Tag Archives: #PhiladelphiaInquirer

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The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us about its impending death.

Yes, I subscribe to The Philadelphia Inquirer, to keep up with the news from the state in which I lived for fifteen years, and the news from the City of Brotherly Love, and yes, I have often mocked the paper by calling it The Philadelphia Enquirer, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it sometimes can be. RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but it seems apt enough that I often use it. And thus I was wryly amused by this story:

At Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, the last newsstand stopped selling newspapers

The explanation, sadly, is old news. Nearly no one was buying them.

by Mike Newall | Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

The handwritten sign hung on the door of the newsstand at 30th Street Station. It offered one final headline from a shop that will carry no more.

“No newspapers,” it read, underlined four times for emphasis.

That’s because earlier this month Faber, the New Jersey-based newsstand and bookseller, stopped selling newspapers at its 30th Street location. The store’s shelves remain stocked with magazines, periodicals, books, snacks, greeting cards, and travel trinkets. But the iconic station’s sole newsagent is now a newsstand without newspapers.

The explanation, sadly, is old news. Nearly no one was buying them.

One would think that this story would truly alarm Publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar, and the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, which owns the newspaper. If no one is buying the newspaper, that means that no one wants the newspaper, at least not enough to pay the newsstand price of $2.95.

Slumping sales would hardly come as a surprise. Not in the Age of Smartphones. Not when the pandemic only worsened the newspaper industry’s existential struggle to survive its digital transformation. And not as newsstands themselves, like coin-operated news boxes before them, slowly disappear.

But newspaper sales had grown beyond bleak at 30th Street Station, Carr said. Each year an estimated four million passengers pass through the station’s soaring concourse, making it Amtrak’s third busiest hub. Meanwhile, in recent times, the stand rarely sold more than a dozen daily papers each day, Carr said. (And mostly out-of-town publications. Ouch.) Then there’s rising prices, delivery costs, and time and energy spent bundling up returns.

I’m actually a special case. Due at least in part to my poor hearing, getting the news via television or radio isn’t effective for me. More, when I read the news, if there’s something which sounds strange or inconsistent, I can go back are reread the part that confused me. More, using printed material for my poor site, I like using a more comprehensive and consistent site; newspapers have the ability to go more into depth than the broadcast/cablecast media. Finally, I delivered newspapers when I was in junior high and high schools. They are, for me, a medium I appreciate and like.

But if newspapers, which actually are just updated 18th century technology, want to survive somehow, they have to produce a product that people actually want to not just read, but actually buy. National news we can get for free, even if in print form, from CNN or Fox or the new News Nation, which claims to be unbiased. I’m paying for the Inky because I’m looking for Philly and Pennsylvania news, and if the Inky can’t provide that, in a form that people will buy, in the end, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper will be history.

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In trying to avoid calling street gangs gangs, The Philadelphia Inquirer has again beclowned itself

We have expended some bandwidth mocking The Philadelphia Inquirer for its statement that there are no real gangs in the City of Brotherly Love:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

We also mocked the George Soros-sponsored defense mouthpiece who is now the city’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, when his office decided to refer to them as rival street groups. And we pointed out, at the end of last year, that what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. was still using euphemisms to refer to gangs those cliques of young men, though the word “gang” in one article, apparently for prosaic reasons, since the term “street group” had been used previously in the same sentence.

Since then, we have noted the newspaper’s adoption of the term “street groups.”

And now? The Enquirer Inquirer is taking a silly effort to justify it!

North Philadelphia street group ‘BNG’ members have been charged in multiple shootings

Prosecutors say four men committed a string of shootings in 2021 that left two people dead and five others injured.

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, May 23, 2023

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday announced charges against four young men affiliated with a North Philadelphia street group that investigators say committed a string of shootings in 2021 that left two people dead and five others injured.

Following a more than year-long investigation, prosecutors charged four men they say are affiliated with the group “BNG” or “Big Naddy Gang” — named after a 15-year-old boy known as “Naddy” who was fatally shot in April 2021.

So, the “street group” members call themselves a “gang,” but the Inky can’t? 🙂

After the teen was killed, prosecutors said, his friends — seeking retaliation and local notoriety — formed BNG and committed at least five shootings in the next six months, chronicling the violence along the way on social media, in rap songs, and in texts to one another.

District Attorney Larry Krasner said Tuesday that the young men wrote in one text that they “put the ‘h’ in homicide.”

“Today, we’re going to put the ‘j’ in jail,” the DA said.

One does wonder whether Mr Krasner had the opportunity to put the ‘j’ in jail for the accused previously, but declined to do so.

Mugshots via 6ABC News, because the Inquirer would never publish them.

The story went on to describe the crimes allegedly committed by the members of the gang, Dontae Sutton, then 17, Jamir Brunson-Gans, 18 at the time, Elijah Soto, then 16, and Khalil Henry, then 17.

Brunson-Gans and Soto have each been charged with murder, attempted murder, and related crimes.

Henry has been charged with murder, two counts of attempted murder, and related offenses.

Sutton has been charged with murder, four counts of attempted murder, and many additional crimes.

Since three of the four were under 18 at the times of their alleged offenses, the obvious question becomes: will Mr Krasner charge them as adults, or juveniles? Mr Soto has already had that break previously:

Soto was arrested in January 2022 and charged with conspiracy and simple assault after court records say he and three others attacked, kicked, and stabbed a juvenile. A court spokesperson said the adult charges against Soto were withdrawn and the case was transferred to juvenile court.

Here’s where the Inky gets funny:

This is the third sprawling indictment of a Philadelphia street group in just the last six months, as the District Attorney’s Office, in partnership with local and federal police, try to crack down on the numerous street groups across Philadelphia.

Those groups — which prosecutors call gangs, a label sometimes contested by community members given the groups’ small size and fluid structure and membership — are often made up of a small group of friends, mostly young men, largely from the same neighborhood. Many are involved in the drill rap scene, and their music and social media posts often chronicle — and fuel — shootings, authorities say.

So, even the District Attorney calls them gangs now, but The Philadelphia Inquirer will not? One wonders: what is the minimum size at which a “street group” becomes a “gang” as far as the Inky is concerned? Maybe when they call themselves Bloods or Crips?

At what point do the editors and the publisher of the Inquirer realize just how foolish they look? Everyone reading the Inky’s stories knows that they mean “gang” when they write “street group,” so it isn’t as though the newspaper is somehow fooling anybody.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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Killadelphia: Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Sometimes, reporters for The Philadelphia Inquirer don’t really pay attention to their sources. Dylan Purcell wrote:

Through midnight Friday there were 155 homicides citywide, a 14% decline from the same date last year.

Well, that’s what the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page said on Saturday, but, as the website states, the figures are only updated Monday through Friday during normal business hours. The 155 figure is actually from Thursday, May 18th, but Mr Purcell was apparently unaware of that. Since Mr Purcell describes himself as “a local investigative reporter specializing in data and documents that expose wrongdoing”, one would think that he’d understand his data sources better.

And I note that the template still states that the percentage change is compared to 2021, but it’s actually the change compared to 2022.

Multiple weekend shootings in Philly leave four dead, and a 17-year-old in critical condition

A 21-year-old man was killed in the triple shooting in which two teenagers were wounded

by Dylan Purcell | Saturday, May 20, 2023

Multiple shootings Friday night and early Saturday in Philadelphia left four people dead and five others hospitalized, including a 17-year-old who was in critical condition, police said.

A 21-year-old man died after suffering multiple gunshot wounds in a triple shooting on the 5600 block of Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia about 8:45 p.m. Friday, according to police. The victim was identified as Michael Goodwin, of the 1200 block of South Greylock Street.

The two other victims — a 17-year-old who is in “extremely critical condition” and a 16-year-old reported in stable condition, were taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.

Of course, Mr Purcell deleted what was actually reported, that a 21-year-old black man died, because reporting all of the news is against the Inquirer’s editorial guidelines.

Less than an hour earlier, a shooting inside a barbershop in the 2000 block of Kensington Avenue took the life of a 43-year-old man. The victim, Adinson Suarez-Marte, of the 3000 block of Hartville Street, was taken by police to Temple University Hospital for several gunshot wounds to his torso. He was pronounced shortly after arrival.

Police are seeking information on as many as eight men who they said were seen wearing dark clothing and masks. No arrests were made, or weapons recovered from the barbershop scene.

As many as eight men being sought? In other words, a gang shooting, not that the Inky uses the word “gang” anymore.

Mr Purcell also noted an apparent murder/suicide that was found shortly after midnight, which would place it under Saturday’s statistics.

The website Broad + Liberty maintains its own homicide tracker, because, quite frankly, a lot of people do not believe that the city’s statistics are completely reliable, and that site documents 160 homicides through Thursday, May 18th. B+L has a third homicide listed for the 19th, beyond the two the Inquirer reported, and does not, as of 12:40 PM EDT on Sunday, May 21st, include the reported murder/suicide.

Broad + Liberty is very careful in its collection of statistics, and includes links to its documentation of homicides; while a few of the reports are listed as media reports, the vast majority are from Philadelphia Police Department news releases or emails. This is a source Mr Purcell needs to consider, but if the Inquirer has ever questioned the PPD statistics, I’ve yet to see it.

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Killadelphia: Everyone wants to talk around the problem, without ever telling the truth

There are dozens and dozens of suggestions on how to reduce crime, but there is one way which actually does work: locking up the criminals that are caught for as long as the law allows, because the criminal who is behind bars is not out on the streets able to commit more crimes. But somehow, some way, that very simple logic has escaped the good citizens of the City of Brotherly Love. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Gun violence can affect every part of Philly life. Here’s how residents suggest solving it.

Philadelphians are “tired of looking over their shoulder.” Some want to leave the city altogether.

by Ellie Rushing and Nate File | Monday, March 20, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Joshua Sanchez was leaving his bank one day in North Philly when a group of men with guns swarmed him. They robbed him, he said, then shot him once in the back before fleeing.

“It’s still there,” Sanchez, 38, said of the bullet, which is lodged too deep and close to his spine for doctors to remove.

Three years later, he’s tried to move his life forward, but gun violence remains a looming threat. Sanchez hears shots at home and at job sites, where he works in property maintenance. The danger often feels overwhelming, the lifelong Philadelphian said. He worries that if he stays much longer, he or his son may not survive.

“I just put my house up for sale,” he said. “I’m getting out of Philadelphia.”

He wouldn’t be the first. The 2020 Census put the population of Philadelphia at 1,603,797, but just a year later, the Census Bureau was guesstimating the city’s population as down to 1,576,251, a 1.72% population loss. More than a year later, the Census Bureau has still not updated its website to reflect its guesstimate for 2022 population.

Nearly 50% of Philadelphians in recent poll said that gun violence has had a major negative impact on their quality of life, per the Lenfest Institute for Journalism and research firm SSRS, and 64% of respondents said they have heard gunshots in their neighborhood in the last year.

This is the second time in a week in which I have seen the Leftist Lenfest Institute referenced in an Inquirer story, yet in neither the previous one, nor this, does the newspaper article point out that the Lenfest Institute owns the Inquirer. To cite something as though it is an outside source without that disclosure violates every standard of journalism of which I can think. The Lenfest Institute’s website doesn’t even mention that it owns the Inky on its main page, and you have to go down to a second section on its “About” page to see that acknowledged.

In interviews with nearly a dozen residents, people conveyed an ever-present fear of life in the city. Many said they’ve changed their habits in recent years as shootings have spiked, and now limit their time spent outdoors, especially at night. Mothers said they worry about their children anytime they leave home. Others, such as Sanchez, said they’d move out of Philadelphia if they had the resources.

“People are tired of looking over their shoulder,” said Jacob Green, 69, a poll respondent who’s saving up money to move from Mount Airy to North Carolina.

Then there was this tweet from WCAU-TV, Channel 10, the NBC owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia. District Attorney Larry Krasner apparently wants to give them their severe slaps on the wrist, and released a series of mugshots of homicide suspects. Given that many of the credentialed media journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading have complained about Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News and his unsoftened coverage of crime in the city, they will doubtlessly be aghast that NBC10 put together this montage of the mugshots of the ten murder suspects, because nine of them are black, and one appears to be Hispanic, or “brown” as The Philadelphia Inquirer would call him. That the District Attorney had the police mugshots of nine of the ten suspects tells us that all but one had been previously arrested, which raises the obvious question: how many, if any, of these suspects could and should have been behind bars when they committed the murders of which they are accused?

More than that, in the linked story from NBC10, the mugshots of the ten suspects are all separate, but, for the tweet, the station put them all together, a montage of minority suspects.

As I guessed without looking first, the Inky didn’t have any of that on their website main page or specific crime page.[2]As of 10;10 AM EDT. The newspaper would much rather not show mugshots like that than help the police apprehend murder suspects.

Back to the original Inquirer article:

The poll also quantified a long-known fact of the crisis: Communities of color largely bear the brunt of it.

Black respondents were more than twice as likely to say that gun violence has seriously affected their quality of life, compared with white respondents. And across income levels, Black and Latino residents were more likely than white residents to report that they had heard gunshots in the last year.

So, while the Inky is willing to tell us that “(c)ommunities of color” are the primary victims of shootings and killings in Philly, the newspaper is unwilling to do anything to get identified and sought-after killers off the city’s streets. Got it!

The survey indicates that while 86% want improved relationships between the police and local communities, only 55% support increased funding for the Philadelphia Police Department. And the people of Philadelphia voted, by landslide margins in both the primary and general elections, in Philly’s most murderous year, 2021, to keep Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner as District Attorney.

Meanwhile, Margie Harkins, 63, a former X-ray technician who frequently worked with gun violence victims, said she wants to see stricter gun laws but knows that action must come from state leaders, not the city. But first, she said, the city must address the mindset of the people using guns.

“Why is everything settled by pulling a gun?” asked Harkins, a poll respondent from Southwest Philly.

Why? Because parents aren’t rearing their children properly, that’s why. With fathers absent or never known, and mothers trying to rear children on their own when there simply are not enough hours in the day to work and try to be both mother and father to their kids, with drugs rampant and a city that’s trying not to stamp out drugs but create ‘safe injection centers’, how can anyone expect anything other than savagery?

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑2 As of 10;10 AM EDT.
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Once again, the #woke credentialed media don’t want to cover the story * Updated! *

As we reported on Saturday, some of the credentialed journalists, journolists as we see them, really don’t like it when other journalists do something really radical like report the facts. The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

Yesterday, a 15-year-old Hispanic boy was shot and killed, shot ten times, making it an obvious hit, not far from Samuel Fels High School. Here’s the story from Fox 29 News:

Police: 15-year-old chased down Philadelphia street, shot to death in broad daylight

Published March 13, 2023 1:27PM | Updated 10:17PM

PHILADELPHIA – A 15-year-old is dead after police say he was chased down a Philadelphia street by a group of gunmen and shot at least 10 times. Continue reading →

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The Philadelphia Inquirer: using grammar to avoid telling the whole truth

Writers attempt to communicate with the written word, and decent writers should know at least something about grammar, to ply their trade most efficiently. One important concept in grammar is the difference between the comparative and the superlative.

Comparatives vs. Superlatives

Published October 7, 2019

Not all things are created equal: some are good, others are better, and only the cream of the crop rise to the level of best. These three words—good, better, and best—are examples of the three forms of an adjective or adverb: positive, comparative, and superlative. . . . .

There are a few irregular adjectives and adverbs. For those, you must memorize how these change the spelling of their positive form to show comparative and superlative degrees.

Some common irregular adjectives are good, better, best and bad, worse, worst.

Some have more than one option: little can become littler or less (comparative), and littlest or least (superlative). Many, some, or much become more in the comparative and most in the superlative.

It was this paragraph which caught my attention, in the main editorial in this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer. Any decent writer understands that he shouldn’t use the same word twice in a sentence if possible, so when the Editorial Board wrote that “too many residents endure,” the following should be “where most, but not all, the shootings occur.” Continue reading →

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You can never solve a problem unless you admit what the problem is, and Philly’s Democrats won’t do that

As we noted on Friday, with “(N)early thirty” spent shell casings — and an Inquirer photo shows a #29 evidence marker at the shell casings — and three shooters, and everyone is going to know that this was a targeted hit intended for one or more of the victims, and this is Philly same old, same old. Of course we were right!

The Strawberry Mansion shooting that wounded 7 was a targeted attack that hit bystanders — including a 2-year-old and her mother

Surveillance footage shows the three black-clad masked shooters firing at the teenagers, as bystanders flee stray bullets.

by Rodrigo Torrejón, Oona Goodin-Smith, and Chris Palmer | Friday, February 24, 2023 | 11:02 PM EST

The shooting that wounded seven people Thursday evening in Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion neighborhood appeared to be a targeted attack between three shooters and a group of teenagers — with stray bullets injuring a 2-year-old girl and her mother — police said Friday. The gunmen remain at large.

It occurred shortly before 6 p.m. as the group of four teens rounded the corner of 31st and Norris Streets, in front of a beer distributor and half a block from James G. Blaine School.

Surveillance footage shows that as the group turned the corner, three black-clad masked shooters hopped out of a silver Hyundai parked in front of the beer shop and began to shoot at the teenagers using at least one gun with an extended clip — peppering the street with gunfire. . . . .

Police said Friday they are still searching for three shooters and a gray, four-door Hyundai Elantra, possibly a model from 2011 to 2016, with an unknown Pennsylvania license plate. Police said it wasn’t immediately clear why the group of teens was targeted.

“It wasn’t immediately clear why the group of teens was targeted”? Bovine feces! It is crystal clear: one group had a beef with another, and in Philadelphia’s normal culture under Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, beefs among the gang-bangers “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families” are settled with bullets. It wouldn’t be quite so bad if the bad guys underprivileged young men from neighborhoods depressed by years of housing ‘redlining’ and economic disinvestment were better shots and only struck their intended victims. Continue reading →

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Killadelphia: Once again, The Philadelphia Inquirer tries to obscure the truth. Philly's "cliques of young men" are some really lousy shots!

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, there have been 68 people murdered in the City of Brotherly Love as of 11:59 PM EST on Thursday, February 23rd, four more than the previous day’s report.

The Twitter site Philly Crime Update reported on two of them, which was more than our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, did. The Inky did, however, have a big story on a multiple shooting in which no one was killed, because it was near a school:

7 people, including a 2-year-old girl and 5 teenagers, were shot in Strawberry Mansion

The gunfire erupted just after 5:50 p.m. at 31st and Norris Streets, police said. Three shooters remained at large, police said.

by Robert Moran, Ellie Rushing, and Kristen A. Graham | Thursday, February 23, 2023 | 10:48 PM EST

Seven people, including a 2-year-old girl and five teenagers, were wounded in a shooting Thursday evening near a school in the city’s Strawberry Mansion section, police said.

The gunfire erupted just after 5:50 p.m. on the northeast corner of 31st and Norris Streets in front of a beer distributor, said police, who provided the following information on the victims:

  • 2-year-old black female who was shot in her left thigh, transported by private vehicle with a police escort to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, listed in stable condition.
  • 15-year-old male, race not specified, shot twice in the chest and once in the right side of his body was transported to Temple University Hospital, listed in critical condition.
  • 13-year-old black male shot in his left hand, transported to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, listed in stable condition.
  • 16-year-old black male shot in his left arm, transported to Temple University Hospital, listed in stable condition.
  • 16-year-old black male shot in his right arm and left leg was taken by medics to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, reported in stable condition.
  • 17-year-old black male with a graze wound to his thigh was transported by Uber to Thomas Jefferson, reported in stable condition.
  • 31-year-old black female, was shot twice in the left leg, transported to Temple, listed in stable condition.

Except that, nope, what I listed above was the information actually provided by the police. What the Inquirer published was:

A 2-year-old girl who was shot in her left thigh was transported by private vehicle with a police escort to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she was listed in stable condition.

A 15-year-old boy shot twice in the chest and once in the right side of his body was transported to Temple University Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition.

A 13-year-old boy shot in his left hand also was transported to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he was listed in stable condition.

A 16-year-old boy shot in his left arm also was taken to Temple and was reported in stable condition.

Another 16-year-old boy shot in his right arm and left leg was taken by medics to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. He was reported in stable condition.

A 17-year-old boy with a graze wound to his thigh was transported by Uber to Thomas Jefferson and was reported in stable condition.

The seventh victim, a 31-year-old woman, was shot twice in the left leg. She was listed in stable condition at Temple.

Note that the newspaper deliberately scrubbed all references to race from their story. It’s nice to have the direct confirmation of what I have been saying, that the Inky has been deliberately censoring the information they have received, in order to fulfill publisher Elizabeth Hughes’ dictate that the newspaper will be an “anti-racist news organization,” but at some point, I’ve got to ask: who do they think they’re fooling? It’s Strawberry Mansion, and anybody who knows anything about Philly will simply assume that the victims are black.

Of course, it wasn’t just the victims about whom the Inky censored information:

Late Thursday night, police said they were looking for three shooters and a gray 4-door Hyundai Elantra, possibly a model year from 2011 to 2016, with an unknown Pennsylvania license plate.

The Inquirer printed the same images that Philly Crime Update had received from the police, but the newspaper censored the fact that all three suspects are black males, another thing that almost all readers would suspect. “(N)early thirty” spent shell casings — and an Inquirer photo shows a #29 evidence marker at the shell casings — and three shooters, and everyone is going to know that this was a targeted hit intended for one or more of the victims, and this is Philly same old, same old. The police will interrogate the victims, to attempt to find out which one had been the real target, though it’s always possible that the intended victim will clam up, expecting street justice from other members of his crew.

One final point: at least 29 rounds fired, and the gang-bangers “clique of young men”[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading didn’t actually kill anyone? Philly’s “cliques of young men” are some really rotten shots!

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups“
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Are dog lives more important than humans in Philadelphia?

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page has reported that 62 Philadelphians have been sent untimely to their eternal rewards as of 11:59 PM EST on Monday, February 20th. While that number is lower than the same date in 2021 and 2022, it’s higher than in 2020, which saw 499 ‘official’ homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. And, as we have reported frequently, very few of those killings — other than the fatal shooting of Temple Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald, allegedly by a privileged punk kid from Bucks County — have received much press coverage from The Philadelphia Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and the newspaper of record for the entire area.

Well, this morning, the newspaper I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. showed us just what shootings in the city are really important!

Off-duty FBI agent shoots dog in Center City

The incident occurred Monday evening on the 1500 block of Spruce Street. It was not immediately known if the dog survived.

by Robert Moran | Tuesday, February 21, 2023 | 7:38 AM EST

An off-duty FBI agent shot a dog outside a Center City apartment building Monday, the FBI and Philadelphia police said.

Video posted on social media showed the aftermath of the incident on the sidewalk in front of the Touraine residential high-rise on the 1500 block of Spruce Street.

The special agent was walking a small dog when she encountered at least one other person walking two dogs, according to witnesses. A fight broke out involving the three dogs.

It was not immediately known if the dog that was shot survived. The FBI did not identify the agent.

At the end of the story:

Animal rights organization Revolution Philly is planning to protest the animal shooting in front of FBI headquarters at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

“This woman is a trained professional and a dog owner. Her first reaction shouldn’t be to shoot first,” said Revolution Philly organizer Tiffany Stair in a statement. “This is unacceptable and we are demanding that she be held accountable.”

The entire article, exclusive of the headline, subheading, photos, and byline, was 237 words over nine paragraphs, a lot longer than the usual reports of killings.

Polar Bear, the Great Pyrenees who is trying to move in with us.

We have two dogs ourselves, and a third, a 150 lb Great Pyrenees we have named Polar Bear, who is trying to move in with us. If we didn’t know his actual human, who lives ¾ mile away from us, we’d let him, but his real human loves him. Bear loves our dogs, and us, more than his human. So, yes, to us, the shooting of a dog is a bad, bad thing.

But, radically enough, the idea that a dog was shot, and perhaps killed — that part is as yet unknown — is generating a protest by Revolution Philly, while the 230 reported shooting victims[2]Through February 20, 2023, including 46 fatally shot, plus 16 other murders, have mostly drawn nothing but the sound of crickets in the city, strikes me as a terrible thing.

Murder has simply been normalized in Philadelphia. Yes, Officer Fitzgerald’s senseless murder, by a punk who seemingly thought he was playing Grand Theft Auto in real life, has generated a lot of emotion in Philly, but for the most part, murder victims are mourned by their family and friends, and otherwise dismissed as just the same old, same old.

And why not? The city is governed by Democrats, has been since Harry Truman was President, and it seems as though preserving prenatal infanticide is the most important issue to them. It’s not as though teenagers don’t get that message, that people who are inconvenient can simply be disposed of, and it really isn’t a surprise that teenaged gangbangers and wannabes find life cheap enough that they will shoot people over the least provocation. The Democrats want to ‘explain’ the city’s killing spree as the result of poverty, racism, segregation, and community ‘disinvestment,’ but the 18-year-old white kid who (allegedly) killed Officer Fitzgerald was a privileged kid, living in his mother’s $1.2 million, 15-acre estate in Bucks County, who’d had one previous ‘contact’, a telephoned and internet reported bomb threat that got him one month’s probation in Bucks County, with law enforcement as a juvenile. For whatever reasons there were, his parents — who are now divorced, with a rumored, but unconfirmed by reliable sources, custody dispute — didn’t teach their son respect for life, and now he’s looking at spending the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

The death penalty, to which I am opposed anyway, is off the table: Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) has stated that he will not allow any executions to proceed as long as he is in office,[3]In Pennsylvania, the Governor does not have independent authority to commute capital sentences, but can only do so with the recommendation of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. and District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) has campaigned on, and vowed, never to seek the death penalty in any capital crimes committed while he is prosecutor. A photo of the alleged killer shows him in custody, leaning back, apparently awaiting questioning, with a posture that says, “What the f(ornicate) did I do? The rest of my life is trashed,” perhaps the best picture from this entire, sad episode. His father and mother — and the mother may be charged with a crime as well, for allegedly picking up her son after he called her for help — are going to have to live with that image, burned into their minds, wondering what they could have done differently.

There’s also a photo of him, as a juvenile, wearing a Biden-Harris t-shirt. Yeah, that’s a way not to rear your children right!

Philadelphia, and many other urban areas as well, are places in which human life has become cheap, and with life being cheap, life is being taken cheaply. When we have politicians telling us that human life before birth can be sucked out and destroyed, because some babies are just plain inconvenient, when we have parents supporting and voting for the politicians who support prenatal infanticide, we’re going to get more punks like the one who murdered Officer Fitzgerald. And we’re also going to get more punks roaming the streets of our major cities who apparently think nothing of blowing away rival gang members or girls that cheated on them or people who resist armed carjacking attempts or just look at them the wrong way.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 Through February 20, 2023
↑3 In Pennsylvania, the Governor does not have independent authority to commute capital sentences, but can only do so with the recommendation of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.