Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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Killadelphia: Just because 60 bullets flew doesn’t mean it was gang related!

Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Chris Palmer’s last paragraph contained an element of truth that Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw would like for you not to realize:

More than 1,100 people have been shot in the city as of Wednesday, according to police statistics, and 245 of those victims have died. The pace of gunfire was about 23% lower than last year, the statistics show, but still much higher than the years before 2020, when gun violence began hitting record heights.

The impetus for Mr Palmer’s story? Yet another gang-banger shooting in West Philadelphia!

Seven people were shot, one fatally, during possible shoot-out at West Philly block party, police say

Several gunmen sprayed at least 60 bullets through a crowd on the 500 block of North Creighton Street around 1:30 a.m., police said.

by Chris Palmer | Saturday, August 19, 2023 | 12:42 PM EDT

Seven people were shot, one fatally, when several gunmen sprayed at least 60 bullets through a crowd on a West Philadelphia street early Saturday morning, according to police.

The shooting happened about 1:30 a.m. on the 500 block of North Creighton Street, said Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore. The victims ranged in age from 19 to 51, he said.

The 500 block of North Creighton Street is a poor, mostly black, rowhouse street, but, as we have reported previously, the good people of West Philadelphia don’t want public projects to make the area nicer, because that might cause more white people to move there.

Some witnesses described the shooting as a “shoot-out” at a block party or barbecue on the rowhouse street, said Vanore, though he added that detectives were in the early stages of gathering information and evidence.

A woman who lives on the block said in an interview that at least 100 people had been outside for a birthday party before gunfire erupted. . . . .

“It was a nice party — they were dancing, drinking, having fun, and then these knuckleheads [opened fire],” said the woman, who declined to give her name due to fear of retribution.

One of the victims, a 19-year-old man, was pronounced dead early Saturday, said Vanore. He declined to identify the man pending family notification.

Creighton Avenue PPD report, via Steve Keeley.

The Philadelphia Police reported that the deceased was a 19-year-old black male, but naturally, the Inquirer scrubbed the victim’s race from the report, even though the Philadelphia Police Department provided it. However, anyone ever remotely familiar with the City of Brotherly Love simply assumed that the deceased was black, just from the area.

There’s a truth that the Inky simply won’t report. The deceased was “shot several times to the face”, which tells you all that you really need to know: this was a deliberately targeted gang hit. We were, of course, reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups,” something that the newspaper has now come to use as well. I suppose that the word “gang” is now racist somehow, as though there cannot be any white gangs out there.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer does some good reporting . . . and then they hide it

We have previously noted some articles in The Philadelphia Inquirer marked as exclusive for paid subscribers. The newspaper has a digital paywall which allows non-subscribers a limited number of articles a month before it descends and blocks access to all articles, but even if you haven’t tried to open an Inky article for months, the subscribers only block will stop you from accessing those stories. Nevertheless, the story below is one that should have been available to more Philadelphia readers!

Yes, the Inquirer does have to make money to stay in business, and the economic condition has been serious enough that the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism has sent out begging letters to subscribers at least thrice that I have documented, so perhaps the $285.48 that I’ve been paying still isn’t enough.

Jim Kenney raised money to boost progressive candidates but spent it on consultants and restaurant tabs

Of the more than $780,000 that Kenney PAC has spent over the last three years, only about $60,000 went to other campaigns. The money has also gone to political operatives and miscellaneous expenses.

by Sean Collins Walsh | Monday, August 7, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

In early 2020, things were looking good for Mayor Jim Kenney, who had just coasted to reelection after a productive first term and was eyeing statewide office.

In June of that year, he launched Kenney PAC, a political action committee that he said would “help progressive candidates in the forthcoming legislative races in Pennsylvania defeat extremist pro-Trump Republicans.”

Giving money to Democrats across the state would have built goodwill for a mayor little known outside Southeastern Pennsylvania, and news of the PAC helped fuel speculation that Kenney might run for U.S. Senate or governor in 2022.

Well, those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” haven’t had much success in the Keystone State, but the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sure hasn’t benefitted under those ‘progressive’ Democrats! Under Mayor Kenney, the City of Brotherly Love, the town he was (supposedly) running, in 2020, the year he launched Kenney PAC, went from 356 homicides — which the Philadelphia Police have now revised down to 353 — to 499, and there are serious reasons to believe that the number was actually 502, as initially reported.

We have noted, several times, the change in the Philadelphia Police Department’s statistics, down from the 502 homicides initially reported for 2020, down to 499, one short of the then-all-time record of 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, under the ‘leadership’ of then-Mayor Wilson Goode, he of MOVE bombing fame. I made a totally rookie mistake, and failed to get a screen capture of that, but a Twitter fellow styling himself NDJinPhilly was apparently smarter than me that particular time, took the screen shot, and then tweeted it to me.

2020 was the year of the unfortunate death while resisting arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled convicted felon George Floyd in Minneapolis, and riots broke out in many cities, including Philly, but the change in attitudes continued far beyond 2020; Philly saw a whopping 562 homicides in 2021, a number which blew the old record completely apart, along with 190 deaths marked ‘suspicious’. 2022 saw an improvement of sorts, with the official number of homicides down to 516, which was still second all time.

Why, it’s almost as though Philly could have used those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” running the city!

Back to the Inky:

But of the more than $780,000 that Kenney PAC has spent over the last three years, only about $60,000 went to other campaigns, according to an analysis of campaign finance reports. Instead, the PAC’s money has primarily gone to benefit operatives close to Kenney — who abandoned his hopes of higher office after his popularity tanked starting in 2020 — and to pay for miscellaneous expenses, such as events, hotel rooms, and restaurant bills.

You know what that is? That’s actually good, investigative reporting, which makes me wonder why the newspaper’s Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar decided to restrict the article to subscribers only. If there’s anything in the Inquirer’s reporting which should draw in new subscribers, it’s the “high-impact journalism“, “speaking truth to power“, and “high-impact election reporting” the Leftist Lenfest Institute told us the newspaper delivered, yet that’s just what Mr Escobar, or possibly one of his minions, restricted.

I’ve quoted a lot of the article, and cited my sources, as always, but unless you are a subscriber, you can’t even check to see if I’ve lied to you; that bothers me.

I can’t simply quote the whole thing, and I really wish that more people could read it for themselves, but I’ll note briefly here that reporter Sean Collins Walsh pointed out that the top ten donors to Kenney PAC, roughly $399,000 out of $850,000, were all building trade unions; the unions had also been the primary contributors to the Mayor’s two campaigns. Mayor Jim Kenney has just plain checked out, marking time until he’s no longer in the job. The members of those very same unions are the working men of the city who are at risk from the bullets flying around town, especially in the working-class neighborhoods.

What the unions bought with their support of Mr Kenney is greater danger for their members and their families! Perhaps some of those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” could have done a better job? After all, it hardly seems that they could have done worse!

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Another story you won’t find in The Philadelphia Inquirer (Alleged) criminal out on bail (allegedly) rapes 13-year-old girl, and the professional media are mostly quiet

We have previously noted that many people in the Philadelphia news media just don’t like Fox 29 News and reporter Steve Keeley. But when I found the story below thanks to a tweet from Fox 29, my natural inclination was to search The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website database for “Herbert Morrison”, I found exactly nothing on his current offense, though I was able to find a story on his prior offense.

Man out on bail for 2021 beating charged for rape of 13-year-old girl

Published July 13, 2023 6:29PM | Crime & Public Safety | FOX 29 Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA – A Philadelphia man is back behind bars after authorities say he raped a teenage girl while he was out on bail for allegedly beating a man two years ago in Queen Village.

The Inquirer’s story on that is dated Sunday, August 22, 2021, and stated that the assault took place the previous Tuesday, the 17th. The obvious question becomes: why wasn’t Mr Morrison’s case tried or otherwise settled in the 23 months, almost two years, since his (alleged) offense?

Herbert Morrison turned himself in last Friday for the alleged sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl whom investigators say he met on Instagram.

Court documents show the sexual assault happened a month after the pair met while Morrison was out on bail for beating 40-year-old Zach Lean so severely he was in monthlong coma.

“One of them punched him in the head, knocked him to the ground, he hit his head on the curb and started having a seizure,” said his Zach’s wife Christine.

Mr Morrison was not some irresponsible 13-year-old punk, but legally an adult at 19, and the crimes with which he was charged, and the injuries he (allegedly) helped deal out to an innocent victim, were serious. Yet, after he made bail, there is no information in the Fox 29 story, or anywhere else I could find, telling us why Mr Morrison’s case hasn’t been tried yet. Mr Morrison had been charged with a violent crime, yet no one seemed to care that he had been left out on the streets.

Morrison, with the help of the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, posted 10% of his $75k bail which released him back out into the public in August 2021. When reached for comment, the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund shared the following statement:

The mission of the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund is to end cash bail and pretrial detention in our city. Until that day, we post bail for our neighbors who cannot afford to pay. In addition to posting bail, we offer support to those we bail out to help them rebuild their lives and successfully return to court. We also value trauma support for victims and those who cause harm so everyone can heal by providing connections to practitioners of victim support, restorative justice, and counseling. We envision a justice system built around restorative justice practices that support and prioritize victims’ needs while holding those who have caused harm accountable and providing them opportunities to take responsibility for their actions. We do not comment on individual decisions to post bail, and we are unaware of the facts of the current incident involving Mr. Morrison. However, we are troubled that a young person was harmed, and we hope they and their family can find the healing and support they deserve.

Every time I see the phrase “restorative justice,” I know that I bovine feces is about to follow. Holding those who have caused harm accountable is done by putting them in jail!

The Philadelphia Community Bail Fund “hope” that the 13-year-old rape victim and her family “can find the healing and support they deserve”?

“I feel like he killed my daughter, and she’s not the same,” the victim’s mother said. “She has her happy days, but it’s something that won’t leave her, it’s something that will stay with her for the rest of her life.”

The victim has been injured in ways that go far beyond the physical trauma, ways which might stay with her for decades, perhaps for as long as she lives. What “restorative justice” can heal that? Is the victim supposed to sit down with the punk who raped her — that’s supposed to be a part of “restorative justice” — and listen as he makes a (supposedly) heartfelt apology?

Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §3122.1(a), the alleged crime is a second-degree felony. Under Title 30 §923(a)(9), the penalty is “a fine of not less than $5,000 nor more than $25,000, or imprisonment not exceeding ten years, or both.” For the sexual assault of a 13-year-old, that penalty seems insufficient. If it could be upgraded to a first-degree felony, the sentence could be twenty years. With his previous charges, perhaps he could be locked up even longer, which would be great, because let’s tell the truth here: this man person is irredeemable and irretrievably lost.

The Inquirer? The Fox 29 story was dated last Thursday; if the Inky was going to cover it, it would already have been done. If you only got your news from the Inquirer, you’d never have known that Mr Morrison was charged with sexually assaulting a 13-year-old at all. The professional media in the City of Brotherly Love don’t like Fox 29 News, but at least Fox 29 actually reports the news, and doesn’t try to hide it.

Mr Morrison is, of course, innocent until proven guilty, but if he is proven guilty, the Commonwealth needs to throw the book at him. “Restorative justice”? One can only hope that news that her assailant will be going to jail for a long, long time will help heal the 13-year-old rape victim, but who can know if that will actually happen? But the longer the assailant is behind bars, the safer the people of Philadelphia will be.

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Killadelphia: What the Philly media won’t tell us

With the Kingsessing mass shooting being a Philadelphia story, it’s unsurprising that The Philadelphia Inquirer would have several follow-up stories on it.

As soon as the name of Kimbrady Carriker was released, his social media were investigated, and photos of Mr Carriker in female dress led to immediate speculation that he was, like Audrey Hale in Nashville, yet another transgender killer. Well, that led to Philly officials quickly denying it:

While he acknowledged the social media images that appear to show Carriker wearing women’s clothing and jewelry, Asa Khalif, a member of the LGBTQ advisory committee for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, condemned the “violent” language coming from the “conservative press” about Carriker’s gender identity and shared what the district attorney’s office knows firsthand about Carriker’s gender identity.

“Appear to show”? No, there’s no “appear to show” here, but actually show. Why would Mr Khalif, who supports the homosexual and transgender community, and must surely not be offended by, or see anything wrong, with cross-dressing, want to mealy-mouth things?

“The suspect has not identified themselves as trans. They have only identified themselves as male,” Khalif said at Wednesday’s news conference. “But the language spewed out by the conservative press is violent and is dangerous, and it’s targeting trans women of color. It’s rallying the community to be violent, and we’re better than that.”

I saw a video of Mr Khalif’s statement, and while he stated that Mr Carriker had not identified as transgender or anything other than male, I also noticed that he went out of his way to use “they/them” pronouns to refer to the suspect. Did Mr Carriker express a preference for such to be used? If so, it hasn’t made the credentialed press, but speaking with the District Attorney at his side, he might have been clued in to something the DA’s office knew but hasn’t been made public.

Khalif condemned those who label trans people as “killers.”

“They are the most vulnerable to violence,” he said. “They want to live their lives, and they have every right to do so, and we will not allow conservative bigots to use that type of language to attack trans people.”

District Attorney Larry Krasner expressed similar sentiments.

“There are some people for whom hate is a full-time job,” Krasner said. “And if they can stay away from the facts and talk about nonsense, that’s what they’re going to do.”

Mr Khalif, who tweeted on the Fourth of July, “So when i say Fuck The Police..don’t tell me that’s disrespectful..the violence against black people is beyond disrespectful!”, keeps telling us, through multiple tweets, and retweets that the alleged shooter isn’t transgender. The Philadelphia Inquirer also jumped on that bandwagon:

Conservative media outlets claimed Carriker was transgender based on Facebook photos of him dressed in feminine clothing. However, Carriker is identified as male on public records and district attorney officials said Wednesday that he identifies as male.

I actually avoided making such a claim, writing on Independence Day:

Everybody who pays any attention to Philadelphia news had heard, hours before the Post’s article was time-stamped, that the (alleged) shooter has been identified as Kimbrady Carriker, a 40-year-old black male, and he has a history of posting photos of himself on Facebook in women’s clothing, including earrings, tank tops, and at least one in which the outlines of a bra are showing. It has not been reported that he somehow thinks he’s really a woman, whether he’s just a cross-dresser, or whether he’s just clowning around, but that’s part of what we do know, and have known since well before the Post updated this article, yet the newspaper has kept this information from readers, readers who are paying good money for their subscriptions, because, Heaven forfend!, it isn’t politically correct.

But, you know what I also haven’t seen in the Philly media? You know what Mr Khalif, a member of the LGBTQ advisory committee for District Attorney Larry Krasner, hasn’t yet told us? Mr Carriker’s grandmother said that he was homosexual:

Ms Carriker said her grandson was gay and would sometimes dress in women’s clothing, but had not undergone gender transition surgery or treatment.

She said she made it clear to Carriker that she disapproved of him wearing women’s clothes due to her Christian beliefs.

“I saw him one time in female clothes, and from the expression on my face, from that point on, he never came in female clothes around me because he knew how I felt about it,” she told The Independent.

“He was trying to find himself. He didn’t know where he belonged. I used to talk to him about it, but he didn’t like to converse with me about things like that.”

The Philadelphia media, so quick to tell us some of Mr Carriker’s political views, his support for the Second Amendment, admiration of Tucker Carlson, and hating of President Biden, but soft-peddling his support of #BlackLivesMatter and the riots in many cities in the wake of the unfortunate death during the arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled convicted felon George Floyd, and telling us that he wasn’t transgendered, never mentioned, at least as far as I could find, that he is homosexual. It took a report from a newspaper in London, England, for us to get that news.

It is not a surprise to anyone who pays attention to the Philly media that they would keep such under wraps.

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Killadelphia: A Philadelphia councilcritter tells us the truth The problem isn't guns; the problem is her rotten constituents

Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier (D-Philadelphia). Photo from her city biography page and is a public record. Click to enlarge.

The Washington Post quoted Philadelphian City Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier, a Democrat who represents the area of southwest Philadelphia in which the mass murder occurred, though possibly in a way she might regret:

Philadelphia City Council member Jamie R. Gauthier (D), who represents areas where the shooting occurred, described her district as “under siege” by gun violence.

“It creates a situation where mostly Black and Brown people can’t be in their neighborhood enjoying summer weather. Kids — anyone — enjoying their block should not live in fear of being shot and killed,” she said Tuesday.

Now that Democrats control the state house for the first time in 12 years following last November’s election, Gauthier said some movement on gun control legislation has started. However, any house bills would still face opposition in the GOP-controlled state senate.

“In Pennsylvania, you have Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in the cities and outside of that, you have a lot of rural areas that don’t look like us and don’t have the same issues with everyday gun violence — and don’t have the same motivation to really cut off access to these types of weapons,” she said. “We have a long way to go to get these kinds of weapons off the street.”

“(D)on’t look like us” means ‘are mostly white,’ or so I inferred, rather different from the Kingsessing neighborhood in southwest Philly. that’s fairly innocuous. But then we get to “don’t have the same issues with everyday gun violence,” and it raises the obvious question: why does Miss Gauthier’s district, why does her city, have “issues with everyday gun violence” when so much of Pennsylvania outside of Philly does not?

I previously wrote that in 2020, there were 1,009 murders in the Keystone State, 499, or 49.45%, of which occurred in Philadelphia. According to the 2020 Census, Pennsylvania’s population was 13,002,700 while Philadelphia’s alone was 1,603,797, just 12.33% of Pennsylvania’s totals.

It got worse in 2021: with 562 homicides in Philly, out of 1027 total for Pennsylvania, 54.72% of all homicides in the Keystone State occurred in Philadelphia. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, was second, with 123 killings, 11.98% of the state’s total, but only 9.52% of Pennsylvania’s population.

The other 65 counties, with 78.11% of the state’s total population, had 33.30% of total murders. It should also be noted that in comparing 2018 with 2021, the homicide rate for the 65 counties which are not Philadelphia and Allegheny (where Pittsburgh is), barely increased, from 3.38 per 100,000 population, to 3.42, a 1.12% rise, in Philadelphia it jumped from 22.31 to 35.53 per 100,000 population, a 59.21% increase.

Things got slightly better in the City of Brotherly Love in 2022, with 516 homicides officially reported in the Philadelphia, out of 1,015 total homicides for the Commonwealth. That’s still 50.84% of the killings in the Commonwealth!

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: National Media Instantly Sends Philly Mass Shooter Down the Memory Hole

The Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 population estimates for Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia specifically, were 12,972,008 and 1,567,258 respectively, meaning that Philly had just 12.08% of the state’s population. The homicide rate for the rest of the Keystone State was 4.38 per 100,000 population, while for Philly it works out to 32.92 per 100,000, 7½ times the rest of the Commonwealth.

Strip out the 138 homicides in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, and the 65 other counties in the Commonwealth had 361 homicides for 10,171,497 people, for a murder rate of 3.55 per 100,000.

Councilwoman Gauthier was born in Kingsessing; she more than represents the third councilmanic district, but this mass killing was in her home neighborhood. She knows it, and has told the truth about it, however inadvertently, so it has to be asked: why is her neighborhood, why is her city, so much worse than the rest of the Keystone State?

Carbon County, 2022 population of 65,460, where I lived before retirement, has had exactly zero murders this year, and a high, for them, number of killings in 2022, two. My former home county has plenty of woods, and there are a lot of hunters there. I remember stopping at the Turkey Hill in downtown Jim Thorpe on my way to work, when buck season began, and I’d see plenty of deer hunters, including some teenagers, in their camouflage gear, and with their weapons in their trucks and Jeeps, and never worried about it in the slightest. Everyone I knew in Jim Thorpe had a firearm of some type, but, shockingly enough, we weren’t killing people at anywhere close to the rate of the City of Brotherly Love.

The Democratic ‘leaders’ in Philly have long been whining that state law does not allow the city to pass and institute gun control laws which are stricter than those of the Commonwealth as a whole, but that begs the obvious question: if the homicide rate in Philly is the fault of the state’s gun control laws, why don’t we see homicide rates across Pennsylvania like are the case in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh?

Dear Councilwoman Gauthier: the problem isn’t the laws, but the rotten people in your neighborhood, the people you represent.
__________________________________
Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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Out-of-control ‘wilding’ teens run Wawa out of Center City, so Josh Kruger blames not the brats, but Wawa

I’ve said it before: Wawa coffee is the best you can buy! Better than Starbucks, better than Doughdaddy’s, better than Dunkin’ Donuts. And in Philadelphia, Wawa sponsors the Independence Day fireworks, as though the city can’t produce fireworks on its own. But Josh Kruger is mad at Wawa!

Hey Wawa, we’ll take Center City stores over fireworks, please

The way Wawa has treated us is hardly worth a parade or fireworks or title sponsor recognition.

by Josh Kruger | Independence Day, July 4, 2023 | 6:00 AM EDT

By now, you’ve seen the commercials and swirling, groovy banners for Wawa Hoagiefest. You might’ve even eaten one of the beloved local brand’s sandwiches at a discount as part of this year’s 15th anniversary of “Hoagie Love” — at least that’s what the convenience chain calls it. Or maybe you’re participating in any one of over 40 Wawa Welcome America community events celebrating America’s independence.

That’s all well and good — if you don’t mind fraternizing with a company that sees you as the enemy.

If you’re confused, that’s OK. I, too, was disconcerted when I came to the realization that Wawa is no good anymore.

Really, folks, if we have any respect for ourselves, we’ll stop this charade and simply speak the truth: It’s time that we as a city broke up with the idea that we are into Wawa because Wawa is definitely not into us. Not when it counts, at least.

Good heavens, what has Wawa done that has so upset Mr Kruger? After a paragraph in which he trashes Wawa’s quick foods, he continued:

Bad food is one thing. Bad manners exhibited by a company that scapegoats the community we live, work, and play in is another matter altogether. This, unlike the terrible food, is personal.

You might remember this dastardly move as Wawa announced the closure of some Center City locations, citing public safety concerns. Just recently, it announced the impending July 16 closure of the landmark Second and South Streets location, too, following neighborhood complaints of public disorder and crime.

After news of the first two closures, The Inquirer’s own Editorial Board somberly wept that the action was a “dire statement about public safety in Philadelphia.”

To me, it was more a dire statement about the ethics of the privately held corporation’s executive leadership.

One would hope that this alleged “dire statement about the ethics of the privately held corporation’s executive leadership” is a statement that the corporation’s executive leadership doesn’t want to see its employees assaulted, injured, or even killed. Such would seem to me to be a pretty positive statement about the leadership!

Mr Kruger combitched that, Heaven forfend!, Wawa was moving into more suburban areas, and starting to sell gasoline. As we have previously noted, at least some Wawas are also installing Tesla charging stations. Gosh, moving into areas with less crime, and meeting a potential customer demand? How evil is that!?!

But then the author complained that Wawa was moving into other dangerous areas:

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Democrats Kill Each Other in Baltimore; Mayor Blames … Texas, Florida, Alabama?

In 2019, Wawa cheerily announced it was expanding into Baltimore, despite Baltimore’s murder rate of 58 homicides per 100,000 residents. Philly’s rate was a comparatively less horrific 22 that year. Likewise, Wawa has moved aggressively into locations in Florida — such as Jacksonville, where the homicide rate is only slightly better than Philly’s. Other Florida cities like Miami Gardens — also home to multiple Wawas — have homicide rates that are nearly identical to Philly’s.

This is hugely oversimplistic. Yes, the homicide rate in ‘Charm City,’ as Baltimore has sometimes been called, is horrible, far, far worse than Philly’s, but it isn’t just the homicide rate. The editorial Mr Kruger cited pointed out:

The closings come just weeks after about 100 teens ransacked a Wawa in Mayfair. In February, a man was stabbed to death outside of a Wawa in South Philadelphia. On Thursday, a Wawa employee in University City was pepper sprayed during a robbery involving five suspects. In 2020, Wawa cited the pandemic as the reason to close its flagship store at Broad and Walnut Streets.

What foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia is seeing is not just a terrible homicide and shooting rate, but stores robbed and simply trashed, and a law enforcement system that just flat doesn’t care. Philadelphia’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, a police-hating former defense mouthpiece who believes in ‘restorative justice‘ rather than punishing criminals, has aided and abetted the crime, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is, put as charitably as possible, overworked and overwhelmed in Philly, though many would say that she’s just plain incompetent and marking time until she can get another job. The Philadelphia Police Department is seriously undermanned, and crimes like ransacking a Wawa just fall far down the ladder in police priorities.

Then there’s Mayor Jim Kenney, who has just plain checked out, marking time until he’s no longer in the job. Mr Kenney says stuff, but doesn’t actually do anything.

With all that money coming in, you’re telling me the company had no more resources to devote to safety in Philly? Was it even efficiently protecting Philly stores?

Can we tell the truth here? The out-of-control teens who have been trashing the Center City stores have been primarily out-of-control black teens, and any resources that Wawa put into “efficiently protecting (its) Philly stores” would quickly be characterized as racist attempts to keep black teens out of the stores, and the Inquirer, the Editorial Board of which so lamented the closing of Center City Wawas, would be among the first to point that out. A committed leftist — or so I judge from his Twitter feed — Mr Kruger probably would as well.

You know, I get it: Mr Kruger, who has admitted that he “used to do a lot of meth,” loves his Wawa coffee — I do, too, and was heartened by the news that Wawa is expanding into the Bluegrass State — but he’s blaming Wawa and its corporate executives for abandoning Center City, when the truth is that Philadelphians, the out-of-control teens and the rotten parents who reared them, have actually run Wawa off.

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Today’s left see landlords as Snidely Whiplash, tying Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks

In November on 2017, the voters of the City of Brotherly Love voted in a self-proclaimed “progressive prosecutor,” a criminal defense attorney, Larry Krasner, whose campaign website proudly proclaims that:

During his first term, he has supported victims, he has exonerated the innocent, and he has held police accountable. He has reduced future years of incarceration and supervision while helping to drop the jail population. He has focused on the most serious crimes in Philadelphia while working with leaders to address the root causes of violence.

Translation: Mr Krasner hates the police and loves the criminal class. He wants to keep criminals out of jail, and reduce probation times.

His policies include ending criminal charges against those caught with marijuana possession, ending cash bail for those accused of some misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, reducing supervision for parolees, and seeking more lenient sentences for certain crimes. During his time in office, he has advocated for greater police accountability and pursued police misconduct.

Mr Krasner made no secret of his plans when he first ran for office, and the good citizens of Philadelphia elected him to become District Attorney. Clearly, the majority of Philadelphians are perfectly comfortable with hating the police and coddling criminals.

The draconian, economy-destroying reaction to the COVID-19 panicdemic — and no, that’s not a misspelling; panic is exactly how the response should be characterized — included mass job losses, and many communities put eviction moratoria in place, so those who could not — or would not — pay their rent wouldn’t be thrown out of the apartments in which they lived.

Well, evictions have resumed, and the left are unhappy. It’s very difficult to proclaim that people should be able to simply live without paying rent to property owners, so now the left are using the tactic of complaining about how evictions are handled.

‘I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy’: Housing advocates say eviction process in Philly must change

During a two-hour hearing, tenants and attorneys described a system that’s violent and traumatic.

By Aaron Moselle | Wednesday, June 21, 2023 | 5:19 PM EDT

The knock on the door startled Mark Person.

The person waiting outside shocked him.

It was a deputy landlord-tenant officer. And he was there to evict Person from his Roxborough apartment.

“He looked at his watch and said I had 10 minutes, and that he had others to serve and that I had to hurry up and be out. There was no notice of courtesy — just him standing with his hand atop his pistol like a cowboy Western,” said Person.

As has been journalistic practice in recent times, the article begins with a sort of human-interest hook. The original from WHYY, Philadelphia’s National Public Radio station is not behind a paywall.

As we have previously noted, a deputy landlord-tenant officer had an eviction go bad, and a woman, over $8,000 behind in her rent, being kicked out was shot in the head.

Naturally, it didn’t take long before the Usual Suspects were up in arms, as the furthest left Democratic mayoral candidate, Helen Gym Flaherty — who, thank the Lord, lost in the primary — to politicize it. She tweeted:

While details are still coming to light, I’m appalled by today’s shooting at Girard Court Apartments and my heart is with the impacted families.

I’ve raised alarm bells for years about our city’s terrible eviction practices and worked to reform them.

So, what did we have? The family were more than $8,000 in arrears on their rent, which was apparently forgiven by the owner, in lieu of an agreement that they’d move out by the end of 2022. But the family wanted to stay, and petitioned the court to extend, for an unspecified period of time, a petition which was denied. If the eviction was being carried out on March 29th, the tenants had stayed three months beyond their agreed evacuation date.

In a subscribers-only article, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that City Councilcritters:

Jamie Gauthier and Kendra Brooks called for hearings in April after a deputy landlord-tenant officer shot a woman in the head during an attempted eviction lockout in North Philadelphia. Police said a struggle ensued between 35-year-old tenant Angel Davis and the privately contracted officer, who has still not been identified. The deputy discharged a weapon and struck Davis, who was hospitalized in critical condition.

The shooting sparked a protest and shined a light on a shadowy corner of the city’s legal system — one that housing advocates said is long overdue for sweeping reforms. Calls ranged from increased notice before lockouts occur to ramping up social service outreach to higher training standards and transparency.

The liberal councilcritters don’t like the system, don’t like it at all!

Instead of relying on sworn law enforcement personnel, Philadelphia’s courts allow a private for-profit attorney known as the landlord-tenant officer to carry out eviction orders in exchange for the right to collect millions in fees from landlords. The landlord-tenant officer in turn deputizes independent contractors hired to serve final notices and enforce lockouts.

Gauthier, a Democrat who represents West Philadelphia, described it as a profit-driven arrangement that lacked the oversight standards of other government agencies.

“There is no public bidding process, no standard for how to execute evictions, no mandatory training or law enforcement certification for deputies, and no accountability and oversight,” Gauthier said.

There is an unspoken undercurrent in all of this, that the left would like for all evictions to be handled by the sheriff. Some evictions in Philly still are, but the private system is less expensive for property owners, and thus more frequently used. If the City Council can increase the costs for the landlord-tenant officers, the higher costs could bring the landlord-tenant office to become just as expensive as having the sheriff handle things.

Lawmakers gathered reform ideas from housing attorneys and people who have been evicted. Brooks’ office said the Landlord-Tenant Office was created under state law but the city is exploring whether it has power to enact certain reforms — like requiring a detailed contract between the court system and the office. There currently isn’t one in place.

“(H)ousing attorneys and people who have been evicted,” huh? “(H)ousing advocates,” as quoted above, huh? In other words, people on one side of the issue.

And thus we come back to Larry Krasner, the prosecutor elected on a promise not to prosecute so much. Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal is pretty lousy in her job, but at least she hasn’t promised to refuse to do evictions. The obvious question becomes: if the City Council can eliminate the Landlord-Tenant Office, and push all evictions onto the Sheriff’s Department, would the city not see a Democratic candidate for sheriff make a campaign promise not to enforce any eviction orders? That, after all, would make “housing advocates” and their fellow travelers very, very happy, as it would for the people who see landlords as being Snidely Whiplash, tying Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks.

The left have been slowly — and some would argue not-so-slowly — turning the City of Brotherly Love into a crime-and-drug-addiction filled [insert vulgar term for feces here] hole, and if the left can somehow deprive honest people of their property by refusing to enforce evictions, that would be the final straw.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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Killadelphia: 12-year-old killed on his birthday

I have said it numerous times before: The Philadelphia Inquirer only cares about individual homicides when the victim is an innocent, someone already of note, or a cute little white girl.

Well, another innocent kid got killed:

Laron Williams Jr. was killed on his 12th birthday, struck by stray bullets in what may be a drug-related shooting

The Williams family, overwhelmed with grief, on Friday asked for the city’s prayers.

by Ellie Rushing | Friday, June 23, 2023

Laron Williams Jr. was killed on his 12th birthday, struck by stray bullets while crossing the street.

It was 2 p.m., and the child — just a year away from becoming a teenager — walked 50 feet from his East Germantown house to pick up lunch from the sweet woman on Crowson Street who cooks for the neighborhood children. He said goodbye to her, then walked back across the 700 block of East Locust Avenue, headed for home.

But as he did, a man armed with a rifle jumped out of a car up the block and started shooting down the street. At least 11 shots were fired. Two men, ages 47 and 30, were struck multiple times, and fell on top of one another, police said.

And Laron — known to friends and family as “L.J.” — was caught in the line of fire. He was shot in the back multiple times, police said, and collapsed at the base of the stairs of the home he’d lived in all his life. His parents held him until police arrived, and officers rushed him to Einstein Medical Center.

There’s more at the original, but young Mr Williams did not survive. Khalif Chambers, 30, of Germantown, and Riley Darden, 47, of Norristown, the two adults, also perished.

A source with knowledge of the investigation, who was not permitted to speak publicly, said the shooting was tied to an ongoing drug feud.

Well, of course it was!

At least as of the time Inquirer reporter Ellie Rushing published her article, the Philadelphia Police had not made any arrests in the case. Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore stated that at least one of the adult victims may have been deliberately targeted, but declined to address what the motive for the shooting had been.

Miss Rushing then gave readers four paragraphs about young Mr Williams life, before relating the statistics: 205 official homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, June 22nd:

  • Over 100 persons under 18 shot, including 14 aged 12 or younger
  • 18 minors killed
  • 14 children aged 12 or younger shot, at least seven of whom were struck by stray bullets
  • Roughly 12% of city’s shooting victims were under 18, a slightly higher percentage than during 2021 and 2022

Of course, Philly’s worn-out Mayor, Jim Kenney, had something to say on Twitter, something Miss Rushing noted, and something which was widely mocked. Mr Kenney has had 7½ years in office, and while he is combitching about the state legislature, under Mayor Michael Nutter, his immediate predecessor, the homicide numbers got lower during his term, and his last three years in office, they were under 300 for the year, under 250 in two of them, and the state’s firearms laws were no different then.

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Crime, like any other cancer, left untreated, metastasizes Philadelphians have no one else to blame; they've done this to themselves

I have previously said that the greatest loss I have suffered in moving away from the Keystone State was the loss of freshly baked, hot Philadelphia pretzels. Coming in as a close second is the loss of Wawa coffee. Yes, you can buy Wawa coffee in K-cups, but even though we use filtered water in our Keurig, it just isn’t the same.

Wawa in Philly’s Headhouse Square to close

Neighborhood groups had complained to Wawa about aggressive panhandling, crime, and drug use at the store.

by Mike Newall | Friday, June 16, 2023 | 11:15 AM EDT

The Headhouse Square Wawa will close July 16, a company official told The Inquirer. The move comes after neighborhood associations had complained to Wawa about aggressive panhandling, crime, and drug use at the store and outside on the sidewalk.

The site will become the sixth Center City Wawa to shutter since 2020.

“While closing a store is always a difficult decision to make, Wawa constantly conducts careful and extensive evaluations of business performance and operational challenges of all stores on an ongoing basis,” said Wawa spokesperson Lori Bruce in a statement Friday, confirming the pending closure of the Wawa at Second and Lombard. “We continue to invest in our home market of Philadelphia.”

Also see: Ben Mannes on Broad + Liberty: Can cities rebound from lawlessness to cultures of responsibility and compliance?

This isn’t exactly a poor neighborhood! A 585 ft² rear apartment is listed for $305,000, while a 4 bedroom, 5 bathroom, 2,516 ft² upscale row house, with basement parking, is listed for $1,270,000. Yet the area is suffering from street crime and junkies. Who wants to fork out well over a million bucks to be tripping over junkies laying out in the street?

Joe Dain, cofounder of the Delancey Square Town Watch, which was formed earlier this year, said his group and other neighborhood organizations had met with Wawa officials in April to discuss ongoing concerns at the Headhouse Square Wawa. By that time, the company, he said, had already taken measures to curb panhandlers and other public nuisance issues, including curtailing its hours, hiring private security and working with city police to provide patrols.

“There were certainly efforts being made,” Dain said. “What we were addressing was the fact that more needed to be done.”

Wawa notified the group that it would be instead closing the location, he said. The closure will be only the latest vacancy to hit the historic cobblestone district. A CVS across the street from the Wawa also closed its doors in recent years. The drugstore had been battling many of the same concerns, Dain said. In 2019, Giant Heirloom said it planned to open a supermarket at Abbotts Square at Second and South, around the corner, but that project has since fallen through. The property sits vacant.

Crime affects everybody, not just the immediate victims. Owners see the value of their properties decline, shoppers have fewer options, including the loss of Wawa coffee, and things just generally deteriorate. Trouble is, among the good Democrats of the 5th Ward, which includes Headhouse Square, sort-of progressive but not wild-eyed crazy Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff received 4,777, 47.1%, of the votes in the May primary, while police-hating, hard, hard left progressive Helen Gym Flaherty came in second at 2,908, 28.7%. Primary winner Cherelle Parker Mullin, who campaigned on fighting crime among other things, came in fourth, with 931 votes, 9.2%.

The adjacent 2nd, 8th, and 30th showed similar results.

Simply put, the liberal Democratic voters of the area voted for their own problems!

Wawa has been shrinking its Center City presence.

In October, when Wawa announced it was closing stores at 12th and Market Streets and 19th and Market Streets, the company cited “continued safety and security closures.

Then, even further down, we get to the part where the Inquirer amused me:

Dain, of the Delancey Square Town Watch, said the Headhouse Square store had become more of a problem for residents in recent years.

“We would have groups of kids coming in and ransacking the place at night,” he said. Some of the panhandlers that often congregated outside the store had become aggressive, he said. The store had also become a gathering spot for people in addiction, he said, who would then camp in the historic Shambles structure or by the Headhouse Square Fountain.

“(P)eople in addiction”? That isn’t listed as a direct quote, and I had to chuckle; is that the newspaper’s stylebook phrase for junkies?

This is what you get when you tolerate crime, even the ‘little’ crimes, in what have been mostly minority neighborhoods. Sure, junkies camping out on the streets at Kensington and Allegheny Avenues aren’t bothering anyone in Center City . . . until now, they do. Someone knocking over a bodega in North Philly doesn’t really concern the people in Headhouse Square, and doesn’t even make the news unless a Temple University student gets hurt, so they can safely vote for soft-on-crime, police hating politicians like Mrs Flaherty, or District Attorney Larry Krasner, but crime, like any other cancer left untreated, metastasizes.