Last night, there was widespread mass looting in Philadelphia by minority youths. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:
Large groups of young people broke into numerous stores across Philadelphia Tuesday night, stealing merchandise and vandalizing property, Acting Police Commissioner John Stanford said.
By midnight, police had arrested upward of 20 people, many of whom were juveniles, Stanford said, and at least two guns were recovered. The unrest stretched across the city, including Center City, the Northeast, and West Philadelphia, with business corridors along Aramingo Avenue and Walnut Street targeted through the night.
Initial reports of break-ins near Rittenhouse Square began just after 8 p.m., shortly after protesters had dispersed from a peaceful gathering at City Hall, where marchers called for justice for Eddie Irizarry, who was shot and killed by a Philadelphia Police officer [acting in self-defense] last month. Earlier Tuesday, a judge dismissed all charges against the officer who killed him, setting off a wave of outrage….
The young people involved, Stanford said, appeared to have organized their efforts on social media, and once one group started, others followed suit. He said police believe there was a caravan of cars moving between locations across the city and breaking into stores and pharmacies. A couple of the people involved in that group have been arrested, he said.
Videos posted online showed groups of young people breaking into the Apple Store near 16th and Walnut Streets. As police pursued fleeing teens, officers recovered dropped iPhones and, in one location, a “pile of iPads.”
The groups moved down the block to Foot Locker and Lululemon, and videos showed numerous teens fleeing the store with clothing. Officers attempted to apprehend some of them, and tackled a few to the ground.
Police had cleared and secured the Rittenhouse area by 9:10 p.m., and locked down a four-block stretch.
Police later reported stores being vandalized along Aramingo Avenue in Port Richmond and other locations in North Philadelphia.
One woman livestreamed dozens of people breaking into a Fine Wine & Good Spirits store.
As PJ Media reported yesterday,
Mass looting is being reported all over Philadelphia tonight. There are accounts of Center City stores being cleaned out by looters, including Lululemon, the Apple Store, a Foot Locker near the Liberty Bell, and many others.”
As people noted on Twitter,
This happened 5 minutes from the Liberty Bell and right down the street from where the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.
This is what liberalism has done to our country pic.twitter.com/GVt3ENzls1
— 🇺🇸Travis🇺🇸 (@Travis_in_Flint) September 27, 2023
They looting downtown in Philly. This is CRAZY…wowww dm me what y’all got. 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/F1sDdcNrLO
— Dee (@deegrizzleyy) September 27, 2023
Stay out of center city: Kids looted Apple Store , Lululemon and Chestnut street I hear footlocker has been broken into. this is 17th and Walnut pic.twitter.com/RjcGxu6lES
— PhillyChitChat (@HughE_Dillon) September 27, 2023
Thugs even tried to loot a Popeyes restaurant
— da flyest. (@Z4Bitch) September 27, 2023
As PJ Media noted, there were “reports of looters livestreaming their crimes, monitoring police scanners, and coordinating their efforts on social media. The looting is not confined to a single area.”
As others observed, there was
Confirmed looting in center city, reports of looting in North Philly and additional reports of looting in Port Richmond
Widespread looting will continue throughout the night https://t.co/IFTOAqKWpG
— PhillyCrimeUpdate (@PhillyCrimeUpd) September 27, 2023
This is very similar to the Floyd and Wallace riots when organized crowds of looters traveled together to different parts of the city to loot https://t.co/hq0KGr1DGh
— PhillyCrimeUpdate (@PhillyCrimeUpd) September 27, 2023
Eventually, law enforcement stepped in to “stop the looting.” The looting followed murder charges being dropped against a cop who acted in self-defense during a traffic stop. Eddie Irizarry, who is Hispanic, pulled a knife on cops while in his vehicle.
The “reason” these criminals are looting Philadelphia tonight is because a judge dismissed murder charges against cops who acted in self defense during a traffic stop.
The leftist District Attorney has already refiled charges. Why would anyone want to be a cop/live in Philly. pic.twitter.com/I2QHbbGwKH
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) September 27, 2023
Fox29 earlier reported on how a judge
dismissed all charges, including a murder count, against Philadelphia Police Officer Mark Dial who shot and killed a driver as he sat inside his vehicle last month.
Philadelphia Municipal Judge Wendy Pew made her ruling Tuesday after watching video of the fatal shooting of 27-year-old Eddie Irizarry. The defense had asserted that Officer Mark Dial was acting in self-defense when he fired his weapon at close range through the rolled-up driver’s side window of Irizarry’s sedan during a vehicle stop on August 14….
…Irizarry’s family has said that Dial deserves a long prison sentence. The defense, meanwhile, has blasted Krasner’s decision to charge Dial with murder.
“When police officers ordered him to show his hands, he instead produced a weapon and pointed it at an armed police officer,” lawyer Brian McMonagle told reporters this month. “In no world (are) those facts murder.”
The District Attorney’s Office, headed by Soros-backed District Attorney Larry Krasner, announced that it would appeal the decision. Left-wing Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney inflamed the volatile situation by expressing his support for the man who pulled a knife on police officers:
My thoughts are with Eddie Irizarry’s family and loved ones today as they continue to seek justice and answers around his death.
I trust @philadao will do everything in its power to pursue justice and accountability. https://t.co/E7ydaaNGlW
— Mayor Jim Kenney (@PhillyMayor) September 26, 2023
As PJ Media notes, “No doubt any criminals arrested tonight will be back on the streets without hours if not minutes. It was just a few years ago that the Philadelphia City Council cut $33 million from the police budget. Krasner’s office stopped requiring cash bail for a wide range of crimes, including theft and receiving stolen property, in 2019. ”
Philadelphia’s left-wing district attorney, Larry Krasner, is a dishonest scofflaw who is bad at his job. For example, he freed a convicted murderer who killed again.
Krasner was ordered to apologize for lies his office told a federal judge. Law and Crime reports:
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D), one of the first of a wave of progressive prosecutors elected on a criminal justice reform platform, made “false” claims that his office communicated with the family members of the victims of a man that he sought to free from death row, a federal judge found. According to a scathing 28-page memorandum opinion, the district attorney’s office wrongly suggested the relatives of the Pennsylvania couple killed by Robert Wharton supported his release from death row. In fact, U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg found, Krasner’s office did not even contact the sole surviving victim of the attack: Lisa Hart-Newman, who was an infant when Wharton killed her parents, turned off the heat, and left her inside the house to die.
The surviving victim “was ‘extremely disappointed to learn of the District Attorney’s stance.’’
Krasner’s office, which opposes the death penalty, sided with the murderer in his federal challenge to his death sentence, citing his positive adjustment to life in prison. But “the district attorney’s office failed to advise the court about Wharton’s ‘violent escape from a city hall courtroom’ and subsequent escape conviction,” Judge Goldberg said, which are “possibly the worst type of prison adjustment.” Krasner’s Department Supervisors claimed they hadn’t known about the escape attempt, but in reality, an assistant supervisor stated in court that Krasner’s office was aware of Wharton’s escape conviction.
Because Krasner’s office had committed “egregious” and “exceptional” violations of the federal rules of procedure, the judge ordered the DA to “send separate written apologies” to four victim family members.
Krasner, a soft-on-crime district attorney, is himself a scofflaw, notes Big Trial: “Krasner, a persistent tax deadbeat, still owes the city $83,406.50 in back taxes.” But “unless he’s impeached, or somehow removed from office, Krasner….will continue to let armed and dangerous criminals off the hook. And they’ll continue to go out and hurt, maim and/or kill more innocent victims.”
Krasner fails to prosecute most serious crimes, even when arrests are made. As Big Trial notes, “the percentage of criminal cases withdrawn or dismissed by the D.A.’s office has gone from 28% in 2014 under former D.A. Seth Williams all the way up to 67% last year under D.A. Krasner.” Meanwhile, the murder rate in Philadelphia has risen, breaking record after record.
Krasner fired experienced prosecutors who were good at obtaining justice for crime victims, as soon as he took office. As Big Trial notes,
When he first took office back in January 2018, Krasner’s first official act was to fire 31 senior prosecutors…The new Philly D.A., a career criminal defense lawyer who had never prosecuted a traffic stop, replaced the most senior prosecutors in his office with a combination of social justice warriors, former public defenders and woke progressives fresh out of law school.
The result was that criminals remained free to kill innocent people. 21-year-old Jailene Holton was shot to death by a man that Krasner’s office failed to convict of rape despite overwhelming evidence, such as text messages. Krasner’s office assigned an inexperienced recent hire who had previously interned in a public defender’s office to prosecute the case. He bungled the case, so the defendant walked free. Seven months later, that man shot Jailene Holton to death in a rage.
As Big Trial notes, “for Krasner’s prosecutors, winning a conviction in court is a rare event. The D.A.’s own Data Dashboard shows how inept the D.A.’s office is at obtaining guilty verdicts under Krasner. According to the D.A.’s own stats, the percentage of guilty verdicts won at trial have gone from 17% of all criminal cases in 2014 under former D.A. Seth Williams, all the way down to just 2% of all criminal cases prosecuted last year under D.A. Krasner.”
Under Krasner, Philadelphia’s murder rate spiked in 2020, hit an all-time high in 2021, then rose again in 2022, before finally falling a bit in 2023. Philly has more murders than bigger cities like New York or Los Angeles. Yet when Krasner was asked “about the city’s crime surge,” he played it down, reports NBC News:
“We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness,” Krasner said. “We don’t have a crisis of crime. We don’t have a crisis of violence.”… Michael Nutter, a former Philadelphia mayor who is African American, erupted at Krasner, accusing him of dismissing the pain of Black residents who suffer from the violence.
Many violent crimes in Philadelphia are committed by criminals with long rap sheets. An “illegal Congolese alien had already racked up multiple convictions, including for sex crimes, but still hadn’t been deported and was walking” the “streets free to rape” a woman on a “Philadelphia train,” notes lawyer Ted Frank. “Keith Gibson had 29 felony arrests” and “nine convictions,” yet remained “on the streets at age 39 to murder six more people” in Philadelphia and Delaware.
