Tag Archives: #PhiladelphiaInquirer

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Killadelphia By cooperating with evil, the people of Philadelphia have brought evil upon themselves.

I’ve said it several times: to the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer, killings in the city aren’t newsworthy unless the victim is a child, someone who was a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl. We need to stop pretending that #BlackLivesMatter because in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s very apparent that they don’t.

So, I was somewhat surprised looking at the Inquirer’s website this morning and finding 4 wounded in West Philly shooting: The shooting happened on Market Street near 56th Street, and then this one:

2 teens shot in Harrowgate

The shooting happened on the 1900 block of East Wensley Street.

By Robert Moran | May 14, 2021

A police crime scene unit officer investigates a double shooting in the 1900 block of E. Wensley street in the 24th police district. Some 17 evidence makers lay on the street and sidewalk. Friday May 14, 2021. Steven M. Falk, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.

Two teens were shot Friday night in the city’s Harrowgate section, police said.

The shooting happened around 6 p.m. on the 1900 block of East Wensley Street. An 18-year-old man was shot several times in the head and torso. He was taken by police to Temple University Hospital and was listed in extremely critical condition.

A 17-year-old male was shot in the left leg. He was taken by medics to Temple and was listed in stable condition.

Police reported no arrests and no other details were available.

That’s it; that’s the entire story. Normally, I don’t reproduce photos from the Inquirer, but this one is very germane to the story. It shows most of seventeen “evidence markers,” which normally means shell casings or bullets found at the scene.

Both stories were by Robert Moran, who “covers breaking news at night in the Philadelphia region,” so yeah, shootings are going to be his beat. Neither of the stories was on the Inquirer’s website main page; I found them listed at the bottom of a main page article I opened.

And then I found another, which was also buried:

A 16-year-old fatally shot in Southwest Philly was weeks away from graduating high school

Quamir Mitchell was a senior at West Philadelphia High School, a standout basketball player, and something of a role model for younger teens in the neighborhood.

by Anna Orso and Chris Palmer | Updated May 14, 2021

The 16-year-old boy fatally shot near a Southwest Philadelphia basketball court Thursday night was a high school senior just weeks away from graduation, a standout basketball player, and something of a role model for younger teens in the neighborhood.

That’s how several people remembered Quamir Mitchell on Friday, the day after he was killed and a 13-year-old boy was wounded in a burst of gunfire near the Deritis Playground — a crime that police said remained something of a mystery in the early stages of the investigation.

Adrian Burke, Mitchell’s basketball coach at West Philadelphia High School, visited the crime scene Friday morning, on the 5600 block of Grays Avenue, to offer a prayer for Mitchell. Burke had known the teen for a decade, recalling his big heart, his love of basketball, his tendency to be “dressed to the nines.”

“He was phenomenal,” Burke said, tears pooling in his eyes. “Just a beautiful kid. He was so strong in his skin, and he knew who he was.”

There’s more at the original, but, like I said, the Inquirer provided more coverage because young Mr Mitchell was a “somebody.”

In a story we previously noted, on Monday, May 10th, the Inquirer did note the weekend’s violence in the city, which had one pretty bad paragraph:

The shootings claimed 25 victims in 14 incidents. The victims, 22 males and three females, ranged in age from 17 to 64, and detectives recovered 121 bullet shell casings, officials said.

That’s pretty bad: at least 121 shots fired, actually hitting ‘only’ 25 people, and killing ‘only’ seven of them. The Philadelphia gang bangers are some pretty lousy shots!

Homicide Capt. Jason Smith said some of the bloodshed was fueled by drug turf battles, arguments, robberies, and retaliation for previous killings — a motive police believe was behind three of the weekend killings.

Smith said investigators need the public’s help to solve the crimes — the arrest rate for slayings this year is just 46%.

“It’s up to the community,” he said. “It’s up to these individuals who are committing these acts of violence. They have to take a step back and say: ‘Wow. Is it really worth it? Are we going to continue going in this direction?’”

Smith asked anyone with information about the crimes to notify the police at 215-686-3334, 215-686-3335, or 215-686-TIPS. Tips can also be left at phillyunsolvedmurders.com, he said. Those who provide tips that lead to the arrest and conviction of a suspect will receive $20,000 from the city, officials said.

So far, no one has been arrested in any of the seven slayings and one man was arrested in one of the nonfatal shootings, said Vanore, who added that detectives are culling through video evidence from the various scenes.

An arrest warrant has been issued in one of the slayings, but the suspect remains at large.

Of course, the Inquirer did not print a photo of the suspect, which could help police find him, if someone in the neighborhood spots him and actually calls the cops, but it is possible that the police did not have a photo of the suspect to give to the newspaper.

There are plenty of people, plenty of people, in those neighborhoods who know who shot the victims, but who won’t ‘snitch,’ because they don’t trust the police, and don’t want to become victims themselves. The neighborhood enables these killings, this violence, by its participation in covering up for and hiding the thugs in their midst. With a District Attorney like Larry Krasner, who is trying to reduce ‘mass incarceration’ at a time when more people need to be incarcerated, it’s hard to blame them.

As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, May 13th, the 133rd day of the year, 192 souls had been sent early to their eternal rewards in the City of Brotherly Love. That’s 1.44 people every day, putting Philadelphia on track for 527 homicides for 2021, which would blow 1990’s 500, and last years 499 out of the water. And yet, with all of that, the Inquirer’s Editorial Board actually endorsed Mr Krasner for re-election, saying, “A complex, relatively recent spike in gun violence isn’t a reason to return to the mass incarceration regime of yesteryear, but a challenge to do better.”

No, it’s most certainly a reason to start locking up the bad guys again. Bad guys in jail aren’t bad guys out on the street, committing more crimes.

Come time for the general election, the Editorial Board will, once again, endorse almost all Democrats, and the voters of the city will elect almost all Democrats, and that process will continue in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Philadelphia is a Hellhole, but it is a Hellhole created by the people living there. They are like the Palestinians living in Gaza, providing food, clothing, shelter and hiding places for Hamas, and then shocked, shocked! when Hamas shoot rockets against Israel, and then the Israeli Defence Force destroys their neighborhoods. By cooperating with evil, the people of Philadelphia have brought evil upon themselves.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer says Larry Krasner should be re-elected; I say that he should go to prison!

Perhaps I missed it, or perhaps I simply tweeted too soon:

Well, it turns out that The Philadelphia Inquirer did cover it, though the article doesn’t show a time stamp, so it could have come after I posted my tweet:

Weekend gun violence in city killed 7 and injured 18, police say

Police are investigating 14 shootings that left seven dead and 18 injured in weekend shootings. “This is more violence than I’ve ever seen,” said a detective with 31 years on the job.

by Mensah M Dean | May 10, 2021

A spate of gun violence across the city claimed the lives of seven people and injured 18 over the weekend, making it one of the deadliest stretches of crime in decades, Philadelphia Police Department officials said Monday.

The violence — which included a quintuple shooting, two triple shootings, and three double shootings — pushed the city’s homicide count as of Monday morning to 185 victims, more than 30% higher than at this time last year, according to department data.

When I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page yesterday morning, it stated that there had been 183 homicides, not 185, but it is always possible that there were further updates during the day.

Today? Checking it at 8:55 this morning, 188 homicides have been recorded, a 37.23% increase over the 137 on the same date last year, which was itself an 18.10% increase over the 116 killed by the end of May 10th in 2019.

May 10th was the 130th day of the year. That means that 1.45 people are being murdered every day in the mean streets of the City of Brotherly Love.

Despite all of that, the Editorial Board of the Inquirer endorsed District Attorney Larry Krasner in next Tuesday’s Democratic primary!

Larry Krasner deserves a second term as Philly district attorney | Endorsement

The Editorial Board was surprised and disappointed by Carlos Vega’s lack of new policy ideas.

by The Editorial Board | May 9, 2021

The Democratic primary for Philadelphia district attorney has been drawing national attention, and understandably so. Aside from its colorful main characters — an incumbent DA who’s a national icon in progressive circles, opposed by a former assistant DA whom he’d fired when he took the job — the race hinges on a powerful question: Is dramatic criminal-justice reform possible in a time of rising gun violence and murder rates?

No one can dispute the numbers: Philadelphia experienced the most homicides in 2020 in nearly 60 years, and 2021 is off to an even worse start. The first-term incumbent district attorney, Larry Krasner, notes that this spike parallels a national trend, and he insists it isn’t connected to his programs aimed at curbing mass incarceration. But his opponent, Carlos Vega, argues that Krasner’s approach to prosecuting gun offenses is too lenient — citing recent reports on low conviction rates for such crimes — and that the “bad guys” all know it.

There’s much more at the original, but really, that’s all you need to know about the Editorial Board and their collective stupidity. But one more sentence, from the endorsement’s concluding paragraph, really cements it:

A complex, relatively recent spike in gun violence isn’t a reason to return to the mass incarceration regime of yesteryear, but a challenge to do better.

I have said it before: the problem is not mass incarceration; the problem is that not enough people are incarcerated!

One of the people who wasn’t incarcerated on Friday, March 13, 2020, was Hasan Elliot, 21. How did the District Attorney’s office treat Mr Elliot, a known gang-banger?

  • Mr Elliott, then 18 years old, was arrested in June 2017 on gun- and drug-possession charges stemming after threatening a neighbor with a firearm. The District Attorney’s office granted him a plea bargain arrangement on January 24, 2018, and he was sentenced to 9 to 23 months in jail, followed by three years’ probation. However, he was paroled earlier than that, after seven months in jail.
  • Mr Elliot soon violated parole by failing drug tests and failing to make his meetings with his parole officer.
  • Mr Elliott was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine on January 29, 2019. This was another parole violation, but Mr Krasner’s office did not attempt to have Mr Elliot returned to jail to finish his sentence, nor make any attempts to get serious bail on the new charges; he was released on his own recognizance.
  • After Mr Elliot failed to appear for his scheduled drug-possession trial on March 27, 2019, and prosecutors dropped those charges against him.

On that Friday the 13th, Police Corporal James O’Connor IV, 46, was part of a Philadelphia police SWAT team trying to serve a predawn arrest warrant on Mr Elliott, from a March 2019 killing. Mr Elliot greeted the SWAT team with a hail of bullets, and Corporal O’Connor was killed. Had Mr Elliot been in jail, as he could have been due to parole violations, had Mr Krasner’s office treated him seriously, Corporal O’Connor would have gone home safely to his wife that day. The Inquirer reported:

Philadelphia Police Officers and FOP members block District Attorney Larry Krasner from entering the hospital to meet with slain Police Corporal James O’Connor’s family.

Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 president John McNesby also has criticized Krasner, saying his policies led to the killing of O’Connor. “Unfortunately, he’s murdered by somebody that should have never been on the street,” McNesby said.McNesby also said FOP members and police officers formed a human barricade to block Krasner from entering the hospital Friday to see O’Connor’s family.

James O’Connor is stone-cold graveyard dead because District Attorney Krasner and his minions, in their abhorrence of mass incarceration, left a repeat offender, one with a record of carrying firearms, using and selling drugs, and flouting his required probation meetings. A guy who needed to be incarcerated, and who didn’t even need to be tried again to get him locked up, but Mr Krasner and his office left him out on the streets, even though the police had him in physical custody on January 29, 2019.

Did the lenient treatment do Mr Elliot any good? Had Mr Krasner and his minions treated Mr Elliot seriously, he’d have been in jail on that fateful Friday the 13th, but he’d also be looking at getting out of prison eventually. Now, Mr Elliot, and four of his goons, are looking at spending the rest of their miserable lives in prison.

The Editorial Board celebrated Mr Krasner as being different from his “‘law-and-order’ predecessors,” and that’s the entire problem: Philadelphia’s homicide rate was bad enough under the District Attorney’s “‘law-and-order’ predecessors,” but it has gotten much, much worse under Mr Krasner. He took office in January of 2018, and under his regime, homicides, an already unacceptably high 315 the previous year, jumped to 353 in 2018, them 356 the following year, and then to 499 in 2020. At the current rate of 1.45 killings per day, Philly is on track for 528 homicides this year, and the long, hot days of summer haven’t started yet.

Even the Inquirer ran an editorial cartoon noting how the George Soros-funded ‘prosecutor’ was blaming all of the city’s woes on everybody but himself, but that didn’t stop the Editorial Board from endorsing him. Then again, we have previously noted that the Inquirer’s newsroom has been taken over by the #woke, who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski for having written a headline, “Buildings Matter, Too.”

Is there even honesty in the Inquirer anymore? Philadelphia magazine noted, on June 27, 2019:

Maalik Jackson-Wallace, for example, was given a second chance by Krasner’s office. Jackson-Wallace, whose case was highlighted by the Inquirer, was initially arrested on a gun possession charge. The case was sent to ARD and Jackson-Wallace received probation. He was arrested a second time for gun possession and released on unsecured bail. On June 13th, he was arrested again and charged with murder; police say he shot and killed a 26-year-old man. (Jackson-Wallace’s attorney claims it was in self-defense.)

Yet a site search of the Inquirer turned up zero returns on Maalik Jackson-Wallace or any of several variations of the spelling of his name. Did the Inquirer scrub the stories for some reason? I did, however, find the story, in the Inquirer through a Google search:

“You may have a law-abiding person … who gets beaten up and who goes to purchase a firearm but does not know enough to get a permit, or maybe reads some misleading website from the NRA informing him he has rights he doesn’t actually have, and so is carrying that weapon for self-defense,” Krasner said.

“If you go ahead and prosecute that person, it is very likely that you are going to seriously limit the capacity of that person to complete college. You will definitely limit their earning potential, their capacity to get a job.”

Of course, Mr Jackson-Wallace was not a “law-abiding person,” in that his first arrest was not just for carrying a concealed weapon without a license, but for possession of marijuana. Then again, under Mr Krasner, the District Attorney’s office does not prosecute marijuana possession, in effect nullifying what is a crime in the Keystone State. And, in the end, Mr jackson-Wallace’s “capacity to get a job” was limited by him killing someone else.

Larry Krasner not only does not deserve to be re-elected; he deserves to be sent to prison himself, for aiding and abetting the murder of Corporal O’Connor, and of the killings of other Philadelphians who would still be alive today if the District Attorney had treated their killers seriously when in custody on lesser charges.

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Journolists: how the credentialed media are limiting reporting to change people’s minds

In my seemingly endless crusade against an irresponsible credentialed media, I have noted, several times, that the Lexington Herald-Leader has been mostly reluctant to publish photos of criminal suspects, even when a criminal suspect was still at large and it was possible that publishing his photo might help the city police to find and arrest him.

Researching the topic further, I found that the Sacramento Bee has done the same thing, and explained it:

Why The Sacramento Bee will no longer publish police ‘mugshots,’ with limited exceptions

By Ryan Lillis | July 9, 2020 | 2:08 PM PDT | Updated July 9, 2020 | 2:24 PM PDT

The Sacramento Bee announced Wednesday it will limit the publication of police booking photos, surveillance photos and videos of alleged crimes, and composite sketches of suspects provided by law enforcement agencies.

Now, I knew, as soon as I saw the story, that the Bee must be a McClatchy paper, just from the website layout. A search of the Herald-Leader’s website failed to turn up anything similar, but Wikipedia noted that the Bee is the “flagship” of the McClatchy papers.

Publishing these photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

The policy is effective immediately and will be applied moving forward.

The obvious question is: how would publishing photos of criminal suspects “disproportionately (harm) people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community” unless those photos showed a ‘disproportionate’ number of ‘people of color’ being arrested? How could such ‘perpetuate stereotypes about who commits crimes’ unless those stereotypes are accurate?

Of course, the Herald-Leader was perfectly willing to publish one recent mugshot, but, not to worry, that photo wouldn’t disproportionately harm a person of color.

Then we have Trudy Rubin, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer:

As journalists worldwide face repression, GOP lies threaten U.S. media future

Around the world, journalists are killed with bullets, but in the U.S., Fox News undermines media with endless lies about COVID-19 and election fraud.

By Trudy Rubin | May 4, 2021

Monday was World Press Freedom Day, a United Nations-approved “reminder to governments to respect press freedom” that most nations ignore.

The 2021 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders reports that “journalism, the main vaccine against disinformation, is completely or partly blocked in 73% of the 180 countries ranked by the organization.”

Thirty-two journalists around the globe were reportedly killed last year. Already this year, in Afghanistan — in an episode enough to make one cry — three young women employees of a local TV station in Jalalabad were gunned down in March by the local Islamic State affiliate. That’s after a 26-year-old woman presenter at the same station named Malalai Maiwand was shot dead in December.

Can you imagine the courage it takes for young women (and men) to continue to work in journalism in Afghanistan, or civil-war-torn Myanmar or Belarus, or in many African nations? Or to keep trying to present real news in the handful of independent online or provincial outlets that still exist in Russia? (The many brave independent Chinese journalists who once functioned in print and online are almost completely silenced.)

Yet, today’s main threat to press freedom in the United States is more insidious than grisly murders. And it undermines the very future of our democratic system.

I refer, of course, to the growth of an alternative media universe, amplified by Donald Trump, that attracts a sizeable portion of the American public into their own news silo — and feeds them a constant and hypnotic “news” diet of outright lies.

This cuts to the heart of how we define press freedom.

This is almost laughable. Mrs Rubin is complaining that some credentialed media sources do not report things the way other credentialed media sources do, and has claimed that some of the reports are, gasp! false! But her own newspaper, the newspaper of record for Philadelphia, the sixth=most populous city in the country, a newspaper which began publication on June 1, 1829, decades before The New York Times or Washington Post, doesn’t even cover the murders in her city, 169 of which had rocked the city so far this year as of the end of Sunday, May 2nd.

Let’s tell the truth here: while Mrs Rubin is complaining that other media sources are pushing false stories, the credentialed media of which she approves are deliberately concealing information from the public. The truth is that the left in today’s media can’t handle the truth, because it would wholly upset their narrative.

Back to the Bee:

”The Bee has taken several recent steps to work against long-standing stereotypes. We have largely banned the use of the word “looting” – a term rooted in racism – and have sought to elevate the voices of emerging writers from communities we have long underserved through our Community Voices project,” said Bee President and Editor Lauren Gustus. “And building trust takes time. Our intention with this policy change is to take another step forward.”

The Bee and most other mainstream media outlets have routinely published police booking photos, commonly referred to as “mugshots,” for decades. The photos are typically provided by law enforcement agencies that arrest or charge suspects.

Their publication can have a permanent damaging effect on individuals and communities.

For example, it’s not always reported when a suspect arrested on suspicion of a crime is later released, acquitted by a jury or pleads guilty to a charge of lesser severity. Yet the mugshot of that person in police custody remains.

It’s certainly true that the mugshot will remain on the internet forever. But it is also true that the Bee and the Herald-Leader routinely publish the names of those arrested, even though those arrested might have the charges dropped, be acquitted in trial or perhaps plead guilty to a ‘lesser’ offense, and it is far easier to search for text, for a name, than it is for a photo. If, for example, Ryan Dontese Jones, is acquitted of the several charges against him, charges reported by the Herald-Leader, when he goes to apply for a job after all is said and done, any company with a responsible human resources department is going to do a Google search for his name, and they’ll find that story, even though the newspaper declined to include Mr Jones’ mugshot.

“Thank you for your application, Mr Jones. We will be in touch with you.”

The truth is that this has nothing to do with the suspects individually. Rather, it has to do with exactly what the Bee said it was: to prevent readers from drawing conclusions based upon the perceived race of suspects identified with mug shots.

The credentialed media are manipulating the news, and the Bee has admitted it. And now you know why I call them journolists.

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Black Lives Don’t Matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer

I rather mockingly tweeted, on Sunday around 11:30 AM:

At 10:33 AM EDT this morning, I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, and it stated that as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, May 2, 2021, there had been 176 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year. The previous update showed 169 homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, April 29, 2021. (The site is only updated Monday through Friday, so there are no separate totals for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Naturally, I checked The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website immediately after the Current Crime Statistics page, and there was not a single story on the rather long main page about any of the killings. Not a single one!

I’m pretty good in math, but perhaps I made a mistake. I did it twice, just to be sure, and I came up with 176 – 169 = 7. I did get that right, didn’t I?

So, if I got the math right, there were seven murders in Philadelphia over the weekend — counting Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights as the weekend — yet none of the journolists journalists or editors at the Inquirer found that newsworthy?

There was an article, “Black-owned school-lunch business moving to Philly area to create ‘culturally relevant’ meals for kids,” dated April 30th, still on the main page, and an article about a golf club agreeing to admit women as members, “Reports: Pine Valley to admit women as members, provide unrestricted access to guests,” dated two days ago, and even this large section, on Asian American and Pacific Islander activism, with some articles dating from over a month ago, but not one word about seven homicides in Philly over the weekend.

The tremendously #woke staff of the Inquirer were so concerned that #BlackLivesMatter that they forced the firing resignation of Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski for entitling an article “Buildings Matter, Too,” seem to have no concern at all for black lives lost to the carnage on Philly’s mean streets, at least not enough concern to publish a paragraph of two when they are snuffed out.

The truth is simple: there is no evidence, no evidence at all, that black lives matter to the staff of the Inquirer

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Killadelphia Four overnight homicides aren't even newsworthy as far as The Philadelphia Inquirer is concerned

Today being Friday, there won’t be any more updates on the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page until Monday morning, which means that we’ll get the weekend homicide numbers all together. Nevertheless, you’d think that even the very #woke Philadelphia Inquirer would take notice of four more homicides in a day!

Screen capture of Inquirer main page, April 30, 2021, 10:25 AM EDT. Click to enlarge

It’s possible, of course, that some of those four additional homicides were from shootings from a couple of days ago, victims who didn’t give up the ghost until yesterday, but still, as of 10:26 AM EDT, nothing but crickets from the editors of what I have sometimes called The Philadelphia Enquirer.[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, which brings to my mind the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Last year saw 499 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, initially reported as 502, but later amended down. Assuming that three people didn’t actually recover from death on New Year’s Eve, my guess is that a few people didn’t expire until after midnight, though, knowing what a tool of Mayor Jim Kenney Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is, any sort of ‘massaging’ of the numbers is possible.

The numbers are stark. Last year’s 499 homicides was just one short of the record set in 1990, during the worst of the crack cocaine wars. As of April 29, 2020, ‘only’ 124 people had been murdered in Philadelphia. That was a 19.23% increase over 2019, but still ‘only’ 1.033 homicides per day.[2]With 2020 being a leap year, April 29th was the 120th day of the year, not the 119th as it is in non-leap years.

Things worsened as the year went along, following the Mostly Peaceful Protests™ over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the COVID-19 lockdowns. Oddly enough, crime kept increasing in Philadelphia, despite the lockdown orders. I was just so, so shocked!

But 169 homicides is a 36.29% increase over bloody 2020, and 62.50% increase over just two years ago. In case anyone hadn’t noticed, Donald Trump isn’t President anymore — though the left will still blame him — and we’ve had a COVID-19 vaccine available, and cities and states doing everything they can to get people vaccinated, and states and cities, including Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, are reducing their COVID-19 restrictions. Derek Chauvin was convicted on all charges concerning the killing of George Floyd. At this point, the left are out of external excuses on which to blame the increased violence in our inner cities.

Not that they won’t make up something else, of course, because that’s what they do.

So, what concerns the editors of the Inquirer?

There was a seemingly endless list of articles on the Eagles drafting DaVonta Smith in the first round of the NFL draft! But there were no stories which led me to believe that #BlackLivesMattered to the editors of the Inquirer. The #woke nature of the Inquirer staff, the ones who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline Buildings Matter, Too, even though Philadelphia experienced plenty of damage and violence in the protests over the killing of George Floyd, would have made anyone think that #BlackLivesMatter was of ultimate importance to the staff, so important that the innocent play on words over a legitimate concerns over the historic buildings in one of our oldest cities could be torched in those Mostly Peaceful Protests™.

But if the staff believe that black lives really matter, it’s obvious that the untimely ending of black lives, unless at the hands of a white policeman, simply isn’t newsworthy.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, which brings to my mind the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
↑2 With 2020 being a leap year, April 29th was the 120th day of the year, not the 119th as it is in non-leap years.
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Killadelphia: Philly Police arrest 16-year-old connected to four murders

We have previously noted the apparent policy of the Lexington Herald-Leader not to publish photos of accused criminals, at least of accused criminals who are not white. And now it seems that The Philadelphia Inquirer is doing the same thing.

A 16-year-old is connected to four homicides, including a man shot outside a Philly jail, police say

Officials apprehended the teenager after highlighting his alleged crimes during the city’s first biweekly gun violence briefing.

By Anna Orso | April 28, 2021

Philadelphia police have arrested a 16-year-old who they say is connected to four killings since December, including the fatal shooting of man who was gunned down after his release from a city jail last month.

Ameen Hurst, of Philadelphia, faces murder and related charges in connection with two shooting incidents: a Christmas Eve killing in Overbrook and a quadruple shooting in West Philadelphia on March 11 that left two men dead. Police said charges are also expected to be filed against him this week in connection with the shooting death of Rodney Hargrove, 20, near the front gates of the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in the middle of the night on March 18.

Just a day before the incident outside the jail, officials had publicly named Hurst as a person of interest in the Christmas Eve killing of 20-year-old Dyewou Nyshawn Scruggs, who was streaming live on social media when he was shot.

In none of the cases did police offer a possible motive for the shootings.

Ameen Hurst, 16. Click to enlarge.

There’s more at the original. What there isn’t at the original is a photo of the accused. The website of WPVI-TV, Channel 6, the ABC owned-and-operated (O&O) station in Philadelphia, had Mr Hurst’s photo, as did KYW-TV, Channel 3, the CBS O&O station, so the photo was available. The Inquirer simply chose not to display it on its website.

As I noted in my stories concerning the Herald-Leader, it wasn’t an issue of saving bandwidth, because the Inquirer story was illustrated with this stock photo of Philly cops placing numbered markers by spent shell casings. It would have cost the Inquirer no more bandwidth to publish Mr Hurst than it did the stock photo.

I will admit to some surprise that the Inquirer printed the name of the 16-year-old suspect, as he’s legally a minor. That his name was released probably indicates that he is being charged as an adult, so why not publish a freely available photo?

I, of course, don’t know why the Inquirer didn’t include the photo in the website article, but knowing how the young #woke have captured the Inquirer’s newsroom, forcing the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too,” I would not be in the least surprised if the Inquirer declined to publish Mr Hurst’s photo because the accused is black.

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As nearly as I can tell, black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer unless they are taken by a white police officer.

When you have been married for 41 years, 11 months and 7 days, as my wife and I have — but who’s counting, right? — a six-month anniversary seems pretty inconsequential, something that you remember like six-months of dating or you first six months of being married.[1]Actually, we got married just six months and two days after we met, and one day short of five months after our first date!

So, April 26th being the six-month anniversary of Walter Wallace, Jr, being sent to his eternal reward by two Philadelphia policemen as he was advancing on them with a raised knife never occurred to me when I mentioned his death in an article on the 25th.

But Mr Wallace’s family remembered, and held a small, roughly 200-person rally, and it was covered by The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Walter Wallace Jr. is remembered 6 months after police fatally shot him

“We will never let my brother’s name be forgotten,” said Lakitah Wallace, growing choked up. “Our lives matter. Our lives matter.”

by Rita Giordano and Kristen A. Graham | April 25, 2021

Three siblings stood in Malcolm X Park on Sunday and looked out at a crowd of more than 200 who gathered in West Philadelphia.

But there should have been four, said Lakitah Wallace, 28. Six months ago Monday, her brother Walter Wallace Jr. died at the hands of Philadelphia police.

“We will never let my brother’s name be forgotten,” said Lakitah Wallace, her voice catching. “Our lives matter. Our lives matter.”

In her brother’s honor, scores marched from 58th and Spruce to Malcolm X Park. The event marked one of the first times the family has appeared publicly since Wallace’s death. It was part of a multi-city rally calling for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Russell Maroon Shoatz, both convicted of killing Philadelphia police officers.

Screen capture when searching Google for “Mumia”. Screen cap by Dana R Pico, April 26, 2021, at 7:46 AM EDT.

Freedom for Wesley Cook, who now goes by the fake name Mumia Abu-Jamal, huh? Mr Cook murdered a police officer, so naturally he’s some kind of hero to the #BlackLivesMatter protesters.[2]According to Wikipedia, “In 1968, a high school teacher, a Kenyan instructing a class on African cultures, encouraged the students to take African or Arabic names for classroom use; he gave … Continue reading

If you do a Google search for Mumia Abu-Jamal — and Google fills it in as soon as you finish typing Mumia — you get what I screen captured on the right, a claim that Mr Cook is a “Journalist.” If you click on his Wikipedia biography, you’ll get more material slanted in Mr Cook’s favor.

Mr Cook was sentenced to death for the murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner on December 9, 1981. Through exhaustive appeals, his sentence was later reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.[3]Fortunately, Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) does not have the power to issue pardons or sentence commutations absent “the recommendation in writing of a majority of the Board of Pardons,” or … Continue reading

Back to the Inquirer:

Lakitah Wallace — who was flanked by her sister Wynetta Wallace, Walter Jr.’s twin, and brother John Brant — led the crowd in a chant: “Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.”

“We want to give support to any family who has been traumatized by police brutality,” Lakitah Wallace said. “We want justice for my brother, we want justice for every other Black man who has been murdered and sacrificed in front of their loved ones.”

This is no different from the cries of outrage that a Columbus, Ohio, police officer shot and killed Ma’khia Bryant, a 16-year-old black girl, as young Miss Bryant was trying to stab another young black girl to death. What was the officer supposed to do, wait for Miss Bryant to kill her victim and then ask her to politely surrender so that he could place her under arrest?

A site search of the Inquirer’s website yielded no returns for Jaslyn Adams, a seven-year-old girl killed in a McDonald’s drive-through lane in Chicago, because gang-bangers were trying to kill her father? Her black life doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t taken by a white policeman.

Fortunately, one of the young Miss Adams’ alleged killers has been apprehended:

Marion Lewis, 18, faces a first-degree murder charge along with 17 other felony charges, including one count of aggravated vehicular hijacking, three counts of attempted first-degree murder and six counts of aggravated discharge of a firearm. . . . .

During Sunday’s bond hearing, prosecutors said Lewis was behind the wheel when two other suspects got out and fired several rounds into Adam’s vehicle. Police have identified the two suspects. Both remain at large.

But while Miss Adams’ murder has been prominent in the Chicago media, it still hasn’t been the media sensation that Ma’khia Bryant’s or Walter Wallace’s were, even though Miss Adams was an innocent victim, and the two killed by police officers were attacking with knives.

Where is the outrage in the black community, the nationwide black community, over the death of Miss Adams? Where is the outrage that the Inquirer, once considered a great newspaper, and, by some rights, the oldest daily newspaper in the United States, had no stories at all on the website main page, as of 8:45 AM EDT on any of the three homicides in the City of Brotherly Love over the weekend?[4]The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is updated only Monday through Friday. It reported that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, April 25th, 159 homicides had occurred … Continue reading

“If it bleeds, it leads,” is an old, old newspaper saying, yet, for the Inquirer, unless the bleeding victim is a child, a local child, a “somebody,” or a cute little white girl, — a site search for Rian Thal yielded 2,963 results — the Inquirer doesn’t cover it. As nearly as I can tell, black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer unless they are taken by a white police officer.

References

References
↑1 Actually, we got married just six months and two days after we met, and one day short of five months after our first date!
↑2 According to Wikipedia, “In 1968, a high school teacher, a Kenyan instructing a class on African cultures, encouraged the students to take African or Arabic names for classroom use; he gave Cook the name “Mumia”. According to Abu-Jamal, “Mumia” means “Prince” and was the name of a Kenyan anti-colonial African nationalist who fought against the British before Kenyan independence. . . . . Cook adopted the surname Abu-Jamal (“father of Jamal” in Arabic) after the birth of his first child, son Jamal, on July 18, 1971.” There is no indication in the Wikipedia biography that Mr Cook ever legally changed his name, and even if he had, as a cop killer, he does not deserve any respect, and I will not show him any respect by deferring to his use of a made-up name.
↑3 Fortunately, Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) does not have the power to issue pardons or sentence commutations absent “the recommendation in writing of a majority of the Board of Pardons,” or that idiot probably would set Mr Cook free.
↑4 The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is updated only Monday through Friday. It reported that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, April 25th, 159 homicides had occurred in Philly. The previous update, on Friday morning, stated that there had been 156 homicides as of the end of Thursday, April 22nd.
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The credentialed media are the ones telling us that most black lives don’t matter

We noted on the 23rd how credentialed media institutions like what I like to call The Philadelphia Enquirer have been pushing the “cops shoot black people for no reason” meme, and how such an august newspaper — founded in 1829, making it decades older than The New York Times — responded with such glee at the conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin over the death of George Floyd:

Even on Sunday, April 25th, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page is running a big section on the verdict against Mr Chauvin:

Screen capture, The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 25, 2021, taken at 11:25 AM EDT, by Dana R Pico.

Now comes former Washington Times reporter Robert Stacy McCain, noting how the credentialed media — if you can actually call the HuffPost “credentialed” — are still fanning the flames:

Media: The Enemy of the People

by Robert Stacy McCain | April 25, 2021

Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics remarks on Twitter:

Hard to imagine a more divisive, sensational, context-less headline. A textbook example of the media being the enemy of the people.

The story in question is by the Associated Press:

Even as the Derek Chauvin case was fresh in memory — the reading of the verdict in a Minneapolis courtroom, the shackling of the former police officer, the jubilation at what many saw as justice in the death of George Floyd — even then, blood flowed on America’s streets.

And even then, some of that blood was shed at the hands of law enforcement.

At least six people were fatally shot by officers across the United States in the 24 hours after jurors reached a verdict in the murder case against Chauvin on Tuesday. The roll call of the dead is distressing:

  • A 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio.
  • An oft-arrested man in Escondido, California.
  • A 42-year-old man in eastern North Carolina. . . .
  • An unidentified man in San Antonio.
  • Another man, killed in the same city within hours of the first.
  • A 31-year-old man in central Massachusetts.

The circumstances surrounding each death differ widely.

Were they engaged in crime? Were they resisting arrest? Did they pose a threat of deadly violence? “Circumstances . . . differ widely,” we are told, but all the Associated Press and the headline writers at the Huffington Post are interested in is the number, with the implication that the lives of innocent Americans everywhere are endangered by the police.

There’s more at Mr McCain’s original.

The “16-year-old girl in Columbus”? A police officer shot her as she was attempting to stab another girl to death! The Inquirer ran two stories on the death of Ma’khia Bryant, but I have not been able to find a single story on the newspaper’s website main page concerning the individual deaths of people virtually every single day in the City of Brotherly Love, which I believe to be because there’s no perceived political advantage to be found in stories about young black men being shot by other young black men. Jaslyn Adams, the seven-year-old girl killed in a McDonald’s drive-through lane, because gang-bangers were trying to kill her father? Her black life doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t taken by a white policeman.

Mr McCain noted:

Even if someone is charging at you with a knife, cops can’t shoot them — that’s the madhouse toward which the media seek to lead us.

When I saw that brief paragraph, with the internal link about Ma’khia Bryant, my mind went to the shooting of Walter Wallace, Jr. There were riots in the City of Brotherly Love last fall after two officers shot Mr Wallace, a mentally unstable man who had been the subject of several calls to police, by his own family, that very day due to his rampages. Body camera photos showed the whacked out Mr Wallace charging two officers, on the last call concerning Mr Wallace’s threatening behavior, with a raised knife.

Of course, the Usual Suspects waxed wroth. Why didn’t they shoot him in the leg, the Snowflakes™ chimed in? Why didn’t they use tasers? (The responding officers did not have tasers.) William Teach noted that the San Diego Union Tribune’s Editorial Board said that Police urgently need a more humane alternative to lethal weapons. It’s time to design one, as though no one is trying to do that right now. Sometimes I think that these people have watched too much Star Trek and think the police can just set their phasers on stun.

Naturally, the family, the same family who called the cops on Mr Wallace, “wanted answers.” The answer was simple: two officers responded, had to make a split second decision on a guy charging at them with a knife, and took the right one. Riots followed in Philly, and the Inquirer’s website gave 99 returns in a site search for Walter Wallace.

The activists at Ohio State University, which is located in Columbus, the city in which Miss Bryant was killed, were just thoroughly upset about it:

Destiny Brown, a senior at the Ohio State University, breathed a sigh of relief in her dorm room on Tuesday when the guilty verdict came down for former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. But the moment of respite proved short-lived. Minutes later, she scrolled on Twitter and learned that a 16-year-old Black girl, Ma’Khia Bryant, had been shot and killed that afternoon by Columbus police.

“I can’t even begin to process the fact that we live in a world where people’s lives — regardless of what they’re doing, what they have going on, guilty or not, innocent or not — their lives just do not matter,” Brown told Yahoo News. “It doesn’t make sense to me and never will.”

Overcome with a feeling of helplessness, Brown fired off a group text message to her friends Tuesday evening. “I’m ready to organize again,” she told them.

In a matter of hours, Brown and her friends had planned a sit-in to be held the following day at the Ohio Union, the university’s student center in Columbus. Their goal, Brown said, was simple: to demand that the school sever ties with Columbus police over Bryant’s killing and its mistreatment of students of color.

Columbus, Ohio, saw 175 murders in 2020, and, as of mid October, 75% of the victims were black:

Columbus Police also shared details on the homicide suspects. Of the 79 identified, 65 are Black with 59 being Black men, and nine are white with eight being white men.

Of the cases police say were solved, 56 had a Black victim and a Black suspect, two had a Black victim and a white suspect, seven had a white victim and a Black suspect and six had a white victim and a white suspect.

I couldn’t find more recent numbers, but in 2010, the population of Columbus was 28.0% black. Shouldn’t Destiny Brown, a senior at Ohio State, be asking why a city that’s 28% black is seeing 75% of murder victims being black, and that 96.6% of the solved murders of black people were committed by other black people? Then again, if the local media in Columbus are anything like the media in Philadelphia, Miss Brown may never have heard that so many black people had been killed locally, the vast majority of them by other black people.

The lovely Miss Brown wouldn’t admit it, of course, because she’s too #woke to do so, and asking the question leads to an uncomfortable truth: in urban America, the black culture allows these killings to happen, and the credentialed media have been their willing accomplices.

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Is it any wonder black Americans don’t trust the police? Liberal media organizations like The Philadelphia Inquirer try to undermine trust

Do you know who Jaslyn Adams is?

You could be forgiven if you hadn’t heard of young Miss Adams, whose black life didn’t matter all that much, because she wasn’t shot by a white policeman.

‘I want my baby’s killers in jail,’ dad says at vigil for 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams

About 75 neighbors, family members and friends gathered in East Garfield Park Wednesday to honor Jaslyn, who was fatally shot Sunday while at a McDonald’s drive-thru with her father.

Jaslyn Adams. Photo provided to media by family.

By Madeline Kenney | April 21, 2021, 9:48pm CDTAbout 75 neighbors, family members and friends gathered in East Garfield Park Wednesday evening to honor the life of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams, who was fatally shot Sunday as she and her father were getting food at a McDonald’s drive-thru.

Pink spray paint covered the sidewalks and brick wall with messages, like “I love you, Pinky” — Jaslyn’s nickname. Dozens of pink balloons were taped to the wall.

Jaslyn’s father, Jontae Adams, who was also wounded in the Sunday afternoon shooting, struggled to get out of his car when he arrived at the vigil. His loved ones helped him walk with his crutches before his father stopped him and the two embraced.

“I’m sorry, man,” Adams murmured as he cried on his father’s shoulder.

I’ve said it before: murders of black people are not news to The Philadelphia Inquirer unless the victim is a child, a “somebody,” or a cute little white girl. Young Miss Adams was killed in Chicago, as some thug was gunning for her father, so it’s not Philly news, and, a site search of the Inquirer’s website for Jaslyn Adams, at 9:24 AM EDT today, got zero returns. The Inquirer never mentioned her killing.

Fortunately, a suspect has been apprehended, and Chicago police have said the killing was gang-related.

Police body camera image of Ma’khia Bryant trying to stab another woman.


The Inquirer did have two stories about the shooting death of 16-year-old Ma’khia Bryant at the hands of a white police officer; young Miss Bryant was shot while attempting to stab another black woman. Miss Bryant’s black life mattered because of who fired the shots who killed her, and, for some people, her black life mattered more than the girl, another black girl, she was trying to kill.

And so we come to the newspaper I have sometimes referred to as The Philadelphia Enquirer:[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Families of murdered Philadelphians know the hollow victory of justice

No verdict will undo the harm — whether it’s a death by state-sanctioned police brutality or by Philadelphia’s relentless gun violence.

by Helen Ubiñas | Columnist | April 21, 2021

Aleida Garcia watched the verdict against former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin at home, alone, and found herself reliving the 2018 day she sat in a cramped Philadelphia courtroom praying for justice in the murder of her son.

It all felt so familiar, she told me moments after the Chauvin verdict was announced Tuesday: the anxiety, the adrenaline, and then, finally, the relief when, just like the man who murdered her son in 2015, Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd.

Victory — if only a painfully hollow one.

“It’s like the twilight zone,” Garcia said, recalling the day the man who killed her son was sentenced to life in prison. “You feel like somehow you earned a prize and the prize is having your child back, that he’s going to walk through the door, but of course that’s never going to happen.”

Because as she and other loved ones of murder victims know all too well: No verdict will undo the harm — whether it’s a death by state-sanctioned police brutality or by Philadelphia’s relentless gun violence that claimed nearly 500 lives last year and more than 150 so far this year.

There’s more of the same drivel at the original, but notice: in both the article subtitle — which may have been written by an editor rather than Miss Ubiñas — and Miss Ubiñas’ copy, “state-sanctioned police brutality” is listed before “Philadelphia’s relentless gun violence.”

On the Inquirer’s website main page, at 10:03 AM EDT, there was not a single story listed concerning any homicides in Philadelphia yesterday or overnight . . . but, according to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, two more people were sent to an early grave in Philly’s mean streets, though one killing happened early enough yesterday for a very brief article on the website yesterday. The victim, a 20-year-old man, was shot “several times,” which makes it appear to be a deliberate hit, and probably gang-related. But, to Miss Ubiñas, let’s worry about the very few people killed by police officers. A whopping 156 people have been killed in Philadelphia so far this year, 38 more than the same date last year — and remember: 2020 was a leap year, so April 22nd was the 113th day of 2020, but just the 112th day this year — a 32.20% increase over last year. At 1.39 homicides per day, the City of Brotherly Love is on track for a record 508 murders in 2021.

But the Enquirer doesn’t care about that, or at least doesn’t comment on that, other than to use the euphemism “gun violence,” when the problem is bad people picking up those inanimate objects and shooting people. As we noted two days ago, the Inquirer was full of gloating and thankful articles about the conviction of Derek Chauvin, but nobody there seems to give a damn about the people, the mostly black victims, killed on the streets every f(ornicating) day by other people, mostly other black people, because to note that would offend the sensibilities of the #woke in the Inquirer’s newsroom.[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading

I’ve said it before: black lives don’t matter, at least not to the editors, columnists and writers of the Inquirer, unless they are taken by a white police officer. It has become obvious with the way the Inquirer does everything it can to undermine the Philadelphia Police Department, and to ruin what little trust black Philadelphians have in calling the cops.
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Related articles from other sites:

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
↑2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.