Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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After six second chances, a Philadelphia thug does something which gets him stone-cold graveyard dead.

As we noted almost two years ago, when the Philadelphia Police Department tried to keep the identity of a police officer involved in a shooting which killed a common criminal, because then-Commissioner Danielle Outlaw claimed that the officer’s personal safety was at risk, The Philadelphia Inquirer put together its sources, and identified and published the identity of the officer.

Well, oops, they did it again!

Police are investigating a traffic stop that ended with an injured officer and fatally shot driver

A police officer shot Curtis Wallace Jr. on the Adams Avenue Bridge in Crescentville after he allegedly hit the officer with his car.

by Ellie Rushing | Friday, February 16, 2024 | 12:56 PM EST

Curtis Wallace, Jr, from a 2022 mugshot, via WTAE.

Philadelphia police on Friday continued to investigate an attempted traffic stop Thursday night that authorities said led to an officer being struck by a car, then pinned against a wall by the vehicle, before the officer shot and fatally wounded the driver.

Family identified the man who died as 36-year-old Curtis Wallace Jr. And while police declined to name the officer involved, multiple law enforcement sources identified him as 38-year-old Marckenson Smith, an eight-year veteran of the force.

So, when the Usual Suspects protest against this incident — they’ve even protested the police shooting of a thug who had shot an officer.

And, no, of course the Inquirer didn’t provide Mr Wallace’s old mugshot, but it didn’t take much searching to find it.

The incident began around 7 p.m. Thursday, when Smith attempted to pull over a white Ford Lincoln sedan at Roosevelt Boulevard and F Street in Crescentville, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said outside Einstein Medical Center Thursday night.

Bethel did not say what prompted the traffic stop, and a department spokesman on Friday said that remains part of the investigation.

You can follow the link to the newspaper’s original, to read the details which have been published. To me, the interesting part is toward the end of Miss Rushing’s story:

Records show (Mr Wallace) has a history of prior arrests and run-ins with the law.

In March 2015, records show he pleaded guilty to theft and receiving stolen property, and was sentenced to two years’ probation. Later that year in December, he was charged with aggravated assault after police said he broke into a house, beat a man with a metal pipe, dragged him out of the property, and threatened to kill him. Wallace pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 1½ months to a year in jail, plus two years’ probation, and was released on time served.

Really? What kind of sweetheart plea deal was he given? Under Title 18 §2702, aggravated assault is, depending on a couple of circumstances, either a First-degree or Second-degree felony, which under Title 18 §106 has a sentence of over ten years (b)(2) for First-degree, or a maximum of ten years (b)(3) for a Second-degree felony conviction. Yet Mr Wallace released on time served in jail awaiting trial. This was after he was already on probation.

He continued to violate this probation over the years, records show. In early 2019, he was charged with indecent assault, violating a protective order, and strangulation, but the charges were later dismissed for reasons that were not immediately clear.

Most recently, in January 2022, he was convicted of theft and conspiracy for breaking into a woman’s car and stealing her computer, $900 cash, and Burberry coat, records show. He was sentenced to up to 23 months in jail, plus 30 months probation, though he was immediately paroled and ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution.

Just a few months later, he was arrested and charged with orchestrating a catalytic converter theft ring in Allegheny County. Records show he pleaded guilty to theft and was sentenced to one year probation.

Mr Wallace appears to have spent much of his past few years on probation, but, despite continual violations, never had his probation revoked and sent to prison. It’s obvious that previous probation sentences, previous second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth chances, didn’t turn Mr Wallace to the straight and narrow, didn’t get him to reform his life and become a law-abiding citizen.

Instead, he got let go and leniently treated, and shown just about every courtesy possible, right up until he did something which put him on a slab in the morgue. I have previously joked that that was District Attorney Larry Krasner’s — though the Allegheny County event is not on Mr Krasner — brilliant policy to reduce crime by releasing criminals until they do something which gets them off the streets permanently.

Perhaps my joking isn’t all that much of a joke. But if Mr Wallace had been treated according to the laws passed by the Commonwealth’s elected representatives, who (supposedly) reflect the will of the people, he’d be alive today, alive behind bars, but at least able to look forward to getting out at some point.

He won’t be getting out of that pine box.

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Once again, an otherwise detailed article in The Philadelphia Inquirer omits a pertinent fact. The newspaper just doesn't want to mention the crime angle

Perhaps it’s wrong of me to expect more in-depth coverage from The Philadelphia Inquirer, and my $285.48 annual subscription, but this one jumped out at me:

These Philadelphians got rid of their cars in the past year. They haven’t looked back.

“Now that I’m forced to walk, I’m seeing the city more than I did before,” said one newly car-less resident. She used to pay about $400 a month on her car payment and insurance.

by Erin McCarthy | Friday, February 9, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

Dajé Walker’s Hyundai Elantra was stolen from a Brewerytown parking lot in July, only to be found a week later on the side of a local highway.

The car that Walker had driven for three years was “in shambles,” Walker said, and the insurance company deemed it a total loss.

“I had that existential crisis moment where I was like, ‘Do I need a car or do I want a car?” she said.

Around the same time, Walker, 28, got a new, completely remote job as a project manager. The news sealed her decision: She took the insurance payout of about $15,000, putting some of the money in savings and using the rest to move from Brewerytown to Old City, and never looked back.

She no longer has to set aside $300 a month for her car payment and another $100 for insurance. When she recently moved to Old City, she didn’t have to worry about securing a convenient and safe parking spot, which can cost at least $250 a month at private lots.

There’s a nice photo of Miss Walker, with her dog, on the narrow, brick streets, streets wide enough for a horse-and-buggy back in 1776, in the historic Old City, a really nice area in Philly, if you can afford it.

But while Miss Walker was able to get a new, 100% work from home job, published at the very same time was the article “IBX’s (Independence Blue Cross) new in-person office policy has some workers feeling betrayed. Others are job-hunting. Senior employees say they are worried that their teams will quit to find more flexible or better-paying positions at other companies,” which was a follow on to the Groundhog Day article, “Independence Blue Cross changes its work-from-home policy, the latest big Philly employer to require more in-office days: The insurance company had been allowing most employees to work remote as much as they liked. Now, they’ll be required onsite a majority of the work week.”

So, more and more employees are being expected to do something really radical and actually come to work in Philly; won’t those workers need a way to get to work?

More people are back in the office, but commuters say SEPTA service isn’t back to pre-pandemic norms

SEPTA service isn’t back to 100%, but it’s still outpacing ridership, even as employers push more in-office time. Would workers be more willing to commute if transportation schedules bulked up?

by Lizzy McLellan Ravitch | Friday, October 6, 2023 | 9:18 AM EDT

On Wednesday morning, SEPTA sent 39 notifications of Regional Rail trains running at least 10 minutes late and warned of potential delays or cancellations on 18 bus and trolley lines “due to operator unavailability.”

“It’s a gamble” trying to catch the bus, said a Pennsylvania state employee from West Philadelphia, who asked to remain nameless out of concern for their job. “There were times I would wake up earlier to get an earlier bus, and that wouldn’t show up.”

SEPTA’s mismanagement by CEO Leslie Richards is famed far and wide in Philly.

They have taken a rideshare to work on multiple occasions because their bus route options were canceled or late. Walking to a further bus stop isn’t an option because they have a disability. A lifelong bus rider, they said the system was more dependable before COVID-19.

[Sigh!] In English grammar, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine, meaning that the singular masculine pronouns are used to refer to one person, even when that person’s sex is not known or specified. Anything else is sloppy writing.

“You have to laugh to keep from crying,” the West Philly bus rider said. “People could lose their jobs” if they’re late for work.

Septa’s ridership is down 39% from 2019, the year prior to the panicdemic, though the bus service alone was back up to 75% last October.

Back to the first cited article:

After a surge in car-buying statewide at the height of the pandemic, there are signs that some Philadelphians like Walker have made the decision to do away with their cars in recent years, bucking larger trends.

In 2022, more than 638,000 passenger vehicles were registered in the city, about 24,000 fewer cars than were registered here a year prior, according to the most recent state data. That represents a 3.6% decline in registered vehicles over a period when the city’s population decreased 1.4%, the largest one year drop in 45 years.

Do all of these things make sense together? Car ownership is down significantly from the population decrease, public transportation ridership has significantly decreased, and more people are being required to return to their employers’ offices? We reported, just two days ago, that the newspaper did not report politically inconvenient facts about vehicle ownership, that while the Inquirer reported on the surge in automobile insurance rates, completely ignored was the possibility the city’s huge auto theft and carjacking rates had anything to do with that surge.

Well, here they go again. The newspaper has previously reported:

Philadelphia has seen a surge in plateless vehicles. Some are abandoned, but others are the result of drivers attempting to evade law enforcement, parking tickets, or toll-by-plate systems.

There was also this:

How rampant phony license plates are being used to get away with crimes in Philadelphia

Fraudulent temporary tags have flooded into Philadelphia from states with looser rules — like Delaware.

by Ryan W. Briggs and Dylan Purcell | November 18, 2022 | 5:00 AM EST | Updated: 12:11 PM EST

(F)ake license plates are an old tool of criminal trades, what’s new is the flood of fraudulent temporary tags into Philadelphia from states with looser issuance rules — like Texas and Delaware. These phony plates have shown up increasingly in police investigations into shootings, carjackings, hit-and-runs, and car thefts. (In addition to counterfeit plates, thefts of auto tags this year to date were 2,378, a more than 60% increase over the same period in 2018.)

How, I have to ask, is it good and reliable reporting to tell the newspaper’s readers that fewer people own cars without mentioning that the city has seen a surge in vehicles on the street which some people possess, though “own” might not be the proper word? There was not the first word in Erin McCarthy’s article to even hint that, Heaven forfend!, there might be more cars on the road possessed by scofflaws and criminals.

Miss McCarthy’s article was entirely upbeat, telling readers that there are good and reasonable ways to live in the City of Brotherly Love, that Philly “is known for being one of the best cities to live in without a car (though historically not all neighborhoods have the same access to public transit),” which, I would guess, will be something referenced in yet another article telling us that we must give up cars to save Mother Gaia.

William Teach reported, just this morning, that we are being told by Our Betters that the behavior of the public as a whole must be changed to fight global warming climate change, but at least Miss McCarthy’s article is trying to be persuasive rather than authoritarian.

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Killadelphia: A public service homicide? One bad guy dead, another in jail

Jahsir Walke mug shot, via Steve Keeley, Fox29 News.

Meet Jahsir Walke, 16, of foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, and you can say goodby to him as well. No, unlike Robert Stacy McCain’s use of a similar line, young Mr Walke has not gone on to his eternal reward, but we can have some real hope that he will disappear into a Pennsylvania state penitentiary, and never see the sun from outside again.

So, what did young Mr Walke do? Well, the first part of the problem is that he is just plain stupid. At just 16 years of age, he thought it was wise and cool and all gangster to walk around carrying a firearm. Oddly enough, the fact that he was violating gun control laws didn’t seem to give him pause, and certainly did not stop him from carrying, something which must surely shock the left.

Mr Keeley posted his notice of the crime at 4:23 PM EST, but, at least as of 8:52 PM, The Philadelphia Inquirer has nothing on the story; I am not surprised.

On Monday, January 29th, officers of the 19th District responded to a “Man with a gun” call at the Martinez Food Market, a corner store bodega at 5453 Master Street, in the Hestonville neighborhood in West Philadelphia. Upon arrival, they found Nafiese McClain, a 19-year-old black male, shot twice. He was transported to Penn Presbyterian Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly thereafter.

According to initial reports, Mr McClain entered the bodega and brushed past two young black males, one of whom was Mr Walke, and then assaulted a third black male in the back of the store. Mr Walke then pulled his weapon from the waistband of his pants, and shot Mr McClain twice. This wasn’t some after dark crime, but happened at 1:37 in the afternoon.

Of course, as is the case virtually everywhere these days, it was all caught by a security camera, Mr Walke was identified as the shooter, and a week later he’s behind bars.

So, what do we have? A 19-year-old tough guy treats a couple of teenagers rudely, then starts to pound on a third man, for a thus far unreported reason. Then, one of the two teenaged tough guys pulls out his gun, and sends Mr McClain straight to Hell.

If I was to be cynical, I’d call this a public service homicide. Mr McClain seems to have been a good-for-nothing punk of whom West Philly is well rid, and young Mr Walke another useless consumer of food, water and oxygen, whose disappearance into the state pen can only benefit the decent people in the neighborhood. Being a juvenile, his record is almost certainly sealed, but a 16-year-old carrying? The probability that Mr Walke has a record himself would seem pretty high.

Through Sunday, February 4th, the City of Brotherly Love had seen ‘only’ 27 homicides, down from the 41 on the same date last year. With 35 days having elapsed in the year, the city is seeing fewer than one homicide per day, 0.7714 per day. While even one murder is one too many, in Philly terms, 0.7714 killings per day is pretty good, and the lowest number on this date since 2018. And when we consider the victim and the killer, this just might be a win/win.

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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 →