Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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C’mon, Philly, you can do it! 500 homicides for 2020 is within range!

I spent a good deal of time yesterday on an article about the murder rate in Killadelphia Philadelphia, but it sort of petered out, because, well, just because. But the first three paragraphs were decent:

I will admit to having taken an almost perverse pleasure in checking the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, which tells us that, as of 11:59 PM on Tuesday, December 29th, 494 people had lost heir lives on Philadelphia’s mean streets. That was up two from the previous day, which had been up three from the end of the Christmas weekend.

And the Christmas weekend itself? The 24th through the 27th, four days, saw seven homicides.

On Friday, December 11th, Helen Ubiñas published an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.” As of the day prior to publication, there had been 466 killings in the city. In the 19 days since the publication of that article, 28 people were sent to their eternal rewards, 1.47 per day, which is a faster rate than the rate for the entire year, 1.36 per day. At a time celebrated in song as The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, times don’t seem quite so wonderful in the City of Brotherly Love.

With ‘only’ 494 homicides, and two days left in the year, the numbers were against the city reaching 500 for 2020, or so it seemed until I checked the Current Crime Statistics page this morning. And there it was: 498 homicides as of 11:59 PM EST on December 30th. Only two more people need to be slaughtered to make it happen!

OK, OK, I’m getting pretty morbid here. But in 2019, there had been 353 homicides through December 30th, but 356 for the entire year, meaning that Philadelphia saw three more people killed on New Year’s Eve last year. This year has seen a 41.08% increase over last year, and New Year’s Eve parties can be boisterous. And the weather forecast has temperatures in the low 40s to mid 30s through midnight, with relatively mild winds, and a low probability of precipitation, which shouldn’t keep the gang bangers holed up inside. Partiers will want their molly or blow to celebrate the New Year, and that’s always a chance to get people interacting with the sellers of recreational pharmaceuticals, and that is always a chance for gunfire.

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Congratulations to Philadelphia! 2020 has won the silver medal!

In 1989, the City of Brotherly Love set a new record for homicides, at 489 souls. The record didn’t last long, as 505 people gave up the ghost in Philadelphia’s streets the following year, but, after that, the number of murders started declining, and 1989 still holds the silver medal.

Well, not anymore: as of 11:59 PM on Sunday, December 27th, Philadelphia tied that 489 number, with four days left to go in 2020. With a current average of 1.3508 homicides per day, Philly ought to easily move past that number, and end up with 494 or 495 homicides. Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw ought to be really proud of the jobs that they have done.

Really, it wasn’t easy for them. When Mayor Michael Nutter (D-Philadelphia) and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey retired in first week of January, 2016, they left a city which saw 280 homicides in their last year. The year before Messrs Nutter and Ramsey took office, 2007, Philly had suffered through 391 killings. In their first year in office, the number of homicides dropped by 60, to 331.

In 2007, the homicide rate was 27.3 per 100,000 population. By 2013, it was down to 15.9. A bad spike in 2015, their last year in office, saw the murder rate jump to 17.9, as there were 280 killings that year, up from 248 the previous year.

In 2017, it jumped to 21.1, and then to 22.2 in 2018 and 2019. All of the progress under Messrs Nutter and Ramsey had been undone.

Now, at the end of 2020, projecting 494 homicides, and with the city’s population last guesstimated at 1.556 million, the homicide rate figures out to 31.75 per 100.000. Even if the last four days of the year pass with no more killings, the rate works out to 31.43. Either would be the highest number since 1997. Mr Krasner has accomplished what he set out to do, with his cockamamie social justice version of law enforcement.

Everyone hears about Chicago, where murders have skyrocketed under laughable Mayor Lori Lightfoot. According to The Chicago Tribune’s Tracking Chicago Homicides page, last updated following Sunday, December 20, 2020, the Windy City had seen 753 murders. That’s a lot of blood running into the gutters. But with a population of 2.706 million, the homicide rate there is 27.83, pending, of course, the final blood tally for the year. That’s a lot lower than Philadelphia’s! If Philly had Chicago’s murder rate, there’d be about 60 fewer people murdered in the streets. That’s how bad Philadelphia has become.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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O, their precious little feelings are hurt again!

A Philadelphia building mural by artist Michelle Angela-Ortiz, painted in a tribute to “LGBTQ activist and Latinx community icon Gloria Casarez,” Philadelphia’s first director of LGBT affairs, was painted over on the “former site of the 12th Street Gym in the Gayborhood.”

Why? The building had been sold to Midwood Investment and Development, a developer from New York City, which planned to build a 30-story housing complex. The new owners planned to demolish the building. Painting over the mural cost the developer money, but would spare the local “gayborhood” from seeing the mural being visibly knocked down.

And now, it’s an act of violence!

Whitewashing Gloria Casarez mural is a violent act against Philly’s LGBTQ community | Opinion

By David Acosta | December 24, 2020 | 12:41 PM EST

On Wednesday, Midwood Properties, a New York-based real estate developer who bought the property which used to house the 12th Street Gym, whitewashed the Gloria Cazares mural before demolition was set to start to make way for a 30-story housing complex. The act was not only deliberate, but it was also done in bad faith without consulting either the artist who created the mural, Michelle Angela Ortiz, or Mural arts.

For months, a group of us — including friends of Gloria; Gloria’s wife, Tricia Dressel; the artist; Mural Arts and concerned neighbors who opposed the project — had been working with Midwood Properties to try and preserve the mural and if not salvageable, to create a new project that honored Gloria’s legacy as well as the legacy of the Black abolitionist Henry Minton who lived on the property and was part of the underground railroad. It is believed that the property still contains tunnels used at the time, a fact that should be investigated so that the property can be designated as historically significant and so as to prevent its impending demolition.

The erasure of the mural feels particularly painful as it was the only mural depicting a Latinx LGBTQ woman of color in a city with 3,600 murals to date and counting. The mural’s position in the heart of the Gayborhood was also significant to the LGBTQ community who see the neighborhood as an important location with historical ties to business, and community-based organizations, and as a place where the LGBTQ community has for decades celebrated not only our community festivals but also some of our most important civil rights achievements.

There’s more at the original, including all sorts of tropes of the #woke:

The optics of literally painting over the mural with white paint is not lost on those of us whose lives oftentimes feel invisible because of the color of our skin, our economic conditions, our sexual orientation and our stories as immigrants.

It was difficult to keep from laughing at all of that. The building was scheduled to be torn down! If the “Gayborhood” wanted the mural saved, they should have gotten the money together and bought the building themselves, before it was sold to a developer.

In what has already been a difficult year for so many, the destruction of the mural is a violent act against all of us who saw our lives and our work represented on that wall.

A “violent act,” huh? The City of Brotherly Love has seen 486 people killed in the streets; that’s violence! But the “Gayborhood” is worried that someone painted over a mural that was going to be destroyed anyway. When the “Gayborhood” gets together to try to work at stopping the slaughter of primarily heterosexual, young black males in Philly, I’ll start to be impressed with their abhorrence of violence.

I have to admit it: when I see the name “Gayborhood,” and realize that the old 12th Street Gym catered primarily, though not exclusively, to homosexuals, and that a 30-story housing complex will be built there, I have to wonder just how much of this is a concern that the population required to support a housing complex of that size will change the complexion of the area. Once the complex is built, there will be a lot of normal people moving in. Being in Center City, they’re likely to be mostly white and mostly liberal, and unlikely to be ill-disposed to homosexuals, but they will still be primarily heterosexual.

If a neighborhood tried to preserve its character by exerting political pressure to stay primarily white, it would be denounced as shockingly racist. Yet, when depressed, minority neighborhoods try to fight ‘gentrification,’ which involves primarily white, well-to-do individuals buying and fixing up run down properties, no, that isn’t racist at all. And if a ‘gayborhood’ is trying to preserve a primarily homosexual culture in their area, is that somehow illegally discriminatory?

The gym closed almost three years ago, because “the gym would have had to pay at least $500,000 to address fire-code violations found by the Department of Licenses and Inspections. He also said real estate taxes on the property have surged in recent years.” I have to wonder: how much degradation did a building vacant and (probably) unheated for almost three years suffer? Had it been broken into and seen homeless squatters camped out inside? It couldn’t be pretty.

The local patrons thought that a liberal government might save it:

But, of course, politics doesn’t somehow erase half a million dollars, or more, of fire code violations. Every commercial building in Philadelphia is subject to those kinds of inspections; do the “LGBTQ community” somehow think that their favorite places should somehow be exempt?

Every community is, and ought to be, subject to the same rules, the same laws, and the same economic laws. There ought not to be some special considerations for one particular group, due to race or sexual orientation or sex, that somehow overcome local building codes or economic problems. And if a mural gets painted over because the building got sold, well, too bad, so sad, but that’s life.

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Killadelphia * Updated!

The Philadelphia Police Department only updates its Current Crime Stats page on normal business days, so the numbers are current as of 11:59 PM on Wednesday, December 23rd, where they show that 482 souls have gone to their eternal rewards due to homicide in the City of Brotherly Love in 2020. Uncharacteristically, The Philadelphia Inquirer has told us the tales since then. Yesterday, there was this:

Shootings leave two young men dead on Christmas Eve, police say

by Catherine Dunn | December 24, 2020 | 9:11 PM EST

A 20-year-old man who was shot multiple times died Thursday morning, Philadelphia police said.

The shooting occurred in the city’s Overbook section, on the 1800 block of Wynnewood Road, about 11:30 a.m., according to police. The man was taken to Lankenau Medical Center, and pronounced dead at 11:46 a.m.

In a statement, police said that a preliminary investigation indicated the victim was outside recording on social media when another man approached him, started a verbal altercation, and then shot the victim. When police arrived, authorities said, they found the victim lying in the grass, with multiple wounds to the torso. . . .

Hours later, at 1:42 p.m., a shooting in Philadelphia’s Kensington section led to the death of another young man.

The victim was about 20 years old, police said. He was shot five times on the 3200 block of G Street, according to information provided by police.

In neither case was an arrest made or weapons recovered. The Inquirer noted that no motive was determined in the first shooting.

Assuming those were the only two homicides on Christmas Eve, well 482 + 2 = 484.

Today is Christmas Day, a day of peace and love and brotherhood, right?

Philly police fatally shoot gunman accused of shooting into a crowd, killing teen and injuring another

by Diane Mastrull | December 25, 2020 | 2:51 PM EST

Christmas morning got off to a grim start in Philadelphia when a street fight escalated to one man firing a gun into a crowd, striking two teenagers in the neck before officers fatally shot him, according to police.

A 15-year-old male whose identity was not released was pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital, where a 17-year-old remained Friday in stable condition, police said.

The alleged gunman, 43, was shot in the torso and pronounced dead at Temple, police said. Police did not disclose how many times he was hit, just that two officers fired at him about 12:30 a.m. on the 3300 block of Emerald Street in the city’s Kensington section.

The officers had responded to a call about a disturbance or fight at that location. They were attempting to defuse the situation, police said, when additional family members of the feuding people came out of their houses and gathered on the sidewalk and in the middle of the street. Pushing and punching ensued between the original combatants, police said, when a man pulled a gun from his right rear waistband and fired it, hitting both teenagers.

The officers immediately pulled their service weapons and shot the “alleged” gunman, and I have to wonder if we’ll see protests such as the ones following the shooting of Walter Wallace, because the police killed a violent criminal.

484 + 2 = 486. Yes, the dead criminal counts as a homicide, even though it was obviously justified.

And Christmas Day isn’t even over yet.

Philly’s record is 505 killings in 1990, with 1989 coming in at second place with 489. With six more days remaining in 2020, the city has a very good chance to make second place.

By the time the Philadelphia Police Department updates its figures, on Monday, December 28th, the city might have already moved into second place!

The left will cry for more gun control, as though the guns somehow killed people by themselves. But the 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun used was reported stolen from Virginia. Shockingly, it appears — though I hate to judge a thing like that before all of the facts are in — that a criminal misguided gentleman broke the law in obtaining his weapon.

Updated: December 26, 2020 | 8:45 AM EST

Well, how about that? It turns out that the Christmas Day shooter, Jesus Perez, killed his own son, and wounded a nephew. From the updated version of the Inquirer story:

The family of the man, identified by CBS3 as Jesus Perez, denied that he was armed or would have fired at his own child. “He would obviously never do that,” his brother, Noris Cueva-Nova, said in an email. “He was a respectable, hard-working man who cared deeply for his family.”

The family denied that the guy, from whose warm, dead fingers the police pulled a 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun, was armed. I guess it was just imaginary bullets which killed the guy’s son.

Pretty soon we’ll hear that the police shot the two boys, then planted the stolen 9mm in Mr Perez’s hand.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Murder in Philadelphia: Is anybody there? Does anybody care?

Sometimes an article which would deserve a laughing out loud derision is about a subject which is in no way humorous. On Friday, December 11, 2020, Helen Ubiñas published an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The truth is simple: Murders of young black men in Phila-delphia are simply no longer news.

Of course, Miss Ubiñas followed the Inquirer’s stylebook in claiming that these Philadelphians were “killed by guns.” No, they were killed by bad people, people who used guns as their tools. But the Inquirer doesn’t want to ever say that part.

I’ve told the truth previously: unless the murder victim is someone already of note, or a cute little white girl, the editors of the Inquirer don’t care, because, to be bluntly honest about it, the murder of a young black man in Philadelphia is not news. Unless the victim was a Somebody, the Inquirer didn’t care. If the victim is a white male, and the shooting probably accidental, yeah, that merits not just one but two stories.

And so we come to a story in Sunday’s Inquirer:

3 dead, 9 people shot in another violent overnight in Philly

by Katie Park | December 13, 2020 | 2:23 PM EST

Nine people were shot overnight Saturday, three fatally, in a series of violent hours in Philadelphia that included a double homicide, police said.

Two men died at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center after they were shot on South Ruby Street in West Philadelphia around 1:30 a.m., police said Sunday.

One of the men, who was 33, had been shot a total of eight times — three times in each leg, once in the chest, and once in the torso, police said. The other man, 25, was shot in the chest. Police said both died within minutes of each other around 2 a.m.

Take note: this was Saturday night; the weekend was not over when the Inquirer reported the story. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Stats page on Sunday still shows 466 homicides, but that was of 11:59 PM EST on Thursday, December 10th; it’s normally updated during the business week around 8:00 AM.

At Broad Street and Hunting Park Avenue in North Philadelphia, a man between 20 and 25 years old died from a gunshot wound to the chest during a carjacking a little before 10:40 p.m., police said. He was pronounced dead about 20 minutes later at Temple University Hospital.

We cannot expect the Inquirer to report the names of those victims in the initial stories, because families have to be notified, but the truth is that the Inquirer will almost certainly not have any further stories on these victims unless the police are able to make arrests and charges in the cases listed. That’s the part Miss Ubiñas appeared to be decrying, but, with all of the layoffs over the years at Pennsylvania’s newspaper of record, perhaps a newsroom full of the #woke doesn’t really have the time to pursue such stories.

Going back to Miss Ubiñas’ story, roughly a third of the names have hyperlinks embedded, some to a website called the Philadelphia Obituary Project, and some to news stories about their killings. Still, in a lot of cases, such as this one about 22-year-old Isaiah Carter, all that it has is a photo and “If you have any information about this victim, please contact us at tips@phillyobitproject.com. Date: 2020-08-14 Location: 200 E Clearfield St, Philadelphia, PA”.

The Philadelphia Eagles, in the midst of a really bad season, replaced starting quarterback Carson Wentz with former Alabama and Oklahoma quarterback Jalen Hurts, and the Iggles beat the New Orleans Saints 24-21. There will be four or five, and maybe more, stories on the Inquirer’s website about this game, in which nobody died.

I guarantee there won’t be a bunch of stories about the at least three people who lost their lives in Philly’s mean streets, because it really isn’t news, and let’s be honest, other than their families, nobody cares.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Larry Krasner draws a challenger

I have written frequently about District Attorney Larry Krasner, the anti-police crusader that George Soros helped get elected in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia. Mr Krasner ran promising to completely overhaul the prosecutor’s office, to:

  • 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

Wikipedia noted of Mr Krasner:

In his first week in office, Mr Krasner fired 31 prosecutors from the District Attorney’s Office, including both junior and career supervisory staff. Up to one-third of the homicide prosecutors in the office were dismissed. Those fired represented nearly a 10% reduction in the number of Philadelphia assistant district attorneys.

In February 2018, Krasner announced that law enforcement would no longer pursue criminal charges against those caught with marijuana possession. That same month, Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop seeking cash bail for those accused of some misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Krasner said that it was unfair to keep people in detention simply because they could not afford bail. He also announced that the DA’s office had filed a lawsuit against a number of pharmaceutical companies for their role in the city’s opioid epidemic. Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop charging sex workers who had fewer than three convictions.

In March 2018, it was reported that Krasner’s staffers were working on creating a sentence review unit–the first of its kind in the country–to review past cases and sentences, and seek re-sentencing in cases when individuals were given unduly harsh punishments. Also in March 2018, it was reported that Krasner instructed prosecutors to: “Offer shorter prison sentences in plea deals. Decline certain classes of criminal charges. And explain, on the record, why taxpayers should fork over thousands of dollars per year to incarcerate people.” He said,

Fiscal responsibility is a justice issue, and it is an urgent justice issue. A dollar spent on incarceration should be worth it. Otherwise, that dollar may be better spent on addiction treatment, on public education, on policing and on other types of activity that make us all safer.

Given the approximately 40% increase in homicides in the city this year from 2019, a year which had the highest number of killings since 2007, it doesn’t seem as though Mr Krasner’s ideas have made anyone safer.

Well, now the District Attorney has drawn a primary opponent for next year’s campaign:

A former Philly homicide prosecutor fired by District Attorney Larry Krasner is challenging him for reelection

by Laura McCrystal | December 11, 2020 | 5:02 PM EST

A former Philadelphia homicide prosecutor who was among the staffers fired when District Attorney Larry Krasner took office will challenge the incumbent in next year’s Democratic primary.

Carlos Vega, who worked in the District Attorney’s Office for 35 years and was the first Latino homicide prosecutor in Pennsylvania, has been a vocal critic of Krasner. He plans to formally announce his candidacy Wednesday.

Vega left the District Attorney’s Office in January 2018, when Krasner fired 31 staffers during his first week. He filed a lawsuit against Krasner last year, alleging that his firing was based on age discrimination. Krasner has denied the firing was related to age, and the lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

Vega said in an interview Friday that his campaign will focus on victims of crime and their families, who have accused Krasner’s office of failing to keep them updated and excluding them from decisions.

Protesters, including Jamaal Henderson of ACT UP Philadelphia, gathered outside Philadelphia City Hall in June and called for allocating funds to community services instead of the police.. Photo by Alejandro Alvarez, The Philadelphia Inquirer,

What? A prosecutor focusing on the victims of crimes and their families, rather than Mr Krasner’s coddling of criminals? That’s kind of what the black community said they wanted, according to Thursday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, but, then again, the same people want cop killer Wesley Cook, who uses the fake name ‘Mumia Abu-Jamal’, released from prison, and want the police department defunded.

Mr Krasner should run on his record: 353 homicides his first year, up from 315 in 2017, 356 in 2019, and now up to 466 so far this year. With 20 days left to go in 2020, Philly has already seen its 3rd highest murder total in history, is on pace to easily break 1989’s 2nd place record of 489, and might just challenge 1990’s all time record of 505. If Mr Krasner is re-elected, after that record, then the City of Brotherly Love will have gotten what it deserves.

George Soros money got another ‘social justice’ district attorney elected, in Los Angeles, and he’s already doing the same stuff Mr Krasner has done.

Black Lives Matter? It sure doesn’t seem that they do in Philadelphia, where black men are being murdered every single day, and the District Attorney is more concerned about the murderers than the murdered.

Would Mr Vega be a better District Attorney than Mr Krasner? We can’t know if he would be much better, but one thing is certain; he couldn’t be any worse. The Inquirer article does have a link to a fund-raising site for Mr Vega, but given that it’s an Act Blue site, I will not link it. The site says that Mr Vega “worked to overturn wrongful convictions,” so he might just be on the social justicey side himself, just not as bad as Mr Krasner. What Philadelphia really needs is a tough, and I mean tough on crime Police Commissioner and District Attorney, people who will do for Philly what Rudy Giuliani did for New York City, catch and prosecute harshly the petty crooks when they are “Johnny Misdemeanor,” before they become “Johnny Felony.”
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Black community in Philly protests against the police, but also complains that police aren’t solving enough killings Black community claim that #BlackLivesMatter, but don't do anything to prove that

I was doing some research, looking for a story I remembered, in which then Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey decried the “no snitchin'” culture in the heavily black neighborhoods of Philadelphia, when I came across a story about his announced retirement.

Philly Police Commissioner Ramsey to retire

by Aubrey Whelan and Claudia Vargas, Inquirer Staff Writers| October 14, 2015

Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey couldn’t stand the thought of burying another one of his own.

It was March, and he had long been thinking of retirement, ever since Mayor Nutter had won reelection. Even then, he had been “95 percent sure.” His career was at an apex – there had been presidential appointments, and prominent positions on national policing boards, and an unprecedented drop in homicides in a city once dubbed “Killadelphia.”

When 2015 ended, there had been 280 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, an unfortunate jump from 248 the previous year, but overall he presided over a sharp drop in murder. In 2007, the year before he became Commissioner, there were 391 bodies laying in the city streets. In Mayor Michael Nutter’s (D-Philadelphia) and the new Commissioner’s first year, homicides dropped to 331, and then to 302 the following year. 2013 saw 246 homicides, the lowest number since 1967.

It seems that the city has re-earned that nickname.

As of December 9th, Killadelphia had seen 465 corpses homicides. That’s good for the bronze medal, 3rd place in all of the city’s long history, under Mayor Nutter’s successor, Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), under ‘social justice’ District Attorney Larry Krasner, the beneficiary of George Soros’ campaign millions, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, who seems to be trying, but is little more than a pawn and tool of Mayor Kenney, and had her own ‘social justice’ history in Oakland and Portland.

What moved me to do that research in the first place? It was this article in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Under Fire

In 8,500 shootings since 2015, suspects have been charged in 1 out of 5 cases and convicted in just 9%.

by Chris Palmer, Mike Newall, Mensah M. Dean and Dylan Purcell | December 10, 2020 | 5:00 AM EST

Every trip outside the house for Jackee Nichols brings a new reminder of the pain.

Nichols is from a part of South Philadelphia that has been embroiled in a shooting conflict for as long as anyone can remember. In October 2018, that violence claimed her 15-year-old grandson. Police believe he was gunned down for living on the wrong block — but, like most shootings in Philadelphia, no one has been charged in the crime.

Now Nichols faces the daily torment of living among the people she suspects killed her grandson, Rasul Benson, leaving trauma to resurface in unexpected moments.

There is, of course, the very #woke notation that this article was “One in an occasional series about Philadelphia’s unchecked gun violence,” as though a gun, an inanimate object, is somehow responsible, and not the criminal mindset allowed to run rampant through Strawberry Mansion and not-so-Nicetown. “Gun violence” is the euphemism used by the credentialed media and the left to avoid blaming actual people.[1]In The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, I noted that “The term “gun violence” is, if you will pardon the pun, a politically loaded one, meant to convey the impression that an … Continue reading

Nichols, 57, a devout Muslim, raced home and cried and prayed for forgiveness, overwhelmed by the feeling that she has been ignored by police, abandoned by some in her neighborhood, and failed by a city she believes has turned an uncaring eye toward unsolved killings.

“It seems to me,” she said, her voice catching, “like you all forgot about my boy.”

Nichols’ pain is one shared by thousands of Philadelphians, because city law enforcement is failing to fulfill one of its most fundamental responsibilities: Secure justice when people are shot.

There are people in her neighborhood who know who murdered her grandson, but unless someone actually tells the police, gives them some clues as to who did it, and why, don’t blame “city law enforcement.” The police depend on the public to help them.

The article goes on to include some grisly statistics:

  • Out of almost 8,500 shootings since 2015, just 21% led to charges, less than 9% have reached a conviction.
  • As of November 1, just under one in six of this year’s nearly 1,900 shootings had led to a suspect in custody.

Then the #woke had to have their say:

What’s more, in a historically segregated city, where Black and brown neighborhoods have long suffered from government disinvestment, institutional racism, and heavy-handed police tactics, The Inquirer found that this system has disproportionately failed these communities.

Since 2015, almost 2,700 young Black men were wounded in shootings, but suspected triggermen were convicted in only 6% of their cases.

White men of the same age were three times as likely to see their shooters convicted.

Uhhh, if white victims of the same age were thrice as likely to see the men who shot them tried and convicted, isn’t it possible, just possible, that it was because a greater percentage of white witnesses cooperated with the police? Of course, the #woke among the Inquirer’s reportorial staff would never even ask that question. Instead, they’d frame the statistic, as they did, by blaming “institutional racism”. Remember, they forced Stan Wischnowski, senior vice president and executive editor of the Inquirer to resign, and the paper to issue an apology, because their precious little feelings were hurt.

Protesters, including Jamaal Henderson of ACT UP Philadelphia, gathered outside Philadelphia City Hall in June and called for allocating funds to community services instead of the police.. Photo by Alejandro Alvarez, The Philadelphia Inquirer,

One has to ask: why, if the black community in Philadelphia are so upset that the police are not solving many of the homicides in black neighborhoods, are so many from that community demanding that the city ‘defund the police’? Would not reducing the resources available to the Philadelphia Police Department be more probable to reduce the number of crimes that they can solve, the number of patrols they can do?

The article does note the ‘defund’ movement, but uncritically states that it’s the fault of the police because the black community do not trust them.

Police say they are embracing reform, developing smarter, more targeted tactics, and trying to overcome the challenge of making cases when so many witnesses don’t want to talk. Within the Philadelphia Police Department, many officers — including Commissioner Danielle Outlaw — have also grown increasingly outspoken about what they view as a criminal justice system and reform-oriented prosecutor’s office that have not cracked down hard enough on illegal guns.

“The criminal community, they’re more emboldened to go out and do more,” Outlaw said in an interview.

Conviction rates for nonfatal shootings and illegal gun possession have fallen since District Attorney Larry Krasner took office in 2018, according to data published by his office. Some police commanders also complain that repeat offenders now routinely get low bail or shorter sentences for gun crimes.

Still, Outlaw acknowledged that the Police Department is primarily responsible for building investigations to get suspected shooters off the street. And the failure to secure justice in the vast majority of gun-violence cases, she said, was “very concerning, for obvious reasons.”

I’ve noted the failures of Mr Krasner’s office previously, but they aren’t failures to him: he wants to see shorter jail terms, he wants to see fewer criminals convicted. And, once again, the “gun violence” trope is used.

Instead, the Inquirer published a sympathetic story, just the previous day, about cop killer Wesley Cook, who calls himself Mumia Abu-Jamal these days, and poor Mr Cook’s 39 years locked up for the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal demand his freedom on the 39th anniversary of his arrest in the death of a Philadelphia police officer

by Mensah M. Dean | December 9, 2020

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981, used the 39th anniversary of his arrest to call for his release from prison on Wednesday, saying he was innocent.

They also condemned the 1985 bombing of the MOVE compound in West Philadelphia and rejected a recent apology Philadelphia city councilmembers offered for the city’s actions that day in starting a fire that killed 11 people.

Well, in one way that apology was worthless: none of the Philadelphia councilmembers were in office thirty-five years ago, and none of them had anything to do with the MOVE action. How can anyone apologize for someone else’s actions?

The group, many of them MOVE members, gathered at the corner of 52nd and Larchwood Streets to demand freedom for Abu-Jamal, 66, a MOVE supporter who lived under a death sentence for two decades before his sentence was overturned by a federal judge in 2001. He’s now serving life without parole for the Dec. 9, 1981, slaying of Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Despite Abu-Jamal’s conviction and numerous failed appeals, his supporters maintain that he is not guilty of killing Faulkner, who was 25, and that his trial was tainted by racism and corruption.

Well, of course they do. There’s no evidence that Mr Cook[2]While I have not changed the fake name used in quoting the article, I will not go along with his ridiculous alias in my own words. did not shoot Officer Faulkner, but that doesn’t matter: they don’t care if he is actually innocent, but are deifying him precisely because he did kill a police officer. Yet the same people are complaining that the Philadelphia Police Department isn’t bringing murderers in their own communities to justice.

In virtually every one of the murders in Philadelphia, there are people who were not involved but who know who the killers are, who have all of the evidence the police and even the stupid District Attorney need to make the arrests and win the convictions, to lock these killers away for the rest of their miserable lives.

Instead, the left pretend that the problem is ‘mass incarceration,’ when the real problem is that not enough criminals are incarcerated, for not long enough.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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↑1 In The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, I noted that “The term “gun violence” is, if you will pardon the pun, a politically loaded one, meant to convey the impression that an inanimate object was somehow violent all by itself. Sensible writers should use the term “shooting,” to make it clear that a person committed the violent act.” I do not use the term “gun violence,” save in direct quotes or to mock the concept that guns are somehow responsible for murder.
↑2 While I have not changed the fake name used in quoting the article, I will not go along with his ridiculous alias in my own words.
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Things are not just bad in Philadelphia, things are getting worse

According to the Philadelphia Police Department, there have been 463 homicides as of 11:59 PM EST on Sunday, December 6, 2020. That’s 1.358 per day. With 25 days remaining in the year, if the average holds, the city can expect another 40 bodies in the streets by the end of the year. 463 + 40 = 503.

The all time record is 505 homicides, set in 1990. 1989 stands in second place, with 489, and now the City of Brotherly Love has just exceeded 1988’s previous third place finish of 460.

But there’s more. I noted, on October 22nd, just a month and a half ago:

The Current Crime Statistics released by the Philadelphia Police Department note that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on October 21st, 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.

391 + 94 = 485.

That would not be a new record; 1990 holds that dubious honor with 505, killings, and 1989 comes in second with 489, but 485 would be solidly in third place!

Think about that: in just 46 days, Philly has crept up so that the projected homicide totals have increased by eighteen dead bodies; in just 46 days, 72 corpses have littered the city’s streets . . . and that’s a rate of 1.565 per day. As the weather has turned cooler, a time when homicides are expected to decrease, the killing rate has increased in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia.

On October 22nd, I noted that Philly was headed for a solid third place finish. As recently as August 18th, the projected numbers were for ‘just’ 439 homicides.

Now, it’ll take just a few ‘extra’ murders, and Philadelphia could break the all time record. Go, team, go! You can do it, Philly, you can do it!

I have previously noted that George Soros’ supported District Attorney Larry Krasner has done what he wanted to do. But Mayor Jim Kenney and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw deserve a lot of credit, too. The hapless Commissioner Outlaw has at least criticized Mr Krasner’s soft-on-crime prosecutions, but, coming from Oakland, California and later Portland, Oregon, she, too, is infused with at least some of the left coast attitude toward crime; if she hadn’t been, Mayor Kenney would never have appointed her in the first place.

This is the problem with liberalism! This is the problem with the boneheadedly stupid Social Justice Warriors! In their attempts to Do Good, that are making things worse, because their ideas are so wrongheaded, so out of touch with reality.

Crime exists because people tolerate its existence, and the left, the oh-so-understanding-and-tolerant left, always willing to show sympathy to those less fortunate, are more tolerant of crime than normal people.[1]Yes, I deliberately defined leftists as outside of normal. That is the culture which allowed a city like Portland to tolerate the Mostly Peaceful Protests™ of last summer, and which excuses crime because, well, just because the criminals have had life so tough.

Rudy Giuliani showed the way. He didn’t tolerate crime, and when he was mayor of New York City, he had the police arrest for and the district attorneys prosecute the small, petty crimes that people like Larry Krasner excuse and ignore and forgive. Mr Giuliani showed the punks what the inside of the penitentiary was like before they became more hardened criminals, a lesson lost on Mr Krasner.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 Yes, I deliberately defined leftists as outside of normal.
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Philly starts December off with a bang!

I had planned on doing an article on Philadelphia’s prodigious murder rate yesterday, but got involved with other things. I did, however, tweet about it.

So, 454 homicides through the end of November. I checked my go-to site for those statistics, and shazamm! Philly banged off three more corpses on the first day of December.

The math is simple: 457 homicides in 336 days yields 1.36 killings per day. With 30 more days, including today, left in the year, that works out to a projected 40.8 more dead bodies on the streets. 41 + 457 = 498!

In 1990, the City of Brotherly Love saw 505 homicides, up from 489 the previous year, and 460 in 1988. With 457 homicides so far this year, 2020 is already in 4th place, with 1988’s number to be surpassed in just a few days.

The crime rate is supposed to decrease as the year wanes, and colder weather keeps more people inside. But as recently as October 22nd, we noted that the homicide rate was 1.325 per day, and the projected total would be 485 for the year. Now the average has increased to 1.360 dead per day, which might not seem like much, but from October 21st through December 1st, a period of 41 days, 66 people bled to death in the streets, and that’s 1.61 per day. When the weather turned cooler, the homicide rate went up, not down. If the City of Brotherly Love keeps up with 1.61 per day, it could actually tie the 1990 record of 505, though maybe there’d be an * by the number since, being a leap year, 2020 has an extra day in which to kill people.

Of course, ” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>The Philadelphia Inquirer, a proud newspaper from its inception in 1829, and Pennsylvania’s newspaper of record, hasn’t even noticed the increased murder rate this fall. I searched the Inquirer’s website, and while there was a story which noted that shootings were up 53% from last year, I found nothing which indicated that the editors of the newspaper had noticed that the already high murder rate had ticked up a bit. They’ve been great on covering the election and its aftermath, and COVID-19, but when it comes to the daily killings in the city, well, that just isn’t news anymore.