In the wake of his hard-hitting Daily Beast piece on the Kensington Strangler and the gloves-off editorial he wrote for Phawker railing against the Philadelphia police departments’ unspoken policy of ignoring allegations of sexual violence against prostitutes, Jeff Deeney has been invited to discuss all the above on Radio Times tomorrow at 10 AM.
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DEENEY: On The Kensington Strangler
DAILY BEAST: The rusting, blue steel frame of the El, the elevated portion of Philadelphia’s subway, looms over dilapidated Kensington Avenue like a giant centipede’s decaying exoskeleton. Known as “the stroll,” Kensington Avenue is the hub of Philly’s street prostitution scene, where young, drug-addicted women turn tricks for dope money—and where lately, a serial killer stalks them in the sickly orange glow of the streetlamps under the El. […] The two murdered women are alleged by the prostitutes on the stroll who knew them to have met the same fate in similar ways, by having gone on what the girls […]
DEENEY: On Delco’s GPS Killer
BY JEFF DEENEY FOR THE DAILY BEAST James Stropas apparently had no idea that his car was being tracked. It was June 21, coming off another in a series of scorching hot weekends in the quaint Philadelphia suburb of Springfield. Unbeknownst to Stropas, his Jeep Grand Cherokee had a small GPS device attached to its frame that was now broadcasting a signal, silently pinpointing his location as he pulled into the parking lot of the bustling Olde Sproul Shopping Village strip mall. According to police, a man with a laptop accessed the GPS data at 10:40 a.m. Ten minutes later, […]
DEENEY: When The State Orders Abortion
[Illustration by LEONARDO DA VINCI] BY JEFF DEENEY The Daily News’s most recent assault on incompetence and systemic failure at DHS deals with a touchy topic: the agency’s unusual role as abortion advocate with its pregnant juvenile clients. Regina Medina’s story details how the agency got a court to order the procedure after the client’s birth mother refused to comply with the agency’s demand for it. The pregnant teen eventually had to seek a late term abortion in New Jersey because the court proceeding and a failed first attempt to access women’s health services had dragged the process on long […]
DEENEY: DHS’s Trail Of Tears
BY JEFF DEENEY The most recent assault on institutional incompetence at DHS by the press comes this time from the Daily News in the form of a case study of sexual abuse against children placed into foster care by the agency. This information shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with how DHS resorted to removing children from homes en masse after scandal broke in 2007 about social workers, supervisors and even directors asleep at the wheel while children died on the agency’s watch. In a previous editorial I argued that increasing removals was an extremely unwise approach to […]
DEENEY: On Crime And Punishment
BY JEFF DEENEY I’ve been a social worker in the criminal justice system for a little over a year now so I’ve had something of a front row seat to observe the various dysfunctions and outright failures documented in the Inquirer’s series on the courts. The series has done a great job of definitively nailing down a slew of major problems that everyone who has any even small amount of professional contact with the courts has known for a long time. The system is clogged to the point of bursting, and as a result cases get delayed, or dropped, outstanding […]
DEENEY: Damning Facts Continue To Trickle Out
BY JEFF DEENEY The slow trickling out of information regarding the chain of events preceding the death of Charlenni Ferreira continues to reveal details that do not look good for DHS, or for the School District. New reports tell how the school nurse at Feltonville Intermediate urged Charlenni’s parents to take her to a doctor because she had a pronounced limp caused by the broken hip her abusive parents inflicted on her. Today’s Inquirer report, titled just that, “School nurse urged exam of Charlenni’s limp,” seems to imply that there was an effective attempt at advocacy on the child’s behalf […]
DEENEY: Did DHS Let Charlenni Ferreira Die?
BY JEFF DEENEY Some clarifying details are emerging in the Charlenni Ferreira case, changing the picture slightly from initial reports but still not providing enough information to determine if DHS bares some culpability in the 10 year old girl’s horrific death. It appears now that two school nurses at two different schools picked up on Charlenni’s abuse history and took interventive measures that were ineffectual, as both times Charlenni was seen by doctors who were ambivalent about whether the girl was currently being abused. The first nurse to encounter the girl in 2006 followed standard reporting procedures and contacted DHS. […]
DEENEY: About Charlenni Ferreira
BY JEFF DEENEY I want to make some quick comments about the case of Charlenni Ferreira, a 10 year old Feltonville girl who turned up dead on Wednesday bearing multiple indicators of a long and horrendous history of physical and sexual abuse. Due to the demands of my social work job I can’t really take the time to put together anything comprehensive today so this will have to do until more details about the case come out.Let me start by saying that I’ve never worked in child welfare, nor for DHS specifically as an agency but I have worked with […]
DEENEY: The First Time I Got High
BY JEFF DEENEY My first taste of narcotics was a sour one; it never made sense to me that I fell so in love with them later in life after such a traumatic introduction. I didn’t take the drugs on my own the first time. I was too young for that. They were administered to me in a hospital after I broke my arm. I was in a lot of pain and they had to keep me doped up to my eyeballs for hours while waiting through the night for the on-call doc to show up. If I was older […]
MEDIA: The Daily Beast Took My Deeney Away
EDITOR’S NOTE: A little while back we received a note from The Daily Beast peeps wondering if we would be terribly upset if they poached Jeff Deeney for a piece they wanted written about the Coatesville Arson Insanity. We responded something to the effect that introducing writers like Deeney to places like The Daily Beast was half the purpose of Phawker, BUT NO FUCKING WAY! Just kidding about the last part. You can read Deeney’s Coatesville arson piece HERE, co-authored with Philly native/DB staffer Gregory Gilderman. Below you will find an addendum to the piece that Deeney filed for Phawker. […]
SIXTH BOROUGH JUSTICE: City Paper Bags Hipster Grifter; Blogs Set Up & Takedown; Deeney Not Amused
CP: Kari Ferrell lies. She has lied about having cancer. She has lied about booking for Golden Voice. It’s been reported that she called the Philadelphia Police Department to turn herself in. I don’t know where that story originated, but that’s a lie, too. How do I know? I’ve been setting her up for the last few weeks. I had her arrested. Here’s how…MORE DEENEY: My name is Jeff Deeney, I’m also occasionally a contributor to the CP. I think the tone of this article is smug and self-congratulatory. I think this is a completely sensational story printed solely to […]
I TWITTER, THEREFORE I AM: Meet Jeff Tweeney
Hey folks, Jeff Deeney here to let you know how this new Twitter project we’re rolling out will work. From now until Philadelphia no longer needs me for cannon fodder in the trenches of the War On Poverty, I will be posting the little overheard snippets of unintentional brilliance and frequently unhinged insanity that comprise the background noise of my work day. Think of it as Today I Saw for the ADD set; I will bring you the streets in 140 characters or less. All dialogue 100% overheard. You’re already a couple days behind, so start following the Phawker […]