the concept of restorative justice as stated by the University of Wisconsin Law School:

Restorative justice is a set of principles and practices that create a different approach to dealing with crime and its impacts. Restorative justice practices work to address the dehumanization frequently experienced by people in the traditional criminal justice system. Instead of viewing a criminal act as simply a violation of a rule or statute, restorative justice sees this action as a violation of people and relationships.

Restorative justice seeks to examine the harmful impact of a crime and then determines what can be done to repair that harm while holding the person who caused it accountable for his or her actions. Accountability for the offender means accepting responsibility and acting to repair the harm done. Outcomes seek to both repair the harm and address the reasons for the offense, while reducing the likelihood of re-offense. Rather than focusing on the punishment meted out, restorative justice measures results by how successfully the harm is repaired.

What, exactly, would be ‘repairing the harm’ to a shooting victim? How would one ‘repair the harm’ to someone who has been murdered? Given that the Board have recognized that a very significant number of Philadelphians, 70% of them, see public safety as the most important issue facing the city, and that two-thirds of residents have heard gunshots in the city over the past year, it would seem to me that the harm is citywide, as the people who haven’t been robbed or carjacked or stabbed or shot yet are still fearful that they could be the next victims. How can a criminal malefactor repair that harm?

There’s a lot more, with the Board noting that Mr Krasner doesn’t play well with others, and is zealous in his anti-police crusade, something with which the Board are wholeheartedly in support. They concluded:

Ultimately, for the sake of Philadelphia, it is far better for whoever is elected mayor to find a way to partner with the district attorney.

After all, it isn’t politicians who bear the brunt of leadership failures on public safety, it is vulnerable Philadelphians who must live with the everyday reality of gun violence outside their doors.

You know, that’s true enough: the city shouldn’t have to go around one of its elected officials, and the city shouldn’t have to bring in the Feds because local law enforcement won’t do its job. But Mr Krasner won his elections, in landslides, because actual law enforcement is not what a whole lot of city voters want. They want things to be nice, and they’d like things to be peaceful, but they also want things to be nice and peaceful without the police around, as though that were actually possible.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

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

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 Though the Inquirer does have a paywall, non-subscribers can usually get around five ‘free’ articles a month, with the website tracking IP addresses to determine that. You could, and I have before I subscribed, gotten five on your home computer, then five more on your smart phone as long as it wasn’t using your home WiFi for access, than five more on your computer at work.
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Killadelphia: Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has a Department in complete disarray

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page shows 54 homicides through 11:59 PM EST on Monday, February 13th, three more than the previous day, which is actually more than Broad + Liberty’s homicide tracker.

As we previously reported, there was a decline in the rate of homicides in Philadelphia that began last November, and that had continued into early this year, but the number of killings had begun to exceed the 2020 total, and 2020 finished with an ‘official’ 499 murders. Now the total, while lower than in 2021 and 2022, is 20.0% higher than 2020. It’s a bit too early to derive any strong statistical trends, because even though this winter has been mild, homicides normally increase significantly in the summer.

Naturally, The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t have any stories on these on their website main page, but on their specific crime page I was able to find Hit-and-run drivers killed two people after the Super Bowl and 4 dead, 5 injured in shootings during a violent (Saturday) overnight in Philly.

From the 2023 Mummer’s Parade in Philadelphia. Click to enlarge.

But the Inky did note the disarray in Commissioner Danielle Outlaw’s Police Department. Yes, a very large grain of salt has to be taken with this, given that the newspaper and its Editorial Board absotively, posilutely hate the police, there’s nothing I’ve seen which tells me that their reporting is false.

Lacking accountability, some Philly cops follow checkered path to high-ranking positions | Editorial

Apparently, one way to get ahead in the Philadelphia Police Department is to first get fired. No wonder some officers act as if they are above the law.

by The Editorial Board | St Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2023 | 6:00 AM EST

As Philadelphia endures record numbers of shootings and murders, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw implemented a second department shake-up in less than a year, which included promoting several dozen officers and transferring others.

Whether her actions result in safer streets remains to be seen. Given some of the officers who were commended, let’s hold the applause for now.

One of the promoted officers was fired in 2020 after allegedly supervising a meeting where officers were instructed to falsify reports in drug cases. He was also accused of attacking a female officer, hurling racist insults, and hiding information from the District Attorney’s Office. Last year, an arbitrator found the officer’s dismissal violated policy and reinstated him with back pay.

A second officer who was promoted had been dismissed in 2013 after he was charged with aggravated assault and stalking his girlfriend. The charges were dropped after a witness failed to appear in court, and the officer was reinstated.

A third officer who was promoted had been suspended for three days in 2011 after he lost his gun. Three years later, he was suspended for six days after improperly releasing three shooting suspects without questioning them, confiscating their weapons, or entering their information into police records.

Further down:

The message to many who are already wary of the police — as well as to many young officers learning the ropes — is that apparently, one way to get ahead in the Philadelphia Police Department is to first get fired. For that, you can thank the Fraternal Order of Police, which protects all cops, even the rotten apples.

Indeed, when it comes to being a Philly cop, fired rarely means fired. About 70% of officers disciplined in incidents from 2011 to 2019 had their cases overturned or reduced, The Inquirer found.

Of course, the Inky loves unions, at least unions other than the FOP and their own News Guild of Greater Philadelphia. The police officers’ union is doing what a union is supposed to do, protect its members. If the Philadelphia Police Department has been disciplining or firing officers without proper procedure, that’s on the Department and the city.

But promoting such officers? That doesn’t look so good. This is the Commissioner’s second top brass reorganization in half a year.

Then there’s this:

Eight more Philly cops were benched amid widening probe into a city antiviolence program

The officers’ guns were taken after an Inquirer investigation found they were improperly paid $76,000 in city funds to coach boxing. Children of police also got thousands of dollars to participate.

by Max Marin, Samantha Melamed, and Jeremy Roebuck | St Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2023 | 6:00 AM EST

Eight Philadelphia police officers have been placed on restricted duty and stripped of their service weapons — and the FBI is investigating — after an Inquirer report revealed that the officers had improperly received tens of thousands of dollars in city antiviolence grant money.

A police spokesperson confirmed the reassignments of the officers as well as a civilian police staffer. Together with a police captain who resigned last week, they pocketed more than $75,000 from a $392,000 city grant issued to Epiphany Fellowship Church for a program called Guns Down Gloves Up, city records show. City employees are not allowed to be paid from such grants.

The captain who resigned? He was scheduled to be another of the officers promoted, but resigned over other issues, including chronic absenteeism. Why would Commissioner Outlaw plan on promoting a district captain who was frequently absent? Did she not know that he was offnot on duty a lot?

In addition, children and relatives of police officers collected at least one third of funds paid to participants in the youth boxing program — more than $5,000 in prepaid debit cards, records obtained by The Inquirer show.

The program, according to its grant application, was supposed to use those debit cards to attract young people in North Philadelphia’s 19121 zip code who are at risk of becoming involved in gun violence, thereby improving police-community relations in the neighborhood. Yet, public records indicate that several of those teens and young adults reside in Delaware County or in the city’s Mount Airy neighborhood.

The program made its first payments in December of 2021, which was almost two years into Commissioner Outlaw’s watch. And she is responsible for whatever happens on her watch.

The Commissioner serves at the pleasure of the Mayor, and Mayor Jim Kenney, who brought Miss Outlaw in from the left coast in February of 2020, will be out of office at the end of the year, and Commissioner Outlaw will be out with him; none of the serious mayoral candidates will want to retain a police commissioner with her record.

The Philadelphia Police Department is in obvious disarray, with shake-ups, suspensions, firings, and a failure of the Commissioner to have her officers’ backs. She is hardly the only failed Philadelphia official, but she’s certainly very prominent among the failures.

There was, of course, very little reason to think that she’d actually be a success. When she was hired to be Police Chief in Portland, Oregon, this fawning tribute was written about her by Oregon Public Broadcasting, including this tell-tale line:

“She is the personification … [of] a current 21st-century mindset in police and policing in the community,” said Derald Walker, president of Cascadia Behavioral Health. . . . .

“When she left the room, there was an audible collective sigh that represented an incredible impression,” Walker said. “I think it’s going to be very hard to see her negatively, and for those people who have an ax to grind with police, to vilify her.”

Translation: Mr Walker thought that the incoming Police Chief wouldn’t offend the people who already didn’t like the police, then he thought her someone who would soft-peddle enforcement of the law.

Well, soft-peddling law enforcement just plain doesn’t work! And Miss Outlaw’s tenure as Commissioner has been an utter, utter failure, with officers leaving in droves, the Department hundreds of officers undermanned, and enough of a lax atmosphere that some officers think that it really doesn’t matter if they cheat the taxpayers.

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Killadelphia

We have previously reported a decline in the rate of homicides in Philadelphia that began last November, and that had continued into early this year. But a bloody weekend in the City of Brotherly Love has led to the Philadelphia Police Department now reporting 41 murders in the city through 11:59 PM EST on Sunday, February 5th, and that, while lower than 2021 and 2022, is now higher than the same day in 2020, a year in which the city finished with an “official’ 499 murders.

Official murders, that is!

On January 4, 2021, I posted the article, “Killadelphia reaches the milestone: I didn’t think they’d make it, but they did: 502 homicides in 2020.” That soon went out of date, because the Philadelphia Police Department changed the figure on their Current Crime Statistics page to 499 homicides in 2020. I couldn’t prove that they had initially reported 502 killings; it was something that I remembered, but in a truly rookie mistake, I failed to consider that the political powers that be, including Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, a political appointee of Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), not an officer who rose up in the ranks of the PPD, might not want that number to break 500, and the previous record of 500 set under Mayor Wilson Goode (D-Philadelphia) of the MOVE bombing fame, during the crack cocaine wars of 1990.

Well, if I made that mistake, someone obviously smarter than me did not. I got a tweet from NDJinPhilly with the screenshot I failed to get, so I consider that confirmation of my earlier stories.

The website Broad + Liberty has been keeping its own running track of city homicides, and they actually show two fewer murders — than do the Police, 39 murders plus one ‘suspicious’ death. B+L currently shows 40 homicides, but the 40th killing they show is listed as having occurred early this morning, not on the 5th. But I have to wonder: are B+L’s data being restricted, or has Commissioner Danielle Outlaw decided that she might as well have her department report more honestly now that somebody is counting?

The first five weeks of the year don’t really provide a good average daily number of killings; the warmer weather of late spring and summer get into the real averages. And 2020 was the year of the unfortunate death of methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled career-criminal George Floyd in custody, leading to the “Black Lives Matter” riots in many of our cities, including Philadelphia. That probably inflated the number of killings in Philly that year, but I’d note that the number of murders in the city was significantly higher in both subsequent years.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page had no stories at all about the weekend’s killings[1]Access3ed at 10:10 AM EST on Monday, February 6th. — though it naturally included a four-day-old OpEd piece once again supporting open homosexuality — while the specific crime page showed two stories about three of the murders. Given that the Philadelphia Police Department acknowledged five more homicides than in its previous report, ending on Groundhog Day, one would think that two more deaths would have been noted. I suppose that tells us just what is more important to the editors of the Inquirer.

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↑1 Access3ed at 10:10 AM EST on Monday, February 6th.
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Killadelphia: Not as bad as last year!

January is over, and we have the final numbers from the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page: the city officially admits to 30 homicides for January, a major improvement over January of the previous three years. If the current rate of killings is maintained throughout the year, that would put Philly on track for 353 murders for 2023.

However, the website Broad + Liberty, following its exposé concerning how the official numbers have dramatically undercounted killings, has a different number. Broad + Liberty has been keeping a running track of homicides and suspicious deaths in the City of Brotherly Love, including documenting with official police press releases.

B + L have counted 33 homicides, plus one suspicious death. Yeah, that’s still significantly lower than the last three years, but it’s 10% higher than the city admits.

As always, there’s more. The city’s official shooting victims database has documented 141 shootings in January. That’s an improvement over January of 2022, in which the same site recorded 166 shootings, a 15.06 decline in shootings, which is a far lower decline than the 31.82% decline in the official homicide numbers. Either the city is getting better at keeping people who have been wounded by gunfire from dying, or the gang-bangers have become even worse shots than usual; both could be true.

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Philly’s Mother of the Year Has The Philadelphia Inquirer finally admitted that there are gangs in the city?

We have expended some bandwidth mocking The Philadelphia Inquirer for its statement that there are no real gangs in the City of Brotherly Love:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

We also mocked the George Soros-sponsored defense attorney who is now the city’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, when his office decided to refer to them as rival street groups. And we pointed out, at the end of last year, that what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. was still using euphemisms to refer to gangs those cliques of young men, though the word “gang” in one article, apparently for prosaic reasons, since the term “street group” had been used previously in the same sentence.

Well, perhaps the journolists[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading at the Inky got tired of being mocked; I know that I wasn’t the only one doing it!

A Southwest Philly street gang burglarized three gun stores, stealing nearly 100 guns, DA says

Members of 54th Street targeted gun stores in the suburbs, prosecutors said Wednesday, committing overnight, smash-and-grab burglaries that put guns in the hands of criminals.

by Vinny Vella | Thursday, January 25, 2023

Investigators in Montgomery County dismantled a Philadelphia street gang that they say burglarized a series of suburban gun stores in the fall, stealing 93 firearms that they used in shootings in the city or sold to other criminals. One of the guns, prosecutors said, was used in the murder of a 16-year-old.

OK, reporter Vinny Vella gets a point for using the word “gang,” but he loses a point for using the horrible, made-up word “burglarized,” which has, sadly, come into the dictionary, when the proper word is “burgled.”

In a sweeping affidavit of probable cause released Wednesday, prosecutors outlined the investigation of 54th Street, a gang active in Southwest Philadelphia. The group, mostly teens, wielded guns openly on social media and in music videos of rap songs in which they bragged about killing their rivals and terrorizing their neighborhoods, according to the document.Two adults and 11 juveniles were charged in the investigation, but only four were named in the affidavit: Angel Mason, 40, Elijah Terrell, 16, Donte Purnell, 22, and Liv Hall, 18. The nine other suspects, between the ages of 14 and 17, have been charged in juvenile court and were not publicly identified.

All have been charged with operating a corrupt organization, conspiracy, gun violations, and related offenses.

Elijah Terrell, photo via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.

Hmmm, young Miss Hall looks like she never expected to get into this kind of trouble! The Inky, of course, did not include her photo, but Fox 29 News did.

But she’s 18-years-old, legally an adult, and she (allegedly) took a stupid decision to join in burgling a gun store. They whooped and partied and made some good bucks last fall, but now someone is stone-cold graveyard dead, shot by one of the guns the 54th Street clique of young men, and apparently women as well, (allegedly) stole, and since the burglary occurred in Montgomery County and not Philadelphia, Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner won’t be able to cut her any sweetheart plea bargain.

None of the attorneys representing the four charged as adults had any comments concerning the cases. Mr Vella wrote that he found no indication that two of the defendants had yet hired lawyers.

According to Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele, only 33 of the stolen guns have been recovered. That means that sixty of the stolen firearms are still out there, almost certainly in the hands of other criminals. Perhaps, just perhaps, the gun control laws the editors of the Inquirer say that Philly ought to be able to enact on the city’s own authority wouldn’t do anything at all to have stopped a few dozen bad guys from obtaining the firearms they wanted.

Donte Purnell, photos via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.

The first burglary was committed on September 24, 2022, when Miss Hall and four of the charged juveniles broke into Founding Fathers Outfitters in Springfield Township, getting away with 26 handguns, only six of which have been recovered.

Angel Mason would be my nominee for Mother of the Year in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy, Philadelphia. It seems that 16-year-old Elijah Terrell, her son, (allegedly) attempted to rob a man at gunpoint in Southwest Philly, but was thwarted when his intended victim drew his own weapon and shot Mr Terrell. After that, our Mother of the Year candidate supposedly called 22-year-old Donte Purnell, who is also her son, to tell him to get the stolen weapons out of their home before detectives arrived with a search warrant.

There comes a point at which it’s difficult to believe that anything else in Philly could surprise you, and then you read a story like this. Apparently there’s really no bottom to the decadence in the City of Brotherly Love. Liv Hall, the fourth suspect pictured? She was caught when she (allegedly) used one of the weapons from the first burglary to shoot at her brother during an argument outside of their home.

These people were caught not so much because they are evil but because they are just boneheadedly stupid. Who knows, Miss Mason might be the leader of this gang, but a criminal mastermind she isn’t.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Hold them accountable!

Meet Edwin Vargas. If you were expecting to see Mr Vargas’ mugshot in The Philadelphia Inquirer, your expectations would have been dashed, but at least the Inky covered his arrest:

Man arrested for quadruple shooting that killed 3 in Mayfair

Edwin Vargas also is charged with murder that occurred on Jan. 3. Vargas has been in custody since Jan. 18 for an earlier gun incident.

by Robert Moran | Tuesday, January 24, 2023

A 24-year-old man is facing murder charges for the deaths of three young men in a quadruple shooting on Jan. 9 in the city’s Mayfair section, police said.

We had previously noted the killings in Mayfair. We said then:

According to the city’s shooting victims database, which records only three victims, not four, and only two fatally shot, not three, as of 12:22 PM EST on Tuesday, January 10th, the victims were all Hispanic white males; what I have often called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. doesn’t want to tell you that part. As of this writing, the 18-year-old victim does not appear on the database.

A check of the city’s shooting victims database, which now lists 124 shooting victims since the beginning of the year, now lists all four victims.

Mr Vargas was already behind bars, and has been charged with another murder that occurred on January 3rd, but had been locked up since January 18th for a December 30th “gun incident”. The police finally connected him with the January 3rd killing after he had been jailed, and then detectives sought a warrant for him for the triple murders.

But here comes the money line:

Court records show Vargas has been in and out of jail as an adult since late 2016, when he pleaded guilty for firearms violations.

Last July, Vargas pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a telecom device by an inmate.

On Aug. 30, he was released from prison.

Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §5123(c)(2), illegal possession of a telecom device by an inmate is a first degree misdemeanor. Under Title 30 §923(a)(7), the sentence for a first degree misdemeanor is “a fine of not less than $1,500 nor more than $10,000, or imprisonment not exceeding five years, or both.”

Yet, according to the Inquirer, Mr Vargas was locked up for less than two months for this crime.

So, Mr Vargas, “in and out of jail as an adult since late 2016”, and with who knows how many juvenile offenses under his belt, could have been locked up until 2027, but someone, somewhere, decided that nahhh, they could let him back out on the streets.

And now four people are stone-cold graveyard dead.

Mr Vargas is, of course, innocent of those four murders until proven guilty, but if he is guilty of even one of them, whoever decided to turn this fine gentleman loose has the victim’s, or victims’ blood on his hands. Will that person, or persons, ever be held accountable?

That, of course, is a rhetorical question: no, nobody will be held accountable. But if we did hold prosecutors, judges, and parole boards accountable for the crimes committed by previously convicted criminals who could have still been behind bars but were treated leniently and released before the maximum possible sentence, we would see crime rates go down dramatically, if for no other reason than the bad guys would spend more time in prison and less out on the streets. Had Mr Vargas been behind bars when he could have been, when the state already had him in custody, four more men — assuming the charges are correct — could still be alive today.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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Killadelphia: Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Broad + Liberty’s Philadelphia Homicide Tracker noted that the dead body found on January 23rd was not classified as a homicide by the Philadelphia Police Department, although the website did not tell us how the police did categorize it. And there was no change in the PPD’s Current Crime Statistics page to indicate that it was a homicide.

But here’s the PPD’s press release on the discovery of the body, which was Broad + Liberty’s information source:

Death Investigation:

39th district .. Stabbing –3xx Hansberry Street inside at 11:50 AM  a 25-year-old black male was stabbed to the right side of his neck, under his chin. The male was pronounced (dead) on location at 11:52 AM by Medic 28. Scene held, no weapon recovered, no arrest made.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the fact that someone died from being stabbed in the neck, under his chin, and the fact that the knife was not found on the scene, sure makes that seem like a homicide to me! Broad + Liberty obviously thinks so, as would anyone with an IQ higher than Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw’s, but the Philadelphia Police Department can’t quite seem to say that’s what it is.

There are things which could make it not legally a homicide: if it was a killing in self-defense, it’s not considered a homicide under the law. A suicide is also not considered a homicide under the law, but this was no suicide, because the knife disappeared.

It would make more sense to list this as a homicide, and if it turns out to be a self-defense case, remove it from the homicide report later. As it is, it looks like Commissioner Outlaw’s minions are trying to keep the numbers down artificially.

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Killadelphia The city counts 17 homicides, but Broad + Liberty has documented 20.

We had previously noted the decline in the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love that began last November, and that, as of the end of November, there was actually a margin-of-error chance that the city could finish with slightly under 500 ‘official’ homicides. It didn’t work out that way, and Philly finished 2022 with 516 ‘official’ homicides, though with the number of deaths classified as ‘suspicious’ rather than homicides, the real number could be much higher. Currently, the Philadelphia Police are reporting 17 homicides as of 11:59 PM EST on Tuesday, January 17th, but Broad + Liberty are reporting 20 through that time period. The Broad + Liberty site includes its sources, and every single one of them is documented with Police Department press releases.

Of the 21 homicides noted by Broad + Liberty — their update at 11:28 AM EST this morning includes a killing this morning — 14 of the victims, 12 males and 2 females, were black, six were Hispanic (all males), and there was one Asian male constituting the victims. This is the kind of information The Philadelphia Inquirer has, in that they receive the same press releases as Broad + Liberty, but they censor out of their news stories.

Two dead, one in critical condition after shooting breaks out at a Chinese restaurant in Southwest Philly

Police said the motive is unknown, but the victims all lived close to the restaurant where the shooting occurred.

by Beatrice Forman | Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Shangri-La Chinese food takeout, August 2019, via Google Maps.

Two people were killed and another was in critical condition after a shooting at a Chinese takeout restaurant in Southwest Philadelphia.Police told reporters at least 16 shots were fired at the Shangri-La restaurant on the 5400 block of Chester Avenue around 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday night as customers were picking up orders.

Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said officers found three unconscious victims on the floor of the takeout area when they arrived on the scene: a 19-year-old man, a 20-year-old man, and a 43-year-old woman. “All three victims were suffering from gunshot wounds,” Small said.

Police confirmed the 19-year-old man and the woman were pronounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The 20-year-old man is in critical condition.

While Broad + Liberty reported that the two who were killed were black, I had to find out from the city’s shooting victims database that the third victim, the 20-year-old male, was also black. I would have guessed that anyway, given that the Inquirer’s story said that the two men were brothers. While Inspector Small stated that the motive was unknown, or who were the intended targets, the shootings victims database indicated that the two men suffered multiple body wounds, including a head wound to the survivor, while the slain woman was struck in the shoulder. I’d note here that the database is a pain to use, and the three shooting victims from the same incident are not listed together, but on the fifth, seventh, and nineth lines of the database, as accessed at 1:40 PM EST.

It’s still early in the year, but the difference between 17 homicides and 20 is stark. Extrapolated over the full year, it’s a difference between 365 and 429 murders for 2023. With three more dead bodies documented in the city, the Philadelphia Police Department need to explain why three people who are stone-cold graveyard dead, three people who died from gunshot wounds according to Broad + Liberty’s statistics, don’t count as homicides.

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Nice guys will never solve Kensington’s problems Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here] to get things done

The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer is, since publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes took over, and the firing resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski, has been the wokest of the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading, so it’s rare for me to see them get something even half-right, but half right they got it:

It’s going to take more than $20 million to help the people of Kensington | Editorial

Without a comprehensive plan to clear the open-air drug markets and help those struggling with addiction and homelessness, the city will be throwing good money after bad.

by The Editorial Board | Sunday, January 15, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST

The city’s plan to steer millions of dollars to Kensington to combat the opioid crisis is a much-needed welcome start. But without a comprehensive plan to address the rampant open-air drug markets and homelessness lining the main business corridor there, the city will be throwing good money after bad.

Mayor Jim Kenney announced plans to distribute $20 million to community groups in Kensington to fund a variety of efforts, including overdose prevention, home repairs, and improvements to parks and schools.

The money is part of the $200 million Philadelphia expects to receive over 18 years as part of a national settlement with Johnson & Johnson and three drug distribution firms that helped fuel the opioid crisis.

Overall, Pennsylvania expects to receive $1.6 billion as part of the settlement negotiated by then-Attorney General (and now Gov.-elect) Josh Shapiro.

To their credit, Kenney and District Attorney Larry Krasner initially balked at the city’s portion of the settlement, given the scale of the opioid epidemic in Philadelphia, which has resulted in more than 1,100 deaths annually since 2017.

Philadelphia is ground zero in the state’s opioid crisis and should receive more funding. But the city ultimately went along with the settlement, figuring it was better than nothing.

The challenge now is to not waste the opportunity — or the money. For far too long, the city has allowed Kensington to devolve into an infamous drug bazaar.

That blurb above? That was in the online version of the editorial itself. It pretty much pegs the irony meter having the Editorial Board telling us about the “opioid crisis” and the Hellhole Kensington has become, and then link an OpEd which implores making illegal drug abuse safer!

As for the “infamous drug bazaar” mentioned? That’s a link to the Inky’s story about the Mexican government using videos of Kensington’s homeless and junkies in an ad campaign to scare Mexicans away from drug use!

The scene along the main business corridor is dystopian. Homeless encampments line the trash-strewn streets along with used needles, human feces, and vomit. There are scores of people smoking, drinking, sleeping, sitting, standing, and stumbling in different states of addiction.

Those unfamiliar with the jaw-dropping sight should google videos of Kensington, as words can’t capture the daily horror. It is an appalling and embarrassing blot on the city that no leader should accept.

Let’s tell the truth here: Mayor Jim Kenney has accepted it! Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has accepted it. And District Attorney Larry Krasner has accepted it. Oh, they’ll never say that, not out loud, but the fact that they haven’t actually done anything about it speaks volumes.

I don’t particularly like copying photos from the Inquirer, but the one on the right, which you can click to enlarge, illustrates the problem, and I thought that photographer José Moreno captured it well. An unidentified junkie, passed out on litter-strewn Kensington Avenue, just a few steps from the SEPTA Market Street/Frankford rail line station, by security roll-down shutters marred by graffiti, with someone trying to see if he’s just passed out or maybe dead, while the police look on. Are the police doing anything about it? Has an ambulance been called?

Another photo can be found here.

Near the end of the editorial:

Past efforts to clamp down on drug dealing and homelessness have been successful, but short-lived. In 1998, then-Police Commissioner John Timoney launched Operation Sunrise, a major effort designed to retake control of Kensington’s streets.

In 2017, the city cleared a large heroin encampment that existed for years in a gulch along the Kensington rail line. In 2021, the city cleared two homeless encampments along Kensington Avenue.

Really? The Editorial Board could reference just three major efforts in twenty-five years? Well, perhaps there were more, and the newspaper simply didn’t have all of the information, or the Board believes that more links would make poorer prose. But I did notice that after a major story in the Inquirer on August 17, 2020, there’s no referenced story about the police making a major raid that year.

The Editorial Board noted that the l;aw abiding residents in Kensington want the police to “crack down” on the open air drug markets, on the crime and the homelessness, but one particular paragraph stands out:

“If the drug dealers are not here then the drug addicts won’t be here,” Darlene Burton, a Kensington resident and community activist, told the Editorial Board. “You have to cut off the head of the snake.”

The Board let that statement stand without challenge, but let’s tell the truth: as long as there are drug addicts, there will be people willing to sell drugs to them. And that is where all of the proposals to attach the dealers fail: the city needs to crack down on the addicts as well.

The addicts need to be arrested and charged for using illegal drugs, and they need to be kept locked up at least long enough for the drugs to get out of their systems, and go through detoxification. You can’t just offer the junkies drug rehabilitation, you have to get them through detox, and force them to go through rehab, or you are just wasting your time and money. You need to convict them of crimes, so that they can, at the very least, be put on probation with frequent, mandatory drug tests.

Why haven’t Mayor Kenney, Commissioner Outlaw, and District Attorney Krasner done anything about Kensington? Because, deep down, they know that what I wrote in the previous paragraph is necessary, and none of them are willing to invest the time or money or political capital to do that. But if the city doesn’t do that, doesn’t treat not only the drug dealers but the drug addicts seriously, then the current situation in Kensington will continue. Oh, a police action of sorts could move the junkies out every so often, but without taking care of the addicts, all that can be done is push them into Fairhill, Harrowgate, or Hunting Park.

The truth ought to be obvious: you can’t be a nice guy and solve the problems. Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here].

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

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

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.