Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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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

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↑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!

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↑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.

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↑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.
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Amanda Marcotte doesn’t care about murders unless they are politically useful

It’s perhaps telling that Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter photo was taken in a bar.

My good friend Amanda Marcotte — OK, OK, she’s not actually my good friend; she hates my evil reich-wing guts and has blocked me on her Twitter account — left Brooklyn and moved to South Philadelphia a couple of years ago. One would think that the über-feminist would be concerned about the huge homicide rate in her adopted home town, but if she is, she certainly hasn’t written about it in Salon.

The City of Brotherly Love saw 499 people give up their last breath in 2020, just one under the record of 500 set in 1990, the depths of the crack cocaine wars. That’s an average of 1.363 murders per day!

Well, guess what: with 77 days elapsed thus far in 2021, Philly is slightly ahead of that mark, at 1.377 per day. But 2020’s 499 mark was ‘achieved’ a bit later in the year; while 106 people were murdered in Philly’s mean streets by 11:59 PM EDT on March 18th, ‘only’ 80 had done so by the same date last year, and the same date last year included another day, due to 2020 being a leap year. City homicides increased as the weather warmed up, as is usually the case.

Miss Marcotte never noted the near-record homicides from last year, when even The Philadelphia Inquirer, which seems to run homicide stories only when something unusual happens, the victim is a ‘somebody’ or an innocent or, of course, a cute little white girl.

Instead, she continued in her usual #TrumpDerangementSyndrome ways.

However, her most recent two stories are about murders. Murders in Georgia, that is: Sarah Everard and the Atlanta spa shootings show how victim blaming continues even after #MeToo and Atlanta spa shootings and the Capitol riot: Gun control is the best tool to fight terrorism.

The murders in the Atlanta burbs have their trumped up racial element, because six of the eight ‘massage parlor workers’ were of Asian ethnicity. Miss Marcotte just loves to blame interracial murders on conservatives or Donald Trump, or really anybody she doesn’t like. She was pretty gleeful about the #BlackLivesMatter protests after the killing of convicted felon George Floyd, attending at least one herself, openly lamenting that “It’s true that anti-lockdown protesters who pack high-powered rifles and scream in cops’ faces haven’t hurt anyone, at least not yet.“

Also see: The Other McCain: Atlanta: The ‘Yellow Fever’ Theory

She wrote:

“Noobs are forever.” That’s what my partner[1]While Miss Marcotte has long been proud of living with Marc Faletti absent the benefit of clergy, her Wikipedia biography lists Mr Faletti as her “Husband.” jokingly said to me this weekend, after the two of us attended the strikingly huge Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest in Philadelphia on Saturday.

We were talking about the phalanxes of newcomers to the movement — often identifiable by their well-meaning but tone deaf signs — who had joined with more seasoned BLM protesters who have been at this for years. We’d both been to BLM protests before, most notably an enormous one in New York in 2014, after an NYPD officer choked Eric Garner to death. But there’s no question that something has shifted, and lots of people who had previously stayed out of the movement now felt compelled to pick up signs and march in the streets against police brutality.

The result is not just that protests seem bigger, but almost more numerous, spreading out not just to every large city but also the suburbs and small towns of America. (The Texas town where I went to high school, which has a population of 6,000, saw a protest on Saturday that drew hundreds of attendees.) There have been many and varied protest movements in the era of Donald Trump, with some — like the Women’s March or the climate strikes — being more successful than others. But BLM seems to be rising above, becoming the protest movement that is doing the best at harnessing the larger anger out there about Trump and his supporters and enablers.

Black Lives Matter is capturing those who have just woken up and, more than any other progressive movement, is turning that noob energy into action.

I will admit it: not being an aging hipster like Miss Marcotte, 43, I had to look up the meaning of ‘noob.’

I spent some time perusing her Salon articles on the George Floyd protests, and one thing struck me: she was far more concerned about the political value of the protests, and their ability to hurt President Trump, than she ever was about that fact that Mr Floyd was killed.

Naturally, as a writer who can work from home, with a partner who can apparently do the same, she absolutely supported the lockdowns, and contrasted them with the #BlackLivesMatter/Antifa protests:

Liberals never wanted “forever quarantine.” That’s a straw man erected by Donald Trump and his supporters. What liberals wanted was an temporary and necessary lockdown to buy time for the federal government to ramp up a testing regime and other health care capacity to deal with the virus.

Trump refused to use the time to do any that, and so it’s no wonder the progressives — who are just as fed up with staying home as conservatives — are exploding in the streets right now. Of course the primary reason for the protests is police brutality, and the motivating incident was the police murder of George Floyd. But the anger fueling the movement has many causes, including three and a half years of the Trump presidency and rage at the federal government for failing us so miserably with the coronavirus response.

Perhaps the left not wanting a “forever quarantine” is laid a bit hollow by President Biden wanting everyone to wear masks until “everyone is, in fact, vaccinated,” and well into 2022. That people might protest the lockdowns because, unlike her partner and her, they can’t work from home and many have lost their jobs, well, who cares about them? Mr Faletti and she apparently saw nothing wrong with breaking Governor Tom Wolf’s (D-PA) orders against large gatherings to join the protest marches.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t find much from her on the actual killings of George Floyd, who was high on a toxic dose of Fentanyl and methamphetamines, or Breonna Taylor, who was killed when her bedpartner started shooting at police and they returned fire, or Walter Wallace in Philadelphia, who was charging at the cops with a knife; all that concerned her was the political advantage to be gained.

And that, to me, explains her stony silence about the murder rate in her adopted home town. While Chicago sees more total murders, Philadelphia’s murder rate is significantly higher, 31.60 per 100,000 population compared to the Windy City’s 28.38, but the uncomfortable fact is that the vast majority of both murder victims in Philly, and their killers, where known, are black, and that does not yield any political benefit for the liberals’ positions.

Of course, I’ve used Miss Marcotte’s writings as a small example of what the left do writ large. I’ve said it before: in Philadelphia, in Chicago, in many of our larger cities, black lives don’t matter unless they are taken by a white person.

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↑1 While Miss Marcotte has long been proud of living with Marc Faletti absent the benefit of clergy, her Wikipedia biography lists Mr Faletti as her “Husband.”
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Killadelphia!

I noted, just three days ago, that with 89 homicides in just 67 days of 2021, that the City of Brotherly Love, at that point killing off 1.328 people per day, ought to hit 100 homicides on March 16th.

Well, it seems that the good natured and kind hearted people of Philadelphia have taken that as a personal challenge; at the end of the 70th day, March 11th, 96 people have bitten the dust there, raising the rate to 1.371 per day. That means it should only take three days to kill off the four people needed to reach 100 homicides, which now means the end of March 14th.

At least on its main page, at 10:45 AM EST, The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t have a single story about any of the murders, about any of the seven homicides over the past three days. I guess none of the victims was a ‘somebody’ or a cute little white girl.

I’ve said it before: in Philadelphia, black lives don’t matter. The Philadelphia Tribune reported that, of the 499 homicides in the city in 2020, 86% of the victims were black, in a city in which less than 44% of the population are black. That black lives don’t matter is evidenced by the silence of the Inquirer when they are snuffed out. The #woke staffers who forced the resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski for his headline “Buildings Matter, Too” during the #BlackLivesMatter protests don’t seem to bother reporting on young black men being murdered because, well because young black males being murdered in Philadelphia simply isn’t news anymore. It would be a bigger story if a weekend day passed in the city without a killing.

I’m guessing that the Inquirer will have a story once that 100 homicides milestone is reached. That’s about all you can expect from them.

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Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is really just the fall guy (fall gal?). The real problem is Mayor Jim Kenney

March 8th is the 67th day of the year. As of March 8th last year (which was actually the 68th day, 2020 being a leap year), the City of Brotherly Love had seen 67 homicides, or 0.985 killings per day. It was also the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, just before the lockdowns — you remember, 15 days to flatten the curve? — and the school closures and millions of people being thrown out of work.

But on the 67th day of 2021, 89 souls were sent early to their eternal rewards in Philadelphia’s mean streets, 1.328 per day. Doing a little math here, it should take only eight more days, until March 16th, for Philly to reach 100 homicides.

On the 8th, The Philadelphia Inquirer published an OpEd defense of Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw:

Danielle Outlaw put in an untenable position by Kenney administration

In order to ensure the overall safety of Philadelphia’s citizens and their neighborhoods, emergency management in Philadelphia County should be immediately reassessed.

by Joseph Certaine | March 8, 2021

Amid calls last month for Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw to tender her resignation for mishandling the response to summer protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, it’s important to consider that she is not the only person at fault here.

Commissioner Outlaw, who had only been on the job for a few months when the protests began, was put in an untenable position by this administration. From my view, as a former managing director, the Kenney administration allowed the new police commissioner to handle large-scale protests without some of the best practices and institutional knowledge that previously determined how the city handled crisis situations.

At that paragraph break, the Inquirer included the boldfaced blurb:

» READ MORE: Danielle Outlaw’s failure should push Kenney to ask for her resignation — but she didn’t fail alone | Editorial

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.

Well, of course the editors did that! But, as we noted previously, the editors want to punish the puppet, not the puppet master. The editors love them some Democrats, and endorsed Mayor Jim Kenney for re-election in the 2019 primaries, and if they endorsed a different candidate, Anthony Williams, for the Democratic nomination in 2015, it was still a close choice for them between Messrs Williams and Kenney.

The apparently odd notion that many of Philadelphia’s problems stem from Philadelphia’s poor leadership does not seem to have occurred to them. The apparently even odder notion that many of Philadelphia’s problems stem from Philadelphia’s leaderships leftist policies, well, they couldn’t say that, or they’d get another revolt among the #woke in their newsroom.[1]Apparently the idea of firing the forty employees who called out sick in protest, even though the inquirer could replace them all, within a day, from smaller newspapers across the country, is another … Continue reading

Mr Certaine continued, further down:

Why is it that the Kenney administration was not prepared for the uprising that occurred after George Floyd’s murder? Why aren’t questions being asked about preparedness in general? Why is the Fire Commissioner appointed as County Emergency Management Coordinator?

Why? I can answer that question, but the #woke won’t like it. The Kenney administration was not prepared because Mayor Kenney and his minions are far more concerned about leftist political positions than they are with protecting the city and its people.

The last Republican mayor of Philadelphia left office left office on January 7, 1952. Harry Truman was President at the time, and the last two Mayors, Mr Kenney and Michael Nutter, hadn’t been born yet! The City Council is controlled by Democrats, and the labor unions, and that has been the situation for decades. If the policies of the Democrats, if the policies of the liberals actually worked, Philadelphia ought to be an urban paradise, because the wicked ol’ reich-wing conservatives haven’t had any power to obstruct them.

Philadelphia is a disaster zone, a man-made disaster zone, and that’s not going to change anytime soon, because the voters of the city keep electing people who want to make the disaster even worse. Commissioner Outlaw is a convenient fall guy (fall gal?), but she’s still just a puppet.

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↑1 Apparently the idea of firing the forty employees who called out sick in protest, even though the inquirer could replace them all, within a day, from smaller newspapers across the country, is another apparently odd notion which never occurred to the editors. The idea of telling the Special Snowflakes™ to buck up and do their jobs, or they’d find someone who would, that, too, never seemed to happen.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer finally publishes a story about a murder victim

Of course, that victim was apparently not a gang banger, so I suppose it was seen as unusual.

A 16-year-old was killed outside a 7-Eleven after looking at a man who took it the wrong way, police say

Police released surveillance video of the suspect, who had gone into the 7-Eleven store with a female companion.

Kahlief Myrick, 16, was fatally shot outside a 7-Eleven store in Southwest Philadelphia on Feb. 18. Police are searching for the gunman. Photo by family, given to The Philadelphia Inquirer

By Julie Shaw | February 24, 2021 | 7:15 PM EST

Police are searching for a gunman who they say killed a 16-year-old outside a 7-Eleven in Southwest Philadelphia last week because the teen looked at him in a way that made him feel disrespected.

“What are you looking at?” police say the man asked the teen when the two encountered each other inside the store.

“What are you looking at?” Kahlief Myrick responded, according to his family.

The man, believed to be in his mid-20s, waited outside for the teen to leave the store and then shot him in the chest, police said.

Police released surveillance video of the alleged gunman inside the store with a female companion. In the video, the suspect could be seen casually picking out potato chips just moments before the shooting.

The victim’s grandparents, Norman and Crystal Boyce, said their grandson was visiting relatives and went to the store with a 19-year-old cousin. The cousin, who they said was too upset to talk to a reporter, told them what happened. The teens did not know the gunman, the family said the cousin told them, and grew upset over a simple glance.

There’s more at the original, including a discussion of the ‘street code,’ and how a perception of disrespect can lead to violence or death.

But what got me was that while the Inquirer was happy enough to publish a photo of the victim, you had to follow the link to the released surveillance video to see a picture of the (alleged) killer. Surely, one would think, that adding that extra link would mean fewer people would see the photo of the (alleged) killer, meaning fewer chances that someone could identify him and report it to the Philadelphia Police.

I, of course, have no compunctions at all about publishing the video on the front page! I wonder why the Inquirer did.

So, assuming this (alleged) killer is caught, and assuming that Philadelphia’s criminal-loving District Attorney, Larry Krasner, actually prosecutes him, and assuming that the (alleged) killer is convicted, he could spend the rest of his miserable life getting three hots and a cot in Graterford, courtesy of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where at least he won’t be out on the streets hurting other people.

If he hurts other people in prison, well, I might not care all that much.

But murder is not normally an entry-level crime. My guess is that, once we find out who the (alleged) killer is, we will read that he has a long rap sheet, and could have been behind bars on February 18th, when he sent young Mr Myrick to his eternal reward.

Was the (alleged) killer out on the streets because District Attorney Krasner didn’t do his duty? We don’t know that yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

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And another one bites the dust!

I have previously noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer does not really take much notice of shootings or homicides unless the victim is a cute little white girl. I do not know if the victim in this case is white, but the story made the website because one of the victims isn’t known to be a gang-banger.

Girl, 15, in critical condition after double shooting in West Philly

The shooting happened in the 6200 block of Chestnut Street.

By Robert Moran | Tuesday, February 23, 2021 | 4:43 PM EST

A 15-year-old girl and was hospitalized in critical condition after being wounded in a double shooting Tuesday afternoon in West Philadelphia, police said.

Just before 3:20 p.m. in the 6200 block of Chestnut Street, the girl and a 20-year-old man were both shot in the head, police said. The girl was taken by private amubulance to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The man was taken by police to the same hospital and was listed in stable condition.

Police reported no arrests or other details.

As of 11:59 PM EST on Monday, February 22, 2021, the City of Brotherly Love had counted 75 homicides, in 53 days of the year. On the same date last year, in which Philadelphia saw 499 killings, just one short of the all-time record, there had been ‘just’ 53, to yesterday’s totals were a 41.5% increase. It looks like Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw are doing just an outstanding job, doesn’t it?

Maybe I’m too early with the headline, but if I am with the victim in the Inquirer story, it’ll be true enough of someone else in Philly.