Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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Philadelphia Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier doesn’t want her “Black and brown” constituents paying more in property taxes

One great thing about moving back to our home state of Kentucky from Pennsylvania: property taxes are much lower in the Bluegrass State! Property taxes on what was our home in Jim Thorpe are currently listed as $3,228 according to Zillow, while we paid slightly under $400 in property taxes on our current abode last October.

No, $400 is not a typo!

Black and brown homeowners unfairly targeted by Philly’s new property assessments

The Kenney administration cannot claim to center either racial or housing equity if they are making it more difficult for working class and Black and brown homeowners to afford to their homes.

by Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier (D – 3rd District) | Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier (D-Philadelphia). Photo from her city biography page and is a public record. Click to enlarge.

Philadelphia prides itself on its high homeownership rates, especially among working class residents. But the massive property assessment increases that were announced earlier this week present an immediate threat to this fact of life in our city — especially in Black and brown neighborhoods experiencing rapid gentrification. A disproportionate number of these neighborhoods are in the 3rd Councilmanic District, where residential assessments have increased by 50% on average.

I will admit to some amusement that The Philadelphia Inquirer’s use of the Associated Press Stylebook has led to the “Black and brown” formulation when it comes to race. The AP decided that black was to be capitalized when referring to race, but white was not. Continue reading →

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Hold them accountable!

What happens when the District Attorney does not take crime seriously?

It was a series of small decisions, taken the wrong way, and the result was that a woman was sexually assaulted.

Suspect in SEPTA sex assault masturbated in a probation office two weeks before, officials say — but wasn’t charged

Some in the court system are questioning whether Quintez Adams could have been prevented from allegedly sexually assaulting a woman on the subway on April 24.

by Chris Palmer | Thursday, April 28, 2022

Quintez Adams, photo by Philadelphia Police Department and is a public record. Photo via the Bucks Daily Voice. Click to enlarge.

The man accused of sexual assault on SEPTA’s Broad Street Line last week had masturbated in front of probation officers inside their Center City offices two weeks earlier, authorities said Thursday.

And though police took 28-year-old Quintez Adams into custody — landing him in jail for potentially violating his probation in a prior burglary case — they didn’t ask prosecutors to charge him with a crime for several weeks.

In the meantime, court records show, a city judge ordered that Adams be released and ended his probation. And just 12 days after that, police say, Adams sexually assaulted a woman on the subway.

  • Mr Adams had been convicted of burglary in 2014, and sentenced to three years in prison. After his release, he was put on probation. Due to several probation violations, his probation has been extended.
  • Mr Adams showed up for a probation meeting on April 4, 2022, and was visibly intoxicated. He had actually appeared on the wrong day. While seated, a probation officer found him masturbating in public. The police were called, and Mr Adams was taken into custody, and the probation officer taken to the police department’s Special Victims Unit to be interviewed.
  • Following the interview, the Special Victims Unit failed to issue an arrest warrant, even though he was arrested after committing an obscene act viewed by several probation officers.
  • Mr Adams could have been charged as a violation of his probation, but was not.
  • Nevertheless, the Adult Probation and Parole Department notified Common Pleas Court Judge Frank Palumbo of the incident. A week later, on April 12th, Judge Palumbo ordered Mr Adams released and his probationary period ended.
  • On Sunday, April 24th a woman was raped on SEPTA’s Broad Street Line. The alleged attack happened between the Erie and Girard Avenue stations around 12:30 PM, a crime caught on surveillance tape.
  • Mr Adams was arrested for that rape, for which he has been charged, along with indecent exposure at the probation office, and an indecent exposure incident at a hospital.

Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said the Department would investigate why the Special Victims Unit did not issue an arrest warrant for Adams over the obscene act on April 4th, to see if there is some action which needs to be taken.

Now, why was Mr Adams allowed to skate, when the Philadelphia Police Department had him in custody? He violated his probation, yet Judge Palumbo turned him loose and ended his period of supervision. The Special Victims Unit knew what he had done, and knew he was a previously convicted felon on probation. They had everything they needed to keep him behind bars.

Because he was not behind bars on April 24th, an innocent woman was raped.

So far, I haven’t found George Soros-funded District Attorney Larry Krasner’s grimy fingerprints on this directly, but he has created an atmosphere in which crime is not taken seriously, because everyone knows he doesn’t really like to send anyone to jail, at least anyone not a police officer who stepped over the line. Did the Special Victims Unit just wave it off as something harmless, because they figured that let’em loose Larry would never prosecute? We don’t know, but can hope that Chief Inspector Vanore gets to the bottom of it.

Did Judge Palumbo somehow figure that the public masturbation, and intoxication, was somehow a meaningless crime, so no harm, no foul? Did he think that Mr Adams was simply no longer worth spending the city’s money?

At some point, people holding a public trust need to be held accountable! Judge Palumbo, most certainly, and the officers on duty with the Special Victims Unit at the time, definitely. Right now, a woman is dealing with the trauma of having been raped due to their refusal to do their duty!

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Killadelphia Though slightly below last year's pace, Philly is easil;y on track for over 500 murders this year.

In doing some research for a completely different project, I came across an article of mine from August 23, 2021:

Haven’t the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer noticed the numbers?

Homicides and shootings in the city have dropped significantly

Posted on August 23, 2021 | 9:05 PM EDT

We have previously noted the recent decrease in the number of homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. We noted, on July 9th, that there had been 291 killings as of 11:59 PM on July 8th. 291 ÷ 189 days in the year, = 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. If I recall correctly, that 562 number was my highest projection for the year.

But then, as of the 221st day of the year, 325 homicides had been recorded. 325 ÷ 221 days in the year, = 1.4706 homicides per day, for a projected 537 for the year. That number stayed fairly consistent, as a week later, with ‘just’ 339 homicides in 228 days, Philadelphia was seeing ‘only’ 1.4868 homicides per day, which works out to ‘just’ 543 over the course of 2021.

As of 11:59 PM on Sunday, August 22nd, the Philadelphia Police Department reported that there had been 345 homicides in the city. 345 ÷ 234 days = 1.4744 per day, or 538 projected for the year. The big news is that, over the past 31 days, a full month, if not a calendar month, there have been ‘just’ 31 homicides, ‘just’ 1.00 per day. With 131 days remaining in 2021, if that rate could be maintained, there would be ‘only’ 476 killings in Philly for the year. If The Philadelphia Inquirer has noticed that decrease, I haven’t seen it mentioned. It certainly doesn’t seem as though their Editorial Board has noticed.

There’s more at the original. But the line that caught my eye was, “We noted, on July 9th, that there had been 291 killings as of 11:59 PM on July 8th. 291 ÷ 189 days in the year, = 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year.”

And 562 it turned out to be!

Between July 9th and September 6th, which Labor Day, the homicide rate dropped to 1.4578 per day, which would have worked out to ‘only’ 532 homicides. Sadly, the killing rate increased, and by the end of the year it was back up to 1.5397 per day, and that 562 projection was realized.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Killadelphia Update

As of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, April 24th, there had been 151 murders in the City of Brotherly Love this year. That’s 4.43% below last year’s pace, when there had been 158 homicides by the end of April 24th.

As of April 24, 2021, 28.11% of city’s total of 562 murders had been committed. If the same percentage applies this year, Philly would see 537 homicides. The city still has the long, hot summer ahead.

But there’s an obvious question: what if Philadelphia doesn’t have that early July through early September lull this year? During the ‘lull,’ there were still 72 murders in the city, but had the ‘lull’ of 1.2203 homicides per day not occurred, there would have been 91 people killed.

Yes, I’m something of a numbers geek, but projecting things like this will always be somewhat problematic. It is well known that homicides increase as the weather gets warmer, and decrease as it cools down again. Yet, in Philly, the pace of killings picked up in the fall; that’s how the city ‘achieved’ its record of 562 souls sent early to their eternal rewards. A couple of weeks of rain could affect the projections, as could an early, heavy snow. A heat wave might keep the gang bangers inside in the air conditioning, and not out on the streets shooting at people.

Well, the 151 number didn’t even last the morning:

The 500 block of West Spencer Street (not Avenue) is not a terrible neighborhood. The area is filled with mostly well-kept attached single-family homes, and North 5th Street is lined with decent-looking two-story businesses with (probable) apartments on the second floor.

Of course, when The Philadelphia Inquirer gets around to reporting it, they’ll remove the race of the victim!

Thus far, under Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, Philadelphia has seen the first and third most homicides in its history, with only Mayor Wilson Goode’s — Mayor Goode of MOVE bombing fame! — record of 500 in the crack cocaine wars of 1990 in the middle of that. But I’m guessing that 2022 will see at least a solid second-place finish for Messrs Kenney and Krasner, and Miss Outlaw.

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Why Philly cancelled its #MaskMandate : it was entirely politics!

I do not normally like to reproduce photos from The Philadelphia Inquirer, due to copyright issues, but this one definitely falls within “fair use” criteria. The caption, reproduced along with the photo via screen capture, states:

Masked Sixers fans watched pregame warm-ups before the Sixers’ Monday playoff game against the Toronto Raptors, during Philadelphia’s short-lived revival of an indoor mask mandate.

Except, of course, that’s not what the photo shows at all.

The photo captures the faces of five people at the game, during pre-game warmups. Three are clearly wearing face masks, a fourth has one, but it’s tucked under his chin, while a fifth spectator doesn’t have a mask visible anywhere on his person, though it’s possible he has one available somewhere. The boy with the red mask is wearing his slightly below his nose, so it’s useless there as well.

This photo was as much propaganda as much as anything else. It was published along with this story:

Why some health experts worry that Philly’s switch on masks may backfire

Philadelphia’s mask conundrum, which saw the city reverse a new mandate days after imposing it, may undermine public confidence, experts warn.

by Tom Avril and Sarah Gantz | Saturday, April 23, 2022

As Philadelphia’s health commissioner during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, Stuart H. Shapiro knows what it’s like to run a big-city health department during a crisis. The evidence keeps changing, yet the guidance has to be updated in a way that inspires public cooperation and trust.

That’s why it was smart for Philadelphia to establish clear COVID-19 benchmarks in February, spelling out what levels of cases and hospitalizations would trigger requirements such as masks and proof of vaccination, he said. But now that those metrics have been cast aside as of Thursday, Shapiro worries that the abrupt reversal may backfire.

Also read: Philadelphia is the only top 10 U.S. city where lawmakers are still meeting virtually

“It’s totally confusing,” he said. “It takes away confidence in science-based criteria.”

Another former health agency chief, previously skeptical of Philadelphia’s decision to become the only big city to resume an indoor masking requirement, praised its decision to replace its mask mandate with a strong recommendation to mask up.

“They did the right thing at the same time, which is to highly recommend the use of masks,” former Baltimore health commissioner Leana Wen tweeted Friday. “Remember if you wear a mask to please wear a well-fitting N95 or equivalent.”

There’s more at the original.

If you look at the photo closely — and you can click on it to enlarge the image — you’ll see that of the three people actually wearing the masks that none of them are wearing N95 or equivalent masks; they’ve got cloth masks, while the gentleman wearing a mask below his chin appears to have a surgical mask.

The article is basically full of excuses as to why Philadelphia was the only major city to reimpose a mask mandate, and then cancel it four days in. But while it gives us an excuse, the real reasons are two-fold, and obvious:

  1. The indoor mask mandate was being significantly ignored, as witnessed by this video taken the same day as the photo above; and
  2. The Democrats are facing a potentially disastrous election for them, and the public, and the voters, are just plain tired of the restrictions.

On Friday, Philadelphia health commissioner Cheryl Bettigole rejected any suggestion that the quick reversal on the mask mandate could hurt the health department’s credibility.

“I very much take seriously my obligations to say things that are true to Philadelphia and to keep my promises,” Bettigole said. “I had said when I announced this that if we didn’t see hospitalizations rising that we needed to rethink this and that we shouldn’t have a mandate in that case.”

COVID hospitalizations in the city rose earlier in the week, following an increase in cases, but both numbers have since declined slightly. Everyone hopes that widespread vaccination, along with the immune response induced by prior infection, will make severe COVID a thing of the past.

Note that the last quoted sentence is not indicated as a quote from Dr Bettigole, but appears to be a political statement by the article writers.

In the past, the decisions and announcements on COVID restrictions came on Mondays. The reinstated mask mandate was announced on Monday, April 11th, the health department supposedly taking the weekend to consider data which were obvious, something I predicted on April 5th, to take effect the following Monday, April 18th. Yet the mandate was lifted on the evening of Thursday, April 21st. Whatever health data existed from the first four days of the mandate was hardly sufficient to justify changing the decision, but the information on the political aspects was right in front of their noses. That Philadelphia was the only major city to reimpose the mandate was information that they did have, as it was blared all over the city’s media outlets.

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A very Democratic city!

We have frequently noted the ridiculous lack of law enforcement in Philadelphia when it comes to illegal drug use.

Now we get Steve Keeley, a reporter for Fox 29 News:

This means that junkies are shooting up heroin and fentanyl and who knows what else in public, on the train platform. This isn’t even the Allegheny Avenue station we’ve written about before, but 30th Street, thirteen stops away from Allegheny Avenue, near the Amtrak station and Drexel University. This isn’t Kensington, this isn’t the slums. This is near Powelton Village.

Of course, some of the junkies could have gotten on the train in Kensington, shot up while riding, and then gotten off at 30th Street, but why would they? It costs money to ride the train, and 30th Street isn’t really a neighborhood itself, but the middle of the train, trolley and Amtrak lines.

But hey, this is for what the good people of Philadelphia voted!

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Gentrification is a good thing!

On its website main page Thursday morning, The Philadelphia Inquirer, in plugging a new story, Philadelphia’s gun violence crisis through the eyes of those experiencing it, there was a link to an older story, Philly blocks besieged by shootings have long endured poverty, blight, and systemic racism. Dated September 16, 2021, I had seen it before. The story documents some of the blocks with the highest number of shootings, and tells us what we already knew:

But in Philadelphia, the epidemic of gun violence has been intensely concentrated in just a handful of neighborhoods and several dozen blocks — like the one where Johnson was killed, according to an Inquirer analysis. These shootings have left behind a breathtaking level of fear and trauma among a fraction of the city’s residents, nearly all of whom are Black and brown.

I admit to being wryly amused by the Inquirer’s stylebook, seemingly copied from the Associated Press, which decided that, in reference to race, “black” should be capitalized, but “white” should not. The stylebook led to “black” being capitalized and “brown” being left in lower case. Social justice, racial justice, and just generally being #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 leads to some real stupidity.

As unchecked gun violence has reached unprecedented heights this year, it has continued to disproportionately batter these same communities, where residents also endure higher poverty levels, lower life expectancy, and more blighted housing, the analysis shows.

Naturally, the “anti-racist” Inquirer wants to blame everything but race, unless it’s the racism of white people!

After several paragraphs noting violent areas, including the blocks around the intersection of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, about which we have written previously, and around which the Philadelphia Police Department has mostly ignored the open-air drug markets, I came to these two paragraphs, two I found very important:

The vast majority of the city’s developed[2]By “developed,” article authors Chris Palmer, Dylan Purcell, Anna Orso, John Duchneskie, and Jessica Griffin meant blocks not devastated by crime and neglect, blocks in which the … Continue reading blocks with housing — more than three-quarters of them — haven’t experienced a single shooting since 2015. Entire swaths of Center City, Northeast Philadelphia, Chestnut Hill and Roxborough, far whiter and wealthier than the rest of the city, have not seen a shooting for years.

Neighborhoods like Graduate Hospital, Fishtown, and University City — where years of reinvestment have ushered in more wealth and opportunity — are just a few minutes’ drive from shooting hot spots. But they rarely experience gun violence.

“(Y)ears of reinvestment have ushered in more wealth and opportunity”, huh? Let’s not beat around the bush here: the writers managed to avoid the word itself in their long article, but the word is gentrification.

Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses.[3]“Gentrification”. Dictionary.com.Lees, Slater & Wyly 2010[page needed] define gentrification as “the transformation of a working-class or vacant area of the central city to a … Continue reading It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning. Gentrification often increases the economic value of a neighborhood, but the resulting demographic displacement may itself become a major social issue. Gentrification often shifts a neighborhood’s racial or ethnic composition and average household income by developing new, more expensive housing and businesses in a gentrified architectural style and extending and improving resources that had not been previously accessible.[4]West, Allyn (5 March 2020). “Baffled City: Exploring the architecture of gentrification”. Texas Observer. Archived from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 21 June 2020., [3][5]Harrison, Sally; Jacobs, Andrew (2016). “Gentrification and the Heterogeneous City: Finding a Role for Design”. The Plan. 1 (2). doi:10.15274/tpj.2016.01.02.03.

The gentrification process is typically the result of increasing attraction to an area by people with higher incomes spilling over from neighboring cities, towns, or neighborhoods. Further steps are increased investments in a community and the related infrastructure by real estate development businesses, local government, or community activists and resulting economic development, increased attraction of business, and lower crime rates. In addition to these potential benefits, gentrification can lead to population migration and displacement. However, some view the fear of displacement, which dominates the debate about gentrification, as hindering discussion about genuine progressive approaches to distribute the benefits of urban redevelopment strategies.

But it appears that the residents of these poorer neighborhoods don’t want wealthier, and let’s be honest here, whiter people moving in:

In a plan for a safer, vibrant 52nd Street, worried West Philly neighbors see gentrification looming

Angst is roiling minority neighborhoods as they struggle to balance the opportunities and the threats created by gentrification. “West Philly is the new Africa,” one resident warned at a community meeting. “Everyone wants the property that’s in West Philadelphia.”

by Jason Laughlin | February 21, 2020

The topic of the community meeting — a plan to beautify 52nd Street, to make it safe, welcoming, and prosperous once again — was, on its face, nothing but good news for West Philadelphia’s long-declining business corridor.

Yet the audience of about 50 residents and retailers, mostly African American, grew increasingly agitated as urban designer Jonas Maciunas flipped through a PowerPoint presentation of proposed improvements. Many weren’t seeing a vision of a neighborhood revitalized from Market to Pine Streets. Instead, in the talk of redesigned intersections, leafy thoroughfares, and better bus shelters, they heard the ominous whisper of gentrification.

“It just seems that when white people decide to come back to a certain neighborhood, they want it a certain way,” said Carol Morris, 68, a retired elementary school teacher.

Morris’ declaration opened the floodgates of fear and anger that recent night at the Lucien E. Blackwell West Philadelphia Regional Library. Maciunas and Jesse Blitzstein, director of community and economic development for the nonprofit Enterprise Center, which is spearheading the project, were peppered with skeptical questions ranging from the validity of surveys showing community support for the improvements to the maintenance of trees that would be planted.

There’s more at the original.

As we have previously noted, the Editorial Board of the Inquirer have told us that racial segregation is very much part of the problem in city residents feeling unsafe, and Philadelphia is one of the United States’ most internally segregated big cities. But that very same Editorial Board, less than two years ago, were very wary about gentrification. To be fair — and I so rarely am when it comes to the Inquirer — the Board have at least mixed feelings when it comes to gentrification.

While Philadelphia and the Inquirer haven’t been so blatant as to say so directly, the liberal city of Lexington[6]Fayette County was one of only two counties, out of 120 total in the Bluegrass State, to be carried by Joe Biden in the 2020 election. has. As we have previously noted, Lexington said, directly, that it was concerned about gentrification, and, “Most new owners being more affluent and differing from the traditional residents in terms of race or ethnicity.” The city was concerned about white people moving into heavily black neighborhoods.[7]Lexington’s Hispanic population are not large enough to really dominate larger neighborhoods.

Philadelphia is not concerned about black residents moving in and integrating nearly all-white neighborhoods, and that is what the Inquirer’s Editorial Board said ought to happen. But somehow, liberal cities don’t seem to want that to happen in reverse, don’t seem to want white people moving into majority black neighborhoods.  Yet, as the Inquirer noted:

Neighborhoods like Graduate Hospital, Fishtown, and University City — where years of reinvestment have ushered in more wealth and opportunity — are just a few minutes’ drive from shooting hot spots. But they rarely experience gun violence.

Gentrification seems to reduce violence!

Gentrification ought to be something every city wants. Not only do revitalized properties raise property values around them, but when white ‘gentrifiers’ move into a majority black neighborhood, they are clearly white people who have no racist attitudes toward blacks, people perfectly willing to have black neighbors. Is that not a good thing?

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 By “developed,” article authors Chris Palmer, Dylan Purcell, Anna Orso, John Duchneskie, and Jessica Griffin meant blocks not devastated by crime and neglect, blocks in which the housing was not dilapidated, but they couldn’t quite bring themselves to say that.
↑3 “Gentrification”. Dictionary.com.Lees, Slater & Wyly 2010[page needed] define gentrification as “the transformation of a working-class or vacant area of the central city to a middle class residential and/or commercial use”.
↑4 West, Allyn (5 March 2020). “Baffled City: Exploring the architecture of gentrification”. Texas Observer. Archived from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
↑5 Harrison, Sally; Jacobs, Andrew (2016). “Gentrification and the Heterogeneous City: Finding a Role for Design”. The Plan. 1 (2). doi:10.15274/tpj.2016.01.02.03.
↑6 Fayette County was one of only two counties, out of 120 total in the Bluegrass State, to be carried by Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
↑7 Lexington’s Hispanic population are not large enough to really dominate larger neighborhoods.
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Killadelphia Perhaps Commissioner Outlaw ought to worry about her primary job first?

We already knew it was a bloody few days in the City of Brotherly Love, but the city didn’t update its figures on Friday, due, I suppose, to the Good Friday holiday. Now they have, and it’s ugly.

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page states that there have been 140 homicides in the city as of 11:59 PM EDT on Easter Sunday, April 17th. That’s 11 more dead bodies since the previous Sunday, and 8 of them occurred since the end of Wednesday, April 13th, 8 murders in 4 days.

So, about what has Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw been worried?

Please join me in welcoming @Phillypolice‘s first Chief Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Officer, Ms. Leslie Marant! Ms. Marant’s position and office have been established to oversee diversity and inclusion efforts at every level of our organization. A lifelong Philadelphian, she …is uniquely qualified to succeed in this position. Having demonstrated tireless dedication and passion to the field of DEI work, she is the former Chief of Staff for the Universal Education Company, as well as the former Chief Council to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. She has earned a B.S. in Finance & HR Admin, and a Juris Doctor & Master of Laws, Trial Advocacy from @TempleUniv. We will benefit enormously from her experience as we continue to build and rebuild trust with the communities we serve. Welcome!

The Commissioner’s statement quoted is from three separate tweets. The image of the tweet on the right is a screenshot taken by me at 9:15 PM EDT on Monday; click on the image to take you to the original tweet.

“(D)iversity and inclusion”? It would seem that “diversity and inclusion” efforts have not been exactly successful in the city’s shootings and killings! Perhaps Commissioner Outlaw should worry about her primary job, bringing criminals to justice, first?

According to the city’s Shooting Victims database, there had been 49 people shot from Thursday through Sunday, 33 of them black, 12 listed as Hispanic white, and 4 as non-Hispanic white. That brings April’s total to 133 shooting victims, 104 of them non-Hispanic black, 12 Hispanic white, and 6 non-Hispanic white. No other racial/ethnic groups are listed as shooting victims.

Philadelphia’s population, according to the 2020 census, was only 38.3% non-Hispanic black, yet, thus far in April, they’ve been 78.20% of the shooting victims. Yet the main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website had exactly one story on the shootings and killings this morning, and it was dated on Saturday, April 16th. The publisher, Lisa Hughes, the Executive Editor, Gabriel Escobar, and their minions don’t want to report at all on shootings and killings in minority communities, because that would be raaaaacist!

By this afternoon, the Inquirer’s Editorial Board weighed in:

50 shootings during the weekend warns of a deadly summer in Philly | Editorial

As summer approaches, and with the city once again on pace to record more than 500 homicides this year, officials must act now to stem the possibility of bloodshed later.

by The Editorial Board | Monday, April 18, 2022

When it comes to gun violence in Philadelphia, it’s long been clear that warm weather can have serious consequences.

A 2018 New York Times analysis found that days when the temperature exceeds 50 degrees have nearly 70% more shooting victims in our city than days when the weather is 49 or below. A similar trend, the Times found, plays out in other cities that also experience seasonal weather changes.

It should hardly have come as a surprise, then, that an unexpected stretch of sunny April weather during the holiday weekend also saw the number of incidents of gun violence tick up dramatically in the city. During a 24-hour stretch from Thursday to Friday, the city averaged a shooting an hour, and of the two dozen people who were shot, five were killed. All told, from Thursday to Sunday, the city saw a total of 50 shootings. During that four-day stretch, the high temperature in the city did not dip below 52 degrees.

The weather has been cool in the northeast on Monday, so maybe there won’t be as many shootings and killings, but the forecast is for a warming trend, to finally get back to spring normal temperatures.

The Editorial Board, a self-described “group of journalists who work separately from the newsroom to debate matters of public interest,” but who seem to have a strong commonality of #woke leftist views, continue with typical liberal pablum ideas: opening more swimming pools this summer, the School District offering in-person educational programming for all students over the summer, and a roster of summer programs.

While restoring programs and reopening pools are important steps for cooling tensions, the stakes and the scale of this crisis demand the same kind of bold intervention that we’ve seen from Mayor Jim Kenney on COVID-19. That means finding more ways to fight gun violence, not telling residents and colleagues that you’ve done all you can.

Apparently Commissioner outlaw believes that hiring a Chief Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Officer is the way to go! Yeah, that’ll sure calm down the gang-bangers!

Call me a cynic if you will, but somehow I’m not confident that the city’s wannabe gangsters are going to be all that interested in summer school.

If the city is once again unable to open all of its pools, then avoid hitting poorer neighborhoods with most of the closures. If library hours and programs cannot be fully staffed, find ways to support branches in our most vulnerable communities. If trash collection once again falls behind, prioritize neighborhoods where residents have smaller homes and fewer cars, leaving them without options to store and transport their waste. Hold the Police Department accountable, track and transparently evaluate anti-violence programs, and ensure the implementation of recommendations from the “100 Shooting Review.” Integrate violence prevention into everything the city does, as this board called for at the outset of the year.

Apparently to The Editorial Board, “poorer neighborhoods” is a synonym for black and Hispanic neighborhoods. As we have previously noted, the Board are very, very concerned about the racial disparity in the danger faced by Philadelphians, and blamed it on Philly being one of the most internally segregated cities in the country. Curiously enough, if you read their editorial carefully, you might come to the conclusion that the Board want white residents to feel as endangered as black residents do, sort of a socialist leveling down rather than raising up.

The fact is that there are a lot of poorer white Philadelphians as well, and they aren’t shooting each other at the same rate black city residents have done. However, neither the Editorial Board, nor the Mayor, nor the District Attorney, nor the Police Commissioner can admit that the homicide rate in Philadelphia is a racial problem more than an economic one. There is something in the culture of urban black communities that is leading the young men males of those communities to carry guns and blast away, but it is apparently wholly raaaaacist to point out that statistically obvious fact.

But you cannot address a problem if you are unwilling to acknowledge the problem, and the while liberals of Philadelphia are unwilling to face the problem because it is so very politically incorrect.

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Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right "Nice guy" policies have led to disaster in our urban areas

I have previously noted a major article in The Philadelphia Inquirer about the city’s open-air drug market near Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, complete with a photo of a man who appears to be shooting up right outside the SEPTA station. The photo shows the street littered with trash, and people just plain not caring.

The theme of the article, dated August 17, 2020, was that the COVID-19 crisis might have caused shortages in everything else, but not in the availability of drugs.

I continued to scan the newspaper for stories about how the Philadelphia Police Department had gotten their dander up about the Inquirer article, and had a massive raid to round up the drug dealers and close the drug trade down there, but it just never seemed to happen. Now there’s this, from Fox 29 News:

Philadelphia officials consider resolution designating Kensington a FEMA site

By Shawnette Wilson | April 13, 2022 | 11:30 PM EDT | Updated April 14, 2022 | 7:28AM EDT

SEPTA station on Kensington Avenue, in the background, with homeless tents on the sidewalk. Photo from Fox29 News. Click to enlarge.

KENSINGTON – Reported as the worst possible section of the United States, in terms of homelessness and drug abuse, city officials are looking for a federal and state government intervention in Kensington.

“When I was a teenager, this neighborhood was fine,” David Adcox stated. He says it’s different for his two teenage children he’s raising in Kensington, where he has lived about 45 years.“You could hang on the corner and play football. You used to be able to block Somerset off and have block parties,” Adcox added.

He says since the late nineties, things have steadily changed for the worse.

“Drugs happened and it’s been downhill since,” Adcox commented.

Some Philadelphia city officials announced last week they are taking drastic steps to address the open drug use and addiction on the streets of Kensington.

At least as of 8:08 AM on Friday morning, there was no story on the Inquirer’s website main page about this. One would think that the city considering turning this problem over to the federal government would make the news.

“What we’ve been doing has not worked. This has been going on for 10, 20, even 30 years,” Philadelphia Councilmember At-Large Allan Domb said and went to say it’s a humanitarian crisis.

“It’s the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse,” Domb added.

Domb, Councilmember Maria Quinones-Sanchez and Councilmember Mark Squilla have announced a resolution requesting that Kensington be declared a FEMA and PEMA site, like areas hit with tornadoes, floods and hurricanes.

It would mean federal and state involvement with resources and financial assistance.

“40 percent might be Philadelphians, but at least 60 percent or more are not. They may have obtained ID’s for Philadelphia, but it’s not right that the city has to take care of this humanitarian crisis when the majority of the people are not from Philadelphia,” Domb explained. “We need to bring people back to the homes where they came from, take care of the population that’s Philadelphia and get them into the right services and help them.”

But, but, but, I thought that Philadelphia was a sanctuary city, welcoming everybody, regardless of immigration status. And Councilman Domb is a Democrat.

Mr Domb has been on the city council since January 4, 2016. Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez has been in office since January 7, 2008, while Councilman Mark Squilla has been there since January 2, 2012. All are Democrats.

Have they not noticed the problem until now?

The Inquirer was all #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 and social justicey on August 17, 2020, when Aubrey Whelan’s article appeared — the firing resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski two months earlier, and “anti-racist” publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes was in place the previous February — yet even the newspaper covered the story at the time. Kensington is a heavily Hispanic neighborhood, with the non-Hispanic black population being relatively low, so perhaps that allowed the Inky to cover it?

The solution is not that complicated: send in the police and clear out the druggies, users as well as dealers. When the next group of dealers move in, as they will, send in the police again.

Philadelphia has been run by the Democrats for the last seven decades; the last Republican Mayor left office when Harry Truman was still President. And while the Democrats have not always been the squishes on law enforcement that they have been for a while, Democratic policies have enabled Kensington to become “the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse” are concerned.

If you want to clean the place up, you need conservative policies, and conservative policies are not nice ones. To be a conservative, you have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] at times, because yielding to sympathy has meant allowing the existing problems to fester and get worse. It is better for the city, it is better for the United States, for [insert plural slang term for the rectum here] to be running the government, at all levels, people who will not allow sympathy and lenient policies to turn everything to [insert slang term for feces here], as has happened in all of our major cities.

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.
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The reason Philly murders are down is that the bad guys are lousy shots * Updated! * They meant to kill more people

The blood was flowing on Philly’s streets early on Thursday!

Shootings across Philly leave 1 dead and 12 injured

An unidentified young man was found shot dead on the 400 Block of Manton Street in South Philadelphia around 2:10 p.m.

by Robert Moran | Thursday, April 15, 2022 | 7:28 PM EDT | Updated: 8:39 PM EDT

Thirteen people were shot — including one fatally — in gun violence across Philadelphia on Thursday, police said.

Around 2:10 p.m. in South Philadelphia, an unidentified young man was found with a gunshot wound to the head outside on the 400 block of Manton Street. He was pronounced dead at the scene by medics. Police reported no arrests.

The 400 block of Manton Street is not a bad neighborhood. Well-kept row houses, some new construction, houses in the $400-$500,000 range, and a South Philadelphia neighborhood that appears to be gentrifying. Continue reading →