Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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We’re from the Government and we know better than you what you should drive If you live in a Philadelphia row house, just where will you charge your electric car?

Oh, goody! Pennsylvania is about to waste more money . . . again! From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Pa. to install electric vehicle chargers in Philly, Ridley Twp., and Quakertown

The Pennsylvania DEP issued nearly $1 million in grants to install fast chargers on West Oregon Ave. in Philadelphia, as well as locations in Ridley Township and Quakertown.

by Frank Kummer | February 19, 2021

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has announced nearly $1 million in grants to install fast chargers on West Oregon Avenue in Philadelphia, as well as locations in Ridley Township, Delaware County; and Quakertown, Bucks County, as part of a larger effort to expand electric vehicle use statewide.

Overall, the $936,000 will pay for 12 fast chargers installed in those locations, as well as four in Allegheny County.

“DEP is committed to supporting this choice by increasing public knowledge of electric vehicles, making it easier for consumers to find electric models, and helping to expand charging infrastructure,” said DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell.

Funding for the project comes from the commonwealth’s share of the national settlement with Volkswagen for cheating on emissions tests.

The author, Frank Kummer, “cover(s) local environmental issues, from the Poconos to the New Jersey Shore.”  His article provides us with the statistics about where the Pennsylvania DEP plans on building the fast chargers:

DEP awarded $750,000 for the three local projects:

  • $250,000 for six fast chargers to be installed by EVgo, the largest public fast-charging network for electric vehicles, at Cedar Realty Trust in Quartermaster Plaza at 2300 West Oregon Ave. in Philadelphia, a site that’s located within an environmental justice community — defined as an area with certain socioeconomic challenges — and within a half-mile of I-76.
  • $250,000 for four fast chargers to be installed by EVgo at Albertsons Acme Market at 124 Morton Ave. in Ridley Township. The location is within two miles of I-95 and I-476.
  • $186,619 for two fast chargers to be installed by EV Build in a mall parking lot at 100 N.W. End Boulevard in Quakertown. The project is located along high-traffic Route 309.

Officials said the chargers will be located in community hubs to serve local residents of single homes and apartments. They are part of a network the DEP and PennDOT hope to build to help drivers traveling longer distances from their homes. The goal is to have chargers every 50 miles along highways and no more than five miles from the road. Interstates 76, 95, 376, and 476 are key.

I will admit to shaking my head at the notion of investing in fast charging stations in an “area with certain socioeconomic challenges,” given that such would be an area which will see a slower adoption of plug-in electric vehicles, because the residents are less able to pay for them. That was a point which Mr Kummer did not mention.

But, with all of the statistics and documentary hyperlinks Mr Kummer included, he omitted the one that most people don’t know about: how long it takes to charge your plug-in electric vehicle! While I cannot read Mr Kummer’s mind, I know why I wouldn’t mention that in an article of the nature of the one he wrote: because it would totally turn off people to the idea of plug-in electrics!

How long does it take to charge an electric car?

Charging an electric car can take a matter of minutes or days, depending on what method you use. Here, we take a look at the ins and outs of the process…

by Martin Saarinen | 28 January 2021

The time it takes to charge an electric car can be as little as 30 minutes or more than 12 hours. This depends on the size of the battery and the speed of the charging point.

  • A typical electric car (60kWh battery) takes just under 8 hours to charge from empty-to-full with a 7kW charging point.
  • Most drivers top up charge rather than waiting for their battery to recharge from empty-to-full.
  • For many electric cars, you can add up to 100 miles of range in ~35 minutes with a 50kW rapid charger.
  • The bigger your car’s battery and the slower the charging point, the longer it takes to charge from empty to full.

Tip: Charging an electric car is similar to charging a mobile phone; you top it up during the day if you need to and give it a full charge at home overnight.

Emphases in the original.

The first bullet point is for an at-home charging unit; the third is for a “fast charging station,” such as the type mentioned in Mr Kummer’s article.

Most people don’t know how long it takes to charge an electric vehicle.

Think about that: if you can add roughly 100 miles of driving range in about 35 minutes, but your gasoline-powered car gets 300 miles of range on a single tank of fuel, the article is saying that to match your gasoline powered vehicle’s one-tank range would require roughly 105 minutes at the “fast charging station.”[1]The 36 gallon tank on my 2010 Ford F-150 gives me about 625 miles of range!

Do you want to replace 5 to 10 minutes at the gas station with one hour and 45 minutes?

Philadelphia has more row houses than any other city.

The article suggests “topping off” during the day, and fully charging overnight at home. That’s a great idea . . . if you have a garage or secure, dedicated parking space at home where you can install an at-home charger. If you don’t, that means complete dependence on public charging stations. If you live in a Philadelphia row house, something fairly common — though often in poorer shape than the ones pictured at the left — in what Mr Kummer described as “an environmental justice community, defined as an area with certain socioeconomic challenges,” just where are you going to put that at home charging unit? Are you going to be running an electric cable out your basement window to your car parked on the street?

Think about that. You might be able to get away with just the 35-minute 100 mile range topping off, but it will also mean stopping at the charging station thrice as often as you have to pump gasoline now.

Car and Driver has a good article on the basics of charging up your vehicle. When using a fast charging station, the article notes that:

A certifiably lethal current of DC power is pumped into the car’s battery, and miles of range are added in short order. Tesla’s V3 superchargers pump out up to 250 kW, and Electrify America’s automotive defibrillators fire out up to 350 kW of heart-stopping power.

“Certifiably lethal”, huh? Yeah, that’s what I want to see, 17-year-olds using 240 volt three-phase power cables!

In the rain and the snow of the City of Brotherly Love.

Am I the only one who sees this as maybe not the greatest idea ever?

If you have a good garage with sufficient electric service, an electric car might not be that bad an idea for you, depending upon your other circumstances. In our current home, out in the country, with a garage with separate electric service, we are as well-situated as anyone to replace one car with a plug-in electric, as long as I can keep my F-150 powered by gasoline. But in our previous home? It would not have worked. If you live in rental property, it might not work, and I can easily see a landlord increasing the rent by $50 or $100 a month for the installation of an vehicle charging station if he did allow it.

The climate change activists, whose numbers now, sadly, include the President of the United States, have no conception of what regular people live like, and how much they are trying to impose on people. But you will do what you are told, won’t you?

References

References
↑1 The 36 gallon tank on my 2010 Ford F-150 gives me about 625 miles of range!
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Schadenfreude! Hard left feminist decries surge in homeschooling, but the surge is caused by leftist teachers’ unions trying to keep public schools closed

Feminist Jill Filipovic McCormick is not a fan of home schooling:

Right-wing groups love to push homeschooling because it helps keep kids away from material that might challenge their conservative worldview, and it keeps women out of work and in the home. It’s a pretty transparent set of motivations, not good for women or children.

This is a pet issue of mine and some day I’ll write about it at length, but the whole conversation about homeschooling would go very differently if we believed children had a right to a high-quality education — or if we believed children had rights at all, separate from parents.

Please do note that my tweet talks about what motivates right-wing groups to push homeschooling — it does not say that parents who homeschool have a single set of motivations (they certainly do not). Plz work on reading comprehension before you teach your kids.

…and just observing how many people on the right are big mad at the idea that “children should have rights.

The previous four paragraphs are the rest of the Twitter thread Mrs McCormick posted; it’s simply easier for the reader for me to copy and paste them; no changes to her text have been made.

Twitchy noted many objections made to Mrs MCormick’s tweets, which you can read if you follow this link.

I had made a few reply tweets to her:

Yet the teachers’ unions, which are 75% female, want to keep the public schools closed to in-person classes, forcing primarily women to stay at home to care for their children. The teachers still get paid, but many of the other public school employees are out of work.

It’s been women’s careers which have been more negatively impacted by the virus, yet it’s the heavily female, politically liberal teachers’ unions which have been most resistant to resuming in-person classes.

Here’s How the Pandemic Is Affecting Women’s Careers: Women have been disproportionately hit by job losses and many of those who are working say they may have to step back.

And, of course, parents who can somehow afford it have shown a tendency to pull students from the closed-to-in-person instruction public schools in favor of private, frequently religious, private schools

Public Schools Will Struggle Even More as Parents Move Kids to Private Ones During the Pandemic.

Then there’s the President attempting to force acceptance of ‘transgenderism’ on the public schools. Why would it surprise anyone that some parents might not accept that, and choose to abandon the public schools?

Now, I was going to let it go at that, until I opened The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website this morning, and found this gem:

Philly teachers union says it’s ‘not safe’ to reopen schools. It wants the city to intervene.

by Kristen A. Graham and Maddie Hanna | February 4, 2021 | 9:20 AM EST

The city teachers union says it doesn’t have confidence buildings are safe for reopening, setting up a showdown with the Philadelphia School District over a planned Monday return for some teachers.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan (David Maialetti/ The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan said Wednesday night he has called on the city to assign a neutral third party who will examine evidence presented by both sides and decide whether buildings are in suitable shape for a return.

That’s a move open to Jordan based on a memorandum of understanding signed by the union and district in the fall, requiring the involvement of the Mayor’s Office of Labor and a “world-renowned physician” to weigh in swiftly on reopening disputes. If the outside expert determines the district is not in compliance with safety standards, they will direct the school system to fix the problems.

After weeks of back and forth and meetings with district officials Monday and Tuesday, Jordan said he still had deep concerns over ventilation, especially in schools where window fans are still being installed to improve air flow, and other safety issues.

There’s more at the original, but it all boils down to one thing: no matter what the school district does, it will never be enough. Here in the Bluegrass State, the Fayette County schools remain closed for other “reasons,” even though the Commonwealth has begun COVID-19 vaccinations prioritizing teachers.

The Inquirer article noted that the Philadelphia public schools have been closed to in-person instruction since last March; that’s eleven months! And if the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers gets its way, the schools will be closed to in-person instruction for a full year.

We might as well face facts: we have lost an entire educational year! From The Washington Post:

It’s time to admit it: Remote education is a failure

Opinion by Helaine Olen, Columnist | December 2, 2020 | 11:32 AM EST

Whenever someone expressed concerns about the quality of remote education back in the early days of covid-19, they were all but shamed into silence. No, the spring did not go well, but that was done on the fly, with next to no preparation. No, it’s not an ideal solution, but staying with in-person instruction is out of the question. There is a learning curve, we were told. We’ll get this thing right with time.

Here’s how that worked out: In Houston, the number of students with failing grades is exploding. In St. Paul, Minn., a high school student is almost as likely to be on track to fail a class as pass it. In the junior high and high schools of Fairfax County — one of the wealthiest counties in the United States — 1 out of 10 students flunked at least two classes, and the number was almost double that for those with disabilities. Enrollment is falling in closed school districts from coast to coast and many points in between. Some children are exiting for private schools, or private pods. Others are simply MIA.

In the vast majority of cases, remote learning is a poor substitute for in-person education — no matter what efforts are made, no matter how many teacher trainings are offered.

It’s not simply a matter of subpar or nonexistent Internet or computer access, something that impacts students from more than 4 million households. Small children, as it turns out, will not sit in front of a computer to listen to a teacher or complete an assignment without supervision. That means millions of parents — for the most part, moms — got conscripted as unpaid teacher’s assistants. And while older children don’t need parents next to them in order to do their work, they often won’t do it regardless.

There’s more at the original, and yes, it is an opinion columnist who wrote it, but Helaine Olen included a lot of linked information, which is why I chose to use it.

We have frequently noted the efforts of private schools to open, despite the orders of state Governors. And private school enrollment has reversed a decades-long decline and showing increased enrollment. The number of students being homeschooled has shot up as well, though some officious bureaucrats are trying to stop that.[1]Full disclosure: My daughters attended parochial schools for part of their education.

I will admit to some schadenfreude here: it is the actions of the public school teachers and their unions which are helping to increase both private and parochial school enrollments and homeschooling, the very thing Mrs McCormick hates. It isn’t we evil reich-wing conservatives forcing and keeping the public schools closed; it’s the actions of the primarily liberal and Democratic public school teachers and their unions.

References

References
↑1 Full disclosure: My daughters attended parochial schools for part of their education.
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Chicago thinks it’s the murder capital; Philly says, “Hold my beer!”

I had noted on Twitter that the City of Brotherly Love was exceeding its one-short-of-the-record homicide rate for 2020, though we aren’t even through January, the coldest month of the year, and that The Philadelphia Inquirer hadn’t even noticed it:

I did see an article on the Inquirer’s website yesterday evening, noting that two men had been murdered in a bodega:

Two men fatally shot in North Philly store

by Mensah M. Dean | January 28, 2021 | 6:17 PM EST

Two men were fatally shot in a North Philadelphia store Thursday in what police are calling a double homicide.

Shortly before 1 p.m., police were called to the Al-Madinah Traders store in the 3600 block of Germantown Avenue, which sells jewelry, perfume, books, and other items. Police said passersby had found the men dead inside the store.

Police did not release the names of the victims, but described one as a man in his 40s who had been shot two times in the face, and the other as a man shot once in the head. His age was not given. Both were pronounced dead on the scene by medics.

As of Thursday evening, police had made no arrests and had not recovered weapons, they said.

The article author continued to note that the number of homicides was well above the same date in 2020, and that two other men had been murdered that morning, on in Kensington and one in the Wissinoming neighborhood.

So, that was four people sent early to their eternal rewards on Thursday, so I figured that I’d see 45 as the total when I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crimes Statistics page this morning. I was wrong; it wasn’t 45, it was 46!

That’s compared to 35 slaughtered by January 28, 2020, a 31.4% increase.

As noted two days ago, the Editorial Board of the Inquirer blamed the Police Commissioner, the ironically named Danielle Outlaw, for the Police Department’s response to the #BlackLivesMatter protests. The Editorial Board thought that Miss Outlaw’s response was too harsh; I thought it too lenient.

But what the Editorial Board did not do was blame the huge jump in homicides on Commissioner Outlaw, or Mayor Jim Kenney, or District Attorney Larry Krasner, the three top law enforcement officials in Philadelphia.

People think of Chicago under its ridiculous Mayor, Lori Lightfoot, as the nation’s murder capital. In 2020, the Windy City saw 769 homicides, 270 more than Philadelphia. But Chicago has a population of 2,710,000, while Philly’s is 1,579,000. Crime rates are compared by rate per 100,000 population, and that leaves Chicago with a homicide rate of 28.38 per 100,000.

Philadelphia laughs and says, “We can beat that!”, checking in with a murder rate of 31.60 per 100,000.

As of January 25th, Chicago had 44 homicides, compared to Philly’s 37, but the disparity in population means that the City of Brotherly Love was far ahead.

New York City saw a huge rise in homicides as well, from 319 in 2019 to 462 last year, 44.8%, fewer than Chicago’s or Philadelphia’s, even though its population is several times that of the latter two cities.

Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York is on the fast track back to the Hell that Mayor Rudy Giuliani cleaned up, and even the liberal Michael Bloomberg didn’t trash. What New York and Chicago and Philadelphia all need is solid, conservative, no f(ornicating) nonsense mayors, district attorneys and police commissioners who will actually fight crime.

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The Editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer blame the puppet, not the puppet master!

Sometimes you just have to laugh at the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer. After years of rising homicide rates, they blame problems not on Mayor Jim Kenney, whom the Editors endorsed in his 2019 campaign, but on Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the ‘social justice’ policewoman from the left coast, and a near-total puppet of the Mayor:

Danielle Outlaw’s failure should push Kenney to ask for her resignation — but she didn’t fail alone

by The Inquirer Editorial Board | opinion@inquirer.com | January 27, 2021 | 4:46 PM EST

A little over 100 days into her job as Police Commissioner, Danielle Outlaw faced a trial by fire when peaceful protests over the killing of George Floyd turned chaotic and destructive.

Of course, the #woke staffers of the Inquirer, the ones who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski, fully supported the #BlackLivesMatter protests of the Summer of Fire and Hate, and they would have complained about any police efforts to rein in the Mostly Peaceful Protests™.

It was a trial demanding leadership and preparation that she failed miserably. But this failure is not hers alone. It was compounded by a failure of leadership of Mayor Jim Kenney and other city officials, including Managing Director Brian Abernathy who has since resigned.

These failures are detailed in an investigation released Wednesday by City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart, conducted by Ballard Spahr, At Risk International, Inc., and input from a Community Advisory Council.

The report detailed the city’s failure to anticipate or prepare for the protests here despite their presence across the country, a failure to create a plan for handling protests despite the existence of a blueprint for just such events, and a series of disastrous and troubling decisions – from declining to activate an Emergency Operations Center to using tools and weapons on crowds and neighborhoods that created chaos instead of control.

At the height of protests about police brutality and violence, Philadelphia police responded with often militaristic force, using tear gas, rubber bullets and force, including in a neighborhood where children and innocent bystanders were present. The city’s failure to anticipate or plan meant there were not enough police or vehicles to stop or contain looting. The report also details the troubling inconsistencies between police response to Black Lives Matter protesters and their friendlier interactions with white vigilantes wielding baseball bats and racial slurs.

The only problem is that the Philadelphia Police Department didn’t use enough force!

There are no “troubling inconsistencies between police response to Black Lives Matter protesters and their friendlier interactions with white vigilantes wielding baseball bats and racial slurs” because the #BlackLivesMatter protesters were vandalistic and violent, and others were not.

Commissioner Outlaw was a ridiculous hire in the first place, coming from the Left Coast, and more concerned about ‘diversity’ than actually fighting crime. But the truth is simple: she was a ‘social justice’ hire of a ‘social justice’ mayor, and both his puppet and his tool.

What the City of Brotherly Love needs is something the Editorial Board of the Inquirer would never, ever accept: the complete replacement of every liberal Democrat officeholder with hardline, conservative Republicans. The Editors would be aghast, but really, could they do any worse?

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In Killadelphia, the beat goes on!

Just twenty-one days into the year, it’s a little bit early to tell. Checking the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page has been all over the board. Some days, 2021 has been behind the running total of homicides from 2020’s disastrous year, and some days ahead.

Philadelphia finished Inauguration Day with 32 homicides, 3 ahead of the same date in 2020, for a rate of 1.60 per day. That’s slightly higher than how Philly finished up in December, 1.45 per day.

I wrote earlier that Philadelphia had 502 homicides for 2020, but the Police Department revised its figures, coming up with a total of 499 for the year. What, did three people recover from death or something?

Is the City of Brotherly Love getting ready to leave 2020’s 499, and 1990’s 500 killings in the dust? It’s a little bit early to make a statement like that, with just twenty days gone and 345 days remaining in the year. But one thing is certain: Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw have failed, failed, failed in their jobs.

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Why should Philadelphia spend money keeping drug addicts alive?

I’m enough of an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to ask: why do we want to keep junkies alive?

They have to steal from innocent people to support their habits, they cannot keep jobs to support themselves, and are nothing but a burden on society. And, heaven forfend! they probably don’t even wear their facemasks properly! Trying to get them off of drugs, so that they can become responsible members of society might make sense, but Safehouse simply enables them to keep shooting up.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A federal appeals court rejects plans for a supervised injection site in Philly

by Jeremy Roebuck and Aubrey Whelan | Updated: January 12, 2021 | 5:36 PM EST

In a setback to advocates who had hoped to open the nation’s first supervised injection site in Philadelphia, a federal appellate court ruled Tuesday that such a facility would violate a law known as the “crack house” statute and open its operators to potential prosecution.

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit lauded the goals behind Safehouse — the nonprofit that, in an attempt to stem the city’s tide of opioid-related deaths, has proposed the site to provide medical supervision to people using drugs.

But, Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote for the majority, “Safehouse’s benevolent motive makes no difference.”

“Congress has made it a crime to open a property to others to use drugs,” he added. “And that is what Safehouse will do.”

There’s more at the original, and the Usual Suspects in Philadelphia have supported Safehouse: Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner and former Mayor, and Pennsylvania Governor, Ed Rendell, all Democrats.

United States Attorney William McSwain, who brought the suit for the Department of Justice and argued the case himself in court, an unusual move, was pleased with the victory, so if he doesn’t resign by January 20th, will probably be fired by Joe Biden. That would hardly be unprecedented: President Clinton fired all 93 US Attorneys in one day, and President Trump, after a couple months delay, told the 46 remaining Obama Administration appointees to tender their resignations. Given that Mr McSwain was a strong critic of Mr Krasner, the George Soros-financed District Attorney will want him gone, gone, gone!

As a lower-case “l” libertarian, but not a Libertarian, I should be perfectly happy with recreational pharmaceuticals being legal. And if the only damage that drug abusers did was to themselves, it would be fine with me.

But that’s not the case: drug abusers damage, and financially burden, society in a major way. Junkies can’t hold jobs, and thus burden our welfare rolls. Junkies can’t support their habits, and wind up stealing from innocent people to support their habits. And, most importantly, drug addicts usually wind up being, at some points, responsible for children.

My wife was a pediatric nurse, and she has told me that she has never seen a case of child abuse — and they had to be pretty bad, hospitalization bad, before she saw them — in which drugs or alcohol, usually drugs and alcohol, were not involved. Here in eastern Kentucky, drugs are a scourge, and my nephew, formerly an Emergency Medical Technician, has told me that at least half of the ambulance calls on which he went were drug related. He worked in Lee and Owsley counties; Beattyville, which CNN called the poorest white town in America, is wracked with poverty and drug abuse:

Rugged explorer Daniel Boone made this part of Kentucky famous in the late 1700s around the time of the Revolutionary War. The rolling hills and forests are still as picturesque as when Boone found them. Rock climbers come from all over the world to tackle the area’s peaks and natural bridges.

But today it’s also easy to come by heroin and cocaine in Kentucky’s hills. Almost every family CNNMoney met in Beattyville had been impacted by drugs.

(Barbara) Puckett and her husband are currently raising a great niece and nephew because their biological parents are drug addicts. The situation is so common in Beattyville that the local elementary school runs a support group for grandparents raising grandkids.

(Chuck Caudhill, the general manager of the local paper, The Beattyville Enterprise) estimates that 40% of kids in the area don’t live with their birth parents because of drugs.

“We need help. Eastern Kentucky is beautiful, but it needs help,” says Patricia “Trish” Cole. Her son died of an overdose when he was 27. Pictures of him are all around her living room. She’s normally quick to smile, but she gets choked up when his named is mentioned. She has a tattoo on her chest that reads: “Can’t keep your arms around a memory.”

Cole saves lives as an EMT for the local ambulance company. She estimates 80% of the ambulance runs she makes now are for drug-related issues. The day after her son died, she had to go get a young man who overdosed out of a closet.

The slow death of the coal industry has strangled many counties in eastern Kentucky, and drugs are destroying the rest. It’s hard to hold that recreational pharmaceuticals ought to be legalized when they are destroying our society around them. Kentucky has the nation’s highest rate of grandparents or other relatives raising children— with 9 percent of kids being raised by a relative compared with the national rate of 4 percent, according to Kentucky Youth Advocates.

Eastern Kentucky ought to be a dream location for industry: a beautiful landscape plus a population with, let’s be honest here, fewer options, ought to leave a potential employer with a more stable workforce, with less employee turnover. But with illegal drugs being rampant, what decent employer would want to come here?

This is what drugs have done to Kentucky! So why, I have to ask, should Philadelphia spend money keeping drug addicts alive?

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Prosecutor who sought to end cash bail imprisonment is bemoaning lower bail for violent offenders

Every once in a while, I’ll come across a story that has me both laughing my butt off and shaking my head in disbelief. As we’ve noted before, Larry Krasner won the election to become District Attorney in Philadelphia in 2017, and was the beneficiary of a huge campaign contribution from leftist billionaire George Soros, is a leftist who hates the police and doesn’t pursue supposedly petty offenses, and ran on a platform saying he would:

  • Stop prosecuting insufficient and insignificant cases
  • Review past convictions, free the wrongfully convicted
  • Stop cash bail imprisonment
  • Treat addiction as an illness, not a crime
  • Protect immigrants while protecting everybody
  • Reject a return to the failed drug wars of the past
  • Stand up to police misconduct

The cost of Mr Krasner’s victory has been written in blood. Philadelphia has seen more murders, many more murders than New York City, which has more than five times Philly’s population.

Philadelphia’s daily average inmate population was 6,409 when Mr Krasner took office, and was down to 4,849 on August 31, 2019.

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.

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.

On that Friday the 13th, Police Corporal James O’Connor IV, 46, was part of a Philadelphia police 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. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 president John McNesby also has criticized Krasner, saying his policies led to the killing of O’Connor. “Unfortunately, he’s murdered by somebody that should have never been on the street,” McNesby said.

McNesby also said FOP members and police officers formed a human barricade to block Krasner from entering the hospital Friday to see O’Connor’s family.

The numbers don’t lie. Under Mayor Jim Kenney, who has managed to make past Mayors John Street and Michael Nutter look great, District Attorney Krasner and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw (who, to be honest, is really just Mayor Kenney’s puppet), Philadelphia has become measurably much worse. Mr Kenney has been in office since the beginning of 2016, and Mr Krasner since the start of 2018, and Philly is now much more dangerous. Their policies were put into governing practice, and, unless chaos and death was the goal all along, they failed miserably.

And now — and it’s difficult not to laugh about this — the esteemed Mr Krasner is lamenting that judges are not imposing high enough bail!

Amid rising gun crime in Philly, DA Larry Krasner blasts low bail

by Mensah M. Dean and Chris Palmer | January 11, 2021 | 7:21 PM EST

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner on Monday blasted bail commissioners for setting lower bails than his office routinely seeks for those charged with gun crimes at a time when the city is besieged by near-record gun violence.

While his office often has asked for million-dollar bails for those charged with violent gun crimes — with suspects typically having to pay 10% of that amount — the median bail last week for those arrested for possession of a gun was just $110,000, and $150,000 for those arrested for a violent offense involving a gun, Krasner said during a news conference in West Philadelphia with community leaders and anticrime activists.

“I’m not saying that’s a tiny amount of money, but what I am saying is for people who have resources, including criminals who are deriving substantial profit from illegal activity, this is not a hard thing to pay,” he said. As a result, he said, many of those accused of gun crimes are back on the street while awaiting trial.

Within 60 days, his office will release a report that will explore the impact bail amounts are having on crime, Krasner said during the first of what he said would be weekly press conferences to keep the public apprised on his offices’ efforts to combat violence.

He campaigned on ending cash bail imprisonment, and now he’s shocked, shocked!, that bail commissioners are setting lower bail amounts. In asking “for million-dollar bails for those charged with violent gun crimes,” is he not seeking to keep those charged, but not yet convicted, suspects in jail, in “cash bail imprisonment”?

This is the type of thing that “social justice,” rather than real justice, law enforcement gets you. By not seriously pursuing the little crimes, when the bad guys get a bit older and are graduated to bigger and badder things, they have less of past criminal record, which naturally means lower bail amounts. More, it means that some of those “charged with violent gun crimes” could have been locked up in jail, on the lesser offenses, on the days that they committed worse crimes. As documented above, Hasan Elliot was one of those criminals who could have been in prison, not just on his original sentence, but on parole violations, had Mr Krasner treated him seriously. Police Corporal James O’Connor IV is stone-cold graveyard dead because Mr Krasner and his office didn’t treat him seriously.

From the Inquirer:

(Mr Krasner’s spokeswoman Jane) Roh responded (to Mt Nesby’s statements) on Friday saying it was “frankly ghoulish that anyone, much less an authority figure, would choose to spread lies for personal or political gain in response to this tragedy.”

On Monday, McNesby shot back, contending that police again “are under attack from the district attorney’s rogue staff.” Calling Roh a “Krasner henchman,” McNesby wrote in a statement that Roh was using “O’Connor’s murder as a reason to attack ALL Police as ‘ghoulish,’” and contended that the “vicious” attack was “tacitly approved and supported by Krasner.”

On Twitter Monday night, Roh said McNesby’s language in the aftermath of the shooting was filled with “Trumpian, deliberately inflammatory falsehoods.” She said he should be “working 24/7 to protect the health & safety of his members” during the coronavirus outbreak.

As opposed to protecting them from the bullets of street thugs Mr Krasner allowed out of jail? COVID-19 is serious, but bullets fired by criminals appear to be a deadlier danger. You can check out Miss Roh’s Twitter feed to see how much of a whacked-out leftist she is; it’s no wonder she is Mr Krasner’s spokesidiot.

Larry Krasner has brought this on himself, through his idiotic, social justice policies. Under his ‘leadership,’ Philadelphia jumped from 315 homicides before he took office, to 353, then 356, and then 2020’s whopping 499. Mr Krasner isn’t all of the reason behind those huge jumps, but he’s definitely part of it. He may be bemoaning the lower bail, but it’s the result of his policies. Thing is, he’s not paying the price for his failures, the good citizens of Philadelphia are.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Killadelphia reaches the milestone I didn't think they'd make it, but they did: 502 homicides in 2020.

This is part of the penitential rite at the beginning of Mass:

I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.

And I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, because, as Philadelphia was approaching 500 homicides for 2020, I was, morbidly enough, rooting for the city to reach the milestone of 500 homicides. And, according to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, that ghastly goal was achieved, with 502 people bleeding out their lives in the city’s mean streets.

I noted, only a few days ago, that the City of Brotherly Love had, under the great leadership of Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, won the Silver Medal, with 489 homicides, tying the second place mark set in 1989, but that 1990’s 505 number seemed out of reach.

I had used an article in Wikipedia as my source, which gave that number. But, as of just a couple of days ago, the article changed, stating that 1990’s total was 497. And The Philadelphia Inquirer’s old website, philly.com, has interactive data which gives that same 497 number for 1990.

That may not be the last word, because the Inquirer’s Chris Palmer reported, on New Year’s Day:

The number of people killed last year — 499 as of late Thursday — is 40% higher than in 2019, and more than in all of 2013 and 2014 combined. The only time more people were slain in the city was in 1990, when police reported 500 homicides as violence surged alongside an intensifying crack-cocaine epidemic.

With that 505 number stuck in my brain, I had thought that Mr Palmer was simply using 500 as an approximation, but with the change in data from my source — now two sources — I have to wonder, is the 500 number an approximation, or precise?

Because, if it is precise, and the Police Department’s 502 number is accurate, Messrs Kenney and Krasner, and Miss Outlaw, have won the Gold Medal!

That’s a pretty sad award.

At any rate, a site search for 502 homicides on the Inquirer’s website, at 5:40 PM EST did not turn up any stories noting the ‘achievement.’

Now, I’m something of a math geek, and I do really radical things like run the numbers. It wasn’t so long ago, October 22nd, that I noted 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 the math said Philly was on track for 485 homicides.

And that had been a huge jump, because on August 18th, the daily averages led to a number of 439.

Of course, in mid-August, there was still a lot of warm weather left, and violent crimes tend to increase in the long, hot summer.

But by October 22nd, we were a month into autumn, cooler weather had prevailed, and supposedly, so would cooler heads. As I wrote then, the math was 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.

391 + 94 = 485.

But 502 killings in 366 days? That works out to 1.372 people being slaughtered, every single day of the year. In the last two months of autumn, and the first two weeks of winter, Philadelphia saw 1.563 homicides per day. The rate of death increased in the cooler months. December’s 48 homicides in 31 days works out to 1.548 per day, during what is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. December, after President Trump had been defeated for re-election, and COVID-19 vaccines had been developed and approved, yet the things on which the left would like to blame the increased crime rate now being diminished didn’t do much to lower the homicide rate.

I have been profuse in my criticism of Mayor Kenney, District Attorney Krasner and Commissioner Outlaw, and I do not take back a single word of it. But the real blame lies with not just the killers, but the parents who reared them. Yes, a no-nonsense “broken windows” policing and prosecution regime would reduce crime, the way Mayor Rudy Giuliani (D-New York) accomplished it, but the real key is reducing criminal thought in the minds of the people. If the kids are reared right, they won’t commit the crimes, regardless of the policing regimen.

Political leaders cannot rear our children for us; that’s up to parents and grandparents. But the Mayor and the District Attorney can look at what Mayor Giuliani accomplished, and if they don’t like his methods, they can at least appreciate his numbers. Philadelphia’s previous Mayor, Michael Nutter, and his Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey, might not have been full on “broken windows” in their policies, but, as Robert Stacy McCain pointed out, there were more killings in Philly last year than in two consecutive years, 2013 and 2014, under Messrs Nutter and Ramsey.

Mr Krasner’s Twitter biography states, “District Attorney Larry Krasner fights for equal justice for the great people of Philadelphia. A fair and effective criminal justice system makes us safer.”  The one thing Mr Krasner’s policies have not done is to make Philadelphians safer.
_____________________________________
Cross-posted on RedState.

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Chicago only thinks it’s the murder capital

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain noted the good mayor of the Windy City, and what had happened to the homicide rate in that toddlin’ town:

Stupid City, Stupid Mayor: Homicide Increases 55% in Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago

January 3, 2021

Remember, dead people are still eligible to vote in Chicago:

A 41-year-old man was shot and killed early Friday morning in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, marking the city’s first homicide of 2021 and following a year of spiking crime rates there and around the nation.

According to Chicago police data, the city recorded 769 homicides in 2020, a 55% increase over 2019.

The increase, reversing a three-year trend, is among the highest in city history, The Chicago Tribune reported Thursday.

Fatal shootings rose by 53%, with December shootings totaling 50, compared with just 19 a year earlier.

According to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, 78% of the gun violence victims were Black.

So that’s about 600 black people shot dead in Chicago last year, a Democrat-run city in a Democrat-controlled state with some of the strictest gun-control laws in the country. If Black Lives Matter actually cared about saving the lives of black people, they’d be rioting about this, but the truth is the Black Lives Matter is just a propaganda operation with only one goal, to help Democrats win elections.

It would be wrong to say to describe this as a “tragedy,” because it’s so predictable. When you elect Democrats, people get killed as a result. If you’re too stupid to understand this, that’s not my fault.

There’s more to the story. The 2020 Census numbers aren’t in yet, but, according to Wikipedia, Chicago’s population was guesstimated at 2,693,976 for 2019. Since crimes rates are calculated by 100,000 population, 769 homicides works out to a murder rate of 28.54.

That’s pretty high, but but Philadelphia laughs, and says, “Hold my beer.”

Philly’s violent year: Nearly 500 people were killed and 2,200 shot in 2020

by Chris Palmer | January 1, 2021 | 5:00 AM EST

For just the second time in its history, Philadelphia’s annual homicide total threatened in 2020 to reach 500, another grim marker in a year where the city has been wracked by the coronavirus pandemic, economic strife, and social unrest over racial inequity.

The number of people killed this year — 494 as of Tuesday — is 40% higher than last year, and more than in all of 2013 and 2014 combined. The only time more people were slain in the city was in 1990, when police reported 500 homicides as violence surged alongside an intensifying crack-cocaine epidemic.

It’s obvious that Chris Palmer, the author, had been working on this story for a couple of days. Though further down in the article he noted that the reported total was 498, he had written this when the reported number was slightly smaller.

The Philadelphia Inquirer noted in a different story that at least one person was murdered on New Year’s Eve, which would bring the total to 499. The population of Philly was guesstimated to be 1,584,064 in 2019. That gives Philly a murder rate of 31.50, leaving Chicago in it’s rear-view mirror. The Philadelphia Police Department should release its final number on 2020 homicides on Monday.

The spike in shootings was even more pronounced. More than 2,240 people were shot since Jan. 1, 40% more than police have ever recorded. Those statistics only date back to 2007, when the department began keeping track of shooting victims separately from the broader category of assaults involving a gun.

As in most years, the vast majority of victims were young, Black men — many from impoverished neighborhoods lacking resources and long afflicted by gun violence. But shots also killed and wounded children playing on the street. A pregnant woman was struck by a stray bullet — forcing the early delivery of her baby. Some gunmen fired indiscriminately into block parties. A witness was shot dead near City Hall in what police believe was a targeted hit for his testimony in a murder trial.

Then came the money line:

Still, the city’s crime picture continued to show uneven and unusual signs: As homicides and shootings soared, overall violent crime — which also includes rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults — remained near decades-long lows, while overall property crime was also lower than last year.

Are there really fewer other crimes? That’s what the statistics say, but there’s an unforgotten factor. Murder is a crime of evidence; dead bodies are very difficult of which to dispose or hide, and they get found. But rape, assaults which don’t result in hospitalization, robberies, etc, are crimes of reporting; if the victims don’t report them, then as far as the police, as far as the statistics are concerned, they didn’t happen.

And with Larry Krasner’s refusal to prosecute seriously the ‘little’ crimes, with the black community hating the police, and with conviction rates so low, it is more probable that other crimes are simply being reported less frequently than it is that fewer crimes are being committed. 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?

From the District Attorney’s Wikipedia biography:

During his tenure, Krasner has sought to spearhead criminal justice reform by ending bail payments for low-level offenders, reducing supervision for parolees, and seeking more lenient sentences for certain crimes. Prior to his government service, Krasner had a 30-year career as a criminal defense and civil rights attorney and public defender. He aggressively pursued police misconduct.

Why would anyone go through the hassle of reporting a crime, and perhaps having to testify in court, when the city isn’t going to give the criminals more than a slap on the wrist?

Murder is not normally a criminal’s first crime; the bad guys tend to start out small, and work their ways up to the really bad stuff. But with all of the ‘social justice’ bovine feces, all of the hatred of the police, and the frustration that comes with crimes not being solved, what’s the point of someone in Kensington or Nicetown calling the cops when they get mugged?

Krasner said summer could have been the moment when the near-total shutdown of social services and alternatives to gun violence collided with warmer weather and other traditional drivers of violence, such as long-simmering feuds — suddenly allowed to play out on streets where witnesses, like everyone else, stayed home in the pandemic lockdown.

Really? The Police Department reported that, as of 11:59 PM on October 23rd, there had been 399 homicides in 297 days in the city. That works out to 1.34 killings per day. But with 498 homicides in 365 days, the average is slightly higher, at 1.36 per day; cooler weather didn’t seem to stem the tide of killings. And in the last 68 days, there were 99 killings, or 1.46 per day, a higher rate, around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Mr Palmer’s article concludes with the usual platitudes about not enough legitimate opportunities for young black males growing up in the City of Brotherly Love, and Mr Krasner and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw saying that they are trying to put in programs that involve more than just (the barely existent) law enforcement. But what no one will do is admit the truth, because the truth is so very, very politically incorrect: the only solution to bad behavior by teenagers and young adults, regardless of race, is better parenting and better communities. The parents of young black males need to rear them better, and that has to mean both parents. If their fathers are absent, boys are crippled in a way that is easy to quantify:

Children brought up in single mother homes are:

  • 5 times more likely to commit suicide,
  • 9 times more likely to drop out of high school,
  • 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances,
  • 14 times more likely to commit rape,
  • 20 times more likely to end up in prison,
  • 32 times more likely to run away from home.

But if that’s easy to quantify, current political realities prohibit us from noting the quality that’s a problem, namely that children need both male and female role models when they are growing up, and they need fathers and mothers who show love and respect for each other, something that cannot happen when they are not living together.

District Attorney Krasner and Commissioner Outlaw can’t do anything about fathers in West Philadelphia not being married to or living with the mothers of their children.

The solution to Philadelphia’s crime rate, to any city’s crime rate, does not come from Mayors or District Attorneys or Police Commissioners. Yes, Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s (R-New York City) “broken windows” policing policies tamped down on serious crime somewhat, but the real solution has to come from parents being married and staying together, and rearing their children properly. Mr Giuliani’s stricter policing may have prevented some bigger crimes, but holding crime down is eventually a losing proposition; only by bringing up kids who don’t want to commit crimes, not because they are afraid of getting caught, but because it’s the right way to live, can society improve.