Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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Because Larry Krasner won’t put the bad guys in jail, the decent people of Philly are putting themselves behind bars

Ho hum, another Friday night, and more gunfire in the City of Brotherly Love. As we noted here, Thye Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jenice Armstrong lamented that “if (Kasheeda) Jones had been white, and driving a minivan, her death could be national — or even international — news. But in Philly, it was just another Friday night.”

Well, last Friday night’s shooting is big news, because a Philadelphia Police officer was shot. Fortunately, he was not killed, and the punk who shot him is now laying on a slab at the morgue.

Philly police officer shot and suspect killed after ‘scuffle’ erupts in corner store

The shooting happened around 8:45 p.m. inside a store at the corner of North Mascher and West Cambria Streets. Police were searching for a man who they said picked up the suspect’s gun and fled.

by Robert Moran | Friday, January 26, 2024 | 9:23 PM EST | Updated: 11:49 PM EST

A police officer was shot Friday night in the Fairhill section of North Philadelphia and the suspected shooter was killed by the officer’s partner during a confrontation inside a neighborhood store, police said.

The shooting happened around 8:45 p.m. inside the store at the intersection of North Mascher and West Cambria Streets.

The “store” at the intersection? Google Maps Streetscape shows us this “store,” and it calls itself the Jennifer Tavern, with a nice picture of a frothy mug and “Ice Cold Beer” in snow-capped letters. A photo in the Inquirer’s story shows the same place, if less clearly.

“Shots fired! Shots fired!” an officer told police dispatchers, then reported that an officer was down.

The injured police officer, who was not identified, was transported to Temple University Hospital, where he was reported in stable condition with two gunshots to the right thigh, Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel said at a news briefing around 11 p.m. outside the hospital.

The suspected shooter also was transported to Temple and was pronounced dead, Bethel said. . . . .

Said a visibly angry Bethel: ”I’ve been here too many times. It is unacceptable.”

That statement, along with the newspaper’s photo of the Commissioner, reminded me eerily of very similar pictures of then-Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, saying the same things after yet another police officer had been shot. Fortunately, this officer will survive.

A Philadelphia crime blogger who goes by the amusing Twitter handle Stinky Feat has looked up the dead punk’s rap sheets, and posted a long series showing how the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating and criminal fellating loving District Attorney, Larry Krasner, and his minions in the District Attorney’s office gave extremely lenient breaks to a persistent criminal and felon, including a 3-to-23 month sentence, immediately paroled, which would, had he actually served it, kept the criminal behind bars through March of this year. Instead of looking forward to getting out in a month or so, he’s now laying on the slab in the morgue.

Did the soft-hearted and soft-headed Mr Krasner really do this punk any favors? I will admit to having snarkily tweeted that we just didn’t understand and appreciate what a super-genius the District Attorney is, with his incredible policy of getting the bad guys killed and thus off the streets without the good taxpayers of the Keystone State having to provide them with three hots and a cot for years on end.

2800 block North Mascher Street, via Google Streetscapes. Click to enlarge.

While others are looking at the thug now assuming room temperature’s criminal record, I have been looking at things in a different manner: I looked at the neighborhood. The 2800 block of North Mascher Street shows older Philly rowhomes, many with metal bars on first-floor windows and front doors, in the Fairhill neighborhood, in what the Inquirer was very upset is called the Philadelphia Badlands. The people there have, in effect, put themselves in jail to try to protect themselves from the criminals who Mr Krasner has not and will not put behind bars.

The 28-year-old felon who will now never turn 29 has a criminal record dating at least as far back as New Year’s Eve of 2015, when he was just 20; if he had a juvenile record, that is sealed. And if perhaps not this particular person having now gone to his eternal reward — I do not know if he lived in the Badlands personally — the city has allowed enough people who do terrorize the decent folks in Philly to push themselves into living behind bars themselves.

2818 North Mascher Street.

This is 2818 North Mascher Street. Would you want to live in this house, in a neighborhood so bad that the owners had to build themselves a jail cell? Zillow shows nearby 2845 North Mascher Street, which does need interior work, currently for sale, for a whopping $74,500. There are a lot of similarly-priced homes in the neighborhood.

New Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins expressed her outrage at the shooting, and she has promised to clean up nearby Kensington of its junkies and open-air drug market, and while Kensington is the most infamous of the bad areas — though not actually in the Badlands definition — the problems are far more widespread. The problem is the culture in these areas, a culture which doesn’t seriously educate kids growing up to be decent, law-abiding citizens. The left want to blame it on poverty, but I grew up poor, too, and I didn’t knock over liquor stores or shoot up bars and bodegas. And is it’s too late for that won’t-reach-29-years-old punk, law enforcement, strict law enforcement, has to be part of the solution. Philly needs to start showing kids growing up that they’re more likely to end up behind bars if they break the law than Mr Krasner is willing to put them.

And that’s the sad part: because of lenient treatment, because Mr Krasner and his minions don’t want to put the bad guys behind bars, the decent residents have felt the need to do it to themselves.

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After 72 uninterrupted years in power, Democrats have kept Philly our nation’s poorest big city

The city of Philadelphia has been governed by Democrats for decades: the last Republican mayor left office while Harry Truman was President of the United States. The Democrats of today, in complete charge of the City of Brotherly Love, have talked a great, great game of taking care of the poor and downtrodden, yet it has to be asked: having talked the talk, have they walked the walk?

Some Philadelphia homeless shelters have gone months or years without being paid by the city

The Office of Homeless Services spent $15 million more than it was budgeted over the last four years, but some nonprofit leaders say during that time, they experienced severe delays in payment.

by Anna Orso | Wednesday, January 17, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

It was the Monday after Thanksgiving when officials at Gloria’s Place, a West Philadelphia homeless shelter that’s operated for five decades, learned their contract with the city wouldn’t be renewed due to a lack of funding, and the seven families in its care would need to find shelter somewhere else.

That came after Gloria’s Place had for ten months housed dozens of children and adults referred to them by the city — but were not paid the more than $400,000 the city owed them.

Yup, it’s another one of those Philadelphia Inquirer articles limited to subscribers only. I subscribe so that you don’t have to. Continue reading →

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Killadelphia Yet another senseless shooting takes the life of an innocent person

We have previously reported on the shooting, allegedly by the-17-year-old Quadir Humphrey, which struck a 16-year-old victim in the head. We also noted:

(I)F the reports I’ve seen on Twitter are correct, the victim has a “non-survivable brain injury” and is “now brain dead,” so the charges will surely be upgraded to murder.

More information has now been made public:

The 16-year-old shot at SEPTA station will not survive, mom says

Quadir Humphrey, 18, and Zaire Wilson, 16, will likely be charged with murder.

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, January 16, 2024 | 2:26 PM EST

The 16-year-old who was critically wounded in a shooting on the subway platform last week will not survive his injuries, his mother said Tuesday.

Tyshaun Welles, a sophomore at Frankford High School, has been on life support since Thursday night, when he was shot in the head by a stray bullet after two teens opened fire at the City Hall SEPTA station, said his mother, Racquel Bango. Continue reading →

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You in a heap ‘o trouble, boy! Larry Krasner didn't do Quadir Humphrey any favors

We noted, on Thursday evening, that the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, softer-on-crime-than-Charmin District Attorney, Larry Krasner, wants to get Act 40, establishing a special prosecutor for crimes committed on or near SEPTA property, declared unconstitutional, because, in my opinion, he wants to cripple the law enforcement arm of Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins’ plan to shut down the infamous open-air drug market and clean up the homeless — read: junkies — encampments on the city’s streets in the Kensington neighborhood.

And here we go!

Two teens charged with shooting 16-year-old at City Hall SEPTA platform

Prosecutors said they intend to charge a 18-year-old and 16-year-old with the shooting.

by Ellie Rushing | Friday, January 12, 2024 | 9:31 AM EST | Updated: 3:44 PM EST

Two teens have been arrested and will be charged with shooting a 16-year-old boy in the head after police said they fired into a crowd of young people waiting for the subway at City Hall’s SEPTA station on Thursday night.

Around 9:25 p.m. Thursday, as a group of teens stood on the westbound platform of the Market-Frankford Line, prosecutors said, 18-year-old Quadir Humphrey, with a 16-year-old, fired multiple times as the train approached. As the crowd fled in a panic, police found the teen lying on the ground, shot in the head.

Continue reading →

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Larry Krasner files a lawsuit to prevent Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins plans to clean up Kensington.

Oh, that’s not how the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, softer-than-Charmin-on-crime District Attorney would put it, publicly, but that’s his intention.

Mayor Cherelle Parker taps a new top police leader to head the department’s Kensington strategy

Pedro Rosario, a new deputy commissioner for the Kensington initiative, is the highest ranking Latino in the history of the Philadelphia Police Department.

by Anna Orso | Thursday, January 11, 2024 | 9:09 AM EST | Updated: 1:21 PM EST

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker announced Thursday that the Police Department has tapped a new deputy commissioner whose sole job will be to head the department’s strategy in Kensington, home to a sprawling open-air drug market that Parker has vowed to shut down. Continue reading →

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What The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t tell us, tells us a lot How can you have a long report on the Philadelphia public schools without telling us how they are doing as far as actually educating students?

We have frequently mentioned the Edward T Steel Elementary School in Philadelphia, since then-mayoral candidate Helen Gym Flaherty used the school as a backdrop for telling voters how she ‘saved’ the school from ‘going charter,’ and kept it a public school.  In the still public Steel Elementary, which is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 8% scored at or above that level for reading. Maybe keeping it public didn’t work all that well? Continue reading →

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Killadelphia

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Crime Maps and Stats page, there have been 383 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love as of 11:59 PM EST on November 30, 2023.

With November 30th being the 334th day of the year, that works out to an average of 1.1467 homicides per day in Philly, which, multiplied by 365 yields a projected 418.5479 murders for the year. That’s a heck of an improvement, even if it’s still ridiculously high, but anything under 422 killings will give Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and most-of-the-year Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw a four-year average slightly under 500 per year.

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Run her out of town on a rail! Rather than the $425,000 to which her $75,000 raise boosted her, Leslie Richards needs a $425,000 pay cut, and a SEPTA train ticket out of town.

If you were apprehended after shooting at a crowd of people in a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority station, would you expect to simply be let go, even if you had missed everyone? I wouldn’t, but, then again, I’m not a 16-year-old girl.

A 16-year-old girl is facing arrest for a SEPTA subway shooting at the 15th and Market station

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office issued a warrant in the Nov. 19 shooting at the 15th and Market Street station.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Monday, November 27, 2023 | 1:00 PM EST

A 16-year-old girl who police say shot at a group of juveniles inside the SEPTA station at 15th and Market Street earlier this month — but struck no one — will be arrested for that crime, authorities said Monday.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said an arrest warrant had been issued for the teen in connection with the Nov. 19 shooting on the station concourse. The girl, whom authorities did not identify because she is a juvenile, is expected to face charges of aggravated assault and firearms violations.

The teen had been detained at the 11th Street station on the day of the shooting because she was wanted on a family court bench warrant for theft, the district attorney’s office said.

She is expected to be arrested for the shooting by the end of the week, authorities said.

The language on this story is unclear, to say no more. Was she already locked up on the bench warrant? Will she be arrested while already behind bars, or is she out on the streets? Normally, one would expect an apprehended shooter to have been arrested on the assault and firearms charges right away. Were the police waiting to see if uber-permissive District Attorney Larry Krasner would want to take any action since the shooter was a 16-year-old girl?

The teen girl opened fire on a group of juveniles who were following her out of the station and up the exit stairs, the district attorney’s office said in a statement. Video obtained by investigators shows the teen shooting from the steps, fleeing, and then throwing a backpack into a trash can in the concourse, the statement said.

A handgun was recovered from the trash can and matched the live rounds and shell casings found at the scene of the shooting, the district attorney’s office said. When the teen was detained on the bench warrant, authorities said, she was wearing clothing that matched what the shooter was seen wearing on surveillance footage.

There’s more at the original, but it’s about SEPTA’s negotiations with the Fraternal Order of Transit Police Lodge 109, who have been working without a contract since March 31st. The union postponed a strike date of November 20th, until a decision on December 13th:

The transit police officers are asking for a pay increase amid a staffing shortage and a rise in antisocial behaviors — like smoking and turnstile jumping — but not violent crimes.

Is shooting up a subway station not a violent crime if the shooter never hit anyone?

But I have to laugh at that last quoted paragraph for other reasons: reporter Rodrigo Torrejón listed “smoking and turnstile jumping” as the antisocial behaviors, but for some reason declined to mention the biggest “antisocial behavior” plaguing not just SEPTA stations but the city itself: drug addicts littering the stations and the tracks with used needles, and junkies passed out on the streets and in the stations and even the train cars.

The (supposed) marathon bargaining session scheduled to begin on October 23rd obviously didn’t solve anything, and SEPTA has only been surviving on federal deficit spending aid due to the COVID-19 panicdemic.[1]No, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly how I see the government response to the virus. Now CEO Leslie Richards, who has presided over worsening service yet got a $75,000 raise earlier in the year, a plethora of bus and trolley accidents, and train stations littered with the homeless and drug needles, with the transit service plagued by delayed service and accidents, with chronic shortfalls in essential staff wants more money from the taxpayers to subsidize SEPTA passengers. Just yesterday, a day in which SEPTA had a whopping forty routes cancelled or delayed due to ‘operator shortages,’ a man on the system stabbed three people at the Walnut Locust station before being shot by a SEPTA police officer.

But, things have improved today: only 21 routes cancelled or delayed due to ‘operator unavailability.’

The Philadelphia Inquirer, not exactly an evil reich-wing site, described the SEPTA trains:

The Market-Frankford Line has its own incense: a combination of cigarette, weed, or K2 smoke. People in the throes of opioid addiction are sometimes frozen in a forward lean in train cars and on platforms. People experiencing homelessness might use a couple of seats or a station to seek rest away from the cold and the heat.

To me, that’s a bit more serious than “smoking and turnstile jumping,” but yeah, I’m an evil reich-wing Republican! I’m the kind of man who would have used the word “junkies” rather than “people in the throes of opioid addiction,” and “vagrants” rather than “people experiencing homelessness.”

Miss Richards will have to somehow hammer out a contract with the SEPTA police officers, and will have to do it in the face of reduced revenues, from a lower number of riders and the loss of Federal dollars as the Covidiocy spending ends.

At a time when the left want to push people out of their cars and onto public transportation, Miss Richards has overseen a real decrease in the quality and service of one of our nations larger public transportation systems. Rather than the $425,000 to which her $75,000 raise boosted her, she needs to get a $425,000 pay cut, and a SEPTA train ticket out of town.

References

References
↑1 No, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly how I see the government response to the virus.
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Even now, Jayana Webb is catching a bit of a break

On March 25, 2022, we reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer tries to ramp up sympathy for the drunk driver who killed three men how our nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper tried to ‘humanize’ Jayana Webb, to let readers know that it was not just the three men she killed but her own life which was now so negatively impacted.

Miss Webb had been pulled over by State Troopers Brendan Sisca, 29, Martin Mack,33, for doing 110 MPH in a 50 MPH zone of southbound Interstate 95. She got away with that, because the Troopers were suddenly called to a man trying to jump median barriers near Lincoln Financial Field. The Troopers let Miss Webb go, and found Reyes Rivera Oliveras, a 28-year-old electrician, around the median barriers.

Miss Webb, a very fortunate woman for getting away with that speeding and reckless driving stop, then headed south herself, and struck Messrs Siska, Mack, and Oliveras, so hard that she tore the doors off the State Police vehicle, sending the Troopers flying over the median divider, and the three men all to their deaths.

Unfortunately, reckless did not translate into wreckless.

    Webb, who prosecutors said admitted to drinking Hennessy cognac that night, proceeded south on I-95 and crashed into the three men at such a speed that the impact ripped the doors off their stopped state police SUV and sent the troopers flying over a highway divider.

The troopers and Mr Oliveras were in the left hand median; to have struck them, Miss Webb had to have been driving down the “hammer” lane, the left-hand passing lane. She got away with speeding, and she was speeding again.

Webb now faces three counts of third-degree murder and potentially decades in prison. Her friends are reckoning with how a popular and promising young entrepreneur ended up in jail without bail over the deaths of three men.

“(A) popular and promising young entrepreneur”, huh? Here the Inquirer was trying to humanize her, to make her sympathetic character, not a killer, not a murderess, but just some poor thing who happened to make a mistake.

Image of tweet, via Fox29 News. Click to enlarge.

By the time Webb’s mugshot hit national news, she had already shown indications of reckless driving. Tweets from before the crash quickly emerged in which she bragged about drinking and driving. One January post read: “If you ask me, I’m the best drunk driver ever.”

Some in her social circle, meanwhile, were in shock. How could Webb — a track-and-field star with no past DUIs and a hair-braiding business — be responsible for the deaths of three people?

Jayana Webb perp walk, via Fox29 News. Click to enlarge.

Some said Webb deserves what’s coming. Others, sometimes posting under the hashtag “#TeamJay,” said Webb made a terrible error, egged on by a pervasive culture of casual drunk driving.

“What she did was not right,” said a friend, who spoke to the The Inquirer on condition of anonymity due to the high-profile nature of the case. “But at the same time we’re all human and we all make mistakes.”

There’s more at the original, and it’s utterly disgusting. The Inquirer let us know what a wonderful person she really was, someone who just happened to get caught up in a culture of drinking, partying hearty, and driving drunk. Remember: the Inquirer also tried to make a martyr out of 12-year-old Thomas Siderio, Jr, who fired a shot at Philadelphia Police officers, and wrote about the killing of 13-year-old Marcus Stokes as though he was an innocent kid just walking to school, when he was not.

It’s really not her fault, you know, she just made a mistake.

A mistake that left three men, three men with families, three apparently hard-working men, stone cold graveyard dead.

Well, she has now been sentenced.

Pregnant woman faces up to 60 years in prison for DUI crash that killed two state troopers and a civilian

Jayana Webb, 23, will start her prison term of 27.5 to 60 years in prison early next year, after giving birth to her child, her attorney said.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Wednesday, November 22, 2023 | 2:26 PM EST

A Montgomery County woman will serve between 27.5 and 60 years in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday to driving drunk and fatally striking two Pennsylvania State Troopers and the civilian they were assisting on I-95 last spring.

Jayana Webb, 23, of Eagleville, pleaded guilty to three counts of third degree murder, three counts of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, and one count of DUI for fatally hitting Troopers Martin Mack III, 33, and Branden T. Sisca, 29, along with Reyes Rivera Oliveras, 28, with her car on I-95 in the early morning hours of March 21, 2022.

As part of the terms of her guilty plea, Webb, who is seven months pregnant, will be allowed to remain out of custody until she gives birth in February, her attorney Michael Walker said. After she gives birth, Webb will be allowed some bonding time with the child before she reports to prison, he said.

This is the part that really pisses me off annoys me. She should go to jail, go directly to jail! She was out on bail, at least long enough to go out and get knocked up, and now, even after her sentencing, gets time before having to report to prison to have the baby, and then additional time to ‘bond with’ the unfortunate child. While the Commonwealth cannot force her to give up her baby for adoption, she should still go to prison immediately, be released to the hospital when she is ready to be delivered of the child, and then go immediately back to jail, to let whomever is going to care for the baby to bond with the child, not with Miss Webb. If she is going to serve a minimum of 27½ years, the child will be well into adulthood when his mother gets out of the slammer.

In a statement, District Attorney Larry Krasner called Wednesday’s guilty plea and sentencing by Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott a “just resolution” to “one of the most shocking incidents of vehicular violence in recent memory.”

A “just resolution”? Will Messrs Siska, Mack, and Oliveras have come back to life in 27½ years? Will they be walking and talking and enjoying life with their families in the sixty years which constitutes her maximum sentence?

The newspaper was still trying to drum up sympathy for Miss Webb. The original title for the story, as I read it in the ‘tab’ in my browser, was “Drunk driver sentenced after killing 3 people in 2022,” but an editor changed it to “Pregnant woman faces up to 60 years in prison for DUI crash that killed two state troopers and a civilian”, just so readers catch that she is pregnant.

The newspaper also reported that Miss Webb’s blood alcohol level was 0.211, when tested sometime after the crash, so it must have been higher than that when the crash occurred. She also tested positive for marijuana use, though that test does not measure active marijuana intoxication at the time taken.

27½ years means that Miss Webb will be somewhere around 50 to 51 years old when her minimum sentence has been served; if she has to do the full 60, she wouldn’t get out until she’s 83 or 84. According to the state Department of Corrections, a prisoner must serve the entire minimum sentence before becoming eligible for parole.