Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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Governor Tom Wolf to lift all #COVID19 restrictions . . . except the one which pisses off people the most

The most visible symbol of compliance with State orders is the facemask, and the Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania doesn’t want to let go of that!

Pennsylvania will fully reopen on Memorial Day, lifting COVID-19 rules. Philadelphia won’t follow suit — yet.

Masking requirements will remain in place until 70% of the state’s 18-and-older population is vaccinated. Philadelphia said it will review the policy.

by Erin McCarthy and Justine McDaniel | May 4, 2021

Pennsylvania will lift its coronavirus mitigation measures on Memorial Day, state officials announced Tuesday, marking a milestone in the pandemic recovery and freeing businesses and patrons to prepare to fill restaurants, bars, and stores for the first time in more than a year.

Philadelphia, however, was not yet set to follow suit: The city will said it will review the state’s policy but retain its own restrictions. Officials are working on the city’s reopening plans.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health announcement keeps in place the requirement for Pennsylvanians to wear masks in compliance with state and CDC guidelines. It also gives residents an incentive to get COVID-19 shots: Masking will be required until 70% of the state’s 18-and-older population is vaccinated.

Gene Barr, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, called the announcement “the long-awaited light at the end of the tunnel and a return to sense of ‘normalcy.’”

What, I have to ask, is so magical about Memorial Day that the restrictions can be lifted then, but not on, say, May 19th, or even today? Saying that the restrictions can be lifted on May 31st but not now, when we cannot know what the conditions will be on that day, means that the the decision was driven by politics, not science. Given that Memorial Day is the end of a three-day holiday weekend, why is Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) waiting until the last day of those three, rather than Saturday, May 29th instead? How will conditions be different enough on the 31st from those on the 29th to justify ruining two of the three days of the holiday?

Of course, the Governor is keeping the most hated restriction in place, the mask mandate, with the threat promise that it will be lifted once 70% of the Commonwealth’s adult population has been vaccinated. He is trying to use the police power of the state to force people to take the vaccine.[1]Full disclosure: I am not an anti-vaxxer by any means, and received my second dose on Cinco de Mayo. But having chosen to take the vaccine myself does not mean that I believe that others should be … Continue reading

The state is trying to use Penn State head football coach James Franklin to push getting vaccinated, having him say, “I encourage everyone who is eligible to get vaccinated. The more people who are vaccinated, the better chance we have to get back to 107,000 strong here in Beaver Stadium.”

But the Commonwealth and the credentialed media are making it political, making it a Democrats vs Republicans issue:

As Pennsylvania pivots to a new phase of its coronavirus vaccination campaign, and focuses on persuading reluctant residents to get their shots, there’s one group that will be especially tough to win over — the scores of Republicans who say they don’t plan to ever get immunized.

Communications and public health experts say these skeptics need reassurance from the Republican elected officials they trust the most. But in Pennsylvania, all but a few GOP lawmakers are keeping quiet about the vaccine, and some of the ones speaking up are spreading misinformation or sending mixed messages about its safety and efficacy.

State Rep. Russ Diamond (R., Lebanon) falsely called the vaccine poison on social media and vowed not to get one. State Rep. Dawn Keefer (R., York) introduced legislation that would ban businesses or sports venues from requiring proof of vaccination. And State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin) wants to block employers from forcing their workers to get the shot.

Doctors say this rhetoric could have deadly consequences.

How, I have to ask, is attempting to protect workers’ rights and individual rights, from having to carry proof of vaccination, a wrong thing?[2]After getting my second dose of the Moderna vaccine, the Estill County Health Department gave me a card, complete with the same type of plastic holder in which a lot of people get their automobile … Continue reading

At every turn, the political left have been trying to force compliance with Government Orders. Instead of asking people to wear masks, Governors across the nation, sadly including Republicans as well as Democrats, have issued orders to people to do so, and issuing orders is the surest way of which I can think to get pushback from people who will not be sheeple.

Despite the claims of the ‘experts,’ the empirical evidence is that the mask mandates do not make any difference.

The facemask is the most visible symbol of compliance, and thus is the one that Governors such as Tom Wolf and Andy Beshear (D-KY) want to keep in place the longest. But Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, lifted the state’s mask mandate on March 10th, and despite the gloom-and-doom predictions of the experts, the number of cases in the Lone Star State have fallen dramatically. We noted, a month ago:

Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) eliminated the mandatory mask order in the Lone Star State, effective on March 10th; on that date, Texas’ seven-day moving average of daily new cases stood at 4,909. As of April 5th, that number was down to 3,007. The New York Times noted that while the moving average was down by 19% over the past fourteen days, the number of daily tests had increased by 8%. More tests, yet far fewer cases; how about that. Hospitalizations were also down, by 18%, and COVID-19 fatalities were down 38%.

Since then, cases have continued to decline. As of May 5th, the moving seven-day average of new cases in Texas is 2,830, the lowest it has been since June 18th of last year. Pennsylvania, which has also seen cases drop, has a moving seven-day average of 2,882, higher than Texas, despite having just 43% of Texas population.[3]Texas = 29.15 million; Pennsylvania = 12.78 million.

Despite the proclamations of the ‘experts,’ the empirical evidence is that the wearing of facemasks does not make a difference. Governor Beshear, in his latest (illegal) executive order, stated that the CDC “conducted a study of all 3,141 counties in the United States and found that those counties with mask mandates experienced a statistically significant decrease in daily COVID-19 cases,” but the evidence given in real life, in current data, so not show that. Texas, with its wide open status, is showing a greater decrease than half-way-closed Pennsylvania, and, in the Bluegrass State, cases have risen slightly.[4]To be fair, in my small, rural county, I have seen a couple of businesses clearly not going along with the mask mandates. I will not disclose which businesses they are, to keep the Commonwealth from … Continue reading

The mask mandates do not help, but Democratic governors just love to exert their authority, and the continuing mask mandates are the visible symbol to them that the sheeple have complied.

References

References
↑1 Full disclosure: I am not an anti-vaxxer by any means, and received my second dose on Cinco de Mayo. But having chosen to take the vaccine myself does not mean that I believe that others should be compelled to do so.
↑2 After getting my second dose of the Moderna vaccine, the Estill County Health Department gave me a card, complete with the same type of plastic holder in which a lot of people get their automobile proof of insurance cards, and the very cute nurse told me to keep it on my person. I will not comply with vaccine ‘passport’ ideas, and removed that card from my wallet when I returned home.
↑3 Texas = 29.15 million; Pennsylvania = 12.78 million.
↑4 To be fair, in my small, rural county, I have seen a couple of businesses clearly not going along with the mask mandates. I will not disclose which businesses they are, to keep the Commonwealth from trying to take action against them.
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Killadelphia Four overnight homicides aren't even newsworthy as far as The Philadelphia Inquirer is concerned

Today being Friday, there won’t be any more updates on the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page until Monday morning, which means that we’ll get the weekend homicide numbers all together. Nevertheless, you’d think that even the very #woke Philadelphia Inquirer would take notice of four more homicides in a day!

Screen capture of Inquirer main page, April 30, 2021, 10:25 AM EDT. Click to enlarge

It’s possible, of course, that some of those four additional homicides were from shootings from a couple of days ago, victims who didn’t give up the ghost until yesterday, but still, as of 10:26 AM EDT, nothing but crickets from the editors of what I have sometimes called The Philadelphia Enquirer.[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, which brings to my mind the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Last year saw 499 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, initially reported as 502, but later amended down. Assuming that three people didn’t actually recover from death on New Year’s Eve, my guess is that a few people didn’t expire until after midnight, though, knowing what a tool of Mayor Jim Kenney Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is, any sort of ‘massaging’ of the numbers is possible.

The numbers are stark. Last year’s 499 homicides was just one short of the record set in 1990, during the worst of the crack cocaine wars. As of April 29, 2020, ‘only’ 124 people had been murdered in Philadelphia. That was a 19.23% increase over 2019, but still ‘only’ 1.033 homicides per day.[2]With 2020 being a leap year, April 29th was the 120th day of the year, not the 119th as it is in non-leap years.

Things worsened as the year went along, following the Mostly Peaceful Protests™ over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the COVID-19 lockdowns. Oddly enough, crime kept increasing in Philadelphia, despite the lockdown orders. I was just so, so shocked!

But 169 homicides is a 36.29% increase over bloody 2020, and 62.50% increase over just two years ago. In case anyone hadn’t noticed, Donald Trump isn’t President anymore — though the left will still blame him — and we’ve had a COVID-19 vaccine available, and cities and states doing everything they can to get people vaccinated, and states and cities, including Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, are reducing their COVID-19 restrictions. Derek Chauvin was convicted on all charges concerning the killing of George Floyd. At this point, the left are out of external excuses on which to blame the increased violence in our inner cities.

Not that they won’t make up something else, of course, because that’s what they do.

So, what concerns the editors of the Inquirer?

There was a seemingly endless list of articles on the Eagles drafting DaVonta Smith in the first round of the NFL draft! But there were no stories which led me to believe that #BlackLivesMattered to the editors of the Inquirer. The #woke nature of the Inquirer staff, the ones who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline Buildings Matter, Too, even though Philadelphia experienced plenty of damage and violence in the protests over the killing of George Floyd, would have made anyone think that #BlackLivesMatter was of ultimate importance to the staff, so important that the innocent play on words over a legitimate concerns over the historic buildings in one of our oldest cities could be torched in those Mostly Peaceful Protests™.

But if the staff believe that black lives really matter, it’s obvious that the untimely ending of black lives, unless at the hands of a white policeman, simply isn’t newsworthy.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, which brings to my mind the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
↑2 With 2020 being a leap year, April 29th was the 120th day of the year, not the 119th as it is in non-leap years.
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Killadelphia: Philly Police arrest 16-year-old connected to four murders

We have previously noted the apparent policy of the Lexington Herald-Leader not to publish photos of accused criminals, at least of accused criminals who are not white. And now it seems that The Philadelphia Inquirer is doing the same thing.

A 16-year-old is connected to four homicides, including a man shot outside a Philly jail, police say

Officials apprehended the teenager after highlighting his alleged crimes during the city’s first biweekly gun violence briefing.

By Anna Orso | April 28, 2021

Philadelphia police have arrested a 16-year-old who they say is connected to four killings since December, including the fatal shooting of man who was gunned down after his release from a city jail last month.

Ameen Hurst, of Philadelphia, faces murder and related charges in connection with two shooting incidents: a Christmas Eve killing in Overbrook and a quadruple shooting in West Philadelphia on March 11 that left two men dead. Police said charges are also expected to be filed against him this week in connection with the shooting death of Rodney Hargrove, 20, near the front gates of the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in the middle of the night on March 18.

Just a day before the incident outside the jail, officials had publicly named Hurst as a person of interest in the Christmas Eve killing of 20-year-old Dyewou Nyshawn Scruggs, who was streaming live on social media when he was shot.

In none of the cases did police offer a possible motive for the shootings.

Ameen Hurst, 16. Click to enlarge.

There’s more at the original. What there isn’t at the original is a photo of the accused. The website of WPVI-TV, Channel 6, the ABC owned-and-operated (O&O) station in Philadelphia, had Mr Hurst’s photo, as did KYW-TV, Channel 3, the CBS O&O station, so the photo was available. The Inquirer simply chose not to display it on its website.

As I noted in my stories concerning the Herald-Leader, it wasn’t an issue of saving bandwidth, because the Inquirer story was illustrated with this stock photo of Philly cops placing numbered markers by spent shell casings. It would have cost the Inquirer no more bandwidth to publish Mr Hurst than it did the stock photo.

I will admit to some surprise that the Inquirer printed the name of the 16-year-old suspect, as he’s legally a minor. That his name was released probably indicates that he is being charged as an adult, so why not publish a freely available photo?

I, of course, don’t know why the Inquirer didn’t include the photo in the website article, but knowing how the young #woke have captured the Inquirer’s newsroom, forcing the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too,” I would not be in the least surprised if the Inquirer declined to publish Mr Hurst’s photo because the accused is black.

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An interesting juxtaposition #BlackLivesMatter protesters celebrate the conviction of Derek Chauvin, but don't help police solve murders of black Americans by other black Americans

There they were, two stories, side by side on the Lexington Herald-Leader’s website main page:

Lexington Herald-Leader website main page, 8:36 AM EDT, April 21, 2021. Screenshot by DRP.

Two stories, one about the glee being felt by some over the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd, and one about the black lives that really don’t matter to the #BlackLivesMatter activists:

‘Justice can prevail.’ Group gathers in Lexington after verdict in Derek Chauvin trial

By Karla Ward | April 20, 2021 | 7:43 PM EDT | Updated April 20, 2021 | 8:11 PM EDT

A group that has been protesting since last summer against police violence gathered Tuesday night in downtown Lexington to hear the verdict announced in the trial of Derek Chauvin, who was found guilty on all counts in the death of George Floyd.

April Taylor, a member of LPD Accountability and a prominent protest organizer in Lexington, was emotional after the verdict was read. She addressed the group of a few dozen that gathered in front of the Fayette County courthouses.

Taylor said Tuesday night that she was grateful for the guilty verdict, but that police reforms are needed to prevent more deaths.

“I am worried about what will happen on appeal,” Taylor said. And she said, as a tear rolled down her cheek, “There are so many other people who have lost their lives who did not get justice.”

Taylor hopes that the verdict in Chauvin’s case will encourage people to keep fighting because “there are moments when we can have wins, when justice can prevail.”

It was only a few days ago that we noted Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers and his complaint:

Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers urged people with information regarding homicide investigations to speak with police. He said some witnesses don’t cooperate with police investigations, making it more difficult to identify suspects.

The other article noted the difficulties in obtaining justice on Lexington’s mean streets:

‘Tired of burying one another.’ Families of Lexington homicide victims rally to end violence

By Jeremy Chisenhall | April 20, 2021 | 8:14 PM EDT | Updated April 20, 2021 | 9:42 PM EDT

Concerned about a recent spike in fatal shootings, Lexington community members on Tuesday gathered to say they’re “sick and tired of burying one another.”

That was Pastor Joseph Owens’ message as he spoke to other residents gathered in the parking lot outside Shiloh Baptist Church. Lexington has had 15 homicides in 2021, all of which have been shootings, according to police data.

An early spike in shootings this year follows a record-setting year for homicides in 2020. Lexington reported 34 homicides last year. Some of the people at Tuesday’s rally were concerned that violence involving gangs and other groups is a significant contributor to the spike in shootings.

It was just two days ago that we noted that Lexington’s 15 homicides by April 18th put the city on a path toward 51 homicides for 2021, and a 15.78 per 100,000 population homicide rate. But, at least the Herald-Leader regards homicides as newsworthy, something The Philadelphia Inquirer does not. Of course, when Lexington has an average of one murder a week, while the City of Brotherly Love averages 1.4 per day, I suppose I can see why the Inquirer doesn’t bother.

Today’s Inquirer? Their website main page was filled with articles of gloating and joy that Mr Chauvin was convicted:

You know what I didn’t see on the Inquirer’s main page? I didn’t see a single story about the the people who were murdered in Philadelphia last night. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page noted that there had been 154 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love by the end of April 20th, a 31.62% increase over the same date last year — and 2020 being a leap year, April 20th of 2020 was the 111th day of the year, not the 110th as it is this year — and three more homicides than just the day before.[1]It’s worth noting that very white Uber-feminist Amanda Marcotte, herself a resident of South Philadelphia, never writes about the black-on-black homicide rate in her adopted home town, but sure … Continue reading

But that didn’t matter to the editors of the Inquirer. It didn’t matter that former Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey used to lament the “no snitchin'” culture which hindered the police in finding and arresting the thugs who killed so many Philadelphians, it doesn’t matter that the city had a higher homicide rate than Chicago, it doesn’t matter that the vast majority of the homicide victims are black, because #BlackLivesMatter only means that black lives matter to the #woke of the Inquirer newsroom when they are taken by white policemen.

We noted, last October, in an article entitled We need to stop pretending that #BlackLivesMatter, because in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s very apparent that they don’t, that:

(A)s of 11:59 PM EDT on October 21th, 391 souls had been sent to their eternal rewards. That isn’t the record, of course, but 2007 is the base year on the Current Crime Statistics website, and that was the number of people killed that year in Philly. This year has now matched that total . . . with 71 days left in the year.

The math is simple: 391 people killed in 295 days so far equals 1.325 people killed every single day. With 71 days left in the year, at that rate the city should see another 94 people sent to their deaths before the ball drops in New York City.

By October 21, 2020, summer had been over for a month, and summer is the season when most murders occur in our major cities. But the math I did, 391 + 94 = 485, turned out to be short, as the daily homicide rate in Philadelphia increased, and 499 souls were sent early to their eternal rewards. And Philly’s homicide rate of 1.40 dead every single day, in just the depths of winter and the first month of spring is higher than it was that October day last year.

But that’s not news to the inquirer! Oh, there was an article by columnist Will Bunch blaming the increase in homicides on increased gun ownership, but the increase in black-on-black murders in Philly was never mentioned. As always, the problem was “gun violence,” rather than the culture and attitudes of the bad guys who used the guns. Malcolm Jenkins, formerly a safety with the Philadelphia Eagles, and Natasha Cloud, a guard with the Washington Mystics, wrote an article published yesterday blaming the police, even though deaths of blacks at the hands of the police are minuscule compared to the deaths of black Americans at the hands of other black Americans.

Michele Kilpatrick, one of District Attorney Larry Krasner’s minions, came ever-so-close to describing the problem:

In 2020, there were four victims of shootings in the Philadelphia Police Department’s 5th District, which includes the affluent, majority-white neighborhoods of Roxborough and Manayunk. Just a few miles away in the 14th District, which includes the low-income, majority-Black neighborhood of Germantown, there were 121 victims of shootings. That disparity is not new: In 2018, the 14th District had 20 times the number of shooting victims than the 5th. In 2016, there were 80 shooting victims in the 14th and none in the 5th.

We know that proactive policing policies like stop-and-frisk, which sometimes yields unlicensed or unregistered guns, are not the reason shootings have remained so low in Chestnut Hill — because the same policies have consistently failed to make shootings also rare in Germantown.

Instead, throughout Philadelphia and cities nationwide, generations of low-income Black and Latino residents have lived and died in communities that have been reduced to symbols in the public imagination — the South Bronx, Compton, South Side of Chicago — as we mistake failed policies for failed people and resign ourselves to the idea that certain types of places and people are just inherently dangerous.

Occam’s Razor is:

a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.

Miss Kilpatrick is apparently not a fan of William of Occam, because she, like so many others, feels the need to go beyond the simple, go beyond the obvious, and find all sorts of reasons why bad people are bad people beyond them simply being bad people! She wants to blame poverty, but I grew up poor, grew up without a father, and it didn’t lead me to kill anyone. I didn’t have the community services she advocates, yet I wasn’t out committing crimes or shooting at people.

Mt Sterling, Kentucky is a small town, and we had something called October Court Day. On Court day, the third Monday of the month, the country folk would come to town and set up along Locust Street and other areas on the south side of town, to sell and trade for their products. On two separate October Court Days, I walked up North Maysville Street, in full view of where the city Police Department used to be on Broadway, across the street from the Montgomery County Courthouse, carrying long guns that I had bought, when I was still in high school . . . and nobody cared, because nobody thought that I was going to shoot anybody.[2]Sadly, Court Day has degenerated into nothing more than a professional vendor-driven flea market.

Why? Because everybody knew that my mother had taught me right!

There’s no way my solutions are politically correct, and many of the Special Snowflakes™ on the left who read it will be absolutely triggered, but I, of course, don’t care; it’s still the truth.

And that’s what it all boils down to: bad kids are brought up by bad parents, assuming that anybody brings them up at all. Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old in Chicago, is stone-cold graveyard dead after being shot by a police officer, because young Mr Toledo was outside, consorting with a 21-year-old convicted criminal, and fleeing with a gun, at 2:30 in the morning. The officer thought that Mr Toledo had turned on him with a gun, though the body camera footage shows Mr Toledo had dropped the weapon, but the real fault is that his parents were letting him run around at 2:30 on a Monday morning.

Miss Kilpatrick got it wrong: the problem really is failed people, failed people in the neighborhoods she mentioned, the South Bronx, Compton, South Side of Chicago, and the ones she left out, Philly’s own Strawberry Mansion or Nicetown, because they are being brought up, are growing up, in a culture which glamorizes violence, which doesn’t teach right from wrong, and in which “street cred” is of major importance.

Well, I’m just enough of an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to tell you what the real solution is. It won’t be politically correct in the slightest, and will doubtlessly offend some people, but I’m retired, and can’t be ‘canceled,’ can’t be fired from a job for telling you the truth. They key to understanding the causes of violence is understanding what is most important to teenaged boys and young men: pussy!

There is nothing teenaged boys and twenty-something men think about more than sex. I know; I used to be a teenaged boy and twenty-something young man, sometime just after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. The greatest reward for young men of those ages is getting laid, and therein lays the key: when young girls reward the behavior of the bad boys with pussy, bad behavior is incentivized, and good behavior devalued. When the gang-bangers get laid, and the nerds do not, the girls wind up with some exciting times, but with guys who will never provide any sort of reasonable and safe future for them.

The key is the education of teenaged girls, teaching them that the nerds they are shunning are the guys who will be there when they get into their thirties and forties, the guys who will actually be fathers to their children, and the guys who will help provide a solid and reliable middle-class home for them. They will be the men who can be with them every day, and not be spending five-to-ten years away in Graterford or Eddyville prisons.

In the end, the solution to the problem is black mothers, teaching their black daughters how their behavior affects their neighborhoods, their cities, and all of society. The black mothers of Lexington and Philadelphia and Chicago and St Louis, mothers who now have a 69.4% out-of-wedlock birth rate, need to realize and teach their daughters that there is a better way of life than the ones the mothers have, need to rear their daughters to do what’s right for themselves and their neighborhoods and their eventual children rather than just what is exciting in the moment.

There’s no way that is politically correct, and many of the Special Snowflakes™ on the left who read it will be absolutely triggered, but I, of course, don’t care; it’s still the truth.[3]Trigger: to cause an intense and usually negative emotional reaction in (someone)

References

References
↑1 It’s worth noting that very white Uber-feminist Amanda Marcotte, herself a resident of South Philadelphia, never writes about the black-on-black homicide rate in her adopted home town, but sure jumps on the Derek Chauvin bandwagon.
↑2 Sadly, Court Day has degenerated into nothing more than a professional vendor-driven flea market.
↑3 Trigger: to cause an intense and usually negative emotional reaction in (someone)
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Mayor Jim Kenney wanted to not increase police funding, to appease the left, and tried to sneak it through in other departments

We have not been particularly charitable toward Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), nor any of the rest of the political leadership of the City of Brotherly Love, but this story from The Philadelphia Inquirer just thoroughly amused me:

Mayor Kenney said his budget wouldn’t increase police spending. It’s not that simple.

His proposal does include new investments for police. They’re just included in the budgets for other departments.

by Anna Orso and Laura McCrystal | April 15, 2021 | Updated: 6:25 PM EDT

Mayor Jim Kenney avoided taking a side in the political battle over law enforcement funding on Thursday when he said he’s proposing flat funding for the Philadelphia Police Department in the coming year.

But his proposal does include new investments for police. Some fund reforms. Others are tucked into budgets for different departments.

In addition to the $727 million police allocation that’s roughly equivalent to last year’s, the administration proposed funneling additional money for police-related reforms and programs through the Managing Director’s Office. And it set aside funding for expected raises as a result of upcoming contract negotiations with municipal unions, including the police.

Of the cash that would run through the Managing Director’s Office, about $6 million would fund a citywide program that pairs behavioral health specialists with officers responding to mental health-related 911 calls. Another $750,000 in spending for that office would expand training for police “to make positive decisions when put in difficult situations.”

There’s more at the original.

So, the Mayor is yielding to the leftist mobs, and not increasing funding for the Philadelphia Police Department, despite 145 homicides in the city, 35 more than the same date last year, a 31.8% increase, and last year saw a near-record 499 people bleed out their life’s blood in Philly’s mean streets.[1]The record was 500, set during the crack cocaine wars in 1990.

But he also knows that more funding is needed, so he’s hiding it in other areas of the city budget. There are more details in the Inquirer story.

But proponents of defunding the police criticized the proposal, saying tax dollars going toward reforms still prop up a system they see as harmful.

“Mayor Jim Kenney is trying to pull the wool over our eyes,” said Kris Henderson, executive director of Amistad Law Project, a West Philadelphia public-interest law center that advocates ending mass incarceration. “Resources that end up in the hands of police are police funding.”

So, what is the Amistad Law Project? They say they are “a public interest law firm and organizing project working to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania and fighting to get our communities the resources they need to thrive,” without realizing that the problem isn’t ‘mass incarceration,’ but that too few people are locked up!

At some point, the soft-heartedness of the left has to be recognized for what it really is, soft-headedness.

Do the good people at Amistad think that, somehow, the 145 people who are now stone-cold graveyard dead, or the 499 who were murdered last year, got that way by the honest mistakes of nice guys? They are “attorneys and organizers,” and one has to assume that anyone who got into law school in the first place isn’t a complete idiot; they have to know that the people who are committing these homicides have mostly had previous brushes with the law, sometimes many brushes with the law. These are the people that the noble #SocialJusticeWarriors want to keep out of jail, but when they have been left out of jail for lesser offenses, some of them wind up going on to bigger and badder things.

When a 6-year-old boy was wounded, and a man killed when someone fired “at least” twelve shots at them as they were sitting in a parked car in the 800 block of South 53rd Street Wednesday evening, do the very concerned “attorneys and organizers” of Amistad think it was really nothing? Are they saying to themselves, “Well, at least the shooter, or shooters — the story said that there was “at least” one shooter but there could have been more — wasn’t incarcerated”?

It seems that almost every time we read about a suspect in a Philadelphia murder — in the too few times the police actually identify and catch him, anyway — we read that he already had a criminal record, that he couldn’t legally own the gun he used, and that he was already wanted on a parole violation. Such suspects usually could still be in jail, were they given the maximum sentence for their previous crimes.

Nikolas Cruz was not a victim of ‘mass incarceration,’ because the Broward County Sheriff’s Department let him go without charges on several occasions. Young Mr Cruz could have been in jail on an in-school assault charge, but the school board did not want to contribute to the “school to prison” pipeline, so he had no criminal record, was able to purchase his weapon legally, and now seventeen people are pushing up daisies, because oh-so-well-meaning people like the Amistad “attorneys and organizers” didn’t want to take his earlier crimes seriously.

In Philadelphia itself, Lewis Jordan, a.k.a. John Lewis, had been treated leniently by the office of then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham, and was out on the street when he could, and should, have been in jail. On October 31, 2007, Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy walked into a Dunkin’ Donuts, the scene of a previous robbery, to check on it, just as Mr Jordan was attempting to rob the place; Mr Jorden shot Officer Cassidy in the head, killing him. Had law enforcement treated Mr Jordan seriously, rather than dropping the charges if he’d attend drug counseling courses, he would have been in jail, and Officer Cassidy would have gone home to his wife that Hallowe’en.

More, Mr Jordan might have spent what, a year in the clink. No one can say whether he would have learned his lesson in prison, but if he had been locked up that day, as he could have been, he (probably) wouldn’t be on death row now.

Amistad opposes “mass incarceration,” but had criminals been treated more seriously for their lesser offenses, people like Mr Cruz and Mr Jordan would have a reasonable chance of walking free at sometime in the future. As it is, they will both die in prison.

This is what those who are soft on crime have wrought. Petty criminals who aren’t slapped down hard become bigger criminals, and worse things happen. At some point, the soft-heartedness of the left has to be recognized for what it really is, soft-headedness.

References

References
↑1 The record was 500, set during the crack cocaine wars in 1990.
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What #socialjustice criminal prosecution has done for Philadelphia In his eagerness to avoid 'mass incarceration,' Larry Krasner has left violent criminals out on the streets

When I wrote on Saturday that there must’ve been at least 133 souls sent early to their eternal rewards by the end of Friday, April 9th, based on a story in The Philadelphia Inquirer, I realized that it could have been an undercount. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is only updated on the weekdays, so I knew the numbers when I checked this morning could be a surprise. I did check the Inquirer’s website several times yesterday, but saw no stories on city murders beyond the one referenced above.

But I will admit it: I hadn’t guessed that there would have been 139 homicides by the end of Sunday, April 11th! The above linked Inquirer story began with, “Two men are dead and six others injured in a total of five shooting incidents in less than nine hours Friday night into Saturday morning throughout Philadelphia, police said.” If there were no other attempted homicides, that could mean that five of the six wounded expired over the weekend, or it could mean that there were more murders, unreported by the Inquirer, over the weekend.

No matter: I’ve said it several times: to the editors of the Inquirer, killings in Philadelphia aren’t newsworthy unless the victim is a child, someone who was a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl. We need to stop pretending that #BlackLivesMatter because in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s very apparent that they don’t.

Of course, the Inquirer did mention the homicide rate, just not in the context of the victims:

Philly DA Larry Krasner and challenger Carlos Vega enter election homestretch as gun violence surges

Krasner’s reelection campaign against primary challenger Carlos Vega is a key test for the reform movement that helped make him one of the most liberal big-city prosecutors in the country.

by Chris Brennan | April 12, 2021

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is pitching his reelection campaign as a fight for criminal justice reform — and against a return to injustices of the past.

“Do you want the future, where we are going to continue to keep those kinds of promises?” Krasner, 60, asked voters during a candidate forum last month, citing his reform-based 2017 campaign. “Or do you want the past?”

Carlos Vega, his challenger in the Democratic primary, is offering voters a hybrid: A reform-minded, experienced homicide prosecutor who says Krasner is making the city “vulnerable and unsafe.”

“We need a more responsible approach to criminal justice reform, as well as prosecuting violent criminals,” Vega, 64, told the same Philadelphia Bar Association forum. “Four years ago, we were promised that, through justice, we’d have a safer city. Philadelphia is more dangerous now than it’s been in the last three decades.”

There’s a lot more at the original, but one thing stands out: ‘progressive’ law enforcement has not been law enforcement at all!

An Inquirer analysis last month found that although arrests for illegal gun possession have nearly tripled during Krasner’s time in office, conviction rates have fallen from 63% to 49%.

The District Attorney wants to blame everything and everyone other than himself for the increased homicide numbers in the City of Brotherly Love, but the truth is that Mr Krasner, then a liberal defense attorney, asked for the responsibility to prosecute criminals, and the voters very irresponsibly gave it to him. Even the editors of the Inquirer realized how poor a fit Mr Krasner would be as a prosecutor, endorsing Rich Negrin in the 2017 Democratic primary, and after Mr Krasner won the primary, shockingly endorsed Beth Grossman, his Republican opponent, in 2017.

We’ll see if the editors endorse Republican Chuck Peruto in the general election if Mr Krasner wins the Democratic primary.

“If you don’t believe punishment is a deterrent to crime, then leave,” Peruto said. “Because you’re stupid. Crimes must have consequences.”

Philadelphia Police Officers and FOP members block District Attorney Larry Krasner from entering the hospital to meet with slain Police Corporal James O’Connor’s family, because Mr Krasner’s policies had kept Corporal O’Connor’s killer out on the street in the first place..

Mr Krasner isn’t stupid; Mr Krasner is just plain evil. A stooge of anti-American financier George Soros, it isn’t that Mr Krasner doesn’t believe that punishment is a deterrent to crime, it’s that he doesn’t believe that crime is a serious problem, even as the dead bodies keep piling up in Philadelphia. Mr Krasner ran against ‘mass incarceration,’ when the real problem is that too many criminals who could and should have still been locked up were out on the streets early committing even more crimes.

One of the people who wasn’t in jail on Friday, March 13, 2020, was Hasan Elliot, 21. How did the District Attorney’s office treat Mr Elliot, a known gang-banger?

  • Mr Elliott, then 18 years old, was arrested in June 2017 on gun- and drug-possession charges stemming after threatening a neighbor with a firearm. The District Attorney’s office granted him a plea bargain arrangement on January 24, 2018, and he was sentenced to 9 to 23 months in jail, followed by three years’ probation. However, he was paroled earlier than that, after seven months in jail.
  • Mr Elliot soon violated parole by failing drug tests and failing to mate his meetings with his parole officer.
  • Mr Elliott was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine on January 29, 2019. This was another parole violation, but Mr Krasner’s office did not attempt to have Mr Elliot returned to jail to finish his sentence, nor make any attempts to get serious bail on the new charges;he was released on his own recognizance.
  • After Mr Elliot failed to appear for his scheduled drug-possession trial on March 27, 2019, and prosecutors dropped those charges against him.

On that Friday the 13th, Police Corporal James O’Connor IV, 46, was part of a Philadelphia Police Department SWAT team trying to serve a predawn arrest warrant on Mr Elliott, from a March 2019 killing. Mr Elliot greeted the SWAT team with a hail of bullets, and Corporal O’Connor was killed. Had Mr Elliot been in jail, as he could have been due to parole violations, had Mr Krasner’s office treated him seriously, Corporal O’Connor would have gone home safely to his wife that day.

That is what the City of Brotherly Love has for a District Attorney! Mr Krasner is more concerned about not locking up people than he was with the safety of both police officers and civilians, and Corporal O’Connor is stone-cold graveyard dead because of it.

‘Progressive’ policies have encouraged criminal behavior. When idiotic prosecutors like Mr Krasner don’t try to seriously punish lesser crimes, the bad guys remain out on the streets, and move on to bigger and badder crimes, and decent people get killed. Real #socialjustice would be trying to make neighborhoods, and, let’s face it, in Philadelphia we mean poorer, minority neighborhoods, safer for the people living there.

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Killadelphia

While I normally check the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page in the morning, I don’t on the weekend, because “statistics reflect the accurate count during normal business hours, Monday through Friday.” But I did check it today, after seeing an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer about two more people being killed. The page still shows the 132 listed as having been killed in Philly at the end of April 8th, but noted that at the end of Friday, April 9th, there had been an even 100 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love on that date in 2020.

2 dead, 8 shot in violent overnight in Philly

Two of the five shootings involved a total of three victims on their way to the store. And a triple shooting occurred at an illegal after-hours club, police said.

By Diane Mastrull | Saturday, April 10, 2021

Two men are dead and six others injured in a total of five shooting incidents in less than nine hours Friday night into Saturday morning throughout Philadelphia, police said.

All but one of the shootings were in North Philadelphia, and three of the victims had been on their way to the store when struck by bullets, according to police. One incident was a triple shooting outside of an illegal after-hours club, police said.

The first of the shootings was reported just after 10 p.m. Friday at Front and East Champlost Avenue. There, on the 5900 block of North Front Street, police said they found a 20-year-old shot multiple times. He was transported to Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, where he was pronounced dead at 10:47, police said.

That makes the total 133 by the end of Friday; the Philadelphia Police close their daily count at 11:59 PM each day.

For every three people murdered in Philadelphia last year, four have been killed so far this year.

The second murder victim was pronounced dead a few minutes after midnight, at 12:12 AM Saturday morning at Temple University Hospital. I suppose that he will be counted as part of today’s statistics.

Still, 133 dead, compared to 100 last year, is a 33% increase, a very neat 1/3. For every three people murdered in Philadelphia last year, four have been killed so far this year.

Yeah, that’s a kind of ghoulish calculation, but I’m kind of a numbers guy. I like hard data, information not tainted by politics, and the raw numbers of homicides isn’t something that can be massaged.

The Philadelphia Police Department and District Attorney Larry Krasner like to claim that, overall, crime has decreased in the city. The obvious question is: is that true?

There are two kinds of crimes: crimes of evidence and crimes of reporting. If a man rapes a woman on the streets of Philadelphia, as far as the police are concerned, if it wasn’t reported, it didn’t happen. It is commonly assumed that most rapes go unreported, with some guesstimates being as high as 90% not reported. Crimes like robbery might go unreported if the victims do not trust the police or think it will do any good, or are fearful of revenge by the criminals. When your city is stuck with a District Attorney like Mr Krasner, who doesn’t believe in prosecuting criminals, or sentencing them harshly when they are prosecuted and convicted, what reason is there to report that you were robbed?

But murder is different: it is a crime of evidence. It isn’t easy to dispose of a dead body in a way that it won’t be found, especially if you haven’t carefully planned things. You’re looking at 100 to 300 pounds of dead meat, bone and fat, and something which will put off a strong and nasty odor after very little time. The vast majority of dead bodies get found.

Of course, in Philadelphia, a whole lot of murders are open and in public: drive up or drive by shootings, essentially public executions, in which the shooters are only concerned with escape, not hiding the fact that someone was killed.

So when I read that most crime had decreased in Philadelphia, I just flat don’t believe it. Murder isn’t normally an entry-level crime; guys who shoot other people have usually been bad guys before that. And if they’ve been bad guys before that, District Attorney Krasner and his ‘social justice’ prosecution policies don’t really believe in getting them locked up for long anyway.

That’s something that the reporters and editors of the Inquirer ought to investigate. Send reporters door-to-door in the same neighborhoods in which the majority of the murders have occurred, and investigate, ask the public whether they have been crime victims and have decided against reporting such to the police. It will take a while, and it will take more than one reporter, but isn’t that what investigative reporting requires?[1]The Inquirer article author, Diane Mastrull, lists as her biography blurb, “I’m a distance runner – in real life, as a breaking news editor, and as president of the NewsGuild.” I … Continue reading

References

References
↑1 The Inquirer article author, Diane Mastrull, lists as her biography blurb, “I’m a distance runner – in real life, as a breaking news editor, and as president of the NewsGuild.” I will be forwarding this article to her via e-mail and Twitter.
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Why can people never tell the truth about homicide?

As is my wont, I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page this morning. I noted yesterday, on Twitter, that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Tuesday, April 6th, that 125 people had been murdered in the mean streets of Philadelphia, a 28.87% increase from the 97 killed by the same day last year. Since 2020 was a leap year, April 6th was the 97th day of 2020, while only the 96th day of this year.

On the 97th day of 2020, 97 dead, exactly one per day.

Well, that was then, and this is now. When I opened the Current Crime Statistics page this morning, the total had jumped to 132 people killed. On the 97th day of 2021, the City of Brotherly Love was seeing an average of 1.36 souls being sent to their eternal rewards early. That’s an average which, if it continues throughout the year, would see 496 homicides in Philly, which would be three fewer than in 2020. But, as we all know, the murder rate usually increases in the long, hot summer. Philadelphia is certainly getting a head start on last year!

Which brings me to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story:

Philly police officer wounded, man killed during gun battle

The officer was shot in the foot on the 1500 block of West Somerville Avenue.

by Robert Moran | April 7, 2021

A man was fatally wounded and a Philadelphia police officer was shot in the left foot during a traffic stop that escalated into a gun battle Wednesday evening in the city’s Logan section, police said.

With Fraternal Order of Police President John McNesby on the left, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw comments, from the 35th District station, on the alleged exchange of gunfire that left a man dead and an officer wounded on the 1500 block of West Somerville Avenue on April 7, 2021.Elizabeth Robertson, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer

About 6:45 p.m., police on patrol initiated a traffic stop on a blue Kia Optima on the 1500 block of West Somerville Avenue, said Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.

The officers ran a check on the four occupants — three men and a woman — and found that two had warrants, Outlaw said. The officers then asked for backup and two other police vehicles arrived.

Four officers approached the Kia and asked a 24-year-old man in the back seat to exit the vehicle, Outlaw said. Then one of the officers allegedly saw that he had a firearm and declared, “He’s got a gun.”

There’s more at the Inquirer original. And is it my imagination, or does Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, covered up in her uniform and cover and face mask, kind of look like an Afghan woman wearing a burqa, with only her eyes visible?

That the police officers’ union president was there sure looks like he was making sure that the Commissioner didn’t somehow trash her officers!

Commissioner Outlaw went on to explain that her officers reported that the armed man fired a shot at the officers from inside the Kia, and then got out and engaged in a gun battle with police. That turned out to be a poor tactical decision on his part, as he managed to hit one officer in the foot, but took multiple rounds in the chest.

“It just speaks to the level of gun violence in the city,” (Police Department spokesman Sgt Eric) Gripp said about the incident, in which one man allegedly opened fire on the officers, apparently without provocation.

Yeah, I suppose that a Police Department spokesman — the Inquirer referred to him as a “spokesperson,” but The First Street Journal does not go along with that politically correct bovine feces — would have been trained to use the term “gun violence,” but we need to start telling the truth here: it wasn’t “gun violence” but criminality! The now deceased criminal was already being sought by the law; there was an active warrant out for his arrest. He was stupid enough to have been carrying a gun, and stupid enough to start shooting at police officers, officers he had to know outnumbered him several to one. He started firing from inside the vehicle, thereby putting the other three people in the Kia in danger of being wounded or killed by return fire from the police.

But, maybe it wasn’t so stupid after all. Maybe the criminal knew that the gun, when ballistics are run on it, will turn out to have a body or three on it, maybe he knew that, if he was arrested, he’d wind up in prison for the rest of his miserable life. In Philadelphia, that’s always a possibility.

But, whatever his reasons, whether a cold, calculated estimate that it was shoot it out or face life in prison, or whether he was just messed up on alcohol and/or drugs and not thinking clearly at all, the deceased decided to risk the death penalty, and received it, all in just a few minutes. I do not support capital punishment, but it’s difficult not to see Philadelphia as being better off without the deceased alive and out on the streets.[1]While Pennsylvania has capital punishment on the books, District Attorney Larry Krasner does not seek the death penalty for any crimes.

Within minutes of the shootout, two men from another shooting also arrived at Einstein hospital by private vehicle. A 21-year-old man who had been shot twice in the head was pronounced dead. A 22-year-old man was shot in the left leg, and was listed in critical condition.

Well, that’s two of the seven people who were killed on April 7th; the Inquirer had no mention of the other five, although, the way statistics can be, it is possible that the others were shot or stabbed or whatevered a day or two earlier, and only expired on the 7th.

The sad fact is that the Inquirer doesn’t run many stories on homicides; there was that one short paragraph about the second murder victim, and that would never have generated a story were it not for the police-involved shooting. The truth is that, unless there’s something ‘special’ about a killing, such as the victim being an innocent bystander, and child, or, most importantly, a cute little white girl, it’s just not news in Philadelphia!

References

References
↑1 While Pennsylvania has capital punishment on the books, District Attorney Larry Krasner does not seek the death penalty for any crimes.
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Why is it that the left only notice the killings in mass murders? When it comes to individual murders in our city streets, we hear nothing but crickets

It was, of course, easily predictable, Amanda Marcotte railing against the Boulder, Colorado, mass killings, and, of course, blaming evil reich-wing Republicans for the actions of a demented, Democrat-supporting Muslim:

The NRA way of life is ruining our nation

Decades of gun propaganda has created a nation of sociopaths

By Amanda Marcotte | March 23, 2021

Right on the heels of last week’s horrific shooting spree by a 21-year-old at three Atlanta-area Asian day spas that left eight dead comes another mass murder, this time with a death toll of 10 at a Boulder, Colorado grocery store. The suspect, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa was reportedly armed with an AR-15. While everyone waits for an apparent motive (officials said an investigation would not take fewer than five days to complete) one thing is absolutely certain: Little will be done to address the primary cause of mass shootings. The ease with which any random man with an inchoate grievance can pick up a gun and rapidly snuff out the lives of strangers to make himself feel powerful will remain unchecked.

That’s not because Americans oppose stricter gun control laws. In fact, around 90% of Americans polled consistently support background checks for all gun sales. But when House Democrats introduced a bill earlier this month making background checks universal, all but eight Republicans voted against it. And forget about even turning this bill into law. The filibuster’s continued existence makes it impossible to get it past Republican obstruction in the Senate.

The grim reality is that the entire nation is in the thrall to a minority of extremely insecure mostly white men who, drunk on decades of NRA-fueled propaganda, have decided that having the ability to commit mass murder at a moment’s notice is a crucial component of maintaining their manhood against the ever-encroaching threats from de-gendered Potato Heads and lady video game players. Most of these men claim exoneration because they don’t personally grab one of their many overpriced killing machines to lay waste to a grocery store or high school. Grotesquely, some even use these mass shootings to indulge in public fantasies about how they would totally stop an active shooter, though somehow they never seem to actually get around to doing it. But ultimately, they’ve become complacent in the face of mass murder from decades of being told by right-wing media that there’s a binary choice between preventing murder and watching Michelle Obama personally run off with their testicles in her handbag. Worse, the right has cultivated an overall suspicion of the very concept of concern for the lives of others at all.

And there it is, of course: we evil white men claim exoneration because we don’t “personally grab one of their many overpriced killing machines to lay waste to a grocery store or high school.” That’s a statement in which Miss Marcotte has, in effect, assigned a collective guilt to her greatest of all bugaboos, conservative white men. In the confines of her South Philadelphia apartment, you can picture her bile simply dripping from the walls.[1]No, I don’t know her exact address, and would not publish it if I did.

This is what Miss Marcotte just can’t understand: only the people who are actually guilty of crimes are guilty of crimes, and it’s rather natural that those of us who have not shot up a grocery store do not see that we should lose our individual rights because someone else did.

She has, in past writings, complained that when one false rape claim was discovered, evil conservatives would jump on the bandwagon and claim that no one could ever believe a rape claim, so one would think she would understand that lumping an entire group together like that is an intellectually vacuous idea, but apparently if one thought that, one would be wrong.

I tweeted a couple of hours ago:

The Bill of Rights

And that’s just what Miss Marcotte has noted: the Boulder killings, along with two articles on the killing of eight people, six of whom were of Asian descent, primarily in yet another push for restricting our rights under the Second Amendment.

But, as we noted just a few days ago, the only murders she seems to notice are those in which she can find a political wedge, or blame evil white men.

Roughly 83% of the firearms murders in Philadelphia so far this year have been of black people, and another 10% of the victims were Hispanic. If her South Philadelphia neighborhood hasn’t been the worst place, it’s not the safest, either. There’s no way a news junkie like her could have missed at least some of the stories about the blood in the streets of her adopted home town, yet she has been curiously silent on the subject, at least in her Salon columns.

But in just the last eight days, Monday, March 15th and Monday, March 22nd, ten people, the same number of people who were killed in Boulder, went untimely to their deaths in the city’s mean streets, and Miss Marcotte didn’t write a single word about them, not in Salon. The Boulder massacre happened in Philadelphia as well, just not all in one shooting, but the victims in Miss Marcotte’s adopted home town are no less dead than the ones in Colorado.[2]Since Miss Marcotte has blocked me from seeing her Tweets, I do not know if she mentioned any of those deaths there.

Let’s be brutally frank here: the vast majority of murders in the United States are intraracial, not interracial. The vast majority of the black victims in Philly were killed by another black person, and the left are just deathly afraid to note that, because it could be seen as criticism of black people in general, and that’s raaaaacist. The Philadelphia Inquirer euphemizes it as “gun violence,” as though an inanimate object somehow kills people on its own initiative. Like the One Ring of Sauron, guns have a malevolence of their own, because the left cannot blame the people firing those guns, not unless the shooters are evil white men.

References

References
↑1 No, I don’t know her exact address, and would not publish it if I did.
↑2 Since Miss Marcotte has blocked me from seeing her Tweets, I do not know if she mentioned any of those deaths there.