Tuesday, April 27, 2021

SAN FRANCISCO - HOME TO WAR PROFITEER SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, NANCY PELOSI, AND FORMER S.F. D.A. BRIBES SUCKING LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS

 

San Francisco’s Substance-Abuse Crisis

A hotels-for-homeless program does nothing to address the real problem: addiction.April 26, 2021 
California
The Social Order

The most important walk you can take in San Francisco is not to the grand Golden Gate bridge, down crooked Lombard Street, or to the brightly painted Victorians in Alamo Square. It’s to the city’s large and gritty sixth district, which contains the Tenderloin, Civic Center, and South of Market neighborhoods. What you’ll find there will shatter any preconceived notions about homelessness you might have heard from activists, city departments, and elected officials. You’ll realize that San Francisco doesn’t have a homeless problem—it has a substance-abuse crisis. And Project Roomkey, California governor Gavin Newsom’s hotels-for-homeless plan that he’s touting as a model for the rest of the country, won’t help any more than a band-aid will cure a cancer patient.

Block after block, you’ll see thousands of people who are barely alive. Some are alone; others are piled on top of one another, running into traffic, or standing slumped over, unconscious. They’ll be injecting or smoking heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamine in front of you, unaware or unfazed by your presence. Scabs cover their faces and bodies, limbs are swollen red and blue, often bloody and oozing pus. You’ll notice the garbage, rotting food, discarded drug detritus, and feces surrounding them. A shocking number are mere teenagers, but many are old or have aged well before their time.

Your immediate reaction will probably be grief and horror. How can we treat our fellow human beings so cruelly, and how did we, as a society, allow things to get this bad? If we can’t admit these individuals into hospitals today, we should at least erect mobile hospitals to deliver critical medical, psychiatric, and addiction treatment before it’s too late.

Yet Newsom has declared that with programs like Project Roomkey, the United States can solve homelessness. To see the results of the program is to know what a bizarre claim this is. While a small portion of the unhoused are healthy enough to shift into and benefit from such housing, the vast majority are not—and their troubles won’t be alleviated by a hotel room.

San Francisco launched Project Roomkey last year, ostensibly as a way to thwart the spread of Covid-19. At last count, approximately 8,000 people live on San Francisco’s streets, and starting in April 2020, a few thousand were routed to leased “shelter-in-place” (SIP) hotels and motels. However, since so many were living outside as a direct result of substance use (or mental illnesses associated with or exacerbated by it), lethal drug activity flourished in and around the buildings.

Then came the body count. In 2020, San Francisco saw 713 fatal drug overdoses, mostly from fentanyl. Nearly three-quarters perished while isolated inside the hotel rooms and supportive housing provided by the city. Six died in the Hotel Whitcomb, a designated SIP hotel, in a single month.

The reason: Project Roomkey hotels offer no addiction-recovery treatment or mental health care. Nor is there a sobriety requirement. Residents do, however, get plenty of fresh needles, fentanyl foil, and other drug supplies, courtesy of the harm-reduction teams. As Dr. Hali Hammer of San Francisco’s Department of Public Health admitted in an April 2021 New York Times story on the city’s epidemic of drug fatalities, “What we as the public health department are responsible for is preventing death by giving people the resources they need to use safely.” The entire system erodes the desire and willpower to accept detox and rehab. It’s easier and less painful, at least in the short term, to use in a hotel.

Crime has also surged around the SIP motels and hotels, as people score from dealers just outside the lobbies. Shootings, robberies, and car break-ins have become commonplace, as have open-air drug use and sexual acts performed in broad daylight—an alarming change for neighborhoods like the Marina, which not long ago did not have a high population of unhoused, addicted people.

Now Project Roomkey is transitioning from leasing rooms in hotels and motels to purchasing buildings and converting them into permanent housing for unsheltered individuals. Funds are suddenly flowing for the program. FEMA offered partial funding, but earlier this year President Biden signed an executive order directing the federal government to reimburse program costs fully.

Newsom and San Francisco officials are aware that Project Roomkey does nothing to heal homelessness because the absence of a home isn’t the real sickness. The self-described experts will continue to blame income inequality, lack of affordable housing, or class and racial disparities. They won’t admit—at least not publicly—that the problem is almost entirely driven by addiction.

Meantime, the tide of people coming into the city, drawn by easy access to cheap, potent narcotics, will continue unabated. Some may get a hotel room, but most will become fixtures on the streets. Few, if any, will get better. Based on current projections, more than 1,000 people will die from overdose in 2021. Their descent will be both agonizing and inhumane.

It doesn’t have to be this way in San Francisco, in California generally, or across the United States. Funds allocated to programs like Project Roomkey should go toward providing vital medical, psychological, and addiction treatment to those in desperate need. Go ahead. Call it a pipe dream.

New Era of Remote Workers Spawns Domestic Migration as Small Towns Offer Financial, Other Incentives

Charming downtown Bristol Main Street.. (Photo by John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images)
John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images
5:42

The coronavirus pandemic that kept people locked in their homes for months turns out to have inspired a new wave of domestic migration as cities across the country offer incentives to remote workers ranging from cash to free recreational opportunities.

Bill Oesterle, co-founder and former CEO of Angie’s List and the co-founder of MakeMyMove, wrote about how his company connects remote workers with communities that want to attract new residents.

Oesterie’s op-ed in USA Today explains how the pandemic has put a new twist on economic development:

The term “talent-driven economic development” has become increasingly popular in city halls and statehouses over the past 10 years. Books like “The Rise of the Creative Class” by Richard Florida ignited enthusiastic discussions at economic development organizations across the country. In the Midwest and Northeast where demographic forces are causing serious work force problems, the focus on talent has become the most acute.

Unfortunately, no one had the foggiest notion how to do it. It’s no coincidence that the vast majority of existing economic development programs focus on attracting companies and the jobs that they create. Jobs attract talent. It has always worked that way.

Then millions of remote workers popped up and many of those will continue to work from home, even after the coronavirus is behind us.

The op-ed continues:

As communities begin to understand this value, it is likely that they will design programs to explore it. Ten thousand dollars may not be enough to move people at the margin, but $100,000 or more just might. At this point, no community has taken a big swing at attracting remote workers with major incentives and sophisticated targeting and marketing.

If that happens, the results could be dramatic. Recruiting 5,000 to 10,000 new remote workers to a local community is now feasible and would have a much more significant and immediate impact than traditional corporate subsidies. If efforts like this gain scale, geographically fixed workers might realize the substantial value they could capture if they moved to remote work, adding additional fuel to this paradigm-changing pandemic.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the phenomenon:

For towns and counties, it’s well worth forking out money to diversify their populations and boost their economies. New residents patronize local restaurants and stores, pay taxes, enroll their kids in schools and may volunteer or immerse themselves in civic activities.

To be sure, all the relocation incentives have fine print. They require income verification and proof that the new residents can work remotely. Some require buying a house … all want at least a year’s residency; some mandate two years. All limit how many folks they can accept.

Some programs include quirky local bonuses. Topeka, Kansas, throws in a year’s worth of Jimmy John sandwiches; northwest Arkansas springs for a mountain bike; West Virginia offers free whitewater rafting, skiing, rock climbing and rafting. Many places include a concierge service to support new residents, access to a co-working space and networking events.

Evan Hock, co-founder with Oesterle of MakeMyMove.com, said in the Chronicle report:

Many of these communities historically have been fly-over towns. Maybe they lost population in the last decade; growth has slowed. Brand-new citizens bring a lot of income and spending that is enormously valuable as it trickles through the economy.

“It’s a magical strategic intersection of new workforce trends and a shift in geographic preferences,” Brad Smith, Intuit’s former CEO, and currently executive chair of its board and chair of the Nordstrom board, said.

“Rural has become the new urban,” Smith said. “People want to be part of that Hallmark lifestyle in communities where they have a chance to know other people.”

Smith and his wife started a business, Ascend WV, that offers $12,000 cash, a year’s worth of free outdoor activities, and co-working space to selected people who move to West Virginia.

“Over the next five years, they aim to lure 1,000 remote workers, starting this year with 50 in Morgantown,” the Chronicle reported.

Some of the other moving incentive programs include:

  • Lauderdale and Colbert counties in Alabama have the Remote Shoals program that offers a $10,000 incentive. The median home price in those locations is $175,000.
  • Michigan’s Berrien County launched Move to Michigan, which offers $10,000 to selected new residents states, plus another $5,000 if they enrolled a child in public schools. The full reward requires buying a house for at least $200,000 and staying for at least two years.
  • A variety of small towns in Iowa, Kansas and Texas offer free lots, valued at about $3,000, to new residents who want to build a house.
  • OpportunityMaine offers up to $367 a month in state tax credits for recent college grads to pay off their student loans. It also offers networking for folks considering a relocation to get questions answered. 
  • Tulsa Remote, started in late 2018, has paid $10,000 to more than 700 people, many of whom moved to the northeast Oklahoma city with spouses, children and other family members.

Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@br


Mayor Bill de Blasio’s NYC Sees 46 Shootings During One Week

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks to reporters after visiting New Bridges Elementary School to observe pandemic-related safety procedures, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Teachers are ramping up pressure on New York City to reconsider its drive to reopen the nation's largest public …
AP Photo/John Minchillo
2:06

There were 46 separate shooting incidents for the seven day time-frame ending Sunday evening in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s (D) New York City.

The New York Post reported that the 46 shooting incidents resulted in 50 victims.

There were 12 shootings with 14 victims during the same week in 2020.

The New York Police Department showed 376 shootings in the city so far this year, with 416 victims.

On April 20, 2021, the Post noted de Blasio was dealing with the violence by reassigning police officers, as he did last year. However, he is reassigning 200 officers versus the 300 he reassigned last year.

Moreover, after the 300 officers were reallocated, gun violence surged in the reassignment areas during 2020.

New York adopted a massive body of gun controls in 2013 under the auspices of the SAFE Act. Those controls include universal background checks, a ban on “high capacity” magazines, an “assault weapons” ban, firearm registration requirements, as well as ammunition registration.

The New York Government’s webpage notes the state also has a red flag law, which took effect August 24, 2019.

Despite all these gun controls, which are the very same  controls Democrats seek at the federal level, gun violence in Mayor de Blasio’s NYC is surging.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkinsa weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

Thug Charged w/Murder of 4-Year-Old Girl Had Been Arrested 6 Times

  3 comments

Pro-crime policies work. This is the result.

 A 4-year-old girl has died from injuries sustained in an incident at a Raleigh hotel. Subsequently, a man has been charged in connection with her death.

Milton Ray Horton, Jr. was charged with murder. Horton, 27, was arrested by Raleigh police.

Around 4:30 on Sunday morning, Raleigh police arrived at the Candlewood Suites hotel on Lead Mine Road to find the child seriously hurt. Police said she suffered severe injuries and later died at a hospital.

WRAL did an extensive search Horton and learned he’s been arrested six times as an adult in Wake County – for crimes like breaking and entering, resisting a public officer and trespassing.

There are always warning signs. Some are more obvious than others.

A sane society pays attention to those warning signs and has mechanisms for triggering them. Those triggers save us from worse consequences.

Then Democrats and some Republicans decided that it was time to dismantle the criminal justice system and policing while calling it reform. The more the system was taken apart, the worse crime got, and the harder activists fought to decriminalize crime. The pettier stuff escalated into much worse incidents because the system was no longer functioning and the criminals had gotten the message. Repeat offenders were never locked up allowing them to escalate to worse things, and the sheer critical mass of violence broke the justice system even further.

A few incidents make the news, but mostly they get ignored. And people get the message. Even if they're dumb enough to vote for pro-crime politicians, they still start buying guns, learning all over again to be wary, and to live in a profoundly dangerous world.

That awareness is very slow to penetrate elite political and cultural circles who hear a lot about Makhia Brown, not about Elijah LaFrance.

A 3-year-old boy was killed when gunfire erupted at a children’s birthday party in a Miami suburb—unleashing shock and outrage from community members, politicians and celebrities.

Investigators are still searching for the person who shot Elijah LaFrance when an altercation at a short-term rental in Golden Glades turned violent on Saturday night.

Elijah isn’t the first child caught in the crossfire at a party in Miami-Dade. In January, 6-year-old Chaussidy Sanders was killed at one. Last year, 7-year-old Alana Washington was killed in a drive-by shooting.

“As a father and as a member of this community, I am completely devastated. I’m disgusted,” Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez told reporters at the scene.

“We talk about accountability. When are we going to hold ourselves accountable for what’s going on in our streets each and every day? This is ridiculous.”

When the elites and the media cares as much about children killed by criminals as they do about criminals killed by cops.

24 Shot, 3 Dead, over the Weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, left, speaks after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a shelter in place order to combat the spread of the Covid-19 virus, during a news conference Friday, March 20, 2020, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Photo
1:57

Twenty-four people were shot, three fatally, over the weekend in Mayor Lori Ligthfoot’s (D) Chicago.

ABC 7 / Chicago Sun Times reported that the first fatality occurred Friday night around 10:30 p.m., at which time police found a 27-year-old lying on the sidewalk with multiple gunshot wounds. He was found “in the 900-block of West 61st Street” and pronounced dead at the scene.

The second fatality took place just before 10:30 p.m. Saturday, as a 30-year-old woman sat in her vehicle  “in Roseland on the Far South Side.” Someone fired shots, striking her multiple times. She was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.

The third fatality occurred at 12:30 a.m. on Sunday morning in Humboldt Park. Thirty-six-year-old Duntae Manuel was sitting in a vehicle when someone walked up and opened fire, fatally wounding him.

On April 23, 2021, Breitbart News noted that over 900 people had already been shot in Chicago by that point in the year.

The Chicago Tribune explained that 907 people were shot January 1, 2021, through April 19, 2021. That figure represented fatal and non-fatal shooting victims combined and was an increase of 214 shooting victims over the same time in 2020.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkinsa weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

The D.C. BLM Insurrectionists Get a Pass

It’s okay to riot in D.C., and assault government buildings and police officers again.

  22 comments

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

The face of the Black Lives Matter insurrectionist who was arrested in Washington D.C. with an axe, a laser, and a “destructive device” will not be plastered by the FBI over any local billboards. 

The BLM insurrections who rioted in Washington D.C. over the death of Daunte Wright, who had choked a woman to steal her rent money, threw fireworks and heavy objects at police. They shone lasers in the eyes of police officers and vandalized the Columbus monument with the obscene and hateful graffiti of a racist black supremacist movement. And they’ll get a pass.

Even when the racist insurrectionist mob chanted, “burn the precinct to the ground.” 

While the D.C. police department has asked for the public’s helpin identifying one of the BLM insurrections who attacked a police officer and is offering a reward, the national media has not picked up the story the way that it did when there was an effort underway to identify the Capitol rioters, nor has the FBI taken to buying billboards asking anyone who knows the thug for tips.

Fighting with a police officer in January was profoundly morally different than doing so in April. 

That’s all the more striking since the D.C. Metro police force is 52% black, while the Capitol Police are 29% black. Black lives don’t matter when they’re also blue. Just ask Captain Dorn.

Only a handful of months after the media agonized over the spectacle of a riot in D.C. and our political class acted as if fights between protesters and police was some inexplicably horrifying event, worse than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor put together, instead of the top outdoor sport of 2020, it’s okay to riot in D.C., assault government buildings, and call for burning them down.

It’s fine to brandish axes, throw fireworks, and assault police officers for social justice.

None of the handful of BLMers and Antifa who have been arrested will have their ugly faces splashed across social media, be fired from their jobs, or face the threat of decades in prison.

Insurrection is once again no longer a crime in America. 

Scenes in which BLM insurrections "lobbed a large firework that exploded amid the police line" and "tossed debris, including water and water bottles" at police was, according to the Washington Post, merely a skirmish. There’s no particular interest in how the cops are doing. Having fireworks and debris thrown at you is just part of the job of coping with social justice.

It was also safe for Rep. Maxine Waters to head down to Minnesota and incite violence by telling BLM race rioters to "stay on the street", fight, and "get more confrontational" if the half-minority George Floyd jury didn’t find a police officer guilty of Floyd’s overdose death. 

Brooklyn Center is a long way from Maxine’s California mansion (well outside the impoverished district she claims to represent), so she wasn’t visiting her constituents. But the Democrat Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee doesn’t have to worry that any of the Wall Street companies she regulates will stop donating to her over her incitement to violence.

Waters regularly wins every election with at least 70% of the vote, but has nonetheless raised and spent nearly $2 million. And Wall Street isn’t about to cut off the insurrectionist’s cash flow.

After the Capitol Riot, MetLife announced that “the board of MetLife’s Political Action Committee (PAC) is reviewing all of its guidelines and giving to ensure that they are consistent with the company’s purpose and values” and that “one of our guiding principles will be to support candidates who uphold our values and the rule of law.” MetLife has been a Maxine donor.

Will MetLife continue donating money to Rep. Maxine Waters after she incited violence?

Don’t bet against it.

No one in the media is calling the latest outburst of Black Lives Matter rioting, even when it targets D.C. police officers and takes place in D.C., an insurrection. The city has asked the National Guard to be ready to provide assistance, but the national media is carefully overlooking the fact that the first time troops have been needed to deal with actual violence in D.C. since Biden took office has been in response to violent race riots by a Democrat political movement.

If it’s not an insurrection, then what is it? Following the AP Stylebook definition, some media outlets are calling it an “uprising”. What’s the difference between an insurrection and an uprising? Much as with the famous quip, “none dare call it treason”, it’s a question of power. 

Challenges by Republicans to Democrat power are an “insurrection”, while Democrat riots are an “uprising” meant to seize power. The difference is not in the substance of the violence, but in the morality of who has power. Democrats and their media believe that Black Lives Matter race riots are righteous, while protests over a rigged election are not. Just as doxxing, election fraud, and cancel culture are right or wrong depending entirely on their practitioners and targets.

The only rule is that leftist power is moral and everyone else’s power is immoral. Everything needed to rectify a leftist imbalance of power, from violence to election theft, is justified.

If an anti-government riot in the nation’s capital that attacks government buildings isn’t an insurrection, then what is it? It’s whatever euphemism the media uses to glamorize it.

“Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s,” the AP Stylebook had argued.

We heard a great deal about the “ransacking” of Pelosi’s office during the Capitol Riot. The focus on “rioting and property destruction” there was justified because the AP didn’t agree with the politics of the rioters. But when the AP and the rest of the media does agree with the politics of the rioters, then it’s important to ignore the violence and focus on the rightness of the cause.

The police and other law enforcement officers caught in the middle of the riots are confused because they’re never sure if they’re supposed to stop a riot or kneel to the rioters.

The Bidenite military leadership just disciplined soldiers who had flown choppers too low down to the crowd of rioting Black Lives Matter insurrectionists who had set fire to a church and the White House gatehouse during the BLM riots over the summer. The media accused the military of being tinpot fascists out to terrorize a mostly peaceful uprising and their arson attempts.

"Immediately after this event, we instituted a very strict ... approval process for the use of the National Guard, not just [for] the Metropolitan Police Department, but any agency that is requesting them," an Army official said

And then when the Capitol Riot happened, and the National Guard, which had by the orders of the D.C. government, been relegated to unarmed traffic control, didn’t arrive right away, the media once again howled holy hell, this time because there weren’t choppers and soldiers. 

But that’s because the National Guard wasn’t using the AP’s stylistic spinbook. 

Under Biden the mostly peaceful race riots, the uprisings, or insurrections, by any name, are back. After the worst part of a year in which the Biden regime decided to keep thousands of troops in the city for political theater, the National Guard is actually needed to keep the peace.

The BLM mobs are shooting off fireworks at police, shining lasers in their eyes, throwing debris at them, and shouting, “If we don't get it, burn it down!" 

But that’s not an insurrection.

It’s an insurrection when the rioters are out of power. When the rioters have the White House, the Justice Department, the House and the Senate on their side, it’s not an insurrection.

Just like the Nazi brownshirts or the Maoist Red Guard, BLM is now a form of state terror.

Storm Warning

Philadelphia residents and business owners brace for the Chauvin verdict.April 20, 2021 
Public safety

As Derek Chauvin’s trial draws to a close in Minneapolis, Philadelphia is among many cities girding itself for a repeat of last year’s rioting. It now seems likely that if Chauvin receives anything less than the maximum “life sentence without the possibility of parole,” Philadelphia will experience a replay of the looting and disorder that gripped the city last June after the death of George Floyd, and again in October after the shooting of Walter Wallace Jr.

In Philadelphia’s Port Richmond section near Aramingo Avenue, where the bulk of the looting occurred last June, some businesses are already boarding up in anticipation of violence. Many of these same business owners have met with the 24th Police District to make safety plans. At the city’s request, Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf signed a Proclamation of Disaster Emergency, activating the National Guard. “This declaration allows the commonwealth to take preemptive steps to ensure the safety of our fellow Pennsylvanians,” Wolf said.

In a city still recovering from the 2020 riots, the emphasis is now on prevention. But will it work?

In March 2021, the New York Times published a retrospective on how police mishandled Black Lives Matter protests in cities across the U.S. The opening paragraphs mention Philadelphia: “Police sprayed tear gas on a crowd of mainly peaceful protesters trapped on an interstate who had nowhere to go and no way to breathe.”

Anyone unfamiliar with the June and October riots in Philadelphia would have come away from the Times article thinking that the city was rife with police abuse. Yet on May 30, 2020, at the first George Floyd protest at the city’s Municipal Services Building, protesters hurled bottles at police (who were not wearing helmets or shields), set a squad car on fire, and broke windows in City Hall. For the next three or four nights, looters and rioters held sections of the city hostage, because police were unable to keep the peace.

The Times quotes independent investigators who claimed that “police did not understand how angry people were” and that “For decades, criminal justice experts have warned that warrior-like police tactics escalate conflict at protests instead of defusing it.” The investigators urged police departments to work with community organizers and enlist the expertise of activists in dealing with civil unrest.

As if heeding this advice, the Philadelphia Police Department Community Relations Unit recently instructed district captains to coordinate with community groups ahead of any possible lawlessness after the Chauvin verdict. Philadelphia chief inspector Altovise Love-Craighead even reached out to local community organizations willing to work with the police during “any civil unrest that might be planned for the foreseeable future.”

The chief inspector’s olive branch, however, was met with scorn from an activist at 5th Square, a city advocacy group, who said that the police outreach “could encourage the vigilantism also seen last year, in which armed groups of mostly white men patrolled for looters and, in some instances, assaulted innocent people.”

The so-called vigilantism of these “mostly white men” (a phrase meant to invoke “white supremacy”) came after days of police incompetence in handling the rioting and looting, which had extended from Center City into the Port Richmond neighborhood of upper Aramingo Avenue, where a large number of businesses and strip malls are located.

On multiple nights, neighborhood residents heard the sound of explosives, police sirens, and gunfire, despite the mayor’s week-long, citywide curfew. The ongoing rioting caused many to fear that the mob was about to infiltrate residential areas. With no police on hand, vigilante groups—made up of long-time residents with generational ties to the neighborhood—formed to protect the area.

Protesters accused these vigilantes of “assaulting innocent bystanders” or using “bad words” during the contentious exchanges between the two groups. Meantime, looters had already caused millions of dollars in property damage throughout the city.

Other attempts by the Philadelphia Police Department to reach out to registered community groups prior to the Chauvin verdict inspired one local activist to deride the whole thing as “a joke.” Local activist Devren Washington called the police outreach “disingenuous” and predicted that many would rebuff it, Plan Philly reported.

An independent report by City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart faulted the city for its handling of last year’s riots, blaming both Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw and Mayor Jim Kenney for the lack of preparedness. The report found that the police department “lacked the manpower and transportation to arrest looters, allowing the looting to continue without challenge for hours.”

Regarding the Chauvin verdict, Outlaw predicts that “emotions will run high regardless of the verdict” and that “The Philadelphia Police Department is committed to protecting the First Amendment rights of individuals to peacefully assemble and protest, but we also want to ensure that any demonstration activity that happens is done in a safe and lawful manner.”

Business owners in Port Richmond, Center City, and West Philadelphia are not so sure that protests will be conducted “in a safe and lawful manner.” Jabari Jones, head of the 2,000-member West Philadelphia Corridor Collaborative, told the African-American-owned Philadelphia Tribune that a number of West Philadelphia business owners have not been able to make repairs and reopen after last year’s riots, and that he doesn’t think the city will be “able to respond any better than the last go-around.”

“A large portion of our businesses would not be able to recover from another bout of civil unrest,” Jones said.


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