My Philly Daily Crime Beat Column On Philly Police And FBI Arresting More Than A Dozen Violent Gang Members

Philly Daily ran my Crime Beat column today on a major bust of Philadelphia violent gang members.

You can read the column via the link below or the text below:

 Davis: Philly police and FBI arrest more than a dozen gang members - Philly Daily 

I’ve been critical of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner here. But in the interest of fairness, after I interviewed two prominent critics of the progressive and activist DA, we at Philly Daily offered a Q&A of Krasner in which we allowed him to fully state his views on crime in Philadelphia without our editing or critical commentary. 

Davis: My Q&A with Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner - Philly Daily

And although I remain critical of Krasner, in fairness I’d like to also commend his office’s participation in the huge takedown of violent criminal gangs in Philadelphia. 

For too long, violent gang members have made life in some of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods a living hell. Like the old Wild West, these gangs face off and fire guns at each other on the streets and often hit innocent bystanders rather than their gangland rivals. (I’ve joked that I’d like to open a school to teach gangbangers how to properly aim and shoot and not turn their guns sideways like they do in the movies). 

I’m glad that the city and the federal government worked together to take some of these violent hoodlums off the board. 

On February 25th, the District Attorney’s Office announced that their Gun Violence Task Force (GVTF), along with the Philadelphia Police Department’s Shooting Investigations Group (SIG), the Philadelphia FBI’s field office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the charging of more than a dozen defendants belonging to multiple West, South and Southwest Philadelphia street groups involved in several shootings in their neighborhoods and elsewhere in the city. 

“The shooting spree occurred between September 21, 2022, and May 18th, 2024, and resulted in five homicides and 35 total shooting victims, the youngest victim being five years old,” the DA’s office stated. “The 33rd Philadelphia County Investigating Grand Jury (IGJ) has determined that Mark Johnson, Kasim Brown, Salahuddin Carter, Jymir Burbage, Jerwayne Haywood, Anthony Woodson, Ronnie Vincent-Quan, Herman Stigall, Markees Muhammad, Quamere Hall, Stephen Weddington, Hassan Stafford, Hamzah Curry, Paul Beckwith, Nasir Wells, Hasin Muse, and Tatiana Edwards are implicated in the shooting homicides of four victims, the non-fatal shootings of five survivors, and eleven other shooting incidents. Two other individuals are not being named at this time as part of ongoing investigations.”

The DA’s announcement stated that the Investigating Grand Jury also determined that nine of the defendants are connected to the street group known as the “Young Bag Chasers,” or “YBC,” six are associated with the street group “Campers Campers Klapperz,” or “CCK,” and two are connected to the street group “Parkside Killers,” or “PSK.”

The list of charges includes:

·     Murder (H) and other related charges:

·         Anthony Woodson

·         Ronnie Vincent-Quan

·         Herman Stigall

·         Markees Muhammad

·         Stephen Weddington

·         Jymir Burbage

·         Hasin Muse

·         Hamzah Curry

·     Attempted Murder (F1) and other related charges:

·         Mark Johnson

·         Kasim Brown

·     Aggravated Assault (F1) and other related charges:

·         Salahuddin Carter

·         Jerwayne Haywood

·         Quamere Hall

·         Hassan Stafford

·         Paul Beckwith

·         Nasir Wells

·     Criminal Conspiracy (H) to Murder and other related charges:

·         Tatiana Edwards

“Ballistic evidence was recovered from various crime scenes and analyzed. The analysis was compared to fired cartridge casings (FCCs) to determine whether the FCCs were fired from the same firearm, and what specific firearm that was. Surveillance video of the shooting incidents were also recovered from businesses, residential properties, city cameras as well as police vehicles equipped with video recording equipment.

“The IGJ alleged that Defendants Salahuddin Carter and Jymir Burbage were involved in a double non-fatal shooting on September 22, 2022, where an eight-year-old was struck by a stray bullet while playing on the front steps in the area of 1500 Block of North 13th Street. Officers responded to the scene at approximately 8:50 P.M. where they found the victim with a graze wound to the side of the victim’s head. The victim was taken to Temple Hospital where a second shooting victim with a gunshot wound to the leg arrived shortly thereafter. The second victim had been the passenger in a vehicle when the vehicle was shot on 13th Street. The driver of the vehicle ultimately crashed the car on the way to the hospital.”

The IGJ also alleges that Defendants Stephen Weddington and Jymir Burbage were involved in a homicide of a victim on December 7, 2023. After the homicide, the “Young Bag Chasers,” or “YBC” relentlessly mocked the victim and the victim’s workplace.

“The DAO remains deeply committed to working with all of our partners to secure justice for victims and co-survivors of violent crime,” said District Attorney Larry Krasner. “Our message to other groups who are engaged in violence: we will use every legal tool, resource and enforcement strategy to hold you accountable and seek an appropriately lengthy jail time for the harm you cause to residents of Philadelphia.”

“I’d like to thank ADA Marianne Aguilar, ADA Anna Walters and members of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Shooting Investigation’s Group for their diligent investigation into a sprawling shooting spree that captured and injured the lives of too many in West, Southwest, and South Philadelphia,” said Assistant District Attorney William Fritze, Chief of the DAO’s Gun Violence Task Force. “This work is a testament to the integral use of witness statements and digital evidence processed through the DAO’s GVTF Forensics Lab.”

Captain James Kearney of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Shooting Investigations Groups also weighed in, “The collaboration between the Philadelphia Police Department’s Shooting Investigations Group and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office’s Gun Violence Task Force allows for successful outcomes like the one today. It’s because of the collaboration with our Law Enforcement Partners that our city can sleep safer tonight.”

Paul Davis’s Crime Beat column appears here each week. He is also a contributor to Broad + Liberty and Counterterrorism magazine. He can be reached at pauldavisoncrime.com.  

Ralph Cipriano: Philadelphia Judge Rips ADA For 'Lack Of Candor;' Tosses Abuse Case Against Cop

 Veteran reporter Ralph Cipriano at BigTrial.net offers a piece on a judge calling out an assistant district attorney for lying to the court in a case against a police officer. 

 On Jan. 7th in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, Judge Karen Simmons called out Assistant District Attorney Rachel Black, one of District Attorney Larry Krasner's hand-picked rookie prosecutors, for lying to Her Honor. 

"Everything that has gone on so far with this case when it's in front of me, I find that your email and your arguments to be disingenuous, and I find that they lack candor to the court, and that's a huge problem for me," Judge Simmons told Black, who's a member of the D.A.'s Special Investigations Unit that specializes in prosecuting Philadelphia police officers. 

In 2019, Krasner personally recruited Black, then a staff attorney for The Legal Aide Society of New York City, to join the D.A.'s office, even though Black had no previous experience as a prosecutor.

But in court, the rookie prosecutor made an enemy out of Judge Simmons. After the judge blasted ADA Black for a lack of candor last month, she dismissed Black's case.  

The Commonwealth v. Carl Holmes accused the former chief inspector in the Philadelphia Police Department of sexually abusing three females who are former cops. Even though more than a dozen years ago, the same exact allegations were previously investigated by the police department's Internal Affairs Division and the District Attorney's office, with the result that no charges were ever filed.  

For D.A. Larry Krasner, the tossing of the Holmes case was a temporary setback in his war on cops, which to date has produced few victories. Cases that Krasner previously filed against cops have been either been lost in court or tossed by judges at preliminary hearings for lack of evidence. The most recent example happened last month, when Krasner's case against Staff Inspector Joe Bologna got tossed.  

But this time around in the D.A.'s war on cops, the Holmes case represented a new low, even for Larry Krasner. A sitting judge just tossed a case because she determined that one of Krasner's ADAs, in their zeal to convict a cop, had committed prosecutorial misconduct by lying to a judge. 

You can read the rest of this outstanding piece via the below link:

Judge Rips ADA For 'Lack Of Candor;' Tosses Abuse Case Against Cop | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog