And they want to disarm ME???

[RickD]

(Reason number 73 that I'm glad I moved out of the city.)

They can't keep the criminals off the street, but they want to take away my right to defend myself. Makes perfect sense. The greater the risk is to me the less I can fight back. Uh huh. Sure. In some bizarro parallel universe maybe.

Message: If you're going to commit a crime with a gun, do it in Philly!

Here's part of the story from the front page of today's Inquirer. (Full story at this link: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front...d__Denied.html )



By Craig R. McCoy, Nancy Phillips, and Dylan Purcell
Inquirer Staff Writers

Kareem Johnson stood over Walter Smith and executed him. He fired so close that Smith's blood splashed up onto Johnson's Air Jordan baseball cap.

He shot him as a favor to a childhood friend.

Smith was a threat because he had come forward as a witness in a murder case against Clinton Robinson.
With the witness dead, Robinson cut a sweet deal. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to just 2 1/2 to five years.

"Basically, I beat it," he says now.

He and Johnson know all about beating cases in the Philadelphia courts. In just three years, Johnson, 26, and Robinson, 24, were arrested a total of nine times for gun crimes, but until the charges escalated to murder, nothing stuck.

Johnson's bloodletting came to an end only after he killed a 10-year-old boy in 2004 in one of the city's most notorious murders. As for Robinson, he's locked up on a drug charge, but expects to go free soon.
The two men's violent path from the streets into the courts and back again vividly illustrates the failure of Philadelphia's criminal justice system.

It is a system that all too often fails to punish violent criminals, fails to protect witnesses, fails to catch thousands of fugitives, fails to decide cases on their merits - fails to provide justice.

In America's most violent big city, people accused of serious crimes are escaping conviction with stunning regularity, an Inquirer investigation has found.

Philadelphia defendants walk free on all charges in nearly two-thirds of violent-crime cases. Among large urban counties, Philadelphia has the nation's lowest felony-conviction rate.

Only one in 10 people charged with gun assaults is convicted of that charge, the newspaper found.

Only two in 10 accused armed robbers are found guilty of armed robbery.

Only one in four accused rapists is found guilty of rape.

The data also show that people charged with assaults with a gun escape conviction more often than those who use fists or knives. Of people arrested for possession of illegal handguns, almost half go free.

Nationally, prosecutors in big cities win felony convictions in half of violent-crime cases, according to federal studies. In Philadelphia, prosecutors win only 20 percent.

In a comprehensive analysis of the Philadelphia criminal courts, The Inquirer traced the outcomes of 31,000 criminal court cases filed in 2006, 2007, and 2008, tracking their dispositions through early this year. The results go a long way toward explaining the violence on city streets.

"We have a system that is on the brink of overall collapse," said Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery, a former Philadelphia judge and a longtime critic of the courts' high dismissal rate, after reviewing The Inquirer's findings.

[RJT]

That sound you just heard was my head exploding....

you NEED a duct tape before reading notice!!!!!!!!

[max384]

What? Low felony conviction rates? Nonsense. There's simply not enough gun control! Keep the guns away from the law abiding citizens. That will lower crime!

Sounds like some house cleaning needs to be done in the Philly court system.

[sttaffy]

every election i vote against every sitting judge in the city and my district.

[stephpd]

Ah, the criminal Justice system. The best money can buy.

Hard to believe that a Philly paper is reporting something like this. Something most of us have known for a long time. Violent criminals often going free to prey on society, while our prisons are filled with non violent drug offenders.

A system so screwed up that a viable solution would seem so extreme to the liberals would faint at the thought. Of course the normal solutions haven't worked. Disarming the law abiding and plea bargaining just to get a conviction of some sort. Multiple felonies and less then 30 years old free to roam the streets because the prisons are full. Cops, DA, courts and prisons pushed to the point of breaking.

Guess we'll just have to raise more taxes.

[dc dalton]

Long article but well worth every minute it takes to read it.

The ineptitude, stupidity and 'dirty' lawyers in Philly just take the cake.

Tell you what, I will be thinking twice before deciding to take a trip to Philly, we used to go all the time and loved it but if this is what it has become there are other places.

[Story]

I'd just read the hardcopy version of this and signed on to see if it had been posted to PAFOA. Rep to you, OP.

These statistics can be used - generated by the anti-2A folks at the Inquirer - can be used by our side to spotlight 1) how a few recidivists are responsible for the majority of firearms crimes and 2) how idiotic is it to punish the law-abiding majority for the crimes of this minority.

[Vortex]

Here's part of the story from the front page of today's Inquirer. (Full story at this link: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front...d__Denied.html)

By Craig R. McCoy, Nancy Phillips, and Dylan Purcell
Inquirer Staff Writers

Only one in 10 people charged with gun assaults is convicted of that charge, the newspaper found.

Now that is a fascinating statistic.

Basically, they are so incompetent in enforcing the current gun laws that they fail to turn 90% of their arrests into convictions.

So the obvious solution is to clamor for more gun laws that they will also be incompetent in enforcing, unless of course it is against the otherwise law abiding citizen that actually has something to lose. Then they will spare no expense in destroying that guy's (or gal's) life.

Quite amazing when you think about it.

[Brick]

Maybe we should bookmark the original article so it can be sent to our PA General Assembly members.

By the way, while you're voting against the judges, I hope you're voting against incumbent District Attorneys also! Remember the DA is one that brings charges for prosecution or not and it's the DA that makes the plea deals. So clobber the DA too!

[adymond]

Now that is a fascinating statistic.

Basically, they are so incompetent in enforcing the current gun laws that they fail to turn 90% of their arrests into convictions.

So the obvious solution is to clamor for more gun laws that they will also be incompetent in enforcing, unless of course it is against the otherwise law abiding citizen that actually has something to lose. Then they will spare no expense in destroying that guy's (or gal's) life.

Quite amazing when you think about it.

Actually it makes perfect sense if you are an incompetent fool. Rather than seeking to become more efficient they are looking to increase the number of laws so that more people will break them and they can then say they are overwhelmed and even though they are only 10% successful, they are putting more people away for gun crimes. And remember the 10% rate is not in perspective since they are so overwhelmed.

God I HATE Philadelphia politics.