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Archive: July, 2012
“Oh no they didn't” is Daniel Denvir's weekly blog post on last week's state politics. Follow on Twitter @DanielDenvir
"To ask me to enforce something that violates civil rights is ludicrous and absolutely something I am not willing to do,” Colwyn Democratic inspector of elections Christopher L. Broach told the Inquirer last week.
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena around Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
If you don't know who Will Smith is, fuck you. From West Philadelphia (born and raised), Smith, according to legend, spent most of his days on the playground. He later became a rapper/singer, then a TV star. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Smith became a big-time mega-millionaire movie star, he, along with his brother Harry, started a real-estate development company called the Treyball Development Corp. It was named after his spoiled-ass son, Willard "Trey" Smith III.
In the summer of 1999, Treyball proposed two major projects for Smith's home city, Philafuckingdelphia. As with many proposals in this fair city, they failed to come to fruition like a motherfucker.
W Hotel
The Stenton Avenue business corridor has some committed backers, like Northwest Philly-based state Rep. Dwight Evans (who took CP on an enthusiastic tour of the area not too long ago), and now it also has significant funding, including $2.25 million from the city and the state. Now, the question is whether facade and streetscape improvements will be sufficient to jumpstart the local economy.
In the meantime, Ogontz Avenue Revitalization Corp., which is managing those grants, is getting ready to roll out one of the city's new pedestrian plazas, (which differ from parklets, somehow, we think?). The plazas, which cost $30,000, were theoretically supposed to be installed in time for summer; at least we now have the design for this one, which will include trees, chess tables, benches and planters. Work will begin in late summer of 2012, so hopefully this can be enjoyed through next fall.
In a little-remembered moment during the 2010 campaign, Governor Tom Corbett told a gathering of suburban Republicans to “keep down” Philadelphia's Democratic voter turnout.
“We want to make sure that they don't get 50-percent [voter turnout],” he said, referring to Philadelphia Democrats. “Keep that down."
The item generated some news media attention at the time but has gone unmentioned during the current debate over the state's contentious new voter ID requirement, which could keep Democratic-leaning student, black, Latino, poor and elderly voters from the polls this November.
“It is extremely disturbing, but not surprising, that Tom Corbett is actively working to suppress the vote in Philadelphia,” State Democratic Chairman Jim Burn told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette two years ago.
Pennsylvania Republicans drew loads of unwanted attention to the law when House Majority leader Mike Turzai boasted in June that the law is “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”
The law is currently being challenged in Commonwealth Court, and the ACLU and other rights groups intend to play the video of Turzai's speech at trial.
“Any doubt,” according to the plaintiff's pretrial brief, that the law is not about “ensuring political advantage through the exclusion of qualified voters who are perceived supporters of the opposition” was “dispelled when the House Majority leader, Mike Turzai, candidly boasted to his colleagues.”
The U.S. Department of Justice has also opened an investigation into whether the law violates the federal Voting Rights Act.
The new law requires voters to show ID at the polls (see the valid forms of ID here). But the state, which originally said that 99 percent of voters had valid ID, has absolutely no idea how many people might be impacted.
Yesterday, City Paper reported that up to 43 percent of Philadelphians may not have valid ID. And Corbett earlier this week expressed confusion about the law's requirements when questioned by a reporter.
Last week, we wrote in City Paper about overcrowding in the Philly jails, and how — in addition to tactics like turning former day areas into dorms — the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility (CFCF) continues to hold some inmates three to a cell, a practice, known as triple-celling, that has triggered a class action lawsuit and a series of some 500 civil suits against the prisons. We've since learned that triple-celling at CFCF is far more extensive than the prisons would lead us to believe.
Because Philly Prisons Public Information Officer Shawn Hawes is pretty new on the job, we chalked it up to error when she responded to our request for triple-cell numbers by first telling us there were "no inmates currently triple-celled at CFCF," then calling back to up that number to around 100 inmates, then calling again to say she didn't know the number, but it could be anywhere from "two to 60 cells," or six to 180 inmates on a given day.
After we printed that quote, though, prisoner advocates told us it was way off — as in, a thousand inmates off. Back to Hawes, who told us she not only can't give us the current triple-cell number, but she now won't give it to us, due to ongoing litigation. However, it turns out there's a monthly list of inmates being triple-celled. And the list of inmates in triple-cell situations for July, obtained by CP, reveals the real number: 1,197 inmates are now living three to a cell. Some 360 of them have been triple-celled for 30 days or more; 19 have been triple-celled for 50 days or more. Remember, for every triple-cell, someone is forced to sleep every night on the floor in a "blue boat," a foam cot wedged, all too often, in splashing distance of the toilet.
David Rudovsky, a lawyer who has been active in overcrowding issues and was a plaintiffs' attorney in the class action Williams v. City of Philadelphia, says the numbers are not surprising. He says the triple-cell number has been "running between 1,100 and 1,300 for the past year." Now, he's particularly worried about how the rash of recent suicides may relate to conditions within the city jails. "We've asked for information concerned with suicides. We are concerned that they may be related to overcrowding and other poor conditions. But it's too early to tell."
In Pennsylvania, juvenile offenders have the right to a second chance. Perpetrators of homicide, aggravated assault, you name it — they’re all eligible for expungement. The one exception, beginning this December: Those who were 14 and older when adjudicated guilty of rape, aggravated indecent assault or involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
Juvenile advocates say the policy, signed into law earlier this month as Act 91, could be devastating. They say the bulk of cases are kids who acted out sexually within their families; some are themselves victims of abuse, and many pled guilty with the promise of a chance for expungement. “Parents may have encouraged kids to plead guilty because it was intra-family; they were entitled to expungement. Now, they can never get their records expunged,” says Jennifer Lutz, juvenile-justice policy analyst at the Defender Association of Philadelphia.
Typically, juveniles are eligible for expungement five years after discharge from supervision, or at age 18. Without expungement, juvenile records may prove a barrier to employment, education and, for sex offenders, access to public housing.
Robert Listenbee, chief of the Defender Association’s Juvenile Unit, says his office’s expungement project (for offenses of all types) has handled 600 to 800 cases a year since 2007. The DA is often cooperative. “They believe children should receive a second chance, the same way we do,” he says.
Now, for those seeking expungements of sex offenses, the clock is winding down.
It's Good News/Bad News, a new feature the Naked City totally hopes to bring you regularly, in which we separate the chaff from the wheat in local media and offer ridicule or praise, as needed.
This week: BAD NEWS.
They say a picture's worth a thousand words — but maybe not when the picture has almost nothing at all to do with the words in question, and is possibly offensive to boot.
Like, for example, the above photo, featured on Page 8 of today's Daily News, in an article about the West Oak Lane murder of 43-year-old Eric Murray, a father and grandfather who had recently gotten out of prison and was working two jobs as a restaurant chef.
The Daily News ran no pictures of Murray or his family; it did, however, run this depiction of two women in their nightgowns, related to the story only by virtue of living near the incident and being, apparently, within range of a crime scene photographer.
The women, the caption notes, “declined to be identified.”
Greater Philadelphia Media — which includes Calkins Media's local publications: The Bucks County Courier Times, the Burlington County Times, The Intelligencer and phillyBurbs.com — is cutting 30 jobs, according to an internal memo that was passed along to the City Paper. The memo from president and general manager Michael Jameson blames the national economy and says, "Even though our ability to generate revenues from local businesses has shown promising trends, we are anticipating overall revenues to fall again next year."
The news of voluntary and potentially involuntary layoffs follows a number of Calkins executive-level hires, including Jameson in March, a new chief digital officer in April and a director of business development in June. The memo doesn't indicate where the staff reductions will come from, and a call to Jameson's office went to voicemail. (If he calls back, we'll update.)
From: Jameson, Michael
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 11:52 AM
Subject: A message from the President and General Manager Importance: HighTo all employees of Greater Philadelphia Media, 7/25/12
Follow on Twitter @DanielDenvir
The number of Pennsylvanians who might not have the photo identification necessary to vote this November has more than doubled: at least 1,636,168 registered voters, or 20 percent of Pennsylvania voters, may not have valid PennDOT-issued ID, according to new data obtained by City Paper. In Philadelphia, an enormous 437,237 people, or 43 percent of city voters, may not possess the valid PennDOT ID necessary to vote under the state's controversial new law.
“Those are the numbers we sent,” says Nick Winkler, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, when asked to confirm the data. “If you want to add them together, I think it's misleading.”
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