I\u2019ve 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And although I remain critical of Krasner, in fairness I\u2019d like to also commend his office\u2019s participation in the huge takedown of violent criminal gangs in Philadelphia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For too long, violent gang members have made life in some of Philadelphia\u2019s 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\u2019ve joked that I\u2019d 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).\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m glad that the city and the federal government worked together to take some of these violent hoodlums off the board.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On February 25th, the District Attorney\u2019s Office announced that their Gun Violence Task Force (GVTF), along with the Philadelphia Police Department\u2019s Shooting Investigations Group (SIG), the Philadelphia FBI\u2019s field office, and the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office of the Eastern District of\u00a0Pennsylvania, the charging of more than a dozen defendants belonging to multiple West, South and Southwest Philadelphia street groups\u00a0involved in several shootings in their neighborhoods and elsewhere in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shooting\u00a0spree occurred between September 21, 2022, and May 18th, 2024, and resulted in five\u00a0homicides and 35 total shooting victims, the youngest victim being five years old,\u201d the DA\u2019s office stated. \u201cThe 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,\u00a0Paul 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The DA\u2019s announcement stated that the Investigating Grand Jury also determined that nine of the defendants are connected to the street group known as the \u201cYoung Bag Chasers,\u201d or \u201cYBC,\u201d six are associated with the street group \u201cCampers Campers Klapperz,\u201d or \u201cCCK,\u201d and two are connected to the street group \u201cParkside Killers,\u201d or \u201cPSK.\u201d<\/p>\n
The list of charges includes:<\/p>\n
Murder (H)\u00a0and other related charges:<\/p>\n
Anthony Woodson<\/p>\n
Ronnie Vincent-Quan<\/p>\n
Herman Stigall<\/p>\n
Markees Muhammad<\/p>\n
Stephen Weddington<\/p>\n
Jymir Burbage<\/p>\n
Hasin Muse<\/p>\n
Hamzah Curry<\/p>\n
Attempted Murder (F1)\u00a0and other related charges:<\/p>\n
Aggravated Assault (F1)\u00a0and other related charges:<\/p>\n
Salahuddin Carter<\/p>\n
Jerwayne Haywood<\/p>\n
Quamere Hall<\/p>\n
Hassan Stafford<\/p>\n
Paul Beckwith<\/p>\n
Nasir Wells<\/p>\n
Criminal Conspiracy (H)\u00a0to Murder and other related charges:<\/p>\n
\u201cBallistic evidence was recovered from various crime scenes and analyzed. The analysis was\u00a0compared to\u00a0fired cartridge casings (FCCs) to\u00a0determine whether the FCCs were fired from the same firearm, and what specific firearm\u00a0that was. Surveillance video of the shooting incidents were also recovered from\u00a0businesses, residential properties, city cameras as well as police vehicles equipped with\u00a0video recording equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe IGJ alleged that Defendants Salahuddin Carter and Jymir Burbage were involved in a double\u00a0non-fatal shooting on September 22, 2022, where an eight-year-old was struck by a\u00a0stray bullet while playing on the front steps in the area of 1500 Block of North 13th Street.\u00a0Officers responded to the scene at approximately 8:50 P.M. where they found the victim\u00a0with a graze wound to the side of the victim\u2019s head. The victim was taken to Temple\u00a0Hospital where a second shooting victim with a gunshot wound to the leg arrived shortly\u00a0thereafter. The second victim had been the passenger in a vehicle when the vehicle was\u00a0shot on 13th Street. The driver of the vehicle ultimately crashed the car on the way to the\u00a0hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
The IGJ also alleges that Defendants Stephen Weddington and Jymir Burbage were involved in a\u00a0homicide of a victim on December 7, 2023. After the homicide, the \u201cYoung Bag Chasers,\u201d or\u00a0\u201cYBC\u201d relentlessly mocked the victim and the victim\u2019s workplace.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe DAO remains deeply committed to working with all of our partners to secure justice for victims and co-survivors of violent crime,\u201d said District Attorney Larry Krasner. \u201cOur 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to thank ADA Marianne Aguilar, ADA Anna Walters and members of the Philadelphia Police Department\u2019s Shooting Investigation\u2019s 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,\u201d said Assistant District Attorney William Fritze, Chief of the DAO\u2019s Gun Violence Task Force. \u201cThis work is a testament to the integral use of witness statements and digital evidence processed through the DAO\u2019s GVTF Forensics Lab.\u201d<\/p>\n
Captain James Kearney of the Philadelphia Police Department\u2019s Shooting Investigations Groups also weighed in, \u201cThe collaboration between the Philadelphia Police Department\u2019s Shooting Investigations Group and the Philadelphia District Attorney\u2019s Office\u2019s Gun Violence Task Force allows for successful outcomes like the one today. It\u2019s because of the collaboration with our Law Enforcement Partners that our city can sleep safer tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul Davis\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve been critical of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner here. But in the interest of fairness, after I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[31,3635,758,336,69,71,70,595],"class_list":["post-136324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-crime","tag-fbi","tag-gun-violence","tag-larry-krasner","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-police-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}