Posted on September 26, 2021 by Dana Pico

Killadelphia passes the 400 mark In the past 20 days, 41 people have been killed in Philadelphia's mean streets

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is only updated “during normal business hours, Monday through Friday,” so it still shows 397 homicides for the City of Brotherly Love. The next ‘milestone,’ so to speak, would be 400, and The Philadelphia Inquirer actually noticed:

Philly surpasses 400 homicides this year

“I am heartbroken and outraged that we’ve lost over 400 Philadelphians to preventable violence already this year,” Mayor Jim Kenney said Sunday.

by Marie McCullough and Chris Palmer | Sunday, September 26, 2021

Two fatal shootings Saturday night brought Philadelphia’s total number of homicides this year to beyond 400, a tragic milestone reached only twice in the past two decades.

Last year the city recorded 499 homicides, and in 2006 the total reached 406. Philadelphia has not had back-to-back years with that grisly tally since 1996.

“I am heartbroken and outraged that we’ve lost over 400 Philadelphians to preventable violence already this year,” Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement issued Sunday morning. “I want all residents to know that our administration takes this crisis very seriously and we’re acting with urgency to reduce violence and save lives.”

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner echoed that sentiment in a statement Sunday: “We should all be outraged that senseless, preventable violence continues to claim and break lives here in Philadelphia and in communities across the country that are also experiencing alarming increases in gun violence.”

Sorry, but when I see softer-than-soft-on-crime District Attorney Krasner, who is more interested in keeping criminals out of prison and putting down the police, complaining about the homicide rate, indeed saying anything at all, I know it’s bovine feces. Mary McCarthy once said, concerning Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” The same is true of Mr Krasner; if he told me that 2+2=4, I’d have to check his math.

The Inquirer reported that there have been no arrests in the latest killings.

Two men, 35 and 28, were found shot multiple times in the 2300 block of Jackson Street in South Philly around 9:30 PM, were taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where the younger man died and the older man is in critical condition.

Another fatal shooting was reported, at 11:20 PM at North 26th and West Silver Streets in Strawberry Mansion. The police had not given the paper any further details when the article was published.

Only 29% of homicides and 15% of nonfatal shootings have resulted in arrests by police so far in 2021, according to an analysis by Krasner’s office.

If both fatal and nonfatal shootings are included, 1,696 people had been shot through Wednesday, according to police statistics. That is the second-highest total in any year since 2007, the year police began recording “shooting victims” as a separate statistic from the broader category of “aggravated assault with a gun.”

Experts and officials point to many reasons for the surge in violence, which has been concentrated in neighborhoods with intractable disadvantages, including higher poverty levels, higher blight levels, and lower life expectancies. The reasons include stressors made worse by the pandemic; closures of schools, workplaces, courts, and other institutions that kept people away from feuds; increasing gun sales; and impaired trust in law enforcement after the George Floyd killing and protests.

This is, of course, the usual bovine feces that I expect from the Inquirer. The #woke there all want to blame everything but the culture and the people who live in those neighborhoods. When two men are shot “multiple times,” it was a targeted killing, a planned assassination, something people had time to consider before taking action. When four men were shot during a drive-by shooting in Mantua, “when three people hopped out of a gold or tan SUV at 38th and Aspen Streets at 10:57 a.m. and began firing,” that’s a planned attempt at murder. This photo shows “a detective and an officer looking at evidence under and around a blue SUV” in that shooting, and there are at least 19 evidence markers, normally used to mark the location of expended shell casings, visible.

When the Inquirer blames “impaired trust in law enforcement after the George Floyd killing and protests,” it has to be remembered that the editors of the newspapers deliberately fanned the flames of those protests.

So, what will I find when the police update their Current Crime Statistics page on Monday? The Inquirer article stated that there were “over 400,” which could mean 401 or 403 or 405. The city had been on a two-killings-per-day tear over the past week, so I could easily guess 403, covering Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Former Mayor Michael Nutter published a list of city homicides, noting just who was running the city at the time, and the city has exceeded 400 murders per year only 17 times previously; the record is 500, in 1990, the heart of the crack cocaine wars. With “over 400” murders so far in Philadelphia, this year makes the eighteenth time this has happened . . . but with 97 days, more than three months, more than entire season, left in the year!
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Update: Monday, September 27, 2021:

The Current Crime Statistics page shows that there have been 404 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, September 26, 2021, the 269^th day of the year. The math is simple, if ugly: 404 ÷ 269 = 1.5019 homicides per day. With 96 days left in the year, that works out to 144 more killings, if that rate remains the same, for a projected total of 548 murders for the year.

We noted, on July 17^th, when Philly hit its 300^th homicide of the year, that the then-current rate of 1.5306 homicides per day led to a projected 559 murders. That was actually down from eight days earlier, when an average of 1.5379 worked out to a projected 562 homicides for the year.

Then, for some unknown reason, the homicide rate dropped. We reported, on September 7^th, that despite a subtitle from The Philadelphia Inquirer stating that “The unofficial end of summer didn’t slow a record year of gun violence. Between Friday and Sunday, at least 13 people were shot in Philadelphia, two fatally,” the murder rate actually did slow down a bit, down to 1.4578 killings per day, with a projected 532 for the year.

^rd

Now, for the first time since the late July through August ‘lull,’ if you can call it that, the rate is above 1.5 again. Since Monday, September 6^th, and its reported 363 homicides, there have been 41 murders in Philly, in just 20 days, 2.050 per day!

Are the gang bangers trying to make up for lost time, or something?

Posted on September 24, 2021 by Dana Pico

Aren’t reporters supposed to ask relevant question?

I had previously thought that reporters, at least good reporters, weren’t supposed to simply accept what they have been told by government, but to ask questions. Apparently, I was wrong about that.

Only a third of Philly city employees and half of Pa. state health workers have reported being vaccinated

City officials believe the number vaccinated is “far higher” than reported, citing difficulty with getting workers who don’t routinely use computers at work to upload their vaccination cards.

by Justine McDaniel and Erin McCarthy | Friday, September 24, 2021 | 5:41 PM EDT

Most city and state employees who were asked to get vaccinated against the coronavirus have not yet reported doing so, according to numbers released this week.

Only 31% of Philadelphia city employees have provided proof of vaccination as of this week, according to the city, though all were told to be immunized against the coronavirus by Sept. 1 or begin double-masking at work.

Translation: the rules aren’t being enforced. If people had to start double-masking, starting over three weeks ago, if they were not vaccinated, those who were already vaccinated would have taken the effort to get their vaccine cards entered into the system, to keep from having to wear that repugnant face diaper!

And just under 50% of Pennsylvania’s 23,000 workers in health and congregate care facilities had provided proof of vaccination as of Friday, said a Wolf administration spokesperson. The state mandated that state health and congregate care workers be fully vaccinated by Sept. 7 or undergo weekly testing.

Odd how the Inquirer didn’t mention that all health care workers in the city had to be fully vaccinated by October 15^th. While there were potential exemptions for medical or religious reasons, there was no ‘get tested’ option.

Philadelphia officials believe the number of city workers vaccinated is “far higher” than reported, citing difficulty with getting employees who don’t routinely use computers at work to upload their vaccination cards. In Philadelphia, 69% of all adults are fully vaccinated, which would indicate the rate among the city’s more than 25,000 workers is likely higher than reported.

Is this a reasonable belief? Since city workers face greater and more annoying restrictions — double-masking and weekly testing — wouldn’t those who were vaccinated but hadn’t filed their cards have done so, to avoid those odious restrictions? I suppose it could be true . . . if supervisors were not enforcing the masking/testing requirements.

As for Philadelphia workers, those who aren’t vaccinated are required to wear a cloth face mask over a surgical mask while working. The city has lists identifying all such employees; Garrow said supervisors are notified and required to ensure employees are double-masking.

There was much more to the article than I quoted, but nowhere in the article did the reporters raise the question I asked: why would already vaccinated workers not report that, to rid themselves of the doubled masks? Nor did I see any questioning of how strictly supervisors were enforcing the orders; would unvaccinated supervisors have been willing to ignore the requirements for their subordinates, so that they could get away with it as well?

Good reporters would have taken the information they were given, and then head out onto the streets, to check out city work crews and see for themselves. As far as I can tell, that did not happen, or, if it did, such was never mentioned in the article.

Posted on September 24, 2021 by Dana Pico

Killadelphia

There are times I begin to feel like a broken record. I noted that the City of Brotherly Love was up to 393 homicides as of 11:59 PM on Wednesday, September 22^nd. This morning, the Philadelphia Police Department reported that there have been 397 murders as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, the 23^rd. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on three of the killings, but, as usual, I had to dig to find the article; it was not on the Inquirer’s website main page.

Three men killed in separate Philly shootings in a one-hour span

Two shootings happened in North Philadelphia and the third in Frankford.

By Robert Moran | Thursday, September 23, 2021

Three men were killed in separate shootings Thursday night in Philadelphia, police said.

Shortly after 7:30 p.m. a 29-year-old man was sitting inside a silver Toyota Camry on the 3500 block of North 21st Street in North Philadelphia when he was shot twice, police said. The man, whose name was not released, was taken by medics to Temple University Hospital and pronounced dead at 8:07. Police reported no arrests.

2800 block of North Orkney Street, from Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

Just before 7:45 p.m., two men were outside on the 2800 block of North Orkney Street in North Philadelphia when they were shot. One of the victims, a 31-year-old whose name was withheld, was shot multiple times in the chest. Police took him to Temple, where he was pronounced dead at 8:09.

The second victim, a 52-year-old man, was shot in the left leg and buttocks. Police took him to Temple, where he was listed in stable condition. Police reported no arrests.

Around 8:30 p.m., an unidentified young man was outside on the 1300 block of Wakeling Street in Frankford when he was shot several times in the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene by medics. Police reported no arrests.

1300 block of Wakeling Street, from Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

Wakeling Street appears, at least on the Google Maps view, to be a reasonably nice neighborhood.

As usual, Mr Moran’s stories are off of the Inquirer’s website main page by the time the morning rolls around. The newspaper is great on decrying “gun violence,” but, as Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas noted last December, even her paper doesn’t really care:

The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

Just weeks before the end of 2020, that number doubled. More than 400 people gunned down.

By the time you read this, there will only be more.

Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

“A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

Actually, the paper would never say, “A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head,” but just a 21-year-old male. To identify the victims as black or white or Hispanic would, over time, report what everybody already knows: in a city that’s only 38.3% non-Hispanic black, black victims, primarily black male victims, will make up the vast majority of homicide victims in the city. Given that publisher Elizabeth Hughes has vowed to make the paper “an anti-racist news organization,” well, they can’t have the paper, as the Sacramento Bee once put it, “perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.”

As always, I run the numbers: 397 homicides ÷ 266 days elapsed in the year = 1.492 homicides per day, x 365 = 544.76 murders projected for the year.

We had previously reported that the homicide rate in Philly had slowed down, from mid-July through August, but it seems to have picked right back up again.

Posted on September 20, 2021 by Dana Pico

The homicide rate ticks up a bit in Killadelphia

We had previously reported on the slowing down of the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love, but things may be going back in the wrong direction again. The Philadelphia Police Department reported 378 homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, September 16^th, but their next report, for 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, September 19^th, showed 384 people killed.^[1]The Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page states that the homicide “statistics reflect the accurate count during normal business hours, Monday through Friday”, so we … Continue reading That’s six people murdered in three days, and twelve people killed over the past week.

Man killed and 5 others wounded in Fern Rock drive-by shooting

The shooting happened near the intersection of Broad Street and West Chew Avenue.

by Robert Moran, Chris Palmer, and Ellie Rushing | Monday, September 20, 2021 | Updated: 6:43 PM EDT

A 26-year-old man was killed and five other adults were wounded in a drive-by shooting Monday afternoon in the city’s Fern Rock section, police said.

The shooting happened just before 2:20 p.m. on the 1300 block of West Chew Avenue near Broad Street.

Five victims were taken by private vehicle to Einstein Medical Center, police said. The man who was fatally wounded was transported by police to the hospital, which is just a few blocks away. He was pronounced dead at 2:55 p.m.

The five surviving victims, including a 28-year-old woman, were listed in stable condition. No arrests were immediately reported.

There’s more at the original. The story noted that the six victims were just standing on the street when a silver Chrysler 300 pulled up, and someone in the back seat started shooting; a photo in the Inquirer shows the Philadelphia Police putting down evidence markers, normally where shell casings were found, showing evidence marker 19.

We reported, just two weeks ago, that over the last 1½ months, the murder rate has really dropped. There had been 314 homicides as of July 22^nd, the 203^rd day of the year. Since that time, 46 days ago, there have been ‘just’ 49 murders, a rate of 1.0652 per day. With 116 days left in 2021, if that rate were maintained, there would be ‘just’ 124 more killings, for a total of 487 for the year, 12 fewer than last year, and 13 fewer than 1990’s all time record of 500. If that number was the final one, it would be 75 fewer homicides than the math had projected just two months ago.

Now, the city has seen 12 homicides in 14 days, ticking the homicide rate up from 1.458 per day to 1.466, and a projected 535 for the year.

The next ‘milestone’ will be 391 homicides, which is the full year’s total for 2007. The city will probably pass that next weekend.
———————-
Update: Tuesday, September 21, 2021 @ 8:30 AM EDT

The Philadelphia Police Department reported 386 homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT yesterday.

References[+]

References
↑1	The Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page states that the homicide “statistics reflect the accurate count during normal business hours, Monday through Friday”, so we don’t get the totals for Friday, Saturday and Sunday until Monday morning.

Posted on September 14, 2021 by Dana Pico

Philadelphia public schools: will this school year be like last school year?

Governor Tom Wolf’s (D-PA) authoritarian dictates during 2020 pushed the Republicans who control the state legislature to set up two constitutional amendments to rein in a tin-pot dictator, something that certainly sounds familiar to Kentuckians! Well, though those constitutional amendments passed, Governor Wolf found a loophole, getting the state’s Secretary of Health to issue a mask mandate for public schools, but now Mr Wolf is angry because some districts are interpreting ‘exemption’ requirements very loosely. We have previously noted that some districts had chosen not to require masks, and some of the Karens were suing the school district, though they didn’t have the courage to identify themselves.

In the City of Brotherly Love, the public schools have a vaccine mandate, sort of:

20,000 Philly schools employees must get vaccinated by Sept. 30. Here’s what happens if they don’t.

If they choose to not get vaccinated, district workers will have to be COVID-19 tested twice a week, and they lose access to a bank of 10 “quarantine leave days.”

by Kristen A. Graham | Monday, September 13, 2021

The Philadelphia School District’s 20,000 employees must be vaccinated for COVID-19 by Sept. 30, but they won’t lose their jobs if they opt not to get the shot.

If they choose to not get vaccinated, teachers, administrators, and support staff — as well as contractors — will have to be COVID-19 tested twice a week, and they lose access to a bank of 10 “quarantine leave days” that allow them to be absent from work with pay if they’re sick with the coronavirus or must isolate because of exposure.

All employees, regardless of vaccination status, are already tested weekly.

“The testing provider will return to schools for a second time each week to test partially vaccinated or unvaccinated staff,” Larisa Shambaugh, the district’s chief talent officer, said in an email to staff. “If these employees do not test two times a week, they will be subject to discipline.”

We can see what they are doing here.

COVID testing is unpleasant. A nurse sticks a long stick mounted swab up your nose to try to get material from your sinuses. The Centers for Disease Control said, on August 26, 2021:

Vaccines are playing a crucial role in limiting spread of the virus and minimizing severe disease. Although vaccines are highly effective, they are not perfect, and there will be vaccine breakthrough infections. Millions of Americans are vaccinated, and that number is growing. This means that even though the risk of breakthrough infections is low, there will be thousands of fully vaccinated people who become infected and able to infect others, especially with the surging spread of the Delta variant.

Since the fully vaccinated can, and do, spread the virus, there’s no logic in letting the fully vaccinated escape testing, if the goal is to prevent the spread of the virus, so the Philadelphia public schools were mandating continued testing of the vaccinated as well as the unvaccinated. But, if the vaccinated are subjected to the same testing regime as the unvaccinated, then there’s no particular incentive to those who are vaccine hesitant to take the jab. Thus, the school system had to make it worse, by mandating testing twice a week rather than once.

Further down in the Inquirer:

Most district unions have endorsed the mandate, including the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which represents 13,000 educators, paraprofessionals, and school nurses. . . . .

PFT has, in fact, called on the district to require COVID-19 testing for all students. Children are now only tested if they display symptoms during the school day, or if they participate in contact sports or extracurricular activities like band or choir.

If the goal is to prevent the spread of the virus, why not test the students? It’s simple: unless a student’s parents have agreed, in writing, for their child to be tested, something which will be the case for those who sign permission slips for their kids to “participate in contact sports or extracurricular activities like band or choir,” testing students would be considered a physical assault.

If you’ve ever had a COVID test, you know what I mean: while it does not actually harm the subject, it’s a hugely uncomfortable experience that could be used to question prisoners at Guantanamo. If I had a kid in the public schools, and the school system forcibly tested him, I would soon be several million dollars wealthier.

But Unite Here Local 634, the union that represents food service workers and some school climate staff, is not pleased by the vaccination mandate, said Nicole Hunt, president.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate,” Hunt said. “For the School District to mandate the vaccine, people will just leave. This is the most vacancies I’ve ever seen.”

The union noted that there were 195 vacant positions in its unionized jobs, and the Inquirer noted that the school district was already short on crossing guards and school bus drivers, something we have already noted.

The Philadelphia School District stated that there were 202,944 students enrolled in the 2020-2021 academic year; the numbers hadn’t been updated for this fall at the time of this writing, and was, in fact, last updated on February 19, 2021, when the schools were almost all ‘virtual.’

Interestingly, though the 2020 census put the city’s non-Hispanic white population at 34.3%, the school district says that only 14% of the student body population are non-Hispanic white. Non-Hispanic blacks make up 38.3% of the city’s population, but 52% of the student body. The other student body percentages are fairly close to their percentage of the population, which tell us one thing: white Philadelphians don’t trust the city’s public schools and are sending their kids to private or parochial schools. We have already noted that the city zip code areas with the highest black percentage of the population have the lowest vaccination rates, meaning that it is probable that a higher percentage of the student body are unvaccinated than normal. Of course, since none of the vaccines have been approved for use in children under 12, the vaccinated percentage of the student body in kindergarten through the fifth grade must be virtually zero.

But those kids can’t be tested unless their parents approve, and even with approval, who wants to be the nurse forcing a swab up into the sinuses of a struggling second grader?

And now there’s this:

2 weeks into the school year, COVID-19 has closed the first Philly public school

Learning will continue during the Emlen Elementary building closure; teachers will be instructing students remotely.

by Kristen A. Graham | Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Two weeks into the new term, COVID-19 has temporarily closed the first Philadelphia School District building.

Emlen Elementary, in East Mount Airy, will be shut for in-person learning until Sept. 24, officials announced in a letter sent to families. The K-5 school enrolls about 300 students, all of whom are too young to be vaccinated.

“Due to multiple positive cases of COVID-19 in our school, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) has determined that our school building will temporarily close from 9-13-21 to 9-23-21 to help stem the spread of the virus,” principal Tammy Thomas wrote in a letter to Emlen families sent Monday. “Students and staff may not return to our school building during this time.”

Learning will continue during the building closure; teachers will be instructing students remotely, as they did for most students for the entirety of the 2020-21 school year.

Students who did not share a classroom with an employee or student who tested positive for COVID-19 do not need to quarantine, the letter said.

Now that’s interesting: does this mean that the school district is sharing the identities of those who have tested positive, or simply specifying classrooms?

Schools officials are following Philadelphia Department of Public Health guidelines to make decisions about when to quarantine students, entire classes, or schools.

Three or more cases in one classroom requires the class to quarantine; three or more classes across a grade requires a grade to quarantine; six or more cases across grades within a school within 14 days triggers temporary building closure.

COVID-19 cases among school-aged children are rising sharply.

There’s more at the original, but I can’t be the only person who thinks it probable that we’re going to have another year in public education like the last school year.

Posted on September 13, 2021 by Dana Pico

Pennsylvania Attorney General cuts Philly DA out of the loop

Pennsylvania state Attorney General announced that his office has charged over five dozen bad guys with carrying guns and selling drugs in West Philadelphia.

Philly Police and state prosecutors made 65 arrests for guns and drugs in West Philly

Those arrested face charges ranging from conspiracy to illegal gun possession and drug violations, Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office said Monday.

By Chris Palmer | Monday, September 13, 2021

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said Monday that his office has charged 65 people over the last six months with carrying guns and selling drugs in West Philadelphia as part of a new initiative with city police.

At a news conference in the neighborhood, Shapiro cast the effort as an example of how law enforcement agencies can work together to address the city’s violence crisis. Philadelphia is on pace to record more homicides in 2021 than in any other year in its history; 372 people have already been slain this year, by far the highest year-to-date total in decades.

“This is an important part of making a difference,” said Shapiro, flanked by residents and officials including Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw and State Sen. Anthony Williams. “Talking, finger-pointing — that ain’t enough, and that’s not going to get the job done.”

The news conference was spare on details about those arrested. Shapiro did not name any defendants or specify what charges any were facing.

There’s more at the original, in which Mr Shapiro credited cooperation and communication between the state Attorney General’s office and the Philadelphia Police Department. What the article doesn’t say is that, by having the state prosecute what would normally be a city case, Philadelphia’s odious District Attorney Larry Krasner has been cut out of the loop, so hopefully we won’t see slap-on-the-wrist plea deals or cases dropped by George Soros’ stooge.

Danielle Outlaw, Mayor Jim Kenney’s puppet Police Commissioner was there, so Mr Kenney was involved. How much Mr Krasner was kept in the dark, we don’t yet know. He could have been fully informed, but told by the Attorney General to sit down and be quiet.

Posted on September 7, 2021 by Dana Pico

The murder rate in Philadelphia has dropped Has The Philadelphia Inquirer actually noticed?

I have frequently referred to ‘journolists’ as opposed to journalists at The Philadelphia Inquirer. The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias. I will admit to also using it to refer to reporters who just don’t look at all of the facts.

‘Silence, and then screams’: Panic and numbness amid Labor Day weekend shootings in Philadelphia

The unofficial end of summer didn’t slow a record year of gun violence. Between Friday and Sunday, at least 13 people were shot in Philadelphia, two fatally.

by Anna Orso | September 6, 2021

Forty minutes feels like an eternity when lives are on the line.

That’s how long it took Brandon Collins to get home from work Friday evening after his sister called frantically: Someone had sprayed bullets right outside their home on the 1500 block of South Cleveland Street in Point Breeze. And Collins was terrified for his 58-year-old mother’s safety.

She was physically unharmed, but Collins was left shaken. “Things happen in a split second,” he said.

Police said two men had been shot and were hospitalized in the incident — a 33-year-old hit in the arm and hip, and a 24-year-old struck in the foot. An SUV that belonged to an uninvolved resident was riddled with bullet holes. No one was arrested, and police haven’t determined a motive.

That was how Labor Day weekend began in Philadelphia as the city’s unrelenting gun violence crisis continued. Even as the Made in America festival packed Center City and some residents bolted for the Shore, others across the city were left fearful for their family’s safety, or their own.

You have to get down to the ninth paragraph, past two large photographs and two ads, before you come to this part:

But that decrease was from a historically high level of gun violence in July. And the 186 shooting victims in all of August was more than in any month between 2015 and May 2020, when shootings spiked dramatically.

Journalists know that the further down in a story you get, the fewer readers who began it are still reading.

The Philadelphia Police Department reported that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Labor Day, September 6^th, there had been 363 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year. With 249 days of the year having elapsed, that gives Philly an average of 1.4578 murders a day, which would yield 532 murders for the entire year, if that average was maintained.

As we reported on July 9^th, the city then had a rate of 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. Thus, even with the really, really bad part of the year in teh statistics, the ‘projected’ homicide total for 2021 has dropped by thirty souls.

But there’s more. Over the last 1½ months, the murder rate has really dropped. There had been 314 homicides as of July 22^nd, the 203^rd day of the year. Since that time, 46 days ago, there have been ‘just’ 49 murders, a rate of 1.0652 per day. With 116 days left in 2021, if that rate were maintained, there would be ‘just’ 124 more killings, for a total of 487 for the year, 12 fewer than last year, and 13 fewer than 1990’s all time record of 500. If that number was the final one, it would be 75 fewer homicides than the math had projected just two months ago.

Which raises the obvious question: why has the homicide rate decreased? After all, mid-July through Labor Day is part of the long, hot summer, when killings seem to be at their peak. Did a really bad gang or two just get completely wiped out? Did a few gangs come up with a truce? Whatever happened, this ought to be a question real journalists would attempt to investigate.

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Dana Pico

The unintended (?) consequences of being #woke

The left have been slamming police departments across this country ever since the death of George Floyd while he was resisting arrest in Minneapolis. Had Mr Floyd just gotten in that police car when he was arrested, he’d be alive today, or at least he would be if he didn’t overdose on the fentanyl he was using at some point. The left and the #woke and antifa all led Mostly Peaceful Protests™ against the police and doing radical things like obeying the law.

In the City of Brotherly Love, the rioters burned and looted:

Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?

That’s the question that has been raging on the streets of Philadelphia, and across my architecture-centric social media feeds, over the last two days as a dark cloud of smoke spiraled up from Center City. What started as a poignant and peaceful protest in Dilworth Park on Saturday morning ended up in a frenzy of destruction by evening. Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire.

Their chances of survival are slim, which means there could soon be a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia, in one of its most iconic and historic neighborhoods. And protesters moved on to West Philadelphia’s fragile 52nd Street shopping corridor, an important center of black life, where yet more property has been battered.

The very first line by Inquirer architecture writer Inga Saffron asked whether the destruction of buildings in the riots in the city after the killing of George Floyd mattered. She claimed that the anger of the protesters was justified, but also noted that yes, those buildings did matter, too.

“People over property” is great as a rhetorical slogan. But as a practical matter, the destruction of downtown buildings in Philadelphia — and in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and a dozen other American cities — is devastating for the future of cities. We know from the civil rights uprisings of the 1960s that the damage will ultimately end up hurting the very people the protests are meant to uplift. Just look at the black neighborhoods surrounding Ridge Avenue in Sharswood or along the western end of Cecil B. Moore Avenue. An incredible 56 years have passed since the Columbia Avenue riots swept through North Philadelphia, and yet those former shopping streets are graveyards of abandoned buildings. Residents still can’t get a supermarket to take a chance on their neighborhood.

The “Buildings Matter, Too” headline got Stan Wischnowski, then Executive Editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer fired to resign, with published Elizabeth Hughes writing that she’s transforming that once-great newspaper into “an anti racist news organization,” and telling readers that the Inquirer was now:

Producing an antiracism workflow guide for the newsroom that provides specific questions that reporters and editors should ask themselves at various stages of producing our journalism.
Establishing a Community News Desk to address long-standing shortcomings in how our journalism portrays Philadelphia communities, which have often been stigmatized by coverage that over-emphasizes crime.
Creating an internal forum for journalists to seek guidance on potentially sensitive content and to ensure that antiracism is central to the journalism.
Commissioning an independent audit of our journalism that resulted in a critical assessment. Many of the recommendations are being addressed, and a process for tracking progress is being developed.
Training our staff and managers on how to recognize and avoid cultural bias.
Examining our crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media.

Translation: the Inquirer would censor the news if it might show black or ‘brown’ people committing crimes. We noted the Sacramento Bee’s description of their policy:

Publishing these (booking) photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

As we have pointed out, Representative Ilhan Omar Mynett (D-MN) and state Attorney General Keith bin Ellison (D-MN) are supporting a ballot measure to eliminate the Police Department in Minneapolis, and while Philadelphia hasn’t been that stupid — at least not yet — it’s clear that the chickens are coming home to roost:

Police struggle to hire officers and 911 dispatchers as homicides and shootings increase

The Police Department is struggling to find enough officers and 911 dispatchers to hire, amid a surge in violence that is on pace to make 2021 the deadliest year in history.

by Mensah M Dean | Sunday, September 5, 2021

An Overbrook man called 911 last week after hearing breaking glass outside his house and looking out to see a teen breaking into his next-door neighbor’s car, then running off.

Realizing he had just witnessed a burglary in progress, the man raced to his car to give chase. Along the way, he said, he repeatedly called 911 for help — and the phone rang and rang with no answer.

Far from unique, his experience of reaching for help by dialing 911 — to no avail — is being played out across the city as the Philadelphia Police Department grapples with a vacancy crisis among officers and 911 dispatchers.

Finding enough officers and dispatchers has been a challenge, according to department officials, as interest in such jobs declines amid calls for police reform and the national racial reckoning sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. In Philadelphia, city and police union officials say, the decline in interest in policing can also be attributed in part to District Attorney Larry Krasner’s stepped-up prosecution of police misconduct.

There’s more at the original

The Philadelphia Police Department, authorized to have 6,380 officers, is 371 officers below strength. There are only 252 dispatchers, out of an authorized strength of 353, 101 vacancies, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw stated that the city has imposed mandatory weekend overtime for 911 dispatchers to make up the shortfall. The story notes that Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Soros’ stooge Larry Krasner, has made prosecuting police ‘misconduct’ a priority.

Would you want to be a police officer in the City of Brotherly Love, with far-left idiots like Mr Krasner just salivating at the chance to catch a mistake and prosecute yet another police officer?

It seems that Philadelphia doesn’t even need to dismantle the Police Department, the way the #woke are trying to do in Minneapolis; instead they’ve inflicted a festering wound of a hundred cuts, one which is slowly dismantling the department, because the #woke simply do not believe in law enforcement.

At least, not until one of them is the victim.

The real divide in America is not between Republicans and Democrats, conservative and liberals, or even urban and rural. No, the real divide is between civilized and barbarian. The problem for the left is that, as barbarians, they have surrendered to the wants and mercies of the strongest, and most of them are weaklings.

Posted on September 4, 2021 by Dana Pico

Philadelphia sports writers might just explain Philly’s murder rate The Inquirer wants to influence the city's culture, but their sportswriters might be going about it the wrong way.

In the city that booed Santa Claus, and which piled heaps of scorn and abuse on Carson Wentz and Ben Simmons after every bad game, Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer Marcus Hayes wants to blame 76ers point guard Ben Simmons and (former) Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz for wanting to leave.

Ben-edict Simmons, Carson Wentz deserve Philadelphia’s fury as they abandon Eagles, Sixers

They should have spent the summer on their knees, begging forgiveness, promising to improve. Instead, they sabotaged their trade value and put your teams in peril. They completely warrant your wrath.

By Marcus Hayes | September 4, 2021

Philly can be an angry place. Just ask Santa.

Sometimes that anger is misplaced, as Jayson Werth can attest. But, in this moment, every ounce of Philadelphia’s fury directed at Ben Simmons and Carson Wentz is justified.

Wentz forced a disastrous trade this spring to the Colts after logging one of the worst seasons in NFL history. Simmons, gun-shy in the playoffs, is trying to trump that unholy departure by strong-arming the Sixers, according to an Inquirer report Wednesday.

They should have returned to the Eagles and Sixers, rehabilitated their images, and enhanced their trade values. They could not, and cannot. They fear competition. They abhor accountability. They see themselves as victims. So, instead, they sabotaged their trade values, which crippled the Eagles, and which probably will cripple the Sixers. That, on its own, should infuriate fans, even if the pair’s dismissiveness didn’t.

Wentz and Simmons should have spent the summer of 2021 down on their knees, begging for your forgiveness, working on their flaws, willing to accept whatever role their bosses decided would best help the team. They should have apologized to their teammates for their shortcomings and for the distractions they caused. They should have pledged to, in the future, actually earn the millions of dollars that you lavish upon them — paying to watch them on TV, online, or in person; parking your cars and buying beers at the stadiums; purchasing their jerseys and shoes online.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Simmons grew up in Australia, where people aren’t treated the way Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, treat sports stars. Mr Wentz grew up in North Dakota, where people aren’t, you know, [insert plural slang term for the rectum here], yet somehow, some way, people there expect them to have Philly thick skins.

Of course, there are a lot of Philadelphians who don’t have such thick skins, which is why people keep getting shot in the City of Brotherly Love, but I digress.

Mr Simmons is an incredible athlete, but he has one glaring weakness as a basketball player: he just can’t shoot. So, with all that he can do, Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, had to jump on his biggest weakness, and forgot about all of the good things he can do. Philly fans, and sports writers, wanted him to play beyond his skill set, and trashed him when he couldn’t. Even before the playoffs, there were plenty of articles in the Inquirer about him taking very few three point shots. (I remember one in which it was noted that, at the time, Shaquille O’Neal had more career three-pointers than Mr Simmons.)

The pressure got to Mr Simmons, and he had a terrible series against the Atlanta Hawks, shooting just 33.3% . . . from the free throw line! Then, with just 3:30 left in the game, and the 76ers trailing by two, Mr Simmons, who is 6’11” tall, passed up a wide-open dunk over 6’1″ Trae Young. The game, as the announcer said, had gotten in his head.

Mr Simmons was rightly criticized, but Philly fans, and sports writers, went way, way overboard.

Mr Wentz? He was well appreciated, until last season, when he played behind a destroyed-by-injuries offensive line, had no rushing game, and second-quality receivers. His top target, Zach Ertz, was out for five games, yet Philly fans, and sports writers, expected Mr Wentz to be Superman anyway. I wasn’t a particularly good football player, but even in high school I knew that there were eleven guys on the field, all of whom are necessary to make plays, and it doesn’t matter how good your quarterback is, if his receivers aren’t getting open, and his line isn’t keeping the defensive rush off of him, he’s not going to have a good game. Even Tom Brady can’t make great plays when he’s underneath a 260 lb blitzing linebacker.

The article was all about Messrs Simmons and Wentz having no loyalty to their Philadelphia teams, but, in reality, Philly fans, and sports writers, had no loyalty to those players. Mr Hayes is like the abusive husband who gets all urinated off and blames his wife for filing for divorce.

When I think of the homicide rate in Philly, which actually has been coming down of late, it seems to me like the Inquirer sports writers, writ large. People getting pissed off, for reasons that really aren’t that important, and overreacting in the extreme. Mr Hayes, of course, is being paid to overreact, even by the very #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 Inquirer, but, in his own small way, he is contributing to the attitude which so frequently spills out onto the city’s mean streets. Through the end of August, 357 people had been murdered in Philly, which means that there were more murders there than any entire year from 2008 through 2019.

Is that fair to Mr Hayes? He might not think so, but the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love is, in the end, an issue of culture, and the Inquirer is, and wants to be, both an element of, and contributor to, the culture of the city. When published Elizabeth Hughes wrote that the newspaper was trying to become “an anti racist news organization,” she was saying that she wanted her newspaper to become a leader in the community, to make the city a better place in which to live. Thus, it has to be asked: do columns like Mr Hayes’, in which he wrote of Messrs Simmons and Wentz, “So yes, this pair warrants your wrath,” lower the rhetoric, dampen down the anger, reduce the tendency to violence? When he wrote, “Ben-edict Simmons and Ginger Jesus are Philly sports’ version of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,” wasn’t he asking for an extreme reaction? If players like Messrs Simmons and Wentz, who have virtually nothing to do, personally, with the vast, vast majority of people in Philly, deserve the “wrath” and “fury” of Philadelphia fans, then doesn’t the guy down the block, who stole your girl, or dunked in your face on the playground, or cut you off in trying to grab a parking space, or sold drugs on your corner, deserve your “wrath” and your “fury” even more?