Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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The Editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer just can’t wrap their heads around the notion that criminals simply don’t obey the law.

In a surprise to absolutely no one who reads The Philadelphia Inquirer, the editors decided to use the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse to call for more gun control. Frist, Adam Garber, executive director of CeaseFirePA Education Fund, a gun violence prevention advocacy organization, was given OpEd space:

Amid a spike in shootings, Pa. legislators are giving us the kinds of gun laws that we don’t need

Gov. Wolf is expected to veto a bill that would allow state residents to carry concealed handguns without a permit. That the measure made it this far should alarm us all, writes Adam Garber.

by Adam Garber | Monday, November 22, 2021

Each year, roughly 1,500 Pennsylvanians lose their lives to a rapidly rising epidemic of gun violence. In our city, these deaths are hollowing out a generation of Philadelphians with 60% more shooting victims under 18 so far this year than in all of 2019. There isn’t a part of the commonwealth from York to Erie to Pittsburgh that isn’t seeing the same deadly violence. But instead of debating numerous evidence-based solutions, the Pennsylvania General Assembly voted this month to make our commonwealth an even less safe place to live.

Senate Bill 565, known as permitless carry, would allow anyone over age 18 to carry a loaded, concealed handgun in public without a permit.

Let that sink in a minute.

The person next to you on the subway, at the deli counter, or at the grocery store could have a hidden firearm. Such a law would dismantle the existing concealed carry permit process, which includes enhanced safeguards to help law enforcement ensure concealed firearm carriers do not endanger public safety. It would also allow for open carry of a firearm without a permit in the City of Philadelphia.

There’s more at the original, but Mr Garber’s statement that “The person next to you on the subway, at the deli counter, or at the grocery store could have a hidden firearm” ignores the obvious: in the City of Brotherly Love, the person next to you on the subway, at the deli counter, or at the grocery store might already have a concealed firearm, and not give a hoot that he doesn’t have a permit; he has his weapon because he wants his weapon.

Then there is this, from the Editorial Board:

In Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal, a lesson about laws that allow more guns to be carried in public

Advocating for more people to be armed in more situations does nothing to make Pennsylvania safer.

by The Editorial Board | Monday, November 22, 2021

The story of the night of Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis., is the story of an American dystopia — one that is induced by guns and one that Pennsylvania’s Republican lawmakers seemingly want to move the commonwealth closer toward by allowing permitless concealed carry of firearms.

It’s the story of a nation armed to the teeth.

It’s the story of, in the words of the Black sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, a “double system of justice, which erred on the white side by undue leniency and the practical immunity of red-handed criminals.”

In the midst of a summer marked by Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, Kenosha police shot and severely injured Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man. The shooting sparked protests nationwide. Two days after the shooting, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old white resident of Illinois, arrived in Kenosha armed with an AR-15-style automatic rifle. By night’s end, Rittenhouse had shot three people who’d participated in a protest, killing two.

Another bit of lying by not telling the whole truth. Yes, Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, and Gaige Grosskreutz “participated in a protest”, but Mr Rittenhouse did not shoot them for “participat(ing) in a protest”; he shot them in self-defense because they chased him down and attacked him! Mr Rittenhouse was legally armed; Mr Grosskreutz, who has a concealed pistol, was not; his concealed carry permit had expired. Mr Rittenhouse was there, with his AR-15, because the Mostly Peaceful Protesters had not been quite so peaceful the previous two nights.

Then again, who knows: perhaps the Editorial Board believe, as David S Cohen seems to imply, that arson is a legitimate part of a “racial justice protest.” The Inquirer did, after all fire get Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski to resign over the “Buildings Matter, Too” headline.

In Pennsylvania, there are more than 1,000 people serving life without the possibility of parole despite never having killed anyone — about 70% of them are Black.

Well, that’s true. It is also true that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 shootings. That 70% of roughly 1,000 people currently serving life without the possibility of parole are black doesn’t seem terribly out of line with the homicide rate among black Philadelphians is so high. The city is just three killings behind 2020’s 499, with five weeks left in the year!

Inquirer reporter Anna Orso reported on a double homicide we mentioned Sunday:

Police are questioning a suspect in the killing of a pregnant woman in Northeast Philadelphia

Authorities said Jessica Covington, 32, was shot multiple times in the head and stomach. Detectives believe she had just left her own baby shower.

by Anna Orso | Monday, November 22, 2021 | Updated: 7:14 PM EST

Philadelphia police were questioning a suspect Monday in the weekend killing of a pregnant woman and her unborn child, but investigators say they were still collecting evidence and charges were not yet filed.

Also see: Killadelphia Update, by Robert Stacy McCain.

Authorities said Jessica Covington, 32, was shot multiple times in the head and stomach just after 8:30 p.m. Saturday on the 6100 block of Palmetto Street in Crescentville, where she lived. Detectives believe she had just left her own baby shower and was unloading gifts from her vehicle when shots rang out.

Joanne Pescatore, assistant supervisor of the homicide and nonfatal shootings unit in the District Attorney’s Office, said Monday that police had identified a suspect, but she would not identify the person or comment on a potential motive. She said investigators had recovered video footage from the block where the shooting occurred, but said several streetlights were out, and the video is “extremely” dark.

Police Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said homicide detectives were conducting “a lot of interviews,” but could not confirm a suspect was among them. He said they were executing search warrants and analyzing other evidence and described the investigation as “very active.”

According to District Attorney Larry Krasner, who said during a news conference that the slaying made him “sick,” it is “very likely” that whoever is charged in connection with the killing will face two counts of murder, one each for the mother and her unborn child. He said homicide detectives “have been working nonstop and doing an amazing job with this case.”

There’s more at the original, including a notation by the reporter that six people had been murdered in Philly over the weekend. According to the Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, there had been only five homicides, but perhaps the police were not counting Miss Covington’s unborn child, where Miss Orso, perhaps influenced by Mr Krasner’s statement, did.

But there’s an obvious question for the Editorial Board: do they think that the only reason Miss Covington could be murdered like that was because her killer had a concealed carry permit? If he didn’t have a permit, would that have meant that he wouldn’t have had a gun?

This is the point that seemingly baffles the left. It’s as though they just can’t wrap their heads around the idea that criminals don’t obey the law, and that if someone was willing to go out and deliberately murder Miss Covington and her unborn daughter — remember: she was shot in both the head and the abdomen, so the unborn child was targeted as well — that someone wouldn’t care one bit that he was carrying his firearm illegally.

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Update: Tuesday, November 23, 2021 at 8:20 AM EST

The Philadelphia Police Department’s morning tally has city homicides up to 497.

In looking at the Inquirer’s website this morning, I found no stories about anyone being murdered in the city yesterday, so it’s possible that the increase to 497 includes Miss Covington’s unborn daughter, but I don’t know that. What I did find was this ending paragraph from an overnight story by Robert Moran:

Gregory Keleman was charged with murder, attempted murder, and unlawful possession of a weapon.

It seems that Mr Keleman, assuming he is guilty of the charges, didn’t care much about not having a permit to carry a weapon. You’d think that the editors of the Inquirer would notice such things, and they would inform their opinions, but if you did think that, you’d apparently be wrong.

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Killadelphia A Philadelphia woman and her unborn child are deliberately murdered

I am stunned that this story is still listed on the main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, but, then again, ‘innocents’ appear to be the victims in this case, and I’ve often said that the inquirer editors only care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love if an innocent, a “somebody“, or a cute little white girl is the victim:

    Pregnant woman fatally shot; her unborn child also dies

    The 32-year-old woman, who was seven months pregnant, was shot in the head and stomach around 8:30 p.m. on the 6100 block of Palmetto Street in what police say appears to have been a targeted hit.

    by Diane Mastrull | Sunday, November 21, 2021

    A pregnant woman and her unborn child were killed Saturday night in a shooting in Philadelphia’s Crescentville section that police say appears to have been a targeted hit.

    The 32-year-old woman, who was seven months pregnant, was unloading baby shower gifts from a Kia Soul when she was shot in the head and stomach around 8:30 p.m. on the 6100 block of Palmetto Street, police said.

WPVI-TV had a longer report. The victims were shot multiple times, something the Inquirer story does not make clear. One witness said he heard seven shots, while the Philadelphia Police collected eleven shell casings. And while the police said that they did not have a motive, shooting a seven-month pregnant woman in the head and stomach, apparently several times each, means that it was definitely intended to kill the unborn child as well.

Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, under whose regime the city has gone from the 280 homicides in Michael Nutter’s last year, 2015, to 277, then 315, 353, 356, and 499 last year, is having the city offer a reward, but notice his wording: he refers to “the victim’s loved ones,” not “the victims’ loved ones”. In this, he betrays the fact that he sees this as only one homicide, and not two. But, then again, he’s a Democrat, so an unborn child doesn’t really count.

I wonder whether the Philadelphia Police Department will count this as one or two killings.
___________________________

Updated: 5:10 PM EST

The Inquirer story was updated at 4:25 PM:

    While police did not update Philadelphia’s official homicide tally over the weekend, the fatal shooting on Saturday night would bring the total slain so far this year to about 494 — a toll already 13% higher than as of the same date last year.

    With murders running at an average rate of more than 50 a month this year, there is little doubt that the total number killed in Philadelphia in 2021 will exceed 500. This would be a grim milestone, topping the previous highest tally of 500 in 1990 when crack was new and turf wars among dealers were unusual.

Actually, there’s little doubt that they’ll top 500 by the end of November! But at least the Inquirer has noticed.

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Killadelphia A trauma nurse laments over all of the bodies which are brought into her emergency room

As I do every weekday morning, I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, and I saw that three more people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards yesterday. 486 homicides ÷ 320 days elapsed = 1.51875 per day x 365 days = 554.34375 projected homicides for the year. With only 14 more killings needed to tie the record of 500, at the current rate that should happen in just 9 days, or on November 25th, which is Thanksgiving Day.

Philadelphia Inquirer writer Robert Moran reported, briefly, on one of the killings:

A 67-year-old woman was fatally shot during an attempted robbery inside a check-cashing store Tuesday afternoon in the city’s Ogontz section, police said.

About 1:10 p.m., the woman, who was believed to be the owner, was shot in the chest inside Any Checks Cashed at 5812 Old York Rd., which is next door to a day-care center. She was pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

That’s it, that’s all, a 67-year-old woman’s life, and death, reduced to two paragraphs. There were a couple more which told readers that the police had very little information thus far. The story had been superseded by others, and was not visible on the Inquirer’s website main page.

But it was this article, blurbed on that main page as “I wake up every day knowing that I will have to watch another Black man take his last breath. And over what?” that caught my attention, though the title, when I opened it, was different:

A trauma nurse’s letter to a Philly shooter | Opinion

I wish you would wait before you pick up that weapon. I wish you could come talk to me. I would’ve begged you not to do this.

by Ruqiyya Greer, For The Inquirer | Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Dear Gunman,

When the alarm goes off, I know that first responders are on the way with your target.

We stand outside, dressed in plastic gowns, gloves, and bonnets. We are sweating profusely as we wait for your target’s arrival. We hear the sirens from a distance. They get louder as they get closer. They race down the hill and come to an abrupt stop. We can smell the burning rubber of the tires. The door swings open and there lays your target, bloody and unconscious.

We struggle to pull his lifeless body, covered with bullet holes and blood, out of the car. It becomes a struggle to get him out as the moisture from the blood makes it difficult to get a tight grasp.

We get your target to the trauma bay as we empty several code carts full of medical supplies, injecting several lifesaving medications into his still body. Techs stand in line taking turns performing chest compressions. The trauma team cracks his chest open to manually compress his heart to keep what little blood he has left circulating.

After we have exhausted all measures, the attending doctor announces, “time of death.” The techs bag his cut-up clothes as well as his body. Two tags are applied, one to his big toe and the other to the outside of the body bag.

There’s more at the original, describing what Ruqiyya Greer, the author and a trauma nurse in the emergency room at Temple University Hospital, sees and feels, practically every day, on the job. And she points out what Mr Moran’s brief stories, the Inquirer in general,[1]We have noted previously Elizabeth Hughes, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her determination to make her newspaper “an anti-racist news organization,” has turned it into exactly … Continue reading and the Police Department figures, obscure, because it’s inconvenient reporting: the vast majority of the homicide victims in the City of Brotherly Love are young black males, sometimes men, and sometimes still boys.[2]The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, noted that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 … Continue reading

She concluded:

There’s so many times I want to walk away, but if I do, I will be deserting my community and my culture. I can’t do that. But these days it feels like I am a nurse in the middle of a war. I wake up every day knowing that I will have to watch another Black man take his last breath. And over what?

Our ancestors fought for our freedom; they were murdered for our freedom. I don’t think they risked it all for us to murder each other.

Please, before you pick up that gun again, placing your life at risk, risking your freedom and ending another life, talk to whoever plays a significant role in your life. A parent, uncle, pastor. You are about to make the worst mistake of your life.

I really don’t like quoting so many paragraphs from an Inquirer article, but Miss Greer’s concluding point is important: she is asking the potential shooters out there — people who will almost certainly never read her ‘letter’ anyway — to think before they act.

But they don’t think, at least they don’t think about the act itself. Oh, they may well think, and plot, and plan about how they are going to get away with it, but seem to give little thought or care about what will happen if they do get caught, very possibly spending the rest of their miserable lives locked up.

Miss Greer has been far more honest than most. While so many Philadelphia politicians want to blame the guns, she noted the people who “pick(ed) up that gun,” the people who shot, and frequently killed, other people, most often members of their own communities.

References

References
↑1 We have noted previously Elizabeth Hughes, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her determination to make her newspaper “an anti-racist news organization,” has turned it into exactly that, a newspaper more concerned with racial identity and sorting out its news coverage that way than it has been about the “public’s right to know.” The vast majority of homicide victims in Philadelphia are black, but when one black gang banger kills another black gang banger, it isn’t really news anymore, not to the Inquirer. Instead, the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s four separate stories; how many do the mostly black victims get?
↑2 The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, noted that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 shootings; non-Hispanic black Americans make up only 38.3% of the city’s population. The current statistics for this year I have not been able to find.
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Philly ties for 3rd place!

It wasn’t really that much of a stretch to guess that 475 wouldn’t be the final homicide number for Thursday, and it wasn’t: the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page shows that 476 Philadelphians have been murdered so far this year, up from ‘just’ 428 on the same day last year. Last year being a leap year, the gang bangers had an extra day to hit that 428 number.

The numbers are ugly: 476 homicides in 315 days works out to 1.5111 per day, or a projected 551.5555, rounding up to 552 for the year.

With 50 days left in the year, and ‘only’ 24 murders needed to tie the all-time record of 500, set in 1990, the homicide rate would have to drop to slightly less than a third of what it is right now, and, at this point, only God could make that happen. At the current rate, the city should tie the all-time high in just 16 days, or Saturday, November 27th.

Mayor James Kenney (Democrat-Philadelphia), District Attorney Larry Krasner (Soros stooge-Philadelphia), and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw (Kenney Puppet-Philadelphia) have certainly done a fine, fine job, haven’t they?

But hey, Philadelphians must like all of those bodies stacked up like cordwood, because they just re-elected George Soros stooge District Attorney Larry Krasner. No one can say that they didn’t know what they were getting.

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Killadelphia

This brings the homicide total in the City of Brotherly Love to 475 for the year; one more, and Philadelphia ties 1989’s Bronze Medal for most murders! Of course, as of this writing, Thursday isn’t over, and the police could still report more killings.

    Nicetown fire that killed 2 ruled arson

    The fire occurred on the 1400 block of West Jerome Street shortly before 4 a.m. Thursday.

    by Robert Moran | Veterans’ Day, November 11, 2021

    A predawn house fire Thursday that killed two men in the city’s Nicetown section has been ruled an arson and is being investigated as a homicide case, police said.

    Firefighters and police responded to the blaze just before 4 a.m. on the 1400 block of West Jerome Street. Two men in their 50s were found in an upstairs bedroom and were transported to Temple University Hospital and Einstein Medical Center. Both were pronounced dead shortly before 5 a.m. Their names were not released.

    Investigators from the Philadelphia Fire Department and the ATF Arson Task Force found an accelerant was used inside the front door.

    Police said the motive for the arson was unknown.

One thing is certain: whoever started this fire didn’t care for anyone’s life. The 1400 block of West Jerome Street consists entirely of Philadelphia row houses. The Google Maps street view shows them as primarily brick buildings, presumably with brick firewalls between each unit, but there’s still plenty of century-old wood involved, and the arsonist could have burned down a whole side of the street.

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Killadelphia! Philadelphia's homicide rate has increased dramatically since Joe Biden was elected

Mayor Jim Kenney (Democrat-Philadelphia), District Attorney Larry Krasner (Soros-Philadelphia), and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw (Puppet-Philadelphia) haven’t quite won the Bronze Medal for annual homicides for the City of Brotherly Love for the year, but they aren’t far away. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page reports that there have been 471 homicides in the city so far this year, through 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, November 7th. With 471 killings over 311 days elapsed in the year, that works out to 1.5145 per day, or a projected 552.7814 for 2021. Since there’s no such thing as 0.7814 of a homicide, that works out to a projected 553.

As of November 7th in 2020, there had been 422 killings in the city. Due to the counting problems in the 2020 elections, that Joe Biden had defeated President Trump on November 3rd wasn’t certain until November 5th. Since the Philly Police don’t report the homicide numbers on the weekend until the subsequent Monday, this is the first day I could make this comparison, but since the evil reich-wing Donald Trump was defeated, and the all sweetness-and-light Joe Biden elected, there have been 548 homicides in the city, over 367 days.

Yet from November 7, 2019 to November 7, 2020, Philly saw ‘only’ 474 murders. It seems as though the killing rate in Philly has been significantly higher, as in 15.61% higher, since Mr Biden was elected! And remember: the vast majority of the COVID-19 lockdowns occurred when Mr Trump was President, so you can’t blame it all on the pandemic.

No Bronze Medal yet, but Miss Outlaw and Messrs Kenney and Krasner need just five more to tie for third place, and at the current rate, they ought to get that by Wednesday or Thursday.

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Another two bite the dust!

If I check the website of The Philadelphia Inquirer in the evening, I can sometimes — certainly not always — find brief stories about murder victims in the City of Brotherly Love:

2 women killed in North Philly shooting

The shooting occurred on the 1900 block of Ridge Avenue.

by Robert Moran | Thursday, November 4, 2021 | 8:10 PM EDT

Two unidentified women were fatally shot Thursday night in North Philadelphia, police said.

The shooting was reported shortly after 7:45 p.m. on the 1900 block of Ridge Avenue. Police arriving at the scene found two women inside a building that was first believed to be a church, but later described as a speakeasy.

The women were pronounced dead by medics at 7:52.

Police said the shooting scene appeared to be outside in front of the building, where they found spent shell casings.

That’s the entire story, and I’d bet euros to eclairs that I won’t be able to find it anywhere on the Inquirer’s website main page on Friday morning. But two more homicides brings the city’s total for 2021 up to at least 466.
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Updated: Friday, November 5, 2021

As I anticipated, the homicide total is 466, and no, there isn’t a single reference to the story concerning the homicide on the main page of the Inquirer’s website, even though the story was updated with more details at 9:39 AM this morning.

Black lives don’t matter in Philadelphia!

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Killadelphia Black lives really don't matter in Philadelphia, or to The Philadelphia Inquirer

I noted, in a tweet Thursday morning, that under Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, Philadelphia’s 443 homicides as of 11:59 PM Wednesday put the city in fifth place, all time, for homicides in the year, and there were still 72 days remaining in 2021.

Well, the move into fourth place didn’t take long:

    Three men killed, four people wounded, including a 14-year-old boy, in separate shootings in Philly

    The fatal shootings occurred in West Oak Lane and North Philadelphia.

    by Robert Moran | Thursday, October 21, 2021 | 8:49 PM EDT

    Three men were killed and four other people, including a 14-year-old boy, were wounded in separate shootings late Thursday in Philadelphia, police said.

    Around 3:45 p.m., a 25-year-old man was on the 1500 block of West 65th Avenue in West Oak Lane when he was shot once in the neck. He was pronounced dead at the scene by medics. Police said they recovered a gun and had a person in custody.

    About 5:50 p.m., a 28-year-old man was on the 900 block of Cambridge Street in North Philadelphia when he was shot several times in his torso. He was transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:22.

    The 14-year-old was shot four times at the same location and was taken by police to Temple University Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition. Police reported no arrests in that case.

There’s more at the original.

Three people dead, plus a 21-year-old man shot five times in North Philadelphia, and a 20-year-old woman shot thrice in Hunting Park, listed in critical condition. Anyone want to bet that Mr Moran’s story won’t be found on the main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website on Friday morning?

This story posted at 9:45 PM EDT on Thursday, October 21st, and will be updated on Friday morning.

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Update! Friday, October 22, 2021

Did someone recover from being dead? The Philadelphia Police Department reported on Thursday that 443 homicides had occurred as of 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, October 20th. Robert Moran’s article cited above tells us of three homicides in the city on Thursday, but the morning report from the Police Department this morning states that the homicide total as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday was 445.

It’s possible that one of the previous homicides has now been ruled self-defense, and subtracted from the total, but I do not know.

Nevertheless, 445 is still ‘good’ enough to push 2021 into fourth place all time, with 71 days remaining in the year. At 1.5136 homicides per day, Philadelphia is on pace for 552 homicides for the year. At the current rate, Philly should tie the all time record of 500 in 36 days, on November 26th, appropriately enough, ‘Black Friday.’

A thorough scan of the Inquirer’s website main page at 8:18 AM EDT this morning verified what I had already guessed: neither Mr Moran’s, or anyone else’s story about the reported murders yesterday were visible on the site. Mr Moran’s story is still available at the embedded link in his headline above, but if you just read the Inquirer through its website in the morning, you’d never see it. But, as I’ve said many times before, black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, unless, of course, they are taken by a white police officer.

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The witnesses who sat by and did nothing should be publicly identified and publicly shamed A woman is raped on a SEPTA train, and not one other passenger had the courage to stop it or even call 911

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain is incensed:

From the New York Post:

Passengers do nothing as woman is raped on Philadelphia train, cops say

By Eileen AJ Connelly | October 16, 2021 | 2:39 PM EDT Updated 5:06 PM EDT

A homeless man raped a woman this week on a commuter train in suburban Philadelphia in full view of other passengers –who cops said didn’t lift a finger to help, or even dial 911, reports said.

The attack at around 10 p.m. Wednesday was captured on surveillance video that showed other people in the train car, according to Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt of the Upper Darby Police Department.

“Were they watching? I don’t know. Again, we’re still going through the video but there was a lot of people, in my opinion, that should’ve intervened. Somebody should’ve done something.,” Bernhardt said, Philadelphia’s CBS-3 reported.

“It speaks to where we are in society; I mean, who would allow something like that to take place? So it’s troubling.”

Bernhardt said it was a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority employee who called the cops to report that “something wasn’t right” with a woman aboard the train.

SEPTA police waiting at the next stop were able to “apprehend the suspect in the act,” an agency spokesman said in a statement, according to NBC-10 Philadelphia.

They arrested Fiston Ngoy, 35, who is believed to be homeless, the station reported.

Ngoy was charged with rape, aggravated indecent assault and related counts, police said.

He remains behind bars in lieu of 10% of $180,000 bail, Philadelphia’s ABC-6 reported.

Bernhardt said he is known to both SEPTA and Upper Darby police.

The woman, who did not know her attacker, was taken to a hospital. Bernhardt called her an “unbelievably strong woman” who provided police with a lot of information, The Associated Press reported.

“She’s on the mend,” Bernhardt said. “Hopefully she will get through this.”

SEPTA issued a statement calling the attack a “horrendous criminal act.”

“There were other people on the train who witnessed this horrific act, and it may have been stopped sooner if a rider called 911,” the authority said.

Or maybe it would have been stopped sooner if people had the courage to intervene physically. Were there no men on that train at all? We may eventually find out that there were some males on that train, but it’s obvious that none of them were actually men.

The Philadelphia Inquirer had an article on the assault, but, of course, the Inquirer would never publish the (alleged) rapist’s mugshot:

SEPTA reports rape on Market-Frankford Line, says no one called 911

A rape occurred Wednesday night but riders did not report it, SEPTA said.

by Stephan Salisbury | Saturday, October 16, 2021

A woman was raped on the Market-Frankford Line on Wednesday night in a car with other passengers but none called 911.

Their failure to do that was noted by SEPTA in an unusual statement — and condemned by the police chief in Upper Darby, where the attack took place.

“There was a lot of people in my opinion that should have intervened, somebody should have done something,” Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt said. “It speaks to where we are in society and who would allow something like that to take place. So it’s troubling.”

In the statement Friday, the SEPTA agency said that “anyone witnessing an emergency” needed to report it immediately.

Report it immediately? How about take action to stop it?

Frank Herbert, in Dune, noted fear, and how fear had to be overcome. But our governments, federal and state and city, have spent the last year and a half trying to instill fear into the public, and it looks like they have succeeded: a train car full of people, and no one of them had the courage to intervene, to stop a rape being perpetrated right in front of them.

“The assault was observed by a SEPTA employee, who called 911, enabling SEPTA officers to respond immediately and apprehend the suspect in the act,” the agency said. ”There were other people on the train who witnessed this horrific act, and it may have been stopped sooner if a rider called 911.” . . . .

Bernhardt said the assault was caught entirely on surveillance video. Bernhardt said they are reviewing the footage, in part to look at the passengers.

Good, and I hope that tape is revealed, and every passenger, especially every male passenger, in that railcar is identified, by name and by photograph, and their information published, widely published, so that everyone knows who they are, and what they were too cowardly to do. I noted that neither story indicated that the (alleged) assailant was armed, with a knife or a firearm.

All it would have taken was one man, just one, to rally the other passengers to intervene and stop the assault, but no one did. Those people need to be publicly shamed, publicly humiliated, and the men males divorced by their wives.

The alleged assailant had been previously convicted of drug possession in 2015, and had been arrested both last year and this in both Philadelphia and Delaware County on charges that included public drunkenness, resisting arrest, and scalping tickets. The Defender Association of Philadelphia, which provides lawyers for people too poor to hire one, had been providing him with representation on the ticket scalping charge.

This crime happened not in Philadelphia, but in Delaware County, and if there’s any good at all in this, it’s that Mr Ngoy won’t be prosecuted by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who would give him a serious, serious! slap on the back of the hand, and maybe even a stern talking to.

There was a time in which, had this occurred then, the other men on that train would have rushed to the victim’s defense and beaten the assailant to a bloody pulp. But fear, fear! was upon them, upon a population cowed into masks and isolation and indifference.