Lib City Is Carjackers Paradise

(TheRedAlertNews.com) – Philadelphia just recorded its 1,000th carjacking for 2022 and is already well beyond last year’s record of 847 carjackings.

The grim new milestone was surpassed earlier this week, more than three months before the end of the year, Fox 29 Philadelphia reported, as cited by Fox News.

“Philadelphia goes over 1,000 carjackings for the first time ever. 1,005 total carjackings at end of day on September 27,” said Fox 29 reporter Steve Keeley.

He noted that this year’s number of carjackings in the City of Brotherly Love is already more than double last year’s number, which in turn was more than double the 2020 number of 410 registered carjackings.

The same pattern occurred in 2020 when carjackings almost doubled compared with the 225 cases in 2019.

The report pointed out that “it is unclear” why this particular type of crime has “so drastically shot up” in the past few years.

In January, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw declared that this development was “not normal.”

“What’s happening here is not normal, and I don’t want anyone for any minute to begin to normalize this,” Outlaw stated back then.

She speculated the COVID-19 pandemic caused deliveries to rise and stay high, which in turn has contributed to carjackings as a “crime of opportunity, which is often committed violently or under arms threat.

Outlaw also argued that anti-coronavirus measures have “normalized” the wearing of masks.

“We also know that this trend is not unique to Philadelphia, as similar increases have been seen across the country during the same time period,” the police commissioner insisted.

She was referring to other cities like Baltimore, Detroit, and Washington, DC, where carjackings have spiked by 50%, 40%, and 25% this year compared with 2021.

Last week, a spokesperson of the Philadelphia Police Department commented that increasing crime rates were “not unique to Philadelphia.”

“Over the past several years, Philadelphia has seen a disturbing spike in the number of violent crime incidents, including shootings, homicides, and carjackings. Unfortunately, these incidents have occurred throughout the country, and their occurrence is not unique to Philadelphia,” the spokesperson said.

There have been other cities with staggering carjacking spikes: between November 2019 and November 2020, Minneapolis saw a 537% increase.

In 2020, Chicago registered a 135% spike year-on-year, and Washington, DC, saw a 136% year-on-year rise.