Tag Archives: #PhiladelphiaInquirer

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A senseless murder finally gets to the people of Philadelphia Requiescat in pace, Christine Lugo

I have said before that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t really care about homicide in the City of Brotherly Love unless a child, a local child, a “somebody,” or a cute little white girl.

A photo taken during a block party last year of Dunkin’ Donuts manager Christine Lugo.

Well, Christine Lugo isn’t quite a cute little white girl; she was Hispanic, at least to judge from her photo. But the city and the Inquirer are making a pretty big deal over her murder.

Philly authorities ask for help identifying the man who shot and killed Dunkin’ manager

“The only way the police can get to an arrest and then our office can get to approve charges is for the community to come forward and help,” said Chesley Lightsey, the DA’s homicide chief.

by Chris Palmer | Monday, 7 June 2021 | 5:00 PM EDT

Philadelphia authorities on Monday urged potential witnesses to speak up and help identify the man who fatally shot a Dunkin’ store manager early Saturday in the city’s Fairhill section.

Chesley Lightsey, homicide chief in the District Attorney’s Office, asked the public to review the “very clear” surveillance video of the suspect from inside the store that police posted on YouTube and help them determine who shot Christine Lugo after robbing the store on the 500 block of Lehigh Avenue around 5:30 a.m. Saturday.

“We are begging you to come forward,” Lightsey said. “The only way the police can get to an arrest and then our office can get to approve charges is for the community to come forward and help.”

Mayor Jim Kenney, at an unrelated news conference, said the video showed Lugo trying to comply with the robber’s demand, “and he still killed her.”

Screen capture of Dunkin’ Donuts murder suspect. Click to enlarge.

The Inquirer would have done better to have included the photo of the suspect, but at least they linked to the Philadelphia Police Department’s YouTube video of the robbery, and were willing to print it previously.

Miss Lugo was not a criminal; she was a hard-working store manager, up at the crack of dawn to do her job, a job made more difficult by the fact that the night shift person had called off sick. She was alone on Saturday morning, in a neighborhood that Google streetview shows to be at least somewhat better kept than some others in Philadelphia.

In a city which doesn’t really care about homicide — 228 people have been murdered in the city so far, a 33.33% increase above last years 171 on the same date — some people are caring about this one.

And someone knows who this thug is. The question is: will that someone call the cops?

Of course, the odds are that his fellow thug friends have seen the reports in the media and told him, “Dude, get out of town, now!” He could be in Atlantic City or Charlotte or Miami[1]John ‘Jordan’ Lewis, who murdered Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy in a Dunkin’ Donuts on West Oak Lane was apprehended in Miami. by now.

Me? I’m still betting a case of Mountain Dew that, when we find out who the (alleged) killer is, we’ll find out that he has a long rap sheet, and that, had he been treated seriously by the District Attorney, could and should have been behind bars at 5:51 AM last Saturday morning. That’s hardly a risky bet: that’s what we always seem to find out about these killers.

References

References
↑1 John ‘Jordan’ Lewis, who murdered Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy in a Dunkin’ Donuts on West Oak Lane was apprehended in Miami.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer does what the Lexington Herald-Leader will not Updated!

I have been generous, shall we say, in my criticism of The Philadelphia Inquirer, so when the paper does something right, it is incumbent on me to note that. The newspaper reported on yet another homicide of a victim in the city:

Dunkin’ Donuts manager shot to death during robbery in North Philly

Police released a video showing the gunman approaching the manager as she opened the store, and pointing a revolver at her as he forces her inside to an office where she hands over money.

by Diane Mastrull and Elizabeth Robertson | Updated June 5, 2021

A Dunkin’ Donuts manager was shot to death early Saturday after a gunman confronted her as she opened the store in North Philadelphia, forced her inside, and demanded she give him all the money, police said.

The victim, a 41-year-old woman, was shot in the head at 5:51 a.m. inside the Dunkin’ Donuts at Lehigh Avenue and Fairhill Street, and was pronounced dead there six minutes later by medics, police said.

Coworkers identified her as Christine Lugo, who lived in the neighborhood and, although she had her own children, was a mother to those she worked with.

“She was an angel, a mother to all of us,” said Larry Evans, one of a few employees who stopped by the restaurant Saturday afternoon to mourn their colleague. “No matter who you are, she give you the shirt off her back.”

Screen capture of Dunkin’ Donuts murder suspect. Click to enlarge.

There’s more at the original, but this killing was wholly senseless: the store manager gave the robber the cash, so he had that for which he came, but he shot her in the head anyway.

The actual video, which I could not link, is available on the Inquirer’s website. The victim is blurred out, for the sake of decency, and it doess not show the killer shooting her.

The Lexington Herald-Leader? If the paper followed McClatchy’s mugshot policy, it would be up to Executive Editor peter Baniak to decide whether or not to publish the photo of the suspect, but, considering how the paper refused to publish the mugshot of accused murderer Juanyah J Clay, who was then on the loose, quite possibly because Mr Clay is black, I have to wonder: would the paper have published the images the Inquirer did, given that the Dunkin’ Donuts killer is visibly black? The Inquirer is trying to help the police and the citizens of Philadelphia to catch this criminal; the Herald-Leader wouldn’t do that to help catch Mr Clay.

If the suspect is caught, what are the odds that he was treated leniently in a criminal past, by District Attorney Larry Krasner and his predecessors, and could have been behind bars on Saturday morning? If he is identified and caught, and it turns out that yes, he was on the loose when he shouldn’t have been, will the District Attorney of the judge involved be held accountable for Miss Lugo’s death?

Of course, in Killadelphia, Miss Lugo was not the only murder victim in the city. The article noted that:

  • A 16-year-old was shot 13 times, killing him, shortly before 8:30 PM Friday at 55th and Market Streets in West Philadelphia;
  • A 25-year-old man was shot once in the chest at 10th and Cumberland Streets in North Philly, and taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7 PM; and
  • Later that night, a man in his late 20s was shot multiple times, and killed, while he was sitting in a vehicle at Broad and Belfield Streets in the Logan section.

That was all on Friday night. How many more murders happened in the City of Brotherly Love on the rest of the weekend?

__________________________________

Updated: Monday, 7 June 2016 | 8:25 AM EDT

A photo taken during a block party last year of Dunkin’ Donuts manager Christine Lugo.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Miss Lugo was not scheduled to be working alone on Saturday morning.

The store is usually open 24 hours, offering only drive-through service overnight. But the person who was supposed to work Friday night into Saturday morning called out, assistant manager Terrell Johnson said, which meant Lugo showed up to an empty store, left to open it alone.

Johnson, 38, said he often worked the overnight shift and would meet Lugo in the morning when she came to start her day about 5 a.m. She’d text him when she was 15 minutes away, he said, and he’d meet her outside. Johnson didn’t work the overnight shift this weekend because he had been suspended from work due to a “no-call, no-show,” which he said was a misunderstanding.

Dunkin’ Donuts corporate office wanted to make sure that they got no blame:

In a statement Sunday, Dunkin’s spokesperson Michelle King said store franchisees ”are solely responsible for the day-to-day operations of their restaurants, including staffing decisions.”

That may be true, but what a poor time to be saying so.

The newspaper reported that there was less than $300 in the store when Miss Lugo opened it. She was senselessly murdered, after giving the robber the money, and it was for under $300.

For less than $300! Had he just robbed the store, and not killed Miss Lugo, he’d have been facing what, five years in the slammer? Now, if he gets caught, even with the miserable Larry Krasner as District Attorney, he’s looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in jail.

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Does Amelia Carter believe that the law should not apply to black Americans?

Conservatives have roundly mocked the chyron used by CNN to tell us about the “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” as a television reporter who might as well have been called Baghdad Bob stood in front of a burning building.

So now we come to Amelia Carter, an organizer for the Philly Human Rights Appeal event, Human Rights Violated Here, scheduled for May 31. She is from Philadelphia and lives on 52nd Street. Miss Carter was granted OpEd space in today’s what might as well be called 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.

A year ago, 52nd Street was teargassed by police. Now we’re fighting back. | Opinion

To make change in policing locally, we need to look in new directions.

By Amelia Carter | May 28, 2021

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings. One year since the public flooded the streets, calling for an end to police impunity, the defunding of police budgets, and investment in Black people. And one year since our communities — including mine on 52nd Street — experienced the severe state repression that followed that call.

I have never seen or felt anything like the seven-hour police occupation of my predominantly Black neighborhood, Cobbs Creek, on May 31, 2020. Although neighbors screamed, “Kids live here! Please don’t shoot,” tear-gas canisters flew relentlessly through the air, landing on residential streets. Gas quickly filled the nurseries where babies napped and the hallways where everyday people did everyday things. To escape the tear gas, families were forced from their homes into the street, where police were indiscriminately shooting people with rubber bullets. The cops said they were there to protect us from rioters — but it was them we feared.

The thing that struck me most about that day was the unity I experienced with neighbors. People sprung into action: bringing milk for our stringing eyes, picking us up off the ground, even as they were stumbling. Some made makeshift protest signs and confronted police directly on Chestnut Street as the tear gas finally subsided. At one point, we all decided — without speaking — to hold the line at Chancellor Street to ensure tanks didn’t press farther into our neighborhood. Without realizing it, we all became activists that day.

There’s much more at the original, which you can read if you follow the link embedded in the title. But what you will not find in the 802 words the Inquirer granted Miss Carter is why the police were using tear gas, were using force along 52nd Street. Fortunately, the Inquirer did report just why that happened:

Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?

That’s the question that has been raging on the streets of Philadelphia, and across my architecture-centric social media feeds, over the last two days as a dark cloud of smoke spiraled up from Center City. What started as a poignant and peaceful protest in Dilworth Park on Saturday morning ended up in a frenzy of destruction by evening. Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire.

Their chances of survival are slim, which means there could soon be a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia, in one of its most iconic and historic neighborhoods. And protesters moved on to West Philadelphia’s fragile 52nd Street shopping corridor, an important center of black life, where yet more property has been battered.

What Miss Carter told her readers was “the public flood(ing) the streets, calling for an end to police impunity, the defunding of police budgets, and investment in Black people,” was in fact, a destructive riot. The Inquirer reported that:

  • A crowd had broken into the Foot Locker store at the intersection of 52nd and Chestnut Streets;
  • people breaking into stores;
  • a few setting police cars on fire; and
  • some officers pinned down by people throwing rocks along one of West Philadelphia’s busiest business corridors

From the story:

Just before 3 p.m., an officer’s voice crackled over police radio.

“Just to advise you, at 5-2 and Chestnut off of 5-4 and Market, we’ve got a large crowd gathering.”

Radio calls from that afternoon depict an increasingly volatile scene stretching from Arch to Chestnut Streets growing chaotic, and quickly. For 90 minutes, police asked for backup, and as it arrived, people pelted police officers with debris, according to radio calls. People smashed the windows of police cars, looted their contents, and set some ablaze. Others put a burning squad car in drive and pushed it toward officers on the street.

Fifteen officers were injured. A captain took a cinder block to the leg and developed a blood clot and needed emergency surgery. Inspector Derrick Wood, a 22-year veteran who oversees police operations in West Philadelphia and has made rebuilding the relationship with residents a focal point of his command, suffered a fractured nose in two places when he was hit by a brick.

To be fair, Miss Carter did link that story in her original, but she never indicated, in any other way, that the police were using force because the Mostly Peaceful Protesters™ were rioting.

52nd Street is a mostly black business corridor; the police were attempting — sadly, with little success — to protect the black residents who were not rioting, and the primarily black businesses from being damaged or destroyed. “Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed,” the article originally entitled “Buildings Matter, Too” noted.

I suppose that Miss Carter doesn’t think that buildings matter, despite the fact that people, including a majority of black people, live and work in the neighborhood the police were trying to defend.

But, let’s tell the truth here: the neighborhood are afraid that 52nd Street is ‘gentrifying.

The topic of the community meeting — a plan to beautify 52nd Street, to make it safe, welcoming, and prosperous once again — was, on its face, nothing but good news for West Philadelphia’s long-declining business corridor.

Yet the audience of about 50 residents and retailers, mostly African American, grew increasingly agitated as urban designer Jonas Maciunas flipped through a PowerPoint presentation of proposed improvements. Many weren’t seeing a vision of a neighborhood revitalized from Market to Pine Streets. Instead, in the talk of redesigned intersections, leafy thoroughfares, and better bus shelters, they heard the ominous whisper of gentrification.

“It just seems that when white people decide to come back to a certain neighborhood, they want it a certain way,” said Carol Morris, 68, a retired elementary school teacher. . . . .

The area’s population remains predominantly black, but residents say they’ve noticed a growing white presence.

I suppose that, for that neighborhood, more white people is considered a bad thing.

Integration was supposed to bring white and black Americans closer, to beat down prejudice and discrimination. I guess that the (mostly) white liberals of the 1960s thought that to be a good thing, but apparently many in black neighborhoods don’t see it that way.

And so we return to Miss Carter. Her complaint is that the law applies to black people as well as whites:

As Malcolm X pointed out, we will always be limited in our ability to fight for the rights of Black Americans through civil rights, because that requires asking for justice from the very systems built on our oppression. Instead, just as the NAACP and W.E.B. Du Bois appealed to the United Nations, we must claim the rights and freedoms entitled to us in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — and join hands with survivors of state repression around the world to upend this broken country. We must recognize that, just as America weaponizes diplomacy to wage long-haul wars abroad, the police are its mechanism for shoring up the empire at home.

The City of Brotherly Love, the city in which Miss Carter lives, has seen 211 people murdered so far this year, and the great majority of those murder victims, in a city that is not majority black, are black. Does she not want the police to respond to calls over robberies or rapes, over arson and vandalism, over muggings and murders?

The police are not there to oppress black people; the police are there to try to enforce the law. Does Miss Carter believe that enforcing the law is “oppression” of black people? Does she believe that the laws should somehow be different for black Americans? Philadelphia got its ‘social justice’ prosecutor in District Attorney Larry Krasner, and all the city, all the black neighborhoods like Miss Carter’s, got for that is more Philadelphians, primarily more black people, pouring out their life’s blood on the city’s mean streets.

References

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↑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.
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Killadelphia Shockingly enough, a murder victim's killing actually gets covered by The Philadelphia Inquirer

Credit where credit is due. I noted yesterday:

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, as of the end of Monday, May 25th, 208 people had been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love. That works out to 1.434 people being murdered every single day, and, if that figure is maintained throughout 2021, 524 homicides for the year, leaving last year’s 499, and 1990’s record of 500, well back in the rear view mirror.

Two of those 208 deaths were reported as having occurred on May 25th, the anniversary of Mr Floyd’s death. Yet, at least at 10:42 AM on the following day, there was not a single story on the Inquirer’s website main page concerning those deaths. The seven killings the Police Department reported as having occurred over the weekend did not rate a single story on the newspaper’s website main page. A site search for homicide turned up nothing, though searching for reporter Robert Moran, who usually covers these stories, turned up two very short news articles, covering one murder on the 24th and two separate murders on the 25th.

If I have to know which reporter to search to find these stories, how am I supposed to believe that #BlackLivesMatter, at least to the news staff of The Philadelphia Inquirer?

I guess that Philadelphia Inquirer really was working on the story, and it just appeared later, because this one had a large spot on the newspaper’s website main page this morning:

Two Philadelphia high school students were fatally shot Tuesday. One was two weeks from graduation.

The young people shot Tuesday night are the latest victims in a surge of unrelenting gun violence in the city.

By Mike Newall, Anna Orso, and Chris Palmer | May 26, 2021

An 18-year-old who was two weeks from graduating from Overbrook High School and set to attend Kutztown University this fall was fatally shot in West Philadelphia on Tuesday, one of two teenagers killed in the city within an hour of each other.

Nasir Marks, of Overbrook Park, spent the evening practicing a speech on diversity in America — his senior project — in front of his mother and brother, his family said. He slipped on a hoodie and got on the bus to visit his girlfriend, texting her at 7:15 p.m. that he’d arrived.

Fifteen minutes later, police were called to the 3900 block of Poplar Street and found Marks with multiple gunshot wounds. His father, Jermaine Thurman, said his son had stepped into gang territory, where groups of young men on both sides of Girard Avenue have traded gunfire.

A police officer places makers on evidence on the 3900 block of Poplar Street 18-year-old Nasir Marks was fatally shot Tuesday. Steven M Falk, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.

There’s more at the original.

I try to avoid using photos from the Inquirer, due to copyright issues, but this one seems appropriate. A Philadelphia Police Officer is placing evidence markers, which normally means where shell casings were found, and marker number 17 is visible; that’s a lot of rounds fired off.

The 3900 block of Poplar Street, between 39th and 40th Streets, near Fairmont Park off Girard Avenue, isn’t exactly a high rent neighborhood. Primarily working-class row homes, some in decent repair and some not, there are a few which are boarded up. The economic condition of the neighborhood is evident in the background of the Inquirer’ photo.

Boathouse Row, one of the hoitier of the toitier neighborhoods, is just across the Schuylkill River. The contrast is stark.

Just a few minutes after young Mr Marks was killed, 15-year-old Kanye Pittman, of North Philadelphia, was murdered in the 2500 block of North Sydenham Street, a North Philadelphia neighborhood of shabby row houses, some of which are boarded up, a long commercial building, and overgrown vacant lots.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department, two more people were murdered in the city last night, bringing the total for the year to 210. That’s 1.438 homicides per day, putting Philly on pace for 525 for the year, which would be a new record. The long, hot summer hasn’t even arrived yet.

Inquirer reporter Robert Moran had two very brief stories yesterday, one noting the murder of an unidentified 23-year-old man in a calculated hit — the story said her was “shot several times” — and another about a 23-year-old woman shot once in the head and pushed out of a car, later found abandoned. She was not listed as having died in Mr Moran’s story, but may have expired later, possibly making her that 210th victim.

At least for a bit, the Inquirer seems to be doing better. Nasir Marks was not a “somebody,” or a cute little white girl, but the paper used three reporters to write about his senseless death. Whether we’ll read more about the two people murdered last night, well, that’s something for the future.

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The racism of The Philadelphia Inquirer The Publisher of the Inquirer says the paper is "an anti-racist news organization," but there's no actual evidence of that

I am not from Missouri, not from the “Show Me” State, and, to the best of my recollection, I’ve only passed through the place once, way back in August of 1972. Nevertheless, I am one of the people who likes to see something really radical, like actual evidence, of something before I accept it as true.

Thus, when I came to this OpEd piece by Elizabeth H. Hughes, the Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of The Philadelphia Inquirer, my truth detector sounded, loudly.

Inquirer publisher: One year later, reflection and a look ahead

A year after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the printing of a racist headline in The Inquirer, work remains left to achieve an equitable future for all.

By Elizabeth Hughes | May 26, 2021

June 2 will mark a year since The Philadelphia Inquirer published this racist headline: “Buildings Matter, Too.”

If printing those words in 72-point type had occurred in a vacuum, it would have been a grievous and unpardonable offense. That it was published at a moment of national reckoning over social justice — prompted by the vicious murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police a year ago yesterday — amplified the outrage and brought us well-deserved scorn and scrutiny.

There is somewhat of a playbook whenever a self-inflicted crisis like this threatens to define any institution and the people who work for it. And so it played out here. Apologies were issued, a change in newsroom leadership was announced, earnest promises of reform and redress were made.

Translation: Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski was forced to resign.

But what, exactly, was “racist” about the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too”? Philadelphia is an old city, founded in 1682 by William Penn, to serve as the capital for the Province of Pennsylvania, on a land grant from King Charles II. Boelson Cottage, built sometime between 1678 and 1684, is the oldest still standing house in Fairmont Park. Independence Hall was built in 1753, and is where both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were debated and adopted. The city has an Historical Commission, dedicated to preserving Philadelphia’s rich history. Why, in a place like Philadelphia, would anyone think that buildings don’t matter?

Even buildings with far fewer, or even any, historic connection, serve important purposes, being places where people live and eat and work, things necessary to survival.

What did the “Buildings Matter, Too” article say?

Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?

That’s the question that has been raging on the streets of Philadelphia, and across my architecture-centric social media feeds, over the last two days as a dark cloud of smoke spiraled up from Center City. What started as a poignant and peaceful protest in Dilworth Park on Saturday morning ended up in a frenzy of destruction by evening. Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire.

Their chances of survival are slim, which means there could soon be a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia, in one of its most iconic and historic neighborhoods. And protesters moved on to West Philadelphia’s fragile 52nd Street shopping corridor, an important center of black life, where yet more property has been battered.

The very first line by Inquirer architecture writer Inga Saffron asked whether the destruction of buildings in the riots in the city after the killing of George Floyd mattered. She claimed that the anger of the protesters was justified, but also noted that yes, those buildings did matter, too.

“People over property” is great as a rhetorical slogan. But as a practical matter, the destruction of downtown buildings in Philadelphia — and in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and a dozen other American cities — is devastating for the future of cities. We know from the civil rights uprisings of the 1960s that the damage will ultimately end up hurting the very people the protests are meant to uplift. Just look at the black neighborhoods surrounding Ridge Avenue in Sharswood or along the western end of Cecil B. Moore Avenue. An incredible 56 years have passed since the Columbia Avenue riots swept through North Philadelphia, and yet those former shopping streets are graveyards of abandoned buildings. Residents still can’t get a supermarket to take a chance on their neighborhood.

The headline that Mr Wischnowski wrote was entirely appropriate for Miss Saffron’s column, because it expressed, succinctly, what was in the article. It noted that the destruction of these buildings was going to hurt Philadelphians, black and white alike, because damage and destruction was going to cost people their jobs.

More, it was catchy, in a way that editors are supposed to write headlines, to attract people actually to read the articles. That, however, was lost on the young #woke who populate the Inquirer’s newsroom.[1]A newsroom, I would note, that moved out of its own historic building almost a decade earlier, as the then Philadelphia Media Holdings sold the old building because the company was in poor financial … Continue reading

Back to Miss Hughes’ original:

But what has happened since? If our call then was to become an anti-racist news organization, what has been done? Has the passage of a year yielded anything concrete? Is there anything that adds real meaning to the lofty and ambitious goals announced over a few tense days when we faced the deserved public criticism?

The reader can follow the link to the Publisher’s original to see what she believes has been accomplished, but what I see is far, far different. According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, as of the end of Monday, May 25th, 208 people had been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love. That works out to 1.434 people being murdered every single day, and, if that figure is maintained throughout 2021, 524 homicides for the year, leaving last year’s 499, and 1990’s record of 500, well back in the rear view mirror.

Two of those 208 deaths were reported as having occurred on May 25th, the anniversary of Mr Floyd’s death. Yet, at least at 10:42 AM on the following day, there was not a single story on the Inquirer’s website main page concerning those deaths. The seven killings the Police Department reported as having occurred over the weekend[2]The Philadelphia Police Department only updates that page Monday through Friday, so the previous update, showing 199 homicides, was for 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, May 20th. did not rate a single story on the newspaper’s website main page. A site search for homicide turned up nothing, though searching for reporter Robert Moran, who usually covers these stories, turned up two very short news articles, covering one murder on the 24th and two separate murders on the 25th.

If I have to know which reporter to search to find these stories, how am I supposed to believe that #BlackLivesMatter, at least to the news staff of The Philadelphia Inquirer?

I am not the only person who has noticed this:

On Friday, December 11, 2020, Helen Ubiñas published an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.”

The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

Just weeks before the end of 2020, that number doubled. More than 400 people gunned down.

By the time you read this, there will only be more.

Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

“A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

Of course, Miss Ubiñas followed the Inquirer’s stylebook in claiming that these Philadelphians were “killed by guns.” No, they were killed by bad people, people who used guns as their tools. But the Inquirer doesn’t want to ever say that part.

I’ve told the truth previously: unless the murder victim is someone already of note, or a cute little white girl, the editors of the Inquirer don’t care, because, to be bluntly honest about it, the murder of a young black man in Philadelphia is not news. Unless the victim was a Somebody, the Inquirer didn’t care. If the victim is a white male, not even in the city, and the shooting was probably accidental, yeah, that merits not just one but two stories.

If the Publisher of the Inquirer really wants the paper to be, as she put it, “an anti-racist news organization,” then she needs to see to it that the newspaper, and its website,[3]I am a digital subscriber to the Inquirer. There is no getting a paper copy out in the wilds of eastern Kentucky. actually covers the news, covers the killings, follows up on the murders, and tells the truth to its readers.

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↑1 A newsroom, I would note, that moved out of its own historic building almost a decade earlier, as the then Philadelphia Media Holdings sold the old building because the company was in poor financial shape. Perhaps now working in the old Strawbridge’s building was less inspiring to the staff as far as architecture was concerned.
↑2 The Philadelphia Police Department only updates that page Monday through Friday, so the previous update, showing 199 homicides, was for 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, May 20th.
↑3 I am a digital subscriber to the Inquirer. There is no getting a paper copy out in the wilds of eastern Kentucky.
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Fear is the Mind-killer

We had previously noted the OpEd column by Alison McCook in The Philadelphia Inquirer on the 14th. Miss McCook said:

I have spent the last 20-plus years as a science journalist. I believe in the vaccines, and that the CDC’s new advice is likely supported by the latest data. I believe in Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who says he feels good about the CDC’s new decision and wants people to feel like we are approaching “normality.” But Thursday’s announcement from the CDC has filled me with fear.

Well, the Inquirer isn’t letting up on the fear-mongering!

Help, I’m still anxious about getting COVID-19 even though I’m vaccinated.

That anxiety? It’s totally natural, experts say, and there are ways to start managing, and conquering, it now.

By Grace Dickinson | May 14, 2021

Once you’re fully vaccinated, it’s safe to start resuming activities like traveling and having friends over for dinner, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As of recently, you can ditch your mask in most settings, too.

These are moments many of us have dreamed about for over a year. And yet, now that they’re finally here, you may be finding yourself having trouble shaking off the fear of getting COVID-19. That anxiety? It’s totally natural, experts say, and there are ways to start managing, and conquering, it now.

The fear is natural.

We’ve spent months training ourselves to be cautious and avoid anything that could put ourselves at risk of getting COVID-19. While getting vaccinated significantly reduces that risk, vaccines aren’t an overnight cure for anxiety. Nor can they do the work to reverse all that training, says Usama Bilal, an assistant professor in the urban health collaborative and the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at Drexel University.

“I still wear a mask outdoors half the time, even though I know that’s something I can stop doing,” says Bilal. “We’ve just experienced the worst pandemic in a century, and it’s both normal and OK for people to take the time they need to transition back to normal.”

If you’ve lost a loved one to COVID-19 or are part of a community that’s been disproportionately impacted, the transition may take longer. “I’d expect post-vaccine fear to be more prominent particularly for communities of color, and in a very valid way,” says Rachel Talley, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. “No matter who you are, feelings are not something to be judged. We’ve collectively, as a world, went through a traumatic experience, and a pandemic that we’re not truly over yet.”

At least that article is about how people can overcome their fear, but in claiming that “the fear is natural” the article normalizes the fearmongering which drove so many people into becoming sheeple!

On the 17th, columnist Elizabeth Wellington wrote “No, you shouldn’t ask for someone’s vaccination status. Here’s what to do instead,” making suggestions on how to get the answers you want without having to ask that very rude question. It feeds into the media-generated and Twitter-disseminated meme that it’s dangerous for fully vaccinated people to dispense with masks because no one can know if the next unmasked guy is vaccinated or not.

And on Wednesday?

The CDC says vaccinated people can unmask. But don’t feel pressured to let your guard down. | Expert Opinion

If you feel confused and worried about changing recommendations, you are not alone. A visit with your PCP is a good place to start.

by Jeffrey Millstein, For The Inquirer | May 19, 2021

For many, the recent news from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that fully vaccinated people can unmask and discontinue social distancing in most public places is a cause for celebration. However, that was not so for a patient I saw shortly after the May 13 announcement.

“Since I’m fully vaccinated, I know that if I do get COVID, it will probably be very mild,” he said. “But I don’t want to get COVID at all.”

He went on to express his frustration with the new CDC guidelines, which he feels will put him at greater risk because he suffers from chronic lung disease. In the past, even mild, non-COVID infections have caused his disease to flare enough to land him in the hospital. He also fears scorn from family and friends if he chooses to continue masking, or that people will assume he is unvaccinated if he wears a mask.

I said that I understood his concern, and that he should certainly continue to wear a mask in public if he feels less vulnerable doing so. We discussed the science behind the new recommendations, and the hope that it may inspire more people who have been hesitant to receive a COVID vaccination. The vaccines show excellent protection for all prevalent virus variants up to at least six months; firm data beyond that point are still lacking because it’s a new vaccine.

As always, there’s more at the original, but it all works out the same: if you are afraid, your fear is justified.

Fear is how we got to this point in the first place. The government wanted everybody afraid, to use fear to get the American people to accept the illegal and unconstitutional restrictions on our constitutional rights, as being just so necessary, don’t you know. When governors across the country ordered churches closed, churches and bishops went right along with it. When a couple of churches ignored Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) order, he sent the Kentucky State Police to record license plates and vehicle identification numbers on vehicles in church parking lots, on Easter Sunday! Two federal judges ruled against the Governor, allowing churches to reopen, but they did not rule until May 8, 2020.

It wasn’t just last year: purportedly Catholic President Biden’s CDC wanted us to miss services this Easter as well!

Easter Sunday was April 4th, yet within five weeks the CDC were saying that ‘fully vaccinated’ people could go without masks in public.

Fear! As Frank Herbert wrote in Dune, fear is the mind-killer, and fear was what the government used to get people to comply. Fear will always be used when a government wants to force you to do something unnatural, something you would not be inclined to do. Fear must be resisted, fear must be fought.

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Journolism: The Philadelphia Inquirer uncritically pushes transgenderism

When The Philadelphia Inquirer fired accepted the resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski due to pressure from the #woke staffers over his article title “Buildings Matter, Too,” it seems as though the last of the adults left the newspaper. Senior Editor Gabriel Escobar certainly hasn’t shown any leadership, nor has Charlotte Sutton, Assistant Managing Editor, Health, Business & Built Environment, if they let this kind of drivel be published:

These Penn State students are tackling the issue of period poverty on their own campus

A campus-wide survey found 13% of students who menstruate have skipped class or work because they didn’t have access to period products at Penn State.

By Bethany Ao | May 18, 2021

Last fall, when Jess Strait became president of a Penn State club focused on eliminating stigma associated with menstruation, one of her goals was to find out how period poverty — the inability to afford sanitary products — was affecting her fellow classmates.

Inspired by the work of No More Secrets, a Mount Airy nonprofit that delivers menstrual care packages around Philadelphia, Strait, a 20-year-old rising senior, and her team at the Days for Girls club drafted a short survey of 10 open-ended questions about menstruation. What they found shocked them.

Of the approximately 500 students surveyed, 13% have skipped class or work because they didn’t have the products they need.

If you apply that rate to the entire student body, Strait said, “that should be at least 2,500 undergraduates who are missing classes and not getting the most of their education because they don’t have period products.”

I’ve seen stories like this for years, and yes, I’m male, but as a man who has lived with a woman for 49 years, and the father of daughters, I’ve seen how women adapt to the fact that they have periods, and learn to carry “period products” with them as their cycles near menstruation.

I get it: sometimes women do get caught by surprise when it comes to their periods. Miss Ao’s article has to do with the availability of “period products” on campus, and the claim that some women are unable to afford them. I have no comments about such things.

But what got me about the article was the verbiage used. This paragraph illustrates it:

A study by researchers at George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services published in February found that one in 10 college students who menstruate reported chronic period poverty, which means that they struggled to pay for basic products each month. And 14% had trouble paying for menstrual products within the last year.

LOL! “(C)ollege students who menstruate”? Wouldn’t they be known as women?

Oops, that’s what got J K Rowling in such trouble.

Miss Ao did use some unwoke language in places, the very next paragraph using the word “woman” thrice, but it wasn’t too much further down that she wrote “At Penn State, the Days for Girls club conducted their own survey of more than 500 students who menstruate.” How incredibly unwoke that organization must be, using the term “Girls”, and thus excluding the “men who menstruate” from their membership and services!

“That was something that had been under our radar before this semester,” (Miss Strait) said. “In the free response questions we had several students who don’t identify as women and sometimes in their bathrooms there wasn’t a trash can, at all. They might have to carry a product with them to dispose of later. The fact that those communities are kind of being put at risk … was really alarming to us.”

The article went on to note that Indiana University supplies free “period products” in all public bathrooms, including men’s bathrooms, but, alas! some colleges do not.

Let me be clear on this: people who menstruate are women, are female. No male has ever had, or ever will have, a period, because menstruation is a biological function limited to females. We can forgive Miss Ao for reporting that Miss Strait was concerned about female “students who don’t identify as women,” because that’s Miss Strait’s belief, not the reporter’s. But Miss Ao uncritically used the term “students who menstruate” in paragraphs which were no quotations of someone else, and that is something which pushes the cockamamie agenda that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

A real editor would have ‘blue penciled’ that, but there is little evidence that The Philadelphia Inquirer has any real editors anymore.

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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.