When the Phillies won the National League pennant, the downtown celebration after the game was decidedly small. While a few celebraters turned up and down various lampposts and the hustle and bustle in the streets drew media attention, the overall celebration paled in comparison to past victory celebrations in the city. was
Can the lethargic crowd be blamed for the fear that some crime is about to happen? A replay of when a fire was fired into a crowd of thousands at a fireworks display on the stairs of
Even die-hard urbanites now seem to realize that Center City can be dangerous. is evidenced by the refrain
In other words, watch your back while waiting on the subway platform. While walking down Kamak Road. While moses along chestnuts and walnuts. Call it the “Krasner effect”.
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Tom McGrath Philadelphia magazine Recently observed:
“After two years of a pandemic, the truth is that Center City, like much of our society, will probably never return to what it was in March 2020. Too much time has passed. Too many new habits have been formed Too many attitudes have changed In fact, thanks not only to the pandemic, but other trends that have nothing to do with it, March 2020 There’s a strong argument that it actually marked the end of a 40-year chapter in Center City’s history: it flourished, but much of the rest of Philadelphia hasn’t.”
McGrath cites crime as a debilitating factor for the “new” city in 2020 and beyond, but doesn’t say how crime has increased since the arrival of District Attorney Larry Krasner. He certainly had reasons to avoid the K-word. Yet optimism pays off, even if that optimism comes with cautious enthusiasm. Plus, Center City’s luxury retailers still thrive with shops like J Crew Walnut (you can book an appointment with a personal stylist), Shops at Liberty Place, Express and Joan Shepp. Both riots and plagues.
Still, this doesn’t negate Center City’s ever-changing landscape. McGrath noted when he said, “More than half of Center City jobs don’t require a bachelor’s degree.”
Crime is Philadelphia’s Achilles heel, one of the city’s seven house museums, as evidenced by the recent attack on Philadelphia’s historic Strawberry Mansion, built in 1789. At the turn of the 20th century, the mansion was a popular restaurant (novelist Henry James once dined here) until 1930, when the mansion was restored and opened to the public as a house museum. , was not a very famous restaurant.
Today, the home is one of the city’s crown jewels thanks to a recent $2 million renovation. Tour groups meet regularly and the house is rented out for banquets, wedding receptions, and more.
Sadly, the mansion is on the east side of Fairmount Park, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city. Since Krasner crippled the city’s criminal justice system by lobbying the Philadelphia police to release criminals and not prosecute certain crimes, the fragile place has been the occasional target of vandals, and the situation has worsened. did.
When an email from a friend who works in the city said a group of teenagers had “raided the Strawberry Mansion house, smashed the glass door of the rental tent and attacked a female worker who was cleaning it.” , the story of the Strawberry Mansion was revealed. after the event. The police did nothing but tell the victim not to be alone in the park…so it was the victim’s own fault for being called out. ”
Shootings and murders have dramatic but temporary (emotional) effects, but the passage of time tends to dilute even the most gruesome murders into sobering statistics.
The raid on the mansion was not reported by the Philadelphia media, so few people knew that the city’s largest historic house museum had been destroyed. revealed the new police attitude below. In fact, the fact that they told the female worker that she shouldn’t have been “alone in the park” even though her job called for it.
This “Krasnerized” attitude seems to suggest that the police, in many ways, have admitted defeat in the fight against crime and criminals.
Other Philadelphia historic house museums subject to vandalism include the Olmsted, the former home of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (the designer of Central Park), and the 1758 Museum by a friend of Benjamin Franklin. There is the Woodford Mansion, which was built in
It is said that when multiple incidents come together in a sort of “catastrophic bouquet”, a perfect storm is born.
This came from a city employee friend who said that not only was his bank in Germantown robbed (again), but the plate glass windows on the front of the bank were literally blown out, forcing the bank to close. Substantiated by yet another email. a few days.
This is surprising because Krasner’s restructuring of the criminal justice system has affected the city, and few places are safe: banks, crowded subway platforms, Wawa in the streets, women’s restrooms at Macy’s department stores with rapists. It’s not what you should do. Tucked away in one of the stalls.
Shootings and murders have a dramatic but temporary (emotional) impact, but the passage of time tends to dilute even the most gruesome murders into sobering statistics. Inside, there are many small-scale manifestations of lawlessness that don’t involve murder, but that affect the quality of life in Philadelphia.
Think of random raids by hooligan teenagers traveling in groups of 10, 15, sometimes 100 or more. many They then proceed to shoplift and sometimes trash the joint.
In September, Wawa, northeastern Philadelphia, was raided by a large group of students after school hours. Students ran around the store, knocking over shelves and smashing merchandise, causing thousands of dollars in damage. Around the same time this was happening, Wawa in the Roxborough area had to deal with an attack similar to, but less dramatic than, the after school raid.
In Philadelphia, it’s only a matter of time before the Wawa store gets raided and vandalized by school kids every time it becomes popular.
Unless, of course, the Social Justice mob manages to trash it before the school kids get it.
In 2020, Wawa’s flagship store on Broad and Walnut streets downtown was vandalized by a George Floyd mob.
A few years ago, a large gang of students tracked down the manager of a downtown Dunkin’ Donuts on the subway concourse and killed him on the spot from a heart attack.
In October, Wawa’s out-of-town Delaware County headquarters closed its two Philadelphia stores on Market Street for “safety and security reasons,” while other stores across the city had reduced night hours. announced. Apparently, Wawa had had enough.
When asked what he thought of the announcement, Mayor Jim Kenny said, “I don’t think it bodes bad at all,” but Krasner called it “another opportunity for entrepreneurship.” .On the other hand, normal superwake Philadelphia Inquirer disputed Kenny’s nonchalant remarks, stating: Ironically, Inquirer He endorsed Krasner when he ran for re-election as a DA in 2001.
Despite Krasner’s re-election in 2001 by a 2-1 margin, resistance to the Krasner government is growing in the city. nevertheless, seeker’s Due to the initial failure to connect the point of crime to Krasner’s policies, most of the people of the city of Philadelphia suffer from the same disease.
Despite a shocking 1,000 murders and 1,000 carjackings over the past 22 months, there’s not enough evidence, if not enough, that the city suffers from an “awakening” in the form of a “developmental disorder.” What’s this.
Once largely the realm of auto thieves and their ilk, the proliferation of carjackings has now become a favorite crime among gangs of homeless men.
And while these crime statistics have many Philadelphia citizens wringing their hands in despair over how bad everything is, in the voting booth all that ugliness is never a big deal It seems. What do the Philadelphians do? They vote for Krasner’s revival.
However, there is one small sign of change.
In October, Republican lawmakers in Philadelphia said after a state commission investigating Mr. Krasner’s office released a report accusing Mr. Krasner’s policies of causing increased crime in the city. filed articles of impeachment against
“The City of Philadelphia cannot afford to wait any longer to act on what we already know to be true. That is why Krasner is responsible for the increase in crime across our city.”
Krasner retaliated by filing a lawsuit challenging the legislative committee’s effectiveness.News of the challenge grabbed attention Newsweekciting several Krasner defenders on the city council, including mayoral candidates (and awakened activists) Helen Jim, Kendra Brooks and Jamie Gautier, impeachment is “a baseless attempt to dethrone the duly elected DA.” criticized.
This awakened screeching triad sent out an SOS like this: It sends a clear message to black and brown voters that their votes don’t matter. not. ”
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This pickle barrel of left-wing slogans — “the power of our voices,” “black and brown voters,” etc. — represents an awakened Philadelphia in turning a blind eye to the realities of crime and the plight of the people. Typical. victim of crime.
There have been abuses in the past where people of color were illegally targeted and charged with crimes they didn’t commit, but those days in the city are over. Criminals of all colors will be released.
In the 2003 gruesome murder of Rite Aid manager Michael Richardson, a black father of five, who was shot in the leg and dragged out of his store on 12th Avenue and Girard by three black men. It is enough to consider the incident. Bleeding, I went to the store office and was forced at gunpoint to open the safe.
When a meager sum of less than $3,000 was collected, Richardson, pleading and praying to be spared, was shot in the head execution-style by Christopher Kennedy.
At a trial a year later, Kennedy’s accomplices were sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment, and Kennedy was indicted for murder and sentenced to death by a jury.
However, in 2019, the Philadelphia DA office declared that it would not pursue the death penalty in Kennedy’s case in response to a new sentencing hearing appeal by Kennedy’s attorneys. Kennedy was re-sentenced to life in prison without parole. This change upset Richardson’s widow, who wanted the death penalty for her husband’s murderers. [her] life. ”
The DA’s decision to no longer pursue the death penalty was based on a friend of Kennedy’s who testified that as a child the killer had suffered “unimaginable abuse, neglect, abandonment and sheer torture…” was.
The Krasner effect occurs again.
Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and winner of the 2005 AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architecture Journalism.he is writing for City Journal, New York, Frontpage Magazine and the Philadelphia Irish EditionHe is the author of 15 books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and “From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” “Death at Dawn: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest” will be published later this year.
