Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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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.

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A SEPTA security guard is shot

It was just eight days ago that we noted The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story in which the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, SEPTA, admitted that they had “lost control of the train cars.”

Then, just Wednesday, we heard that the City Council was going to have hearings on the proposed, $3+ billion Roosevelt Boulevard subway extension, driven in part by the collapsed bridge on Interstate 95 in the city. A lot of people support that, though it seems to me that adding more subway lines when SEPTA has lost control would be premature, to say no more.

And now we get this!

A SEPTA security guard was shot on a train in Frankford, police say

The shooting happened just after 3:10 p.m. at the Arrott Transportation Center, which is located on Frankford Avenue at Margaret Street.

by Robert Moran | Thursday, June 15, 2023 | 6:35 PM EDT

A SEPTA security guard was shot on a Market-Frankford Line train Thursday afternoon in the city’s Frankford section, police said.

The shooting happened just after 3:10 p.m. at the Arrott Transportation Center, which is located on Frankford Avenue at Margaret Street.

The Arrott Transportation Center on the Market Street-Frankford line is just four stops away from the infamous Allegheny Station in the heart of Kensington.

The 27-year-old security guard was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition with a gunshot wound to his right leg.

The victim works for SEPTA through a contract the transit agency has with the security firm Scotlandyard, said SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch.

A person answering the phone at Scotlandyard said the company had no comment.

Police reported no arrests but said a gun was recovered.

There’s more at the original, and at least so far, it’s not a subscribers’ only protected story.

As we’ve noted previously, the global warming climate change activists want more people to move into densely-populated urban areas, where they can use privately-owned automobiles less frequently and take public transportation. But when even the security guards on SEPTA are getting shot, perhaps a lot of people won’t see using SEPTA as a good or wise idea.

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As cities lose control of crime, how can anyone view public transportation as a solution to anything?

The Philadelphia Inquirer likes to use Twitter to pimp its articles online, but hey, so do all of my blogging friends. Thing is, this article from the Inky is restricted to paid subscribers only. Fortunately, I do subscribe, so you don’t have to! [Update: Saturday, June 10: Robert Stacy McCain linked a free, archived version of the article, so you can read the whole thing.]

‘We lost control of the train cars’

With ridership down and antisocial behavior up, SEPTA is grappling with how to make Philly transit feel safer.

By Thomas Fitzgerald, Ryan W. Briggs, and Rodrigo Torrejón | Tuesday, June 6, 2023

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.

One of the stops on the Market-Frankford line is Allegheny Station, at the infamous Kensington and Allegheny Avenues. The fastest way to clean up the Market-Frankford line? Eliminate the stop in Kensington!

Recent high-profile shootings in and around SEPTA stations in Philadelphia reflect an alarming increase in violence following 2022, when crime on the transit system was trending down. In May, two teens were killed on SEPTA in separate shootings.

However, the types of crime passengers are most likely to encounter on SEPTA are smoking, turnstile-jumping, public urination, and other unruly acts. SEPTA is struggling to manage the incidents.

I’ve got to ask: is ridership down because of “the types of crime passengers are most likely to encounter,” or the fact that people are getting shot and sometimes killed?

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain, ‘Other Unruly Acts in Killadelphia

SEPTA, the newspaper tells us, “is struggling to manage the incidents,” and, from the way the paragraph is structured, I believe that the “incidents” referred to are “the types of crime passengers are most likely to encounter.” That’s actually a good thing, a form of ‘broken windows policing,’ trying to stamp out the less important crimes in the belief that such will lead to the worse crimes dropping.

These are not violent crimes but antisocial behaviors that make many people feel unsafe on the subway and El lines, according to interviews with multiple riders. Some avoid the trains, a potential catastrophe for a transit agency that must grow ridership to financially survive.

“It’s filthier than I’ve ever seen it. More dangerous than I’ve ever seen it,” said David Corliss Jr., 40, as he waited for an El train at 34th Street Station on a recent afternoon. He said his family worries about his safety when he rides public transit.

SEPTA, like all of the other municipal organizations, is understaffed, and yes, that means that cleaning up after the junkies gets delayed.

There’s a lot more, but I want to point out five paragraphs from further down the Inquirer’ article:

While repeat offenders are being caught and banned, the court-diversion part of the program has not been carried out, Transit Police say.

“We were finding that most of our misdemeanor [trespassing] cases were being withdrawn,” Nestel said. “The folks we were putting into the criminal justice system weren’t going to diversionary courts and weren’t getting the help they needed.”

Michael Mellon, a lawyer from the Defenders Association of Philadelphia, attributed that to concern among public defenders that SEPTA was using the ban policy to track and arrest people experiencing homelessness.

“Regardless of what SEPTA claims about the purpose of the [citation] program, in reality it criminalized poverty, homelessness, and mental illness,” Mellon said. “Some of the people they targeted languished in jail because they did not have the means or the traditional support to get released.”

In 2020, the Defenders Association and attorneys from the Homeless Advocacy Project contacted the District Attorney’s Office to express their concerns. Trespassing arrests dwindled soon afterward, Mellon said.

The Defenders Association of Philadelphia is the group which provides legal assistance for indigent defendants. And they got what they wanted:

Arrests by SEPTA police plummeted after the agency downgraded penalties for the most minor offenses, but arrests for other, more serious crime also plummeted as the agency has grappled with officer shortages and other issues. Data from the District Attorney’s Office showed annual arrests by SEPTA police for any offense — including misdemeanor and felony crimes — fell by 85% from 2019 to 2022.

The oh-so-sympathetic claimed that it “criminalized poverty, homelessness, and mental illness,” but regardless of the reason for criminal behavior, it was still criminal behavior. In their zeal to defend the drug addicts poor and downtrodden, they are nevertheless defending the people who have caused a serious downturn in SEPTA ridership.

One picture, it has been said, is worth a thousand words, and this screen capture from the newspaper’s article illustrates it perfectly. SEPTA police officers Kevin Newton, left, Anthony Capaldi, center, and Martin Zitter, the caption tells us, ask a person with whom they are familiar — ever heard the description of a suspect as someone ‘known to the police’? — to not block the entrance to the 13th street El station. A man, very probably an addict, chose to lay down with his food and water bottle in a manner which blocked the station entrance, even though, if he just had to lay down in the sidewalk, there was obvious room just to the right of the stairs, against the metal bars, where he could have settled which did not block the entrance.

The Inquirer has published several articles on the proposed Roosevelt Boulevard subway, a $3+ billion for which SEPTA simply doesn’t have the money. A lot of people believe it would be a great idea, but the obvious question arises: if SEPTA can’t really handle and maintain the system it already has, how does it make any sense to add more system?

The left want to push more and more Americans into public transportation, to reduce CO2 emissions to fight global warming climate change, and that is something into which Philly’s political leadership has fully bought.

Ridership remains well below pre-pandemic levels, and SEPTA needs those passengers back, officials say. Federal pandemic aid will run out by April 2024, and the agency depends on rider fares to make enough money to operate.

As the Democrats in a very Democratic city want to push SEPTA ridership, the public have been far less willing to actually use the service; Philadelphians and residents in the collar counties have, in effect, voted with their wallets. Some of it may be attributable to an increase in the number of people able to work from home some days, but when even the transit agency admits that it has lost control of the system, when the stories of serious crime on the buses and trains increase — the lesser crimes are no longer a story — how can anyone seriously contemplate public transportation as a solution to anything?

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There’s no threat quite like an empty threat!

That Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) checked out of his job a year ago is well known.

Frustrated and beaten down, Mayor Jim Kenney quit on the city of Philadelphia late Monday night.

After yet another shooting — this time involving two police officers shot during the July Fourth celebration on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway — Kenney, in a moment of candor, said: “I’ll be happy when I’m not here — when I’m not mayor, and I can enjoy some stuff.”

A reporter followed up, asking: “You’re looking forward to not being mayor?”

Kenney added: “Yeah, as a matter of fact.”

You’d think that with an estimated net worth of $18.6 million, he could have afforded to resign his job, and $240,000 salary, and let someone else take the reins of our nation’s sixth-largest city if he hated the job so much, but he hasn’t done that.

Saturday night was not a good night in the City of Brotherly Love:

Teen killed after street racing chaos, police-involved shooting in Philadelphia

At the scene, troopers found a large group of cars doing “burnouts” and “drifting.”

by 6ABC Digital Staff | Sunday, June 4, 2023 | 3:33 PM EDT

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Overnight street racing chaos involving hundreds of drivers in Philadelphia led to a deadly police-involved shooting on Sunday.

Investigators say it began when over 300 cars gathered at Bustleton and Philmont avenues in the city’s Bustleton section around 1 a.m. Sunday.

One of the drivers struck a responding police vehicle.

Not long after, police responded to another incident involving the same group of drivers that shut down a portion of I-95 in Society Hill.

As of 4:05 PM EDT on Sunday, June 4th, there isn’t a single story on that on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page, or the newspaper’s specific crime page, though both contain several stories that are two and three days old. We have embedded the WPVI-TV report, in this article, below the fold. Continue reading →

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At what point does it have to be asked: “Jim Kenney, Larry Krasner, Danielle Outlaw, have you no shame?” They have not just failed, but failed spectacularly

We have previously noted how the government of Mexico has used street scenes from Kensington in ads to warn the Mexican people about the dangers of using drugs, and asked the very politically incorrect question: why should we spend money to keep junkies alive?

Now comes London’s Daily Mail:

Inside Philadelphia’s tranq hellscape: Disturbing new footage shows devastating scale of drug crisis in Kensington neighborhood – with addicts crowding filthy sidewalks and shooting up in broad daylight

By Will Potter for DailyMail.com | Saturday, May 27, 2023 | 12:43 PM EDT | Updated: 8:37 PM EDT

Shocking footage has revealed the scale of Philadelphia’s untamed ‘tranq’ epidemic, which has transformed the city’s streets into a drug-infested hellhole.

The Kensington neighborhood – known as ‘ground zero’ for the city’s drug crisis – is seen littered with zombie-like addicts, with many shamelessly shooting up in broad daylight.

Gruesome scenes in the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ show droves of homeless addicts aimlessly staggering through the streets, surrounded by tents and scattered trash.

There’s a lot more at the original; hat tip to @DawnStensland. Since this article has an embedded video, the rest is off the front page. Continue reading →

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Killadelphia: Could Philly see ‘only’ 450 homicides in 2023?

I have not been posting nearly as many ‘math’ stories about the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love this year, because that math is so different.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, there have been 165 total homicides through 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, May 24, while the website Broad + Liberty has the total at 168. The 24th was the 144th day of the year, which leads to a homicide rate, using the ‘official’ PPD number, of 1.1458 homicides per day, on pace for 418 murders for the entire year.

Of course, that ignores the normal increase in homicides during the long, hot summer!

The number of homicides is 12.23$ lower than the same day in 2022. If we multiply that over the course of the year, that would yield a total homicide number for the year of 452.87, certainly a vast improvement over 2022’s 516 killings. Doing the same math, using 2021’s record-setting pace, the math works out to 450.15 homicides.

But then I look at 2020’s official homicide total of 499 — though there’s reason to believe that 502 is the correct figure — and the math works out quite differently. The current numbers are 12.24% higher than 2020’s homicide pace, which works out to 560.10 murders for 2023.

So, why is this significant? Because today, May 25th, is the third anniversary of the unfortunate death of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl addled convicted felon George Floyd while he was resisting arrest for passing counterfeit money in Minneapolis. With that, the American left went absolutely bonkers, and killings soared. The idiotic #BlackLivesMatter protests led to more black people being killed!

The death of Mr Floyd was hardly the only tragedy of 2020, as the COVID-19 panicdemic[1]No, that isn’t a typographical error: the spelling of ‘panicdemic’ reflects exactly how I see it as having been. hit, the economy was trashed, and our civil rights unconstitutionally restricted.

But life has returned to (mostly) normal now, and with the numbers working out as they do, I have to wonder: absent another monumental stupidity like we saw three years ago, could Philadelphia see well under 500 homicides this year? Is something around 450 a reasonable projection?

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↑1 No, that isn’t a typographical error: the spelling of ‘panicdemic’ reflects exactly how I see it as having been.