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The book that has yet to be written, ‘Philadelphia Commedia,’ will not have Virgil but Walt Whitman as the reader’s guide as we travel through the city of William Penn.
Unlike Dante Alighieri’s ‘Divine Comedy,’ the Paradiso part of ‘Philadelphia Commedia’ will be put on hold until the city changes its political direction from Blue to Red, which nobody expects to happen anytime soon.
The story begins in Macy’s Department store on December 7, 2023 just as a stabbing is taking place.
We see a man named Tyron Tunnell, a distraught looking figure who has a history of retail theft and drug-related cases in the Philadelphia area.
Tunnell has entered Macy’s with the intention of shoplifting—no big surprise as Center City Macy’s, since the beginning of 2023, has experienced over 250 reports of retail theft, something that Acting Police Commissioner John M. Stanford Jr. says is, “An ongoing problem, not just for large chain stores but in terms of businesses throughout the city.”
In Philadelphia during Christmastime, going to Macy’s is a venerable tradition. Here we have a department store larger than a cathedral that features daily organ recitals, a light show with 100,000 LED lights and a massive Christmas tree you’re not likely to see anywhere else except perhaps in Rockefeller Center.
Tunnell, who has an active warrant out for his arrest in Delaware County, shoplifts a few hats and then proceeds to leave the store when he is stopped by a security guard, 27-year-old Eric Harrison, who makes him return the hats while permitting him to go free, a gesture that’s become all too familiar in big blue cities all across America:
Let the shoplifters go!
Yet Tunnell, not satisfied with his freedom, returns to the store intent on punishing the security guard because he thinks the guard showed him attitude when he made him put the hats back.
He lunges at Harrison and stabs him in the neck, then stabs another security guard who comes to Harrison’s aid. A murder under 100,000 LED lights and as Christmas music plays in the store.
Harrison is taken to the hospital where he dies; the other guard, though severely injured, manages to survive.
The crime occurred not far from where hundreds gather for the regular light shows.
Macy’s closes shop for two days; there’s also the issue of spilled blood to consider.
The killing makes the national 6:30pm news.
The Macy’s attack had the city in an uproar: DA Larry Krasner was quick to tell the press that his office will charge at higher level if someone is a prolific shoplifter offender with a pattern.
So here we have Krasner sounding like former Mayor Frank L. Rizzo. This fact indicates that even Left progressives have had enough of the lawlessness that has taken over the city.
“If it is one dollar or 50 cents, we prosecute that,” Krasner said. “We prosecute consistent with the statute, we prosecute summary offenses, at times misdemeanor offenses, at times felony offenses. Anyone who tells you we’re not prosecuting thefts of less than 55 dollars is misinformed.”
Krasner might as well be saying, “Philadelphia is not San Francisco!”
Krasner goes the extra mile when he says that his office is requesting additional funding from City Council for a task force to focus on repeat retail thieves and those who help them.
SEPTA’s 30,000 security cameras enabled police to follow Tunnell in real-time as he fled the store and discarded the switch-blade knife he used to kill Harrison. He was apprehended at the Somerset station on the Market-Frankford line.
The sad fact is that SEPTA its own world of crime.
Consider these facts:
A November 16, 2023, 6 ABC news headline read, “Man dragged down stairs, assaulted at Center City Septa Station.” The 51-year old victim was standing on the platform at 15th Street (City Hall Station) when he was attacked.
Then the coup de grace: The murder of SEPTA bus driver, Bernard Gribbin, in October 2023 when a female passenger shot him six times in the torso and throat. The 21-year-old assailant pulled a gun on Gribbin as she left the bus, killing him for no apparent reason.
Crime in Philadelphia has moved from the streets onto subway platforms.
In May 2023, Krasner said that while the city homicide rate was down from last year, he felt it necessary to issue warnings about violence on mass transit.
He was referring to groups of teen males in ski masks walking from train car to train car looking for victims.
The El ride from 13th and Market where Macy’s is located to the Somerset station takes about 20 minutes or so.
Here are some of the things a regular passenger might see while traveling this distance:
Sleeping homeless; people smoking weed and cigarettes; food and drink smashed on seats and on the floor; unruly passengers acting out (some in ski masks, despite a recent City Council ban); people holding the doors open at station stops, an action that prevents the train from moving while the train engineer makes repeated pleas to, “Please clear the doors.”
All this is happening while SEPTA’s CEO, Leslie Richards, recently got a $75,000 raise after signing a new four year contract (she makes $425,000 a year) to continue on as SEPTA’s head.
Yet what is Richards doing about improving conditions on the EL, or to convince Philadelphians that the El is safe to ride?
Especially if El passengers have to stand for the duration of their trip because the homeless have taken up all the seats, sometimes two or three seats at a time with their strollers, carts, and oversized moonscape knapsacks?
What she can do, and did, is to promote a $40 million SEPTA rebranding project that will change logos and the colors used in signage and advertising. She can also support the 2024 plan to rename bus and trolley routes to give them more “catchy” buzz names like ‘B1’ and ‘G,’ while the Broad Street subway will be renamed ‘the B,’ and the Market Frankford El, ‘the L.’
She can also cheer the plan to change font changes on SEPTA signs (never mind the stinking homeless person lying in stale urine a few feet below that sign).
After all, the design of a sign, like a tattoo, is everything. A cool look can work miracles.
Yet woke-inspired font changes, new colors and minimalist language that call to mind rock groups like the B52’s, won’t change the fact that tourists in Philadelphia never take the Market-Frankford El or the Broad Street subway.
Only a fool would put new wallpaper on a crumbling house or rehab a kitchen if the roof was falling in, or purchase dental implants or veneers if you had a serious case of gum disease.
The truth is that deteriorating conditions on “the L” have made it unreliable and often dangerous.
Stations are filthy and continue to be places where drug addicts can be seen injecting themselves. The trains themselves are run down and grimy. Marijuana smoking in stations and on trains continues to be a problem. Station announcements about delays and cancellations occur on a daily basis. Train announcements cannot even be coordinated: they often announce incorrect station stops.
It also doesn’t help that passengers are subjected to outdated recordings that masks are required, long after this policy was dropped.
What this shows is an unwillingness to get to the heart of the problem, including fixing the chronic fare dodging one sees at transit station.
Comparable, as some might say, to the Krasner-inspired policy of allowing shoplifters like Tyrone Tunnell to go free.
Tragically, if Tunnell been arrested and processed immediately for stealing those hates, Eric Harrison might still be alive.
Not everybody is from Philadelphia, Mr. Nichols. What does SEPTA stand for? South East Philadelphia Transit Authority?
Years ago, I worked, one Summer, in Plymouth Shops, in New York City. My supervisor caughr two shoplifters and had to let them go because they came from the Frwnch mission to the U.N. and had diplomatic immunity.
When they have detours it’s deviated SEPTA.
If they are above the law they deserve no protection from the law. Beat ’em bloody, break some fingers, and they’ll not steal from you again.
The American society is breaking down in our major cities and beginning to spread to the suburbs as well. This article points out how bad the situation is becoming all across the country. The schools, government, and corporations do not function very well anymore. I remember what it was like in the late fifties and sixties and it was a better time to have and raise a family. Things have changed since then. It seems like the small towns and rural areas have not changed yet.
Au contraire, mon amí Forty years ag I mived to a small town (25K pop) in western Washington State. As local government tilted more marxist/woke/librul, this place has gotten so bad I want out. Popultion has now more than doubled, cramping the limited space we had. A few thousand new apartments have been built, when before there may have been a couple hudred. These are in large “villages” and the traffic impacts are horrendous. But by far the wors “change” is the “homeless” population. They had taken over the cramped downtown areas, encampments sometims stretching half a mile and more,severl hundred “tents” and shleters cobbld together, the filth and mess being wirse than I ever saw in central american barrios inhabited by the poor. Shoplifting and theft are rampatnt car vandalism very high. I’ve discovered these creatures camping on my own property. For wenty years nothing here was ever touched, no one ever locked our houses or garages. Theft began to rise, and did until my neighbour was the light on in his garage at 2AM. He grabbed his .38 Special revlver and poked his nose and that if his pistol into the side door.. the theif’s eyes opened wide, he stammered, put down what he had,, and ran off. We have not seen any such activity in the ten yars since, but remain vigilant. We know KNOW there is an active “bush telegraph” in the area. We look after each other here now. but in town its a different story. The town refuse to arrest tthieves, vagrants, but has managed to shuffle the tent cities away from most of the visible areas. they’ve spent millions placing rip rap to make camping challenging, clearing out hundreds of tonnes of trash…. but the place is still close to a third world ellhole.
Elections actually do have consequences. We escaped two years ago. Washington, especially, Western Washington is a lost cause. Consider that the voters keep Dems in office even when voters see crime increase, tent cities rise all around, corruption in gov offices. Seattle voters did not think Jenny Durkin was not enough so they elected Bruce Harrell. The only thing that has changed is crime and street thugs are worse. Civilized society is dying.
Armed citizens can and often do stop crime without firing a shot. Keep that in mind and keep your own .38 handy at all times.
It’s called Nihilism!!! I grew up in the late 40s and 50s, what a wonderful time to live. Unbelievable what leftism has done to this once great nation.
“ who has a history of retail theft and drug-related cases”
Therein lies the problem, drugs. The liberals will bleat about adults being free to choose but that is the easy way out.
Drugs are at the heart of almost all of society’s issues and until we actually deal with it nothing will improve.
People will point to Portugal and say look how legalised drugs have improved but what are they measuring? Shoplifting? Family theft? Loan sharks?
My guess is that they measure the number of drug dealers arrested.
Marijuana wrecked a life very near and dear to mine.
I was in Portugal a few years ago. I don’t know what percentage of Lisbon’s homeless are drug addicts, but I saw a lot of them.
Yes, drugs and alcohol, combined with a cultural element which favors violence, crime, uninhibited sex, and scamming the system over work, plus a visceral disdain for police and authority, results in more and more angry and delusional people like Tunnell.
And Leslie Richards is yet another Liberal Insider in a Blue city who knows how the ride the gravy train without ever making any improvements.
This lawlessness is likely to continue and get worse, despite the CYA pronouncements by the DA because no one in Blue cities wants to upset the voter base where the perpetrators live.
We may have to organize vigilantes if things get much worse.
Confront those psychos and they are liable to stab you. They generally carry knives or other sharp weapons. Another reason for stop and frisk.
Can the cities ever be recovered?
Not Philly. My brother and his wife (who was born and raised in Philly) left for Florida due to the crime, filth, and degradation that has infested the city, While it is easy to blame the evil incompetents like the mayor and D.A., the fact is that they were both elected, and subsequently re-elected. Until more of our citizens get their heads out of their butts things will only continue to deteriorate.
I would not bet on it…Blue leads to a CNR situation as in do not resuscitate… with one change….CAN NOT resuscitate
Without a doubt, the stand alone GOAT (greatest of all time) costly in every way mistake that this country ever made
was slavery.
What a miserably short sighted idea.
And in 1828 the slave owners founded the Democrat Party.
Happy Holidays
But enforcing the law will have a “disparate impact” on “historically marginalized groups” (except Asian-Americans) and to achieve “equity” this cannot be tolerated.
If one were asked to give details about who’s behind those ski masks, would it be “Amish teenagers?” “Boy Scouts?”
hen they should face the Death Penalty and Shoplifters should get jail for 10 years
in out high income zip code, one can seldom enter a store and not see blacks loading up and hauling out. typically the black security guards simply stand there like they’re bored out of their heads!
BLACK SHOPLIFTING IN AMERICA – IT IS AN EPIDEMIC AND SPONSORED BY GEOGE SOROS’-OWNED DAs, THE DEMOCRAT PARTY and THE BLACK LIVES MATTER HOAX
If those security guards didn’t go after that suspect he would still be alive.
Those owners of Macy’s & other big department stores couldn’t care less about the employees,
Let them take the hats,
I’m NOT condoning the suspect..far from it.
But these owners are not in the “front lines” & they live in gated mansions.
They are NOT losing nothing with a few hats etc.
I’m from & live in Philly & everything you say about the Subways & the public transportation system in Philly is spot on & true.
I haven’t been on one since 2019 & I’m not planning on going on them.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better if at all.
I don’t think it will ever get better IMO.
I used to work with criminals. If you want to reduce violence and murder, you must reduce theft. A thief is only a step from murder.
Shoplifters should be drug and alcohol tested upon arrest. They should be charged with public intoxication and shoplifting. Change the law so that if you steal while drunk or on drugs or carrying drugs in your car on your person to a mandatory year in jail or a year in rehab with work. Mentally ill people should be treated separately from other offenders in rehab. Offenders with a history of violence should be in a rehab with prison officers for at least 2 years.
i guess the fraudulent imbecile in the crack house is not going to MAGA . 81 million ?!!
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: John 10:10