Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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The people in Philly can feel in their bones what The Philadelphia Inquirer won’t report

Another soul was sent untimely to his eternal reward in the City of Brotherly Love yesterday, but Philadelphia, which had been one ahead of its daily total for last year, fell behind by two, as four people were murdered on April 6, 2021. The numbers remain so close that no conclusions can reasonably be drawn as to whether 2022 will see more homicides than last year, but unless there is a very drastic change, 2022 will certainly exceed 2020’s 499 murders.

    70% of Philadelphians believe public safety is the most important issue facing the city, poll finds

    The number of residents who said crime, drugs, and public safety was the No. 1 issue — about 70% — has increased by 30 percentage points compared to August 2020.

    by Anna Orso | Wednesday, April 6, 2022

    More than half of Philadelphia residents do not feel safe in their neighborhoods at night, two-thirds have heard gunshots in the last year, and an overwhelming majority see public safety as the biggest issue facing the city.

    That’s according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which surveyed 1,541 Philadelphians in January on issues related to crime, policing, and the twin impacts gun violence and COVID-19 have had on residents’ outlook. It was conducted after 2021 saw record numbers of people killed or injured by gunfire.

    Among Pew’s starkest findings was that the number of residents who said crime, drugs, and public safety was the No. 1 issue — about 70% — has increased by 30 percentage points compared with August 2020, the last time Pew conducted such a survey. It’s the highest percentage any topic has received since Pew started polling more than a decade ago, said Katie Martin, senior manager of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia research and policy initiative. . . . .

    And while more than half of Black and Hispanic residents said gun violence has had a major effect on quality of life in their neighborhoods, less than 20% of white residents said the same.

There’s a lot more in the original, and while Philadelphia Inquirer articles are hidden behind a paywall, you can see a few free articles a month.

The last quoted paragraph I included reflects the city very well. Though the Inquirer has referred to Philadelphia as a “black city”, the  2020 census found that just 38.3% of the city’s population were non-Hispanic black, and Hispanics, who can be either black or white, made up 14.9%. Between non-Hispanic whites, 34.3%, Asians, 8.3%, and “other groups,” 4.3%, the city is 46.9% non-black, and it doesn’t take a terribly large percentage of the Hispanic population being white to get the city to majority non-black. The non-Hispanic white population of the city have certainly declined, but they are hardly gone. If white residents do not see crime as the most serious problem, the way black and Hispanic Philadelphians do, much of that can be attributed to the fact that, while the city’s overall population are quite “diverse” — a word I’ve come to despise — internally the city is highly segregated.

In being highly segregated, white residents can afford to see crime as a less serious problem, because crime hits white residents far less frequently. The Inquirer is very, very good at covering stories in which the victim was clearly an ‘innocent,’ a ‘somebody,’ or, most importantly, a cute little white girl. When Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student approaching graduation was murdered. Mr Collington was a white victim, allegedly by a black juvenile in a botched robbery. On December 2, 2021, the Inquirer published 14 photographs from a vigil for Mr Collington, along with another story about him. Five separate stories about the case of a murdered white guy. The newspaper even broke precedent when it came to Mr Collington’s murder by including the name of the juvenile suspect in the case, and delving into his previous record.

Oh, it’s not as though the Inquirer doesn’t publish stories about black victims, at least when it comes to black victims who are ‘innocents’. The murder of Samir Jefferson merited two stories, and four stories about the killing of 13-year-old Marcus Stokes.[1]I did note my suspicion that young Mr Stokes might not have been quite the innocent the Inquirer, and writer Anna Orso, made him out to be. A story is merited if the victim was a local high school basketball star, and cute little white girls killed get tremendous coverage: a search of the newspaper’s website for Rian Thal returned 4855 results! But for the vast majority of black victims, Inquirer coverage is a couple paragraphs, mostly in the late evening, and which have disappeared from the main page of the newspaper’s website by morning, if even that much.

Why? It’s simple: reporting about black bad guys getting killed by other black bad guys, in the words of the Sacramento Bee, “perpetuat(es) stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.” In her “apology to black Philadelphians and journalists,” publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes did not use those specific words, but the effect has been the same: no reporting of stories which might tell readers what they already know: that the vast majority of the murder victims, and their killers, in the City of Brotherly Love are black males who have been involved in the gang or criminal lifestyle.

However, despite the Inquirer’s attempt at minimizing crime in black neighborhoods, while reporting on it more diligently when the victims and perpetrators are white, because under Miss Hughes the newspaper is determinedly “anti-racist,” nobody is fooled. Part of the issue is that the newspaper’s paid circulation is pathetically low: the Philadelphia metropolitan area has roughly 6,108,000 people, meaning that the Inquirer’s circulation is paid for by a whopping 1.67% of what ought to be its service area. The circulation numbers are total, but even if all of its circulation was in the city itself, it would be paid for by just 6.35% of the population.

Pretty poor for the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper!

An Inquirer graphic shows how concerned Philly residents are. The people who are more heavily impacted by violence are more concerned, and most white residents simply are not; the gang bangers are shooting up Kensington and Strawberry Mansion, not Rittenhouse Square or Society Hill. The newspaper might not report much on killings in minority neighborhoods, but the people who live there know what happens. And while the Inquirer deliberately eschews publishing the photos of black victims and perpetrators, the television stations there are not so reticent.

Television is, after all, a heavily visual medium, and the television news broadcasts reach far more people than the Inquirer: the Inquirer itself reported that WPVI drew 287,000 viewers for it’s 6:00 PM local newscast, in February of 2018, and 163,000 for the 11:00 PM news show, while the newspaper had a circulation of 101,818 daily copies in May of 2019. WPVI, which has higher ratings than the other Philadelphia stations, is still only one of four.

Of course, local television news is free — although most people are paying for cable subscriptions — while newspapers cost money, but it would seem that a lot more people watch the local news on television than read the newspaper. There is something to be said for providing your customers what they want.

The Inquirer, under Miss Hughes and Executive Editor Gabriel Escobar, deliberately censor their coverage, to meet their “anti-racist” goals, but the truth leaks through. When the newspaper reported on the shooting of a 13-year-old boy at the intersection of 49th and Hoopes Streets, simply printing the location told Philadelphians that it was in a heavily black neighborhood, and while the newspaper didn’t report it, the victim was, in fact, black. When the paper reported on the targeted shooting death of a 15-year-old boy near Tanner Duckrey School, just printing the victim’s name, Juan Carlos Robles-Corana, told readers that the victim was Hispanic.

And so we have the report on how people feel about the issues in the city, and with the Inquirer publishing it, we can see that the propaganda the paper is trying to push has not resulted in people being misinformed. They know what is happening around them!

Also see: Republican registrations surge in Pennsylvania in warning sign for Democrats

Perhaps even more pathetically, white Philadelphians are contributing to the crime wave. Yes, the city is plurality non-Hispanic black, and yes, black voters traditionally give around 90% of their votes to Democrats, but softer-than-soft on crime District Attorney Larry Krasner was re-elected with 71.81% of the vote in November of 2021. That number has to include a whole lot of votes from the liberal white areas, from the voters who saw the impact of violence on the quality of their lives as having a minor (49%) or no (33%) impact. It’s easy to be sympathetic to liberal causes when it’s not in your back yard.

I have complained, more than once, that the Inquirer tries to hide the full truth, because the full truth does not match their editorial philosophy, but, in one very obvious sense, they really haven’t hidden the truth from the black and Hispanic populations of the city; those residents can see and hear and feel what has been happening around them. It’s actually the white residents of Chestnut Hill and Manayunk who have been deceived.

References

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Philadelphia, which ended its indoor mask mandate on March 2, is looking at a new one

Cheryl Bettigole, from BillyPenn.

We have noted Philadelphia’s Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole and her desire to control, control, control people’s lives. We pointed out that even as countries around the world, and many American cities and states were loosening or dropping restrictions on people that had been imposed due to the COVID-19 panicdemic — and no, that’s not a typo — the lovely Dr Bettigole, on Groundhog Day, said that Philadelphia is likely “several months” away from being able to drop its current restrictions.

Exactly four weeks later, on Wednesday, March 2nd Philadelphia ended its indoor mask mandate, and the Commissioner was forced to say said that she hoped that there is “enough immunity in the city that we really are at an end point.”

Now, not quite five weeks later, we find this:

With COVID-19 cases inching up in Philadelphia, city urges a return of masks indoors

As cases start to rise, Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said “now is the time to start taking precautions.”

by Rob Tornoe | Tuesday, April 5, 2022

COVID-19 cases have once again started to increase in Philadelphia, and health officials are encouraging residents to consider wearing masks indoors in public spaces.

As of Monday, Philadelphia was averaging 94 new COVID-19 cases per day over the past two weeks, an increase of more than 50% over the past 10 days, according to the city’s health department. Test positivity rate has also inched up to 3.1% from a low of 2% in the beginning of March.

The city said 48 patients with COVID-19 are being treated in Philadelphia hospitals, five of whom are on ventilators.

Also see: William Teach: Raleigh To Charge Un-Vaxxed Employees $50 A Month Health Surcharge

The slight uptick in cases comes as Europe has seen a wave of new infections brought on by a subvariant of omicron — known as BA.2 — which now accounts for nearly three-quarters of new COVID-19 cases in the United States, according to the CDC.

“As we see more cases of COVID-19 in the city, everyone’s risk goes up. That means that now is the time to start taking precautions,” Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said in a statement. “It’s not required yet, but Philadelphians should strongly consider wearing a mask while in public indoor spaces.”

Philadelphia’s COVID-19 response level remains “all clear,” meaning there are no restrictions or vaccination requirements across the city. The city will require masks in indoor public places if two or more of the following are true:

  • Average new cases per day are more than 100 (currently at 94)
  • Hospitalizations are more than 50 (currently at 48)
  • Cases have increased by more than 50% in the previous 10 days

There’s more at the original, but it seems inevitable: Philadelphia will reimpose its mask mandate, and Dr Bettigole will be happy and dancing, though she might at least do the latter behind closed doors, where the people can’t see her glee. I do have to wonder, though: after two years of the city’s bovine feces, just how many Philadelphians will obey a new mask mandate?

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Killadelphia A 15-year-old was killed, possibly as a result of an earlier fist fight.

A 12-year-old, the son of criminals, takes a shot at the police, and winds up dead. A 15-year-old is arrested for shooting at teenaged girls in a fleeing car, hitting two of them, and the police say that he is a suspect in two other shootings as well. A 17-year-old is accused of shooting and killing a Temple University student in a botched robbery.

Is it any wonder that Philadelphians are applying for concealed carry permits at a record-breaking pace?

    13-year-old boy shot in head in West Philly

    The victim was sitting alone in a car at 49th and Hoopes Streets when someone started shooting shortly before 8:30 p.m., police said.

    by Robert Moran | Monday, April 4, 2022 | 9:55 PM EDT

    A 13-year-old boy was hospitalized in critical condition after he was shot in the head Monday night in the Mill Creek section of West Philadelphia, police said.

    The shooting was reported shortly before 8:30 p.m. at 49th and Hoopes Street.

4931 Hoopes Street, listed for sale at $125,000, from Zillow.com.

Hoopes Street consists almost entirely of two-story row homes, in not the best or repair, and 49th in that area is no better, yet people are being charged $1,195 a month to rent these marginal residences, at least according to this listing on Zillow. A vacant lot at 4935 Hoopes Street is being listed for $50,000, while this disaster at 4931 Hoopes is being listed for $125,000.[1]Here are the other three photos of 4931 Hoopes Street, from the current Zillow listing. Those photos will eventually disappear from the listing if that dump is ever sold. No wonder people in this neighborhood have little hope; they’re being robbed just to live in dumps! Yet it was a neighborhood which got a 13-year-old boy shot in the head; what could have been worth that in that neighborhood?

    The boy, who lives in the neighborhood, was sitting alone in the front passenger seat of an Acura SUV when someone approached the car from that side and opened fire, said Capt. John Walker, commanding officer of the Shooting Investigation Group.

The police believe that the victim was personally targeted, and several shots were fired at him. As of Tuesday morning, Fox29 is reporting that the victim is still “fighting for his life,” so he is not a current homicide statistic.

What does it say that I have quite reasonably referred to a 13-year-old boy as a “statistic”?

A 15-year-old boy was shot dead in the city earlier in the day, and police said that at least 20 shots had been fired in the confrontation. Fox29 reported, that a law enforcement source said that investigators believe the shooting may have stemmed from a fist fight earlier in the day.

At some point it has to be asked: what can a 15-year-old, an eighth grader, and a 13-year-old have done to have caused their enemies to hunt them down and assassinate them in deliberate, targeted killings? One murder was possibly a revenge engagement from a fist fight? If that’s the case, then investigators will know with whom the fist fight occurred, and he’ll be caught. One kid is dead, and another will be locked up, hopefully for the rest of his miserable life, behind a fist fight?

In just the first three days of April, ten people, all of them black, were shot in the city, two fatally, and it’s nothing other than routine in the City of Brotherly Love. 125 people have been murdered in Philly as of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, April 4th, and April 4th in 2021 was the end of a weekend.

Also read: The Philadelphia Inquirer: ‘I just need to know why.’ Mother pleads for answers in the slaying of son, 15.

This is a cultural thing, an urban culture which glorifies carrying guns to the point that adolescents are doing so, exhibiting the quick, responsive, irresponsible and immature judgement of adolescents, and other adolescents are frequently the victims when these kids start firing away. But no one will ask why this is the case, no one will even acknowledge that this could be the result of an urban culture, because that will lead to the obvious point: this is a primarily black phenomenon, and to point out that is raaaaacist.

It ought to be obvious: you cannot address a problem, and certainly cannot solve a problem, if you will not admit the problem, if you cannot discuss the problem, and no one wants to do that, not with this problem. The political, intellectual, and journalistic leaders in the city would rather ignore the problem, would rather see the killing continue, than to risk being labeled racists by doing the very radical thing of just telling the truth.

We have previously noted that not only does The Philadelphia Inquirer decline to print such news itself, but has criticized other media for reporting the news the editors of the Inquirer believe should be ignored.

Of course, the people of Philly know that the problem of killings in the city is a largely black problem; just because the Inquirer specifically, and the rest of the media more generally, try to obscure that doesn’t mean that the public are unaware. When Philadelphians hear that these killings are happening in Kensington or North Philadelphia or Strawberry Mansion or around Temple University or in West Philly, they know that these are heavily black neighborhoods. The primarily law-abiding black residents in those areas have to dread what can happen on their streets, and the wealthier white liberals don’t need to care, because Chestnut Hill and Rittenhouse Square just don’t experience that violence. The truth is that black lives don’t matter, not in Philadelphia, at least they don’t matter enough to address the problems.

References

References
↑1 Here are the other three photos of 4931 Hoopes Street, from the current Zillow listing. Those photos will eventually disappear from the listing if that dump is ever sold.
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A public service homicide It shouldn't be any surprise the Philly has become like the Wild, Wild West, when the sheriff has apparently left town

The initial reports were that the store owner shot and killed a would-be robber in the City of Brotherly Love. After the initial, confused reports, things were clarified:

    Armed robbery suspect shot, killed by customer in North Philadelphia store, police say

    Fox 29 News | Wednesday, March 30, 2022 | 1:42 PM EDT | Updated 5:41 PM EDT

    Crime scene. Photo via Steve Keeley, Foxn29 News.

    PHILADELPHIA – Authorities say a suspected armed robber was shot and killed by a customer at a North Philadelphia corner store Wednesday afternoon.

    Officers from the Philadelphia Police Department were called to the 1400 block of Master Street around noon for reports of a shooting.

    A police source told FOX 29’s Jennifer Joyce that two young men wearing masks entered the store and approached a man in his 23-year-old man waiting for a food order. One of the robbers hit the man in the head with the gun and a struggle began.

    The robber handed the gun to his accomplice at which point law enforcement sources said the customer shot the armed robber twice in the abdomen. The customer is licensed to carry a firearm, according to police sources.

    The suspect was taken to Temple University Hospital by responding officers but later succumbed to his injuries. The second robber fled the store after the shooting and has not been captured.

    Law enforcement sources say the customer was released and is unlikely to be charged. The entire incident was captured on store surveillance that has already been turned over to investigators.

When I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page on Thursday morning, I found the number of killings unchanged since the previous day, which means that the Department did not consider the killing of this thug to be a crime. Some of us might even consider it a public service.

I had figured that, being a day later, even The Philadelphia Inquirer ought to have something on this story, but, unless I completely missed it, there was no story on it on either the newspaper’s website main page or specific crime page.

The bodega in which the shooting occurred is on the corner of Master and 15th Streets, close to Temple University, and it isn’t a slum. Rather, 15th Street is lined with fairly new construction three-and-four-story residences, with the look of having been constructed to house Temple students.

We noted, just a couple of weeks ago, that applications for concealed carry permits in Philadelphia had surged, and the reasons are clear: the city is not protecting citizens from the gang-bangers and the criminal class, and the public increasingly feel the need to protect themselves. When the District Attorney, a George Soros stooge, won’t prosecute crimes, won’t put the bad guys behind bars, what real choice do Philadelphians have?

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Killadelphia When will Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw be held accountable for the chaos in Philadelphia?

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. doesn’t like to print stories about the murders in the city, because so many of them are one gang-banger, almost always black, shooting another gang-banger, the victim again almost always black. But the newspaper does love to do stories about innocent people being killed, so it is with some surprise it took until Monday for the Inquirer to get around to this story; WPVI-TV, Channel 6, had it on Friday.

    A 15-year-old boy, shot in Wissinoming while getting a case of water bottles from his dad’s car, has died

    Sean Toomey was shot in the head outside his family’s home on the 6200 block of Mulberry Street.

    by Chris Palmer | Monday, March 28, 2022

    Sean Toomey, photo from Tweet by Jaclyn Lee, 6ABC News.

    A 15-year-old boy who was shot in the head in Wissinoming last week while grabbing a case of water bottles from his father’s car has died, according to his family and Philadelphia police.

    Sean Toomey, of the 6200 block of Mulberry Street, was shot around 9:10 p.m. Thursday outside his family’s house on that block, police said.

    His aunt, Anna Toomey, said Monday that the teen had been inside the house before going out to retrieve the case of water when he was shot and collapsed on a neighbor’s lawn.

    Officers who responded took him to Jefferson Torresdale Hospital, where he was initially placed in critical condition. He was pronounced dead on Friday afternoon, police said Monday.

WPVI’s report noted:

    That woman called her boyfriend for help and by the time that boyfriend got outside, police say the two suspects ran off – but then shots were fired. Police have ruled out the boyfriend.

    “I heard the two pops and I thought it was firecrackers,” said Sean’s father, John. “But it only takes a second to grab some water and get in the house and he wasn’t coming back in. So I got curious, I put my sweatshirt on, and I went outside and I saw him lying on my neighbor’s lawn.”

    That’s when Toomey discovered his own son had been shot, once in the head, once in the side.

There’s more at the originals.

Homicide Capt. Jason Smith said on Monday that the police believe that the killing was related to a group of three men who had attempted at least two other robberies in the area just prior to the shooting. Though initial reports stated that young Mr Toomey was struck by bullets fired after the previous robbery attempts, police have not ruled out the possibility that the criminals tried to rob Mr Toomey personally.

    Police said three other people were slain over the weekend: A 28-year-old man was found dead from several gunshot wounds on the 400 block of Kingsley Street, in Wissahickon, around 11:50 p.m. Sunday; a 30-year-old man died after being shot on the 800 block of East Willard Street in Kensington around 11 p.m. Sunday; and 33-year-old Eric Sampson, of West Philadelphia, was fatally shot around 12:20 a.m. Friday on the 3500 block of Kensington Avenue in Kensington.

The Inquirer article stated that no arrests have been made in any of the homicide cases.

There have been 120 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, March 27th. That’s a 3.45% increase over the same date in record-shattering 2021, and 31.87% higher than in 2020, which was second all-time in in city murders with 499. The statistics are too close to state that 2022 will break 2021’s record of 562 homicides, but it seems almost certain that the 500 number will be eclipsed.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, there have been 121 murders through Sunday in the Windy City, one more than in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, but the guesstimated population of Chicago is 2,671,635, while 1,576,251 people live in Philly.

At some point it has to be asked: when will Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw be held accountable for the chaos in Philadelphia? These people have failed, utterly failed, in their jobs.

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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A very minor omission in The Philadelphia Inquirer The difference between journalism and journolism

I use the term ‘journolism’ to refer to heavily biased reporting. It’s not a misspelling: my of 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. Many times biased journalism comes not from stating something false, but the omission of pertinent information, and boy, did Philadelphia Inquirer writers Ximena Conde, John Duchneskie, and Aseem Shukla do that here!

    Chart from The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 25, 2022. Click to enlarge.

    Philly had its largest one-year population decline since 1975: See charts that show the factors

    The drop in total population follows almost a decade of population growth for Philadelphia.

    by Ximena Conde, John Duchneskie, and Aseem Shukla | Friday, March 25, 2022

    Philadelphia lost almost 25,000 residents in a year, according to new census data looking at a full year of the pandemic released Thursday.

    The drop in total population between July 2020 and July 2021 is the largest one-year decline since 1975 and follows almost a decade of population growth for Philadelphia, which topped 1.6 million residents in 2020. The losses were driven primarily by the residents who moved out of the city, which exceeded the number of people moving into Philly.

    In the U.S. Census Bureau’s 12-month snapshot, Philly saw the highest disparity since 2001 between people moving in and those moving out. That difference led to a net loss of more than 28,000 residents, doubling what census numbers showed for the year prior.

There’s a lot more at the original, which you can read by following the link embedded in the headline.

The article gives some of the reasons for the city’s guesstimated population loss:

  1. A desire to flee crowded urban centers, something which will disappoint the global warming climate change activists, who see pushing more people into urban areas as a way to decrease CO2 emissions due to automobile traffic.
  2. Young adults moving back in with parents, in part due to the recession caused by responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Philadelphia persisted with restrictions after many other areas had dropped them, though much of that occurred after the data for this study was collected.
  3. More affluent residents leaving to second homes; the article makes no mention as to why such people wouldn’t be counted among current population numbers if they did not sell their city homes.
  4. City dwellers leaving cosmopolitan life in exchange for green space. The COVID-19 shutdowns and lockdowns produced a greater desire for having your own backyard.
  5. Immigration into the city decreased while President Trump was in office, but the article suggests that it will increase again now that Joe Biden is in office.
  6. A significant narrowing of the gap between live births and deaths.

The article writers noted that the population estimates are not as accurate as the actual census counts, so the data are at least questionable.

But despite the “few possible factors driving the Philly departures” given, one was conspicuous in its absence: the writers never mentioned Philadelphia’s huge crime rate! 2020, the first year of the panicdemic pandemic, saw the city’s homicide numbers jump from 356 in 2019 — which was already the highest since 2007 — to 499, good for second place all time, and only one short of the record of 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990. Then, in 2021, that record was blown to smithereens, with 562 murders.

The police were hobbled by a social and racial justice prosecutor who is more interested in finding malfeasance among the police than he is with prosecuting actual criminals, the idiotic #BlackLivesMatter protests which further alienated the population from the police, and the Inquirer itself, which, under “anti-racist” publisher Elizabeth “Lisa” Hughes and new Executive Editor Gabriel Escobar, has editorial policies very much in tune with District Attorney Larry Krasner’s philosophy of soft-peddling crime stories because they might negatively impact and stereotype the black community in the city.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, there have been 115 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, March 24th, three more than the same date last year, meaning that Philadelphia is on a path to come very close to, and possibly exceeding, the 562 record. Fortunately, the latest man killed was a criminal attempting to rob a Dollar General store, shot dead by the store manager after the would-be robber made threatening moves with what turned out to be a toy gun in his jacket pocket.

As Robert Stacy McCain would say, “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

    In other gun violence Thursday night, a 15-year-old boy was shot in the head and right side of his body around 9:10 p.m. in the city’s Wissinoming section, police said.

    The shooting occurred in the area of Mulberry and Devereaux Streets. The teen was taken by police to Jefferson Torresdale Hospital. He was reported in extremely critical condition.

    Police received preliminary information that two males suspected in the shooting also attempted a gunpoint robbery a short time earlier in Mayfair.

Philadelphians see stories like this every day, perhaps not in the Inquirer, but the local television stations carry the stories. In a city in which the quality of life is spiraling downward, in which the voters have just re-elected a softer-than-soft on crime District Attorney, in which Dollar General store managers feel the need to carry a firearm to protect his employees and himself because, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away, how is it that three well-educated and well-paid Inquirer reporters can simply omit the fact that Philadelphia is wracked with crime and violence as one possible reason that people are moving away?

Well, perhaps I’m being unfair in blaming the three reporters; it’s entirely possible that they did include it, but Editor Gabriel Escobar or one of his minions blue penciled it.[1]Yes, I know: I’m showing my age! But, whoever is responsible is showing the journolism of the Inquirer, while Mr Escobar and Miss Hughes and the Lenfest Institute which owns the paper scratch their heads, wondering why the newspaper is losing readers.

References

References
↑1 Yes, I know: I’m showing my age!
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A Philadelphia crook is laying on a slab in the morgue Updated! Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

As we noted yesterday, Philadelphians have been applying for concealed carry permits in droves, due to the city being unable to protect them from the bad guys. Now, another Philadelphian has protected his property:

    West Philadelphia resident fatally shoots trespasser who tried breaking into car

    A West Philadelphia resident on Wednesday night shot and killed a trespasser who had thrown a brick through the resident’s car

    by Rodrigo Torrejón | St Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2022 | 7:49 AM EDT

    A West Philadelphia resident on Wednesday night shot and killed a trespasser who had thrown a brick through the resident’s car, according to reports.

    Shortly after 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, police responded to a call of gunshots on the 4400 block of Fairmount Avenue, 6ABC reported. When officers arrived, they found a 23-year-old man lying on the 700 block of 44th Street, with multiple gunshot wounds.

    The man, whose name was not released, was taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead soon after.

    Police said that the 23-year-old had scaled a fence and trespassed onto the Fairmount Avenue property, into an enclosed rear yard and threw a brick into the driver side window of a Alfa Romeo SUV, 6ABC reported. After hearing the noise, the 49-year-old homeowner, whose name was also not released, came out to confront the man and shot at least three times.

The legal punishment for vandalism is not death; the legal punishment for stealing a car is not death. But sometimes the legal punishment for stupidity is death! When you break into someone’s property — and climbing a fence into someone’s “enclosed rear yard” definitely constitutes breaking into someone’s property — bad things can happen to you. As Robert Stacy McCain would put it, ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes.’

From 6ABC News:

    Before receiving word of gunshots, (Chief Inspector Scott) Small said police got several calls about a man wearing a mask trespassing on the rear or properties in the area and one call about a man breaking into a vehicle.

    “We believe these calls are related to the shooting,” Small said.

And the money line:

    The 23-year-old is known by police and his last known address is two blocks from where he was shot, Small said.

“Is known by police,” huh? That’s the euphemism for “he was a frequent crook we’ve arrested several times.”

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Crazy people are dangerous.

This leads to the obvious question: why wasn’t the 23-year-old frequent flyer already behind bars? Did the police not have enough evidence to get him convicted of something in their previous encounters with him? Did the cops let the guy go with just a warning a couple of times? Did Larry Krasner, who has been Philadelphia’s District Attorney since the deceased was 19 years old, decline to prosecute, or offer the criminal lenient plea bargains which kept him from being locked up for a long sentence, or kept him out of jail completely? There’s some obvious speculation here, but one thing is certain: Philadelphia’s criminal justice system did this guy no favors! Had he been behind bars last night, he wouldn’t have been happy, but he’d at least have been able to look forward to getting out of jail sometime, and getting on with his life.

Instead, he’s lying on a slab in the morgue right now.

I’ve said it before: former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani showed us the way. When he was in charge, New York City strictly enforced the law against the entry-level crooks, giving them an early look at the inside of the penitentiary, giving them early incentive to straighten up and fly right before they got themselves into really serious trouble. It didn’t always work: some of them continued with a life of crime after every stint behind bars, but at least while they were locked up, they weren’t out on the streets preying on innocent civilians.

Well, this guy won’t be breaking into people’s back yards, won’t be smashing car windows, and won’t be stealing laptops or whatever else was left in those cars. Instead, he’ll be pushing up daisies somewhere. This is what “social justice” and “racial justice” law enforcement gets us: criminals out on the streets, and some criminals in early graves.

Updated: Friday, March 18, 2022:

The Inquirer story has been updated to note that the deceased is named Nijer James-Murphy, and that the unnamed homeowner is a good guy:

    While the District Attorney’s Office will determine if the shooting is a justifiable homicide, preliminarily, it appears the homeowner acted in self-defense, (Philadelphia Homicide Capt. Jason) Smith said.

    “He has a valid permit, his gun is registered to him, he has no priors, he called the police, he turned the gun over, and he is cooperating. He’s done all the things that a good, outstanding citizen should do,” he said.

Well, that settles it: Mr Krasner, sponsored by George Soros, and thoroughly eaten up with ‘social justice’ and ‘racial justice’ and a hatred for the police, would seem likely to want to charge the homeowner with something. After all, the deceased is listed as a black male in the city’s shooting victims database. The question is: where would the District Attorney find twelve honest citizens, twelve people in the city without criminal records, to serve on a jury which would convict a man defending his property in his enclosed backyard from a thug like Mr James-Murphy?

Let’s face it: the city ought to throw the homeowner a parade!

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Shockingly enough, Philly is seeing a huge surge in license-to-carry applications That's kind of what happens when law enforcement doesn't actually enforce the law

As of 11:59 PM EDT on the Ides of March, Philadelphia had seen 103 homicides, one more than on the same day in murder record-shattering 2021. That’s actually an improvement; the city was nine murders ahead of last year as recently as March 7th. All of which makes this article from Philadelphia magazine a surprise to absolutely no one:

License-to-Carry Applications Have Skyrocketed In Philly — Even More Than You’d Think

“When I saw how high the numbers were, I had to call our stats department to make sure they were right,” a Philadelphia Police Department representative told us.

by Victor Fiorillo | Wednesday, March 16, 2022 | 8:00 AM EDT

It didn’t surprise me a bit to learn that license-to-carry applications in Philadelphia have risen over the past year. First, you have the constant reports of shootings, carjackings and other violent crimes in the city. Second, the Philadelphia Police Department made it dramatically easier to apply for a license to carry, starting in January 2021. But I wasn’t exactly ready for just how big this increase has been. And neither was the Philadelphia Police Department, it seems.

“When I saw how high the numbers were, I had to call our stats department to make sure they were right,” police department spokesperson Jasmine Reilly told me after I requested the data.

From 2017 through 2020, the number of license-to-carry applications in Philadelphia held about steady, ranging between 11,049 and 11,814 applications each year. But in 2021, 70,789 people applied for licenses to carry guns.

In other words, license-to-carry applications more than sextupled last year. And in January of this year, the number of applications continued its upward trajectory. (The Pennsylvania State Police publish an annual report showing the number of licenses issued in the counties surrounding Philadelphia as well as in the rest of the state, but a spokesperson for PSP says that data isn’t yet available for 2021.)

There’s a lot more at the original.

The rate of increase of applications for concealed carry permits might have surprised some, but that they have increased dramatically can’t stun anyone. Since Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat — and the last Republican Mayor of Philadelphia left office when Harry Truman was still President — took office in January of 2016, killings in the city have risen from 277 to 315 to 353 to 356 to 499 to last years 562; the number of annual homicides has more than doubled since Mr Kenney took office. The George Soros-sponsored District Attorney Larry Krasner, also a Democrat, took office in 2018, and the homicide rate jumped 59.21% in his four years.

In March alone, while ‘only’ 19 people have been murdered, 73 people have been shot in the city; the gang-bangers are really kind of lousy shots. But while the wounded but not killed can take some solace that they are still alive, that’s only so much comfort.

The cited article goes through some of the steps required to obtain a concealed carry permit, and then we get to this:

Of course, just because you’re denied doesn’t mean you’re not carrying, and carrying without a license is generally a first-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to five years in prison. But that charge can be upgraded to a felony depending on the circumstances.

“I have a pistol on me at all times,” one local resident who says he was denied a carry license told me. “You’ve got to be crazy not to, the way things are going.”

The leadership of the city continually complain that the state legislature isn’t doing enough in the way of passing gun control legislation, or allowing the city to pass its own, stricter ordinances, but that really doesn’t matter: District Attorney Krasner doesn’t really enforce the gun control legislation that is on the books:

The urgency of Philadelphia’s crisis of fatal and non-fatal shootings will not be met by looking away from shootings. As noted above, City Council has led a valuable “100 Shooter Review,” a title that makes clear what we already know: that shootings are the primary issue. Our efforts must be focused on preventing shootings and holding people who commit shootings accountable, and we should not accept arrests for gun possession as a substitute.[1]100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30 of the document, page 32 of the .pdf file.

This is very much in line with Mr Krasner’s statement:

This office believes that reform is necessary to focus on the most serious and most violent crime, so that people can be properly held accountable for doing things that are violent, that are vicious, and that tear apart society. We cannot continue to waste resources and time on things that matter less than the truly terrible crisis that we are facing.

Really? Perhaps, just perhaps, if law enforcement, from the police through the prosecutor, would treat the crimes that “matter less” than homicide seriously, people like the cretin who gunned down Hyram Hill would have been behind bars Monday morning, not out robbing someone, and not putting nine bullets into an apparently innocent victim.

It was then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-New York) who showed everyone the way. Under his Administration, and (mostly under that of his successor, Michael Bloomberg, New York went after the small-time criminals, using the theory that if you prosecuted and punished the ‘entry-level’ bad guys, maybe they’d get scared enough seeing the inside of the penitentiary early that they’d straighten out. Murder, after all, isn’t normally an entry-level crime. Even if it doesn’t set them on a better path, criminals in jail aren’t out on the streets, committing other crimes.

Since Mr Krasner, the social justice and racial justice warrior that he is, does not like putting away criminals, is it any wonder that the citizens of Philadelphia think that they are on their own, that they have to protect themselves, because the city will not?

Pennsylvania law says you can be denied a license to carry if you’re judged to be an “individual whose character and reputation is such that the individual would be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety.” There’s a lot of subjectivity in there, and an appeals process does exist for those who are denied.

The gun-carrying resident I spoke with didn’t bother appealing. He has a history of minor drug violations, a DUI, and various summary and misdemeanor offenses and says he’s more concerned about his personal safety than whether the police say he’s allowed to carry a gun.

“It’s not like they are going to protect me,” he argues.

Of course, the gang-bangers out there shooting people don’t bother with getting concealed carry permits. It’s shocking, I know, but it seems that criminals don’t obey the law!

There’s a lot more at the original, and unlike the Philadelphia Inquirer articles I frequently cite, this one isn’t behind a paywall; it’s worth a read.

References

References
↑1 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30 of the document, page 32 of the .pdf file.
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Killadelphia! Perhaps some introspection on just the numbers. 100 people killed in the City of Brotherly Love.

It was in no way unexpected that the City of Brotherly Love would see its 100th homicide of the year this week; the only question was on which day that would happen. For a numbers geek like me, it has led to some introspection, but first, the report from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Philadelphia reaches 100 homicides for 2022, outpacing last year

More people have been killed in Philadelphia so far this year than by this time last year, which ended with a record 562 homicides.

by Robert Moran | Friday, March 11, 2022 | 7:00 PM EST

Philadelphia has topped 100 homicides so far in 2022, outpacing the number of killings this time last year, which ended as the deadliest in the city’s recorded history.

The 100th victim was a 28-year-old man who was shot multiple times shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday on the 100 block of North 53rd Street in West Philadelphia. The man was rushed by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 12:32 a.m. Friday.

As of Friday evening, the city had not yet named the victim. Fox 29 reported that his family had identified him as Bryheem Barr.

The reporter, Robert Moran, followed the Inquirer’s practice of deleting the victim’s race from the story, even though the Philadelphia Police Department provide it. Of course, the tweet Mr Moran embedded in the story told readers that Mr Barr was black. I wonder if, by disclosing that kind of information, whether Mr Moran will get in trouble!

By March 10 last year, Philadelphia had 92 homicides. The city had a total of 562 homicides in 2021, breaking the previous record of 500 killings reported in 1990.

For comparison, New York City had 488 homicides for all of last year. As of last weekend, the city reported 67 killings so far in 2022.

Chicago this week also reached 100 homicides for the year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Mr Moran might have made a better comparison had he noted the populations of New York and Chicago, compared to Philly. The Big Apple had 8,804,190 residents, while the Windy City had a population of 2,746,388; the City of Brotherly Love had 1,603,797 souls in the 2020 census. Chicago is 71 percent larger than Philly, with the same number of killings, while New York City is 5¼ times Philly’s size, and has a third fewer total killings.

There had been ‘only’ 96 homicides on March 11, 2021, a jump from 92 the previous day, which means that Philly’s 100th murder is ‘only’ a 4.17% increase over last year; had the homicide been counted on Thursday, when Mr Barr was shot, it would have been an 8.70% increase.

How does this work out? There are different ways to do the statistics, the simplest being the number of homicides divided by the number of days in the year, 70, to come up with a homicide pace of 1.4286 per day, multiplied by 365, projecting to 521.42 homicides for the year. A more complicated way is to take the number of homicides on the 70th day of the year in 2021, and find that 17.08% of 2021 homicides had occurred by March 11, 2021, and, using that number, project that 2022 will see 585.48 killings.

Bryheem Barr, from Kelly Rule, Fox29. Click to enlarge.

I started this article Friday evening, but, as I was running the numbers through my head, I realized that I was doing what others have done: I had reduced Bryheem Barr to a number. Fox29 had a story on him:

‘He didn’t deserve this’: Man slain in Philadelphia’s 100th homicide was “hardworking” father, fiancé

Published March 11, 2022 | 6:30 PM EST

PHILADELPHIA – Authorities believe a Philadelphia father and soon-to-be husband was shot and killed during an attempted robbery Thursday night to become the city’s 100th homicide so far this year.

Family members say 28-year-old Bryheem Barr was walking to his car to go to work just before 11 p.m. near the intersection of North 53rd and Arch streets when the deadly shooting happened.

According to police, Barr was found shot multiple times and driven to Penn Presbyterian Hospital by officers where he died.

A police source told FOX 29’s Kelly Rule that they believe the deadly shooting happened during a robbery and the shooter took Barr’s legally-owned firearm.

One thing we know: if Mr Barr had a “legally-owned firearm,” he was not a convicted felon, and he had gone through the hassle of getting a permit in Philadelphia. This was not a case of one gang banger offing another, the way so many murders in the city happen.

Another is that he was going to work, obviously night shift somewhere.

Barr was a father of three and was soon to be married. His family said he was studying to become a nurse.

“Hardworking, bothers nobody, will give you the shirt off his back will do anything for his family, he wouldn’t hurt a soul,” Lorriane Barr, Bryheem’s aunt said.

There’s a bit more at the original, and that bit more is more than the Inquirer had on its website.

What did the Inquirer have? Yet another story on Thomas Siderio, Jr, the 12-year-old punk kid to took a shot at the Philadelphia Police, and paid the ultimate price for it. Even as sympathetic to young Mt Siderio as the Inquirer could be, the story couldn’t help but disclose that:

  • In 2021, police “were searching a house where he was living after receiving a tip that he’d pulled a gun during a large fight at Second and Porter Streets in South Philadelphia. They found clothes matching a photo taken at the scene, but no gun.”
  • “In recent Instagram posts, TJ could be seen in a ski mask, and there are several references to guns and drug use.”
  • “’He had a tendency to follow the wrong kind of kids,’ said Terry Elnicki-Varela, who works in special education and started helping TJ at school three years ago. ‘He was no angel. Far from it.’”
  • Young Mr Siderio had been failed by both parents. His father who is currently in prison, and “previously spent at least a year in prison in Philadelphia” on a prior conviction, while his mother, Desirae Frame, also has a criminal record, with two drug cases and other arrests for theft, forgery, contempt of court, and receiving stolen property. The son is noted, in the article, as primarily living with a grandmother, but also living with a great-aunt.

Yes, he had a rough life, and little chance of improving it, but he was still a punk.

Mr Barr? If the Inquirer is working on a story to humanize the victim of the city’s milestone homicide, at least as of 8:49 this morning, it hasn’t been published. Instead, the paper is trying their best to excoriate the Philadelphia Police Department, something which can only lead to more killings in the city.

Mr Barr, at least as far as we know — there’s always a risk in taking just the family’s word for things — was a working man, and a law-abiding Philadelphian. For the Inquirer, his story isn’t an important one, save that he hit a certain number in the liquidation lottery. No, the paper would rather spend time and money trying to make a martyr out of a young punk.