Cops Fire Guns To Stop Gunfire

Every year, around New Year’s, the district attorney or something trots out a kid who was injured by a stray bullet shot into the air to celebrate the New Year. And, every year, the DA tells everyone not to fire guns into the air. The citizens of Philadelphia promptly don’t listen to the teevee telling them not to shoot into the air in celebration, of course. The Inquirer reports today there were 257 incidents of gunfire at midnight reported on 911 calls.

The only way for the police to stop all the shooting, of course, was to apparently fire into a house and arrest the wrong guy. The Inky reports:

“As soon as everyone said ‘Happy New Year!,’ bullets were flying through the house,” said Clinton Rogers, 30, who lives in the 5600 block of Boyer Street, where the party turned to chaos. He said he was near the front door holding his 3-year-old daughter, Camirah, when the gunfire erupted and door fragments struck him in the face.

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Darrell Clarke Wants To Track What You Buy

Hey, know what’d be fun? Having your driver’s license scanned every time you want to purchase cigarettes and beer! That sounds like a gay old time, honestly. Well, if City Councilman Darrell Clarke has his way, that’s what you’ll have to do in Philadelphia! Yes, Clarke wants to track purchases of every can of beer or carton of smokes sold with in city limits.

However, faster than you can say “the lobbying arms of the tobacco and alcohol industries would shut that down in a second” — so, actually, not really all that fast — the plan is kinda dead, since it would require intervention at the state level. But since he can’t pass a law tracking how much we smoke and drink, Clarke came up with a better idea: Tracking purchases of spray paint!

Apparently, graffiti is a out of control here in Philadelphia. Need proof? “Graffiti is out of control in the City of Philadelphia,” said Darrell Clarke. And, so, Clarke has introduced a bill requiring the scan of a driver’s license for anybody purchasing spraypaint, since he says the stores are selling to minors, who are then tagging City Hall and the Comcast Center.

“Unless that information is inserted through the scanner into the register, the product will not register, so therefore there cannot be a transaction,” he told KYW 1060. The problem, of course, is that most of the graffiti done in this city is done by adults. Clarke might just as well have introduced a bill telling kids to get off his lawn.

I can’t wait ’til the regulation of adhesive paper passes, in order to combat El Toro and Bob Will Reign and any of the other cute characters who pop up on the backs of stop signs.

Councilman Wants Stricter Controls on Spray Paint Purchases [KYW 1060]
Attn. City Council: Most Graf Nerds Are Grown Ass Men [Philebrity]