Tag Archives: #SocialJustice

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Helen Gym Flaherty apparently thinks that money grows on trees And she wants to do everything she can to improve public safety except the most obvious: actually enforce the law!

As Robert Stacy McCain noted in “Chicago Votes for More Crime,” when the Windy City Democrats nominated police-hating Brandon Johnson to become their next Mayor, the bad things that happened under Mayor Lori Lightfoot would just get worse.

When Jazz Shaw refers to the city’s “carjacking epidemic,” it’s no exaggeration. As recently as 2014, Chicago had barely 300 carjackings a year. Last year, there were more than 1,600 carjackings in Chicago, to go along with 737 murders and 2,937 people wounded from gunfire.

In crime-ridden Philadelphia, you’d think that people would take notice of that, and some did. Philadelphia’s Working Families Party tweeted how happy they were that Mr Johnson won in Chicago, and wanted Philly to be next by voting for Helen Gym Flaherty.

Who are the Working Families Party? On their About page, they pretty much tell us that they are full socialist without saying that they are full socialist, but I will admit to being amused that the photo they used[1]Also here, in case they delete it. as an illustration of who they are was of almost entirely young people, mostly Asian, in front of a Chinese restaurant in New York City, in the summer[2]Or so I judge by their shorts, sandals, and crop tops., all wearing silly face masks.

And so we come to Mrs Flaherty. The Philadelphia Inquirer, which, to their (slight) credit, endorsed Rebecca Rhynhart rather than the far-left Mrs Flaherty, had this on the Working Families’ favorite:

Philly mayoral candidate Helen Gym’s education plan includes a $10B ‘Green New Deal’ for schools

Gym said Thursday the city could borrow money to finance some capital costs and that she favors directing a higher share of property taxes to the School District.

by Anna Orso | Thursday, April 6, 2023 | 7;40 PM EDT

Philadelphia mayoral candidate Helen Gym on Thursday unveiled an education proposal that includes guaranteed jobs for teenagers, free SEPTA passes for all city students, and a $10 billion plan to modernize school buildings.

Gym, who stood with supporters outside Edward T. Steel Elementary School in Nicetown to make the announcement, called her public-education focused capital plan a “Green New Deal for Schools” and vowed to implement a 10-year facilities improvement plan. She also said she would add more librarians and counselors to schools, overhaul the high school selection process, and base school budgets on need, not enrollment levels.

Ahhh, yes, the Edward T Steel Elementary School. City Councilwoman Kendra Brooks, a Working Families Party member, tweeted:

I met @HelenGymPHL over a decade ago when my daughter’s school was going to be privatized. We were a few moms saying we want something greater. We DESERVE something better.

That’s what her education plan is about. That’s why I’m standing here today because since day one, she’s been fighting for communities like mine. And winning.

To this day, Edward T. Steel Elementary is a public school.

Why yes, it is. In the still public Steel Elementary, which is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 8% scored at or above that level for reading. Maybe keeping it public didn’t work all that well?

Another respondent had the charts. But perhaps having a campaign rally touting public education in front of a clearly failing public school wasn’t the brightest idea, unless Mrs Flaherty was assuming that the people who would be most likely to vote for her aren’t particularly bright themselves.

Her announcement was another sign that the former City Council member and longtime public-schools activist is running in part on her education background by proposing a laundry list of schools improvements that teachers and advocates have been urging for years. . . . .

The proposal didn’t include an overall price tag, but $10 billion in capital costs alone would represent an enormous expense. Under the current administration, the proposed capital investment for the entire city for the next six years is $13.2 billion.

My compliments to reporter Anna Orso for researching that and pointing it out. Where would the city get the money?

Gym said Thursday the city could borrow money to finance some capital costs and that she favors directing a higher share of property taxes to the School District, which currently receives 55% of local property tax revenue. Doing so would, in turn, decrease cash flow to the city’s coffers.

“The point is that we’re not going to get there if all we say is what we don’t have,” she said. “I know the city has to get down to business to do it, but it needs a plan, it needs a vision, and we need somebody who’s been relentless about fighting for this from day one.”

As we have previously noted, Philadelphia’s population has dropped by 2.28% between the April 2020 Census and the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 population guesstimate. More, 3.34% of the 36,539 souls lost during that time period, 1,222 people, were lost to murder! If Mrs Flaherty’s proposals were put into effect, the obvious result is that more better-off people would move out of the city due to the higher taxes which would necessarily be imposed to pay for all of her ideas, whether paid for by direct taxation or in the debt service she would impose. Philly’s poverty rate, 23.1%, is double the U.S average, while the city’s median income, $49,127, is just three-quarters of the national average. Mrs Flaherty’s plans, if they push out more of the higher earners, can only exacerbate that problem, and make paying for her plans even harder.

But her plans, along with those of the Working Families Party are pretty much in line with their complete lack of understanding of economics. Perhaps they believe that money can be created out of thin air, since that’s what our federal government seems to be doing, but Philly isn’t the federal government.

The city’s teachers union, one of Gym’s biggest backers, quickly endorsed the plan Thursday, with Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan saying in a statement that Gym’s plan also prioritizes safety — including through guaranteed after-school programs — and has “thoughtful and proactive measures to address a real crisis in our city.”

Well, of course the teachers’ union endorsed Mrs Flaherty! Government employees all, they, too, have no concept of economics, and they, too, seem to think that the public trough is ever-full and never-ending. It was the teachers in Kentucky which caused former Governor Matt Bevin to lose his re-election bid, because he tried to do something really radical like reform their pension system before it went broke.

But in reading Mrs Flaherty’s website Issues page, clicking on her “Safety in every neighborhood” section, I read that she would “Declare a State of Emergency on Gun Violence,” “Protect, Uplift, and Empower Philadelphia’s Young People,” have “Community-Driven Interventions and Effective Policing,” “Reduce Violence with Clean and Green Neighborhoods”, and “Provide Real Support for Victims of Violent Crime and their Families,” spending gobs of money in these things, but never once said anything about reducing the number of vacancies in the Philadelphia Police Department, the people who actually enforce the law, the people who do their best to get criminals off the streets. Mrs Flaherty strongly endorsed and campaigned with, George Soros-sponsored “restorative justice” District Attorney Larry Krasner, later saying, “I support reducing the prison population by 50% from 2019 levels. We must center transformative and restorative justice practices in Philadelphia.” She wants to do everything ti increase public safety other than getting criminals off the streets! The Philadelphia Tribune reported:

She also vowed to overhaul the Philadelphia Police Department, “so that they are more responsive and interactive with neighbors, so that we are dealing with young people, and helping and support young people, who are currently in the path of violence right now.”

So, nothing about more police officers, just ‘progressive’ reform. Yeah, that has worked so well other places.

In addition to reverse the slashing of hours at recreation centers and public libraries, she said she wants public schools to be open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., referencing the high amount of gun violence involving students that happens before 6 p.m. Gym also pledged to remove 10,000 abandoned cars from city streets and sealing 50% of the city’s vacant lots.

So, spending more money, money that the Jim Kenney Administration couldn’t find. It’s not like Mayor Kenney wanted to close libraries and recreation centers; he just didn’t have the money to do otherwise. Of course, having the recreation centers open didn’t decrease violence, and the city could open only 50 of its 65 pools because they couldn’t find enough lifeguards.

Let’s face it: there are no good candidates for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, but there are some who are worse than others, and Helen Gym Flaherty is the worst of the worst.

References

References
↑1 Also here, in case they delete it.
↑2 Or so I judge by their shorts, sandals, and crop tops.
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The Social Justice Warriors do not believe in people’s property rights

As we noted on Thursday, Philadelphia uses an unusual system for evictions, not relying on the Sheriff’s office, but a private firm:

Unlike other jurisdictions, Philadelphia courts rely on a private attorney, appointed by Municipal Court’s president judge and known as a landlord-tenant officer, to execute evictions. This attorney deputizes private security contractors to perform on-site lockouts in exchange for the right to collect millions in related eviction fees.

With a woman resisting a lawful eviction getting shot in the head by a deputy landlord-tenant officer on Wednesday morning, there were obvious outcries from the usual suspects:

Pa. lawmakers want to ban hired security from doing evictions after shooting of Philly tenant

A deputy landlord-tenant officer shot a woman while enforcing a court-ordered eviction. Lawmakers are proposing to change how the system operates.

by Ryan W. Briggs , Max Marin, and Jesse Bunch | Thursday, March 30, 2023

State lawmakers from Philadelphia are proposing to ban private firms from enforcing evictions after a security contractor shot a 35-year-old woman during an attempted lockout Wednesday.

The move comes after a shooting that has brought Philadelphia’s unusual eviction system into the spotlight.

While most jurisdictions deploy sworn law enforcement personnel, such as sheriff deputies, to enforce evictions, Philadelphia outsources much of that work to a private, for-profit law firm, known as a Landlord-Tenant Officer. This firm in turn contracts out the work of serving court notices and performing tenant lockouts to armed security guards, known as deputy landlord-tenant officers.

That unique arrangement would be banned under legislation State Sens. Nikil Saval and Sharif Street plan to introduce. A bill the Philadelphia Democrats plan to introduce next month would amend state codes to clarify that courts across Pennsylvania “cannot empower private companies or individuals to perform evictions,” according to a statement.

With “progressive” Helen Gym Flaherty running for Mayor of Philadelphia and letting us know how she feels about the eviction system, I can easily see how the rights of property owners can be abridged by the city government. If evictions are returned to the Sheriff’s office for enforcement, then the problems that the Sheriff’s office already have would hit eviction services. In the past, confiscated weapons have gone unaccounted or missing, and even though the then-new Sheriff, Rochelle Bilal, said that she had instituted a new, reformed system and was cleaning up the mess in November of 2020, we previously noted that Sheriff’s Deputy Samir Ahmad was arrested in October of 2022 for trafficking firearms.

The Sheriff is an independently-elected official in Philadelphia, and even the left-wing Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer has complained that Sheriff Bilal has failed in her attempts to reform the Department and that the whole office should be abolished. What if the next Sheriff campaigns on a pledge to not enforce eviction orders?

The original Fourteenth Amendment, via the National Archives.

The Fourteenth Amendment says, in part:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Our rights to property are confirmed in the Constitution of the United States, but we have a situation in which a lot of Philadelphians think that evictions for not paying your rent are somehow wrong. Philly’s leftist politicians — and Democrats outnumber Republicans about seven-to-one in registrations in the city — are very well able to see that landlords are not exactly the most popular people there.

Even if the Sheriff’s office completely supports court-ordered evictions, the city has had staffing shortages in virtually every department; giving eviction duty to the sheriff’s office means that more deputies would be needed, at a time when they are difficult to hire.

The eviction case was one of dozens at Girard Court Apartments in recent years.

The complex is owned by Odin Properties, which is among Philadelphia’s largest landlords. Owned by developer Philip Balderston and based in Philadelphia, its website advertises a full portfolio that encompasses some “10,000 apartments and 200,000 square feet of commercial space in 14 U.S. States.”

But a 2020 report from progressive advocacy group One PA also identified Odin as among “the highest evictors in Philadelphia,” having brought 470 eviction cases to Municipal Court in 2019.

One would expect that one of Philly’s “largest landlords” would also be among “the highest evictors” in the city; the more units one leases, the more non-paying renters he will have.

Who are “One PA,” which even the Inky called a “progressive advocacy group”? They are perfectly willing to tell you exactly who they are!

Housing is a fundamental human right and must be prioritized over the profits of landlords and developers. City Council must act now to protect Philadelphians and support low-income Black and brown residents to stay in their homes and continue to build thriving communities. They must pass rent control and “pay as you stay” property tax relief to create thriving communities in which their constituents can stay in their homes. Our communities need the Freedom to STAY.

Predatory landlords and developers are hiking rents, evicting tenants, operating unsafe housing, and displacing Black and brown Philadelphians, who often have the fewest resources to fight back due to a history of housing discrimination, racial and economic segregation, and depressed wages. These same communities face dramatic increases in property taxes, jeopardizing what wealth they have managed to build. Many low-income tenants find themselves moving every few years because of unsafe and unhealthy homes, hiked rents, and landlords selling their homes. At the rate of current rent increases, many families are not able to relocate to healthier, more stable conditions. They find themselves evicted, disrespected, and dismissed, time after time, causing homelessness and/or mental or physical illness for many. The system is stacked against low-income renters and homeowners and in favor of wealthy landlords and developers.

Translation: they believe that people have a right to the homes and apartments they rented, even if they don’t pay their rent. That landlords and developers invested their own money into building and buying housing units, that they have their property rights as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, apparently means nothing to them.

Since the start of 2022, office addresses associated with Odin have appeared in at least another 727 different landlord tenant filings in Municipal Court. A typical month in Philadelphia sees between 1,500 and 2,000 eviction filings, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, a figure that does not include illegal evictions.

A spokesperson from the Department of Licenses and Inspections said building inspectors issued several violations to the Girard Court complex during a January inspection that stemmed from complaints about nonfunctional fire alarms. That case is still listed as unresolved.

People seem to have a picture of landlords, or property owners, as Snidely Whiplash, tying Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks. But property owners have a right to their property, regardless of how wealthy or otherwise they are. The majority of rental property owners are actually small entrepreneurs who own five or fewer units. This statistic equates to 10.8 million investors representing 98% of all rental property owners or 80% of all rental properties.

As I mentioned previously, we own one rental unit, though it’s a not-for-profit, rented within the family property. The intention is that, once we go to our eternal rewards, our daughters and my sister-in-law’s son, will inherit the house, and, we hope, a significant appreciation in investment. We aren’t tying anyone to the railroad tracks!

Our Constitution is supposed to protect our rights, including protecting our rights from the tyranny of the majority. But I can see the “progressives” of Philadelphia trying to end the property rights of landlords and property owners in the City of Brotherly Love.

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The left just don’t think you live or want to live properly Me? I think that we live the best way possible!

Our farm in winter. Click to enlarge.

In the 51 years since I left my mother’s house, I have lived in apartments, rented single family homes, an owned half-duplex, an owned single family home, and now, finally, an owned farmhouse on actual farmland. We have exactly one neighboring home, about 100 yards away, as our houses are the only two on a country road down which the Post Office will not deliver, and let me tell you: this is the best way to live. My real neighbors are the deer and opossums, our dogs and cats and chickens, and the unspoiled vista that is our view from our northwest facing screened-in porch.

So it was with some amusement that I read how Jason Peasley thinks we ought to all live in apartment buildings: Continue reading →

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Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right "Nice guy" policies have led to disaster in our urban areas

I have previously noted a major article in The Philadelphia Inquirer about the city’s open-air drug market near Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, complete with a photo of a man who appears to be shooting up right outside the SEPTA station. The photo shows the street littered with trash, and people just plain not caring.

The theme of the article, dated August 17, 2020, was that the COVID-19 crisis might have caused shortages in everything else, but not in the availability of drugs.

I continued to scan the newspaper for stories about how the Philadelphia Police Department had gotten their dander up about the Inquirer article, and had a massive raid to round up the drug dealers and close the drug trade down there, but it just never seemed to happen. Now there’s this, from Fox 29 News:

Philadelphia officials consider resolution designating Kensington a FEMA site

By Shawnette Wilson | April 13, 2022 | 11:30 PM EDT | Updated April 14, 2022 | 7:28AM EDT

SEPTA station on Kensington Avenue, in the background, with homeless tents on the sidewalk. Photo from Fox29 News. Click to enlarge.

KENSINGTON – Reported as the worst possible section of the United States, in terms of homelessness and drug abuse, city officials are looking for a federal and state government intervention in Kensington.

“When I was a teenager, this neighborhood was fine,” David Adcox stated. He says it’s different for his two teenage children he’s raising in Kensington, where he has lived about 45 years.“You could hang on the corner and play football. You used to be able to block Somerset off and have block parties,” Adcox added.

He says since the late nineties, things have steadily changed for the worse.

“Drugs happened and it’s been downhill since,” Adcox commented.

Some Philadelphia city officials announced last week they are taking drastic steps to address the open drug use and addiction on the streets of Kensington.

At least as of 8:08 AM on Friday morning, there was no story on the Inquirer’s website main page about this. One would think that the city considering turning this problem over to the federal government would make the news.

“What we’ve been doing has not worked. This has been going on for 10, 20, even 30 years,” Philadelphia Councilmember At-Large Allan Domb said and went to say it’s a humanitarian crisis.

“It’s the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse,” Domb added.

Domb, Councilmember Maria Quinones-Sanchez and Councilmember Mark Squilla have announced a resolution requesting that Kensington be declared a FEMA and PEMA site, like areas hit with tornadoes, floods and hurricanes.

It would mean federal and state involvement with resources and financial assistance.

“40 percent might be Philadelphians, but at least 60 percent or more are not. They may have obtained ID’s for Philadelphia, but it’s not right that the city has to take care of this humanitarian crisis when the majority of the people are not from Philadelphia,” Domb explained. “We need to bring people back to the homes where they came from, take care of the population that’s Philadelphia and get them into the right services and help them.”

But, but, but, I thought that Philadelphia was a sanctuary city, welcoming everybody, regardless of immigration status. And Councilman Domb is a Democrat.

Mr Domb has been on the city council since January 4, 2016. Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez has been in office since January 7, 2008, while Councilman Mark Squilla has been there since January 2, 2012. All are Democrats.

Have they not noticed the problem until now?

The Inquirer was all #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading and social justicey on August 17, 2020, when Aubrey Whelan’s article appeared — the firing resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski two months earlier, and “anti-racist” publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes was in place the previous February — yet even the newspaper covered the story at the time. Kensington is a heavily Hispanic neighborhood, with the non-Hispanic black population being relatively low, so perhaps that allowed the Inky to cover it?

The solution is not that complicated: send in the police and clear out the druggies, users as well as dealers. When the next group of dealers move in, as they will, send in the police again.

Philadelphia has been run by the Democrats for the last seven decades; the last Republican Mayor left office when Harry Truman was still President. And while the Democrats have not always been the squishes on law enforcement that they have been for a while, Democratic policies have enabled Kensington to become “the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse” are concerned.

If you want to clean the place up, you need conservative policies, and conservative policies are not nice ones. To be a conservative, you have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] at times, because yielding to sympathy has meant allowing the existing problems to fester and get worse. It is better for the city, it is better for the United States, for [insert plural slang term for the rectum here] to be running the government, at all levels, people who will not allow sympathy and lenient policies to turn everything to [insert slang term for feces here], as has happened in all of our major cities.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

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

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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A Philadelphia crook is laying on a slab in the morgue Updated! Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

As we noted yesterday, Philadelphians have been applying for concealed carry permits in droves, due to the city being unable to protect them from the bad guys. Now, another Philadelphian has protected his property:

    West Philadelphia resident fatally shoots trespasser who tried breaking into car

    A West Philadelphia resident on Wednesday night shot and killed a trespasser who had thrown a brick through the resident’s car

    by Rodrigo Torrejón | St Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2022 | 7:49 AM EDT

    A West Philadelphia resident on Wednesday night shot and killed a trespasser who had thrown a brick through the resident’s car, according to reports.

    Shortly after 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, police responded to a call of gunshots on the 4400 block of Fairmount Avenue, 6ABC reported. When officers arrived, they found a 23-year-old man lying on the 700 block of 44th Street, with multiple gunshot wounds.

    The man, whose name was not released, was taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead soon after.

    Police said that the 23-year-old had scaled a fence and trespassed onto the Fairmount Avenue property, into an enclosed rear yard and threw a brick into the driver side window of a Alfa Romeo SUV, 6ABC reported. After hearing the noise, the 49-year-old homeowner, whose name was also not released, came out to confront the man and shot at least three times.

The legal punishment for vandalism is not death; the legal punishment for stealing a car is not death. But sometimes the legal punishment for stupidity is death! When you break into someone’s property — and climbing a fence into someone’s “enclosed rear yard” definitely constitutes breaking into someone’s property — bad things can happen to you. As Robert Stacy McCain would put it, ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes.’

From 6ABC News:

    Before receiving word of gunshots, (Chief Inspector Scott) Small said police got several calls about a man wearing a mask trespassing on the rear or properties in the area and one call about a man breaking into a vehicle.

    “We believe these calls are related to the shooting,” Small said.

And the money line:

    The 23-year-old is known by police and his last known address is two blocks from where he was shot, Small said.

“Is known by police,” huh? That’s the euphemism for “he was a frequent crook we’ve arrested several times.”

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Crazy people are dangerous.

This leads to the obvious question: why wasn’t the 23-year-old frequent flyer already behind bars? Did the police not have enough evidence to get him convicted of something in their previous encounters with him? Did the cops let the guy go with just a warning a couple of times? Did Larry Krasner, who has been Philadelphia’s District Attorney since the deceased was 19 years old, decline to prosecute, or offer the criminal lenient plea bargains which kept him from being locked up for a long sentence, or kept him out of jail completely? There’s some obvious speculation here, but one thing is certain: Philadelphia’s criminal justice system did this guy no favors! Had he been behind bars last night, he wouldn’t have been happy, but he’d at least have been able to look forward to getting out of jail sometime, and getting on with his life.

Instead, he’s lying on a slab in the morgue right now.

I’ve said it before: former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani showed us the way. When he was in charge, New York City strictly enforced the law against the entry-level crooks, giving them an early look at the inside of the penitentiary, giving them early incentive to straighten up and fly right before they got themselves into really serious trouble. It didn’t always work: some of them continued with a life of crime after every stint behind bars, but at least while they were locked up, they weren’t out on the streets preying on innocent civilians.

Well, this guy won’t be breaking into people’s back yards, won’t be smashing car windows, and won’t be stealing laptops or whatever else was left in those cars. Instead, he’ll be pushing up daisies somewhere. This is what “social justice” and “racial justice” law enforcement gets us: criminals out on the streets, and some criminals in early graves.

Updated: Friday, March 18, 2022:

The Inquirer story has been updated to note that the deceased is named Nijer James-Murphy, and that the unnamed homeowner is a good guy:

    While the District Attorney’s Office will determine if the shooting is a justifiable homicide, preliminarily, it appears the homeowner acted in self-defense, (Philadelphia Homicide Capt. Jason) Smith said.

    “He has a valid permit, his gun is registered to him, he has no priors, he called the police, he turned the gun over, and he is cooperating. He’s done all the things that a good, outstanding citizen should do,” he said.

Well, that settles it: Mr Krasner, sponsored by George Soros, and thoroughly eaten up with ‘social justice’ and ‘racial justice’ and a hatred for the police, would seem likely to want to charge the homeowner with something. After all, the deceased is listed as a black male in the city’s shooting victims database. The question is: where would the District Attorney find twelve honest citizens, twelve people in the city without criminal records, to serve on a jury which would convict a man defending his property in his enclosed backyard from a thug like Mr James-Murphy?

Let’s face it: the city ought to throw the homeowner a parade!

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Why are police looking the other way until such situations lead to murder? That's kind of what happens under 'defunded' budgets and liberal city restrictions

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain noted that new national holiday Juneteenth “was celebrated in many communities with gunfire and mayhem”. He described several of those events, though he missed the one we noted previously in Lexington, and the three homicides on Saturday in the City of Brotherly Love.

This was the longest incident he documented:

AUSTIN, Tex. – A deadly weekend mass shooting in Austin’s famed entertainment district arose from a feud between two groups of Central Texas teenagers, according to a police affidavit filed Wednesday.

Harker Heights High School student Jeremiah Tabb, 17, was arrested at school Monday and remained in Travis County Jail on Wednesday. He is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison. . . .

In the arrest affidavit filed by Austin police filed in a Travis County district court Wednesday, a wounded male juvenile is quoted as telling detectives at an Austin hospital that he was with friends on East Sixth Street, a famous entertainment strip, when they began exchanging stares with a youth he identified as JT and JT’s friends.

“Exchanging stares”? Yeah, that’s reason enough, right?

The male juvenile, who was not identified by name, said he had attended the same Killeen middle school as JT, who said to the juvenile’s group, “What y’all wanna do? Y’all wanna fight?” The juvenile said he answered, “It’s whatever,” at which point JT pulled a handgun from his waistband and opened fire. A companion of the juvenile, also a juvenile, drew his own gun and returned fire. One person was killed and more than a dozen others were wounded.

Of course, the “wounded male juvenile” broke gang discipline, and ratted out Mr Tabb when shown a photo of Mr Tabb, claiming that Mr Tabb had already shot him in the leg a few days earlier.

Mr McCain then ended his post with three rhetorical questions:

  1. Why are groups of minors walking around downtown Austin after midnight?
  2. Why are these minors carrying pistols?
  3. Why are police looking the other way until such situations lead to murder?

I, of course, am the type to answer rhetorical questions! The answer to the first two is simple: their parents — assuming that there actually were parents who were supposedly responsible for these teenagers — didn’t rear them right, and didn’t care about what their ‘children’ were doing. I’ve said it before: you show me a bad kid, and I’ll show you some rotten parents.

What kind of parents don’t bring up their children to understand that it’s just plain wrong to shoot people? What kind of parents have failed to educate their children that murder — and if you shoot at someone, you must intend to kill him — is wrong? What kind of parents don’t tell their children that, if you kill someone, you might just spend the rest of your miserable life in jail?

Those teenagers were walking around Austin after midnight, and were walking around carrying pistols, because the same kind of ‘parents’ who failed on the three questions in the paragraph above are the ones who don’t give a f(ornicate) about where their kids are or what they are doing.

But the third question?

Austin cuts police budget by 1/3 amid national ‘defund’ push

The Austin City Council has voted to cut one-third of the city’s $434 million police budget amid national calls for “defunding” law enforcement in favor of spending more money on social services

By Acacia Coronado | Report for America/ Associated Press | August 13, 2020 | 6:52 PM

AUSTIN, Texas — In a unanimous vote, the Austin City Council moved Thursday to cut about one-third of next year’s $434 million police budget amid national calls for “defunding” law enforcement agencies in favor of spending more money on social services.

That will come to just over $150 million that will be redirected to social services in the 2021 fiscal budget, which starts Oct 1.

Further down came this gem:

Austin Councilman Gregorio Casar, one of the main proponents of cutting the police budget, called the move “unprecedented in Texas” and praised the decision following the vote.

“Extreme, anti-civil rights voices will try to send us backward and are already working (to) mislead people about this vote,” Casar said on Twitter. “But today, we should celebrate what the movement has achieved for safety, racial justice, and democracy.”

Really? “Safety, racial justice, and democracy”? I’m not certain just what the esteemed Mr Casar thinks is an achievement for safety. According to monthly reports posted by the Austin Police Department, there were 33 murders from January through the end of May; in 2020, the city recorded 19 murders in the same time frame. That’s a 73.68% increase; just how much “safety” has the defunding of the police department achieved?

Jeremiah Tabb (Austin Police Department photo).

“Racial Justice”? Young Mr Tabb, who is black, if he is convicted, could see “racial justice” meted out to him in the form of perhaps two decades behind bars. If the bullets which killed 25-year-old Douglas John Kantor during this gang shooting came from Mr Tabb’s gun, he could spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

All because two hostile groups were “exchanging stares”.

Mr Kantor wasn’t even a target; he was an innocent bystander, a visitor from Michigan.

So, why are police looking the other way until such situations lead to murder? Perhaps it is because dumbasses like Mr Casar cut the police department’s budget by a third!

So, where is the money cut from the police department going to go?

Beginning in October, about $21 million will fund social services, community resources including response to the coronavirus, mental health aid programs, violence prevention, victim services and food, housing and abortion access. Another $80 million will be redistributed to similar city services throughout the year, and $49 million will be spent on city’s Reimagine Safety Fund, which aims to provide alternative forms of public safety and community support besides policing.

Somehow the city’s “Reimagine Safety Fund” has managed to mean “you’re on your own.” Whatever “alternative forms of public safety and community support besides policing” don’t seem to have worked.

Austin, the state capital and home of the University of Texas, is the most liberal city in a conservative state. Joe Biden carried Travis County, where Austin is located, 435,860 (71.62%) to 161,337 (26.51%), and has been governed exclusively by Democrats. If all of the feel-good liberalism and racial and social justice ideas actually worked, Austin should be one of the safest places around.

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, reducing law enforcement doesn’t really work when it comes to keeping the public safe?

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Elect #SocialJustice public officials, and watch crime soar

StJohnTheDivineWilliamPortoIt was the summer of 2007, when my younger daughter, then a rising sophomore in high school, was considering architecture as a potential collegiate major, and she and I went to New York City on an architecture tour. One of the places that she wanted to see was the Episcopal Cathedral of St John the Divine, which is located at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue, at 112th Street.

Well, we missed our subway stop, and instead of getting off at 110th or 116th streets, we wound up getting off at 125th Street. That’s Harlem!

So, my daughter, who was the whitest white girl in town, and I walked back down to our destination. The streets were clean, the people were pleasant, and we didn’t have the first moment’s trouble.

Rudolph Giuliani had succeeded the abysmal David Dinkins as Mayor of New York City on January 1, 1994, and served through December 31, 2001. From Wikipedia:

Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.[3][4] After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, holding a platform of toughness on crime.[1][5] He led New York’s controversial “civic cleanup” as its mayor from 1994 to 2001.[1][6] Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City’s new police commissioner.[5] Reforming the police department’s administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory,[5] which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals.[7] In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a “family values” vibe and a return to the area’s earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts.[8] As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, yet later critics cite other contributing factors.[1] In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer.[9][10] For his mayoral leadership after the September 11 attacks in 2001, he was called “America’s mayor”.[5][11] He was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001,[12][13] and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

By the time my daughter and I made that trip, Mayor Giuliani had been succeeded by another Republican — who later became an independent, and later still, a Democrat — in Michael Bloomberg, and as mayor, he kept the strict policing policies of Mr Giuliani.

But, after three terms, Mayor Bloomberg was succeeded by far left social justice warrior Bill de Blasio. From the New York Post:

NYPD union slams Big Apple as ‘city of violence’ amid surge in shootings

By Amanda Woods | April 27, 2021 | 1:09pm | Updated

The NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association slammed the Big Apple as “the city of violence” amid a 250 percent surge in shootings last week, and a slew of other disturbing crimes citywide.

“Mayor de Blasio has allocated 30 million dollars to bring tourism to NYC,” the union tweeted Monday morning. “Welcome to the city of violence.”

The SBA included a screengrab showing nearly two dozen shootings across the five boroughs between Friday and Sunday.

“Shootings and Homicides plaque [sic] NYC and the numbers aren’t final,” the union tweeted.

NYPD data indicates that 50 people were shot in 46 separate incidents over a seven-day period ending Sunday evening.

The department said it logged 12 shootings with 14 victims during the same time last year — more than a month into the city’s COVID-19 lockdown, according to the weekly Compstat data.

Chicago and Philadelphia laugh! The latest weekly NYPD CompStat Report, for the week of April 12th through 18th, indicates that there had been 106 murders in New York City through the th, up from 100 at the same time last year.

As of the 18th, Chicago had seen 177 homicides, up to 185 as of the 25th, while Philly had piled up 159 dead bodies by the end of the 25th. With New York’s much larger population, their effective homicide rate is significantly lower, but it’s climbing, and getting away from the stricter policing under “Broken Windows” has proven to be ineffective.

The left have, for years, decried “mass incarceration,” but lenient law enforcement has proven to be a bad idea even for the criminals. We have previously noted how John Lewis, AKA Lewis Jordan, who slew Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, and Nikolas Cruz, accused of the mass murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were given every possible break. Had they been in jail at the time they committed their murders, yeah, they might have served a year or three, but Mr Jordan wouldn’t be on death row today, looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in prison, and Mr Cruz wouldn’t have the same kind of sentence looking him dead in the eye.

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.

Are Messrs Jordan and Cruz somehow better off today because lenient law enforcement kept them out of jail? Is Andrew Brown, with his 180-page-long rap sheet, better off today because, despite many criminal convictions, he was out of jail the day he decided to start a gunfight with several Pasquotank County, North Carolina, deputies trying to serve a couple of warrants? Was 21-year-old Hasan Elliot better off on that Friday the 13th when he should have been in jail, and would have been in jail had not Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office declined to have him locked up on a serious parole violation, and he had a shootout with police?

Treating the petty criminals seriously is better for everyone in the long run. It’s better for society, as it gets the bad guys off the street, and lowers the overall crime rate, and it’s better for the criminals themselves, because when they are locked up for crimes that leave them with hope of eventually getting out of prison, they don’t have as much time on the streets, usually in their prime crime committing ages, they are likely to commit the big crimes which will have them locked up for the rest of their miserable lives.

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What #socialjustice criminal prosecution has done for Philadelphia In his eagerness to avoid 'mass incarceration,' Larry Krasner has left violent criminals out on the streets

When I wrote on Saturday that there must’ve been at least 133 souls sent early to their eternal rewards by the end of Friday, April 9th, based on a story in The Philadelphia Inquirer, I realized that it could have been an undercount. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is only updated on the weekdays, so I knew the numbers when I checked this morning could be a surprise. I did check the Inquirer’s website several times yesterday, but saw no stories on city murders beyond the one referenced above.

But I will admit it: I hadn’t guessed that there would have been 139 homicides by the end of Sunday, April 11th! The above linked Inquirer story began with, “Two men are dead and six others injured in a total of five shooting incidents in less than nine hours Friday night into Saturday morning throughout Philadelphia, police said.” If there were no other attempted homicides, that could mean that five of the six wounded expired over the weekend, or it could mean that there were more murders, unreported by the Inquirer, over the weekend.

No matter: I’ve said it several times: to the editors of the Inquirer, killings in Philadelphia 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.

Of course, the Inquirer did mention the homicide rate, just not in the context of the victims:

Philly DA Larry Krasner and challenger Carlos Vega enter election homestretch as gun violence surges

Krasner’s reelection campaign against primary challenger Carlos Vega is a key test for the reform movement that helped make him one of the most liberal big-city prosecutors in the country.

by Chris Brennan | April 12, 2021

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is pitching his reelection campaign as a fight for criminal justice reform — and against a return to injustices of the past.

“Do you want the future, where we are going to continue to keep those kinds of promises?” Krasner, 60, asked voters during a candidate forum last month, citing his reform-based 2017 campaign. “Or do you want the past?”

Carlos Vega, his challenger in the Democratic primary, is offering voters a hybrid: A reform-minded, experienced homicide prosecutor who says Krasner is making the city “vulnerable and unsafe.”

“We need a more responsible approach to criminal justice reform, as well as prosecuting violent criminals,” Vega, 64, told the same Philadelphia Bar Association forum. “Four years ago, we were promised that, through justice, we’d have a safer city. Philadelphia is more dangerous now than it’s been in the last three decades.”

There’s a lot more at the original, but one thing stands out: ‘progressive’ law enforcement has not been law enforcement at all!

An Inquirer analysis last month found that although arrests for illegal gun possession have nearly tripled during Krasner’s time in office, conviction rates have fallen from 63% to 49%.

The District Attorney wants to blame everything and everyone other than himself for the increased homicide numbers in the City of Brotherly Love, but the truth is that Mr Krasner, then a liberal defense attorney, asked for the responsibility to prosecute criminals, and the voters very irresponsibly gave it to him. Even the editors of the Inquirer realized how poor a fit Mr Krasner would be as a prosecutor, endorsing Rich Negrin in the 2017 Democratic primary, and after Mr Krasner won the primary, shockingly endorsed Beth Grossman, his Republican opponent, in 2017.

We’ll see if the editors endorse Republican Chuck Peruto in the general election if Mr Krasner wins the Democratic primary.

“If you don’t believe punishment is a deterrent to crime, then leave,” Peruto said. “Because you’re stupid. Crimes must have consequences.”

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, because Mr Krasner’s policies had kept Corporal O’Connor’s killer out on the street in the first place..

Mr Krasner isn’t stupid; Mr Krasner is just plain evil. A stooge of anti-American financier George Soros, it isn’t that Mr Krasner doesn’t believe that punishment is a deterrent to crime, it’s that he doesn’t believe that crime is a serious problem, even as the dead bodies keep piling up in Philadelphia. Mr Krasner ran against ‘mass incarceration,’ when the real problem is that too many criminals who could and should have still been locked up were out on the streets early committing even more crimes.

One of the people who wasn’t in jail 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 mate 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 Department 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.

That is what the City of Brotherly Love has for a District Attorney! Mr Krasner is more concerned about not locking up people than he was with the safety of both police officers and civilians, and Corporal O’Connor is stone-cold graveyard dead because of it.

‘Progressive’ policies have encouraged criminal behavior. When idiotic prosecutors like Mr Krasner don’t try to seriously punish lesser crimes, the bad guys remain out on the streets, and move on to bigger and badder crimes, and decent people get killed. Real #socialjustice would be trying to make neighborhoods, and, let’s face it, in Philadelphia we mean poorer, minority neighborhoods, safer for the people living there.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer tries to make the Derek Chauvin trial about racism and stereotypes rather than the arrest of a criminal It seems that Cassie Owens doesn't like the fact that Mr Chauvin's defense attorney is actually trying to defend him

I confess: it might seem that my many referrals to The Philadelphia Enquirer Inquirer may seem close to an obsession, but, let’s face it, the paper seems to provide more silliness and stupidity every single day. You’ll love this one!

Stereotypes of larger Black men still persist at the Derek Chauvin trial

Research shows that big and tall Black men are more likely to be seen as threatening, and these notions trace back to slavery.

by Cassie Owens | April 9, 2021

During the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with killing George Floyd, Chauvin’s defense attorney Eric Nelson has repeatedly pointed to Floyd’s size.

Nelson raised size again Tuesday, when he confirmed with a police instructor that officers are trained to consider size difference for use of force. He first brought it up during opening statements in late March.

“You will see that three Minneapolis police officers could not overcome the strength of Mr. Floyd,” Nelson said. “Mr. Chauvin stands five-foot-nine, 140 pounds. Mr. Floyd is six, three, weighs 223 pounds.”

In the conversations around victims of police brutality, pointing to a victim’s size to justify or disregard the violence has become a feature, not a bug. Prominent examples include Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, and Michael Brown. But why is size so often mentioned in these cases?

Uhhh, maybe because all of these suspects were big men? If you do a Google search for George Floyd gentle giant you’ll get 2,690,000 results, including George Floyd: “Gentle Giant” Who Became Symbol Of Fight Against Racism, which lists Mr Floyd’s height as 6’4″, not 6’3″, Friends Remember George Floyd As A Gentle Giant, and George Floyd was ‘very loving’ and a ‘gentle giant,’ friends and family say.

Read more: The Chauvin trial so far, by John Hinderaker on Powerline.

When I searched for eric garner gentle giant, I got 878,000 results, including Friends: Eric Garner was a ‘gentle giant’, ‘Gentle Giant’ Dies After NYPD Cop Puts Him In Chokehold, and Friends: Man in NYC chokehold case ‘gentle giant’. The latter article stated that Mr Garner was 6-foot-3, and 350-pounds.

St George of Floyd

My search for alton sterling gentle giant yielded 480,000 returns, including returns which noted that he was a convicted felon, was brandishing a firearm at police when he was killed, and a registered sex offender for knocking up a 14 year old girl; he had a long criminal record and spent much of his life behind bars. Giant maybe; gentle, not so much.

My search for michael brown gentle giant yielded 8,270,000 results in 0.69 seconds, including Michael Brown remembered as a ‘gentle giant’, and Brown Remembered As a Gentle Giant, even though Mr Brown, all 6’4″ of him, was caught on video roughing up an elderly shopkeeper during a robbery just minutes before his ‘encounter’ with Officer Darrin Wilson.

So, why was the size of these criminals — and let’s make no bones about it, they were criminals — mentioned? Because they were all large men, men who used their size for physical advantage.

Back to the Inquirer:

Anna Mollow, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based disabilities studies expert who sees similarities in the cases of Barbara Dawson and Tamir Rice, said in a recent interview this reflects forms of oppression that are familiar in our society.

“I would, indeed, say that the defense’s comments about George Floyd’s size do draw upon, and do recirculate, stereotypes of Black people as possessing superhuman physical strength,” wrote Mollow, “while at the same time calling up dehumanizing stereotypes about Black people’s supposed moral and intellectual inferiority — for example, the notion that they need to be brought ‘under control,’ as Chauvin said of Floyd.”

Cassie Owens, the Inquirer article author, is trying to claim that Eric Nelson, Derek Chauvin’s defense attorney, was playing on stereotypes, but Mr Nelson is doing his job the best he can, in trying to defend his client. It is not playing a stereotype to note that George Floyd, a drug-addled convicted felon caught in the act of passing counterfeit money, was significantly larger than Officer Chauvin. At 5’9″, Officer Chauvin was very much of average height, in the 50th percentile of adult male height, while the 99th percentile begins at 6’3½”, roughly where Mr Floyd stood. Mr Floyd outweighed Mr Chauvin by roughly 80 lb, more than half again the officer’s mass.

Miss Owens is, of course, utterly appalled that Mr Nelson is doing something really radical like defending his client.

Ben Brooks, a diversity and inclusion expert who was one of the first Black officers to enlist in the Pennsylvania State Police in 1961, said that bias, in general society, isn’t well understood. People use bias to detect danger, Brooks continued, and for some, their danger detectors don’t respond fairly to Black people. . . .

“If you approach [an] individual with dignity, respect, and self worth, then you’re on an even keel,” he said. “But when it’s anything other than that, that means psychologically the temperature rises.”

Empathy, he said, is critical for officers: “When you can approach members of the public with an empathic approach, you’re more likely to make an emotional connection and see them on a human level.”

(Anna Mollow, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based disabilities studies expert) noted that it was important to be mindful of how different forms of oppression, like racism and sizeism, intersect. Thinking that way, she said, invites more space for self-criticism for everyone across groups, rather than thinking confrontationally: “It’s more about continuing to really explore the way that we might be perpetuating forms of oppression without realizing it, and then to explore the ways that we can work together and change that.”

In all of this, in all of her attempts to paint Mr Floyd as a victim of racism and stereotypes, Miss Owens, whose Inquirer bio says, “I cover sociocultural dynamics, as well as how Philadelphians contend with them these days,” ignores that Officer Chauvin was called to the scene by the officers who arrived there first, noting that Mr Floyd was acting drugged up. Mr Chauvin would already have been on alert when he arrived, in that the suspect was described as acting erratically and irrationally, and was resisting arrest.

Yes, Officer Chauvin (probably) was “thinking confrontationally,” given that he was called as backup to a confrontation with a resisting perpetrator. While it is certainly arguable that Officer Chauvin used excessive force against Mr Floyd — that Mr Floyd dies while being restrained certainly makes the officers’ actions subject to question — this trial is about the proper use of force against a resisting criminal suspect, not about racism. But the left want to make it about racism, so they’ll have yet another excuse to riot and loot and burn if Mr Chauvin is acquitted or even just convicted on a lesser charge than second-degree murder.