Crime is out of control in Philadelphia. There were 562 homicides last year, twice as may than eight years ago, and homicides have increased by 19% so far this year. The city’s Police Commissioner reports that last year’s 750 carjackings were triple the number in 2019. For perspective, New York City, which has more than five times the population of Philadelphia, had 485 homicides and 510 carjackings last year. A data snapshot from last year indicates that police arrested only 31% of the Philadelphia’s murderers, 14% of criminals who shot people, and 11% of those committing property crimes. “Far too many in our city think that it’s open season to commit crime here in Philadelphia,” said the Police Commissioner. They think it’s open season because it is open season.
The breakdown in Philadelphia law enforcement began in 2011, when the Obama Justice Department placed the police department under a consent decree in response to an ACLU lawsuit claiming the department was racially biased. As a result, proactive policing ended in the city. Police stops dramatically declined. “There’s no fear of being caught carrying a gun illegally in the city of Philadelphia,” retired Philadelphia police Deputy Commissioner Joe Sullivan told Fox News. Then in 2017, George Soros bankrolled the election of defense attorney Larry Krasner as District Attorney. Krasner’s stated objective is to keep criminals from going to jail or prison. He refuses to seek the death penalty for the city’s worst murderers. He has eliminated bail for most property and drug offenses. He has reduced supervision for offenders on parole and he refuses to seek longer sentences for repeat offenders. In the midst of Philadelphia’s historic wave of crime and violence, Krasner boasts about his success at reducing the sentences of criminals in the city by over 27,000 years and supervision of criminals on parole by over 113,000 years.
As noted by Sullivan, “You can follow a timeline of the rise in homicide and the rise in violent crime and compare that to when the present DA took office, and you can see the relationship very easily. Without a doubt, the communities that are most impacted are communities of color – somewhere between 85 and 95% of all homicide victims in the city of Philadelphia are citizens of color.”
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