Couldn’t we build something like this in Kensington?

In the two-part episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine entitled Past Tense, Part 1 and Part 2, a transporter accident lands Commander Benjamin Sisko, Dr Julian Bashir, and Lt Commander Jadzia Dax in San Francisco, in the year 2024. From Wikipedia:

Sisko and Bashir are found by a pair of police officers, who believe them to be vagrants and warn them to get off the streets. They are escorted to a “Sanctuary District”, a walled-off ghetto that is used to contain the poor, the sick, the mentally disabled, and anyone else who cannot support themselves.

Well, who would have thought that it would be so prescient!

Liberal City Builds Walls To Protect Elite, Clears Out Homeless

by Andrew Sanders | Tuesday, November 14, 2023 Continue reading

Killadelphia The numbers are down, but Philly will still see well over 400 murders in 2023

The ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties of Hallowe’en have left, and, according to the Philadelphia Police Department, there have been 358n homicides through the end of October in the City of Brotherly Love. Yes, that number is a great improvement over the same date during the past three years, but, if you open the website, you’ll see that, for other than the last three years, it is a higher to date total than any of the other years listed, going back through 2007. More, 358 is higher than the entire year totals for 2008 through 2019.

Oh, that “*Annual percentage change compared to same day in 2021” footnote? That’s wrong; it’s the annual percentage change compared to the same day in the previous year, 2022, not 2021, a sloppiness I reported back on April 27th, and something I reported to the Police Department vis Twitter back then; it still hasn’t been corrected.

So, how do the numbers work out? Hallowe’en was the 304th day of the year, which means Philly has been seeing 1.1776 homicides per day, which, multiplied by 365 days in the year, yields 429.84 total murders for 2023. That’s certainly a great improvement over the past three years, but, assuming 430 homicides for the year, 2023 will still be higher than any year since 1995, other, of course, than the last three. And, if the number winds up 430, it will mean that the triumvirate of Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw[1]Miss Outlaw resigned as of September 22nd to take a lower-level job with the Port Authority of New York, because she knew she was toast in Philadelphia. will have averaged slightly more than 500 homicides per year, 501.75 to be exact, during their four years together. For that number to drop below 500 would require the city to see only 422 killings this year, possible but improbable.

References

References
1 Miss Outlaw resigned as of September 22nd to take a lower-level job with the Port Authority of New York, because she knew she was toast in Philadelphia.

Killadelphia To me, it's simple: no one who is guilty of murder should ever see the light of day again as a free man.

On Thursday, October 12th, Philadelphia Police Officers Richard Mendez, 50, and Raul Ortiz, 60, were when the officers attempted to stop a gang of goons from attempting to break in and steal a car in a parking garage at the Philadelphia International Airport. Officer Mendez was killed, and Officer Ortiz wounded. The officers returned fire, and one of ths suspects was wounded. Teenager Jesus Herman Madera Duran was wounded, and his accomplices threw him in the back of their Dodge Durango — which was reported stolen a weak earlier — and dumped him on the floor of a parking garage at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and then fled. Young Mr Duran, of Camden, New Jersey, was pronounced dead at CHOP. Continue reading

Killadelphia: The city’s white, liberal elite were appalled at Josh Kruger’s murder, but didn’t even notice the killings of four ‘nobodies.’ I am not surprised in the least.

We have noted, really too many times to note all of them, that The Philadelphia Inquirer is not really concerned about individual homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl is the victim. On Monday morning, it was reported that Josh Kruger, a freelance journalist of at least some note in Philly was murdered, which we noted here, and the left in Philly — Rue Landau, Inquirer reporter Ellie Rushing, Jordan Winkler, Mayor Jim Kenney, the Liberty City Dems, state Senator Nikil Saval, The New York Times, WPVI-TV, Inquirer editorial writer Daniel Pearson, CNN, Taj Magruder, Maggie Hart, and an untold number of other people are all mourning his death.

Yet what about the three people murdered early this morning, along with a fourth person critically wounded, in the Crascentville section of the city, and the ‘person of interest’ suspected in the killings? They are, as far as the media have told us thus far, not ‘somebodies,’ and there are few tweets about them, few messages I have seen, and, as far as I can tell, other than friends and family, nobody f(ornicating) cares. Mayor Kenney has said nothing about those four people, whom I assume to be black from this photo in the Inky. Mr Kruger was white.

And you know what? I am not surprised in the least!

Killadelphia

Homicides are down in the City of Brotherly Love, as we have previously reported. On May 25th, we noted that it was possible that Philadelphia could see as few as 450 murders in 2023. Under recently resigned Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the city saw 499 homicides in 2020 — though there’s reason to suspect that 502 is the correct figure — 562 in 2021, and 516 in 2022.

With 330 officially listed homicides as of October 1st, the 274th day of the year, Philly has seen 1.204 homicides per day, which works out to a projected 439.60 killings for the year.

That decrease in homicides is good news, at least if over 400 murders can be regarded as anything other than bad news, but the killings are still happening. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Police shoot man suspected of killing 3 people in Philly quadruple shooting

The shooter is believed to be a relative of one of the victims, according to police, who said he fled the scene in a blue Honda Pilot.

by Beatrice Forman | Monday, October 2, 2023 | 7:55 AM EDT | Updated: 9:31 AM EDT

Philadelphia police shot a man they suspected of killing three people during a quadruple shooting inside a Crescentville home early Monday morning. Continue reading

‘I condemn the rioting and looting, but . . . . Jenice Armstrong is protesting is that the civilized people aren’t listening to the barbarians.

Would anyone have expected anything different from Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong? She knows that she has to condemn the riots, but she tries to understand the rioters and looters, and wants to say that she can’t really blame them. Continue reading

Killadelphia: Turn on, tune in, get dead!

We have said, many times, that black lives don’t matter, at least not to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which only reports on homicides in the City of Brotherly Love in which the victim is an ‘innocent,’ a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl is the victim. However, as we have also noted, the newspaper sometimes tries to make ‘innocents’ out of some younger homicide victims, as reporter Anna Orso did with  13-year-old Marcus Stokes, shot while allegedly on his way to school, even though he was sitting in a possibly disabled car which had been sitting on a corner for weeks, not on his way to school, and in the car several minutes after he would have been late for school.

Well, this time it’s reporter Ellie Rushing’s turn! Continue reading

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Just plain senseless

People tend to try to make some sense of events that seem entirely senseless, but sometimes it’s an exercise in futility. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Nicholas Heyward-Walton, photo via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.

Philadelphia man arrested, charged with shooting 80-year-old man in the head on Labor Day

Police arrested Nicholas Heyward-Walton on Tuesday, after accusing him of shooting an 80-year-old man in the head and neck on Labor Day.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Wednesday, September 6, 2023 | 2:29 PM EDT

Philadelphia police have arrested a man they say shot an 80-year-old in the head on Labor Day in what appears to have been a random attack, police said Wednesday.

The victim is now in critical condition, officials said.

Shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, police responded to the 2600 block of Tasker Street for a report of a shooting. When officers arrived, they found the 80-year-old man, whom police did not identify, unresponsive in the street, with gunshot wounds to his head and neck.

Police took him to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was in critical condition Wednesday, said Capt. James Kearney, head of the nonfatal shootings unit.

On Tuesday, police arrested Nicholas Heyward-Walton, 25, at his home on the 1500 block of South Bailey Street. He was charged with attempted murder and related offenses, police said.

No, of course the Inquirer didn’t include Mr Heyward-Walton’s mugshot; I got that from Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News. The left hate Fox 29, because they report all the serious crime news.

You know what else the newspaper didn’t include? Mr Heyward-Walton’s rap sheet! This fine young gentleman was already out on bond for crimes including terroristic threats, PA 18 §2706, which, depending on circumstances, is either first degree misdemeanor or third degree felony. He was released on August 14th on that one.

But the young man has previous convictions, including criminal mischief, PA 18 §3304(a)(1), a third degree felony, for which the penalty includes up to seven years in the state penitentiary, and criminal trespass, PA 18 §3503(a)(1)(ii), a second degree felony, which carries a sentence of up to ten years in prison.

So, guess to how many years Mr Heyward-Walton was sentenced. If you guessed zero, you guessed correctly. On October 6, 2021, he was sentenced to a maximum of two years probation! And yes, of course it was a plea bargain arrangement: the court record states: “Guilty plea – negotiated”.

Those two years are not quite up yet, so he could be sent straight to jail, but for only another month.

Yet, if the suspect had been sentenced to just two years in prison, and assuming he had not been released early, he would have still been in jail on Labor Day, and — assuming that he is the actual Labor Day shooter — his victim would not have been shot. If he had been sentenced to two years behind bars, he’d be looking forward to getting out of jail next month.

Instead, an 80-year-old man is in the hospital, fighting for his life, while this misunderstood 25-year-old is looking at, if his victim succumbs to his injuries, perhaps life in prison without the possibility of parole.

So, did District Attorney Larry Krasner do the suspect any real favors? Mr Krasner and his minions are very much opposed to ‘mass incarceration,’ but if Mr Heyward-Walton had been incarcerated for just those two years, he wouldn’t be looking at being incarcerated for the rest of his miserable life.

Would the suspect have learned anything had he been locked up? Would he have learned that hey, maybe prison isn’t a great place to be? Would he have been at least somewhat rehabilitated? There’s really no way of knowing. But what he did learn, by not being sent to jail, is that he could get away with stupid stuff, that Mr Krasner and his fellow travelers aren’t really interested in punishing anyone for crimes.

And here’s the kicker, the article’s final sentence:

There was no altercation between the victim and the shooter, said Kearney, and the shooting appeared to be random.

If this turns out to be the case, the shooting becomes truly senseless. Even someone with a room temperature IQ ought to know that trying to kill someone is something that would probably not be ignored.