Search Results for: deeney

  BY JEFF DEENEY “Hustlers Anonymous is a fellowship of members whose lives have become unmanageable due to the choices they have made. The only requirement for membership is the desire for a better life and a willingness to take certain suggestions. Many of us have experienced negative consequences as a result of our hustler lifestyle: incarceration, broken families, police harassment, and near death experiences. Due to the lure of the streets we have time and again chosen the seemingly easy way out over our mothers, children and our own personal freedom. If you are tired of handing over control […]

JEFF DEENEY: This tale of drugs and death begins and ends far from Nogales—in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, probably the last place you’d expect to find a former drug smuggler. The small park is ringed by high-rise apartment and condo complexes filled with old-money blue hairs, baby-boomer corporate execs and U. Penn kids whose rich parents happily shell out for luxury off-campus housing. Nestled among the city’s elite is a woman with a secret past [not pictured, that’s Marianne Faithfull] that includes having moved almost a half-ton of weed from Mexico to the East Coast. Rita (her executive-level career position […]

JEFF DEENEY: The drug game is considered one of the few viable money makers here where fewer than half of the local kids graduate from high school, many don’t speak English, and the local manufacturing economy that might once have hired unskilled labor died decades ago. Many settle for less risky ventures like selling barbecue and bottled water in the streets in the summer, but it’s hard to raise a family on that kind of chump change. Local kids, often under pressure for financial support from their own moms, seek out The Owner. Every dope block in the Badlands is […]

GLENN GREENWALD: The now-viral video of police officers in their Robocop costumes sadistically pepper-spraying peaceful, sitting protesters at UC-Davis (details here) shows a police state in its pure form. It’s easy to be outraged by this incident as though it’s some sort of shocking aberration, but that is exactly what it is not. The Atlantic‘s Garance Franke-Ruta adeptly demonstrates with an assemblage of video how common such excessive police force has been in response to the Occupy protests. Along those lines, there are several points to note about this incident and what it reflects…MORE BOING BOING: Lt. Jon Pike sprayed […]

INQUIRER: The woman charged with keeping four adults with mental disabilities locked in a squalid Tacony basement while collecting their Social Security checks may have victimized dozens of others, police said Monday. When Linda Ann Weston was arrested Sunday, she had identification records for as many as 50 people in her possession, including power of attorney paperwork, forms of identification, and Social Security numbers, according to Philadelphia Police Lt. Ray Evers. The documents suggest that Weston has been running a wide-ranging fraud operation, he said. “She might have been doing this for years, probably since she got out of prison,” […]

#OccupyPhilly, Dilworth Plaza, 12:27 PM by JEFF DEENEY RELATED: “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time,” said Eleanor Walker, a 70-year-old retiree who worked in human resources for corporate America. “It seems like the American people have been sleeping. When this happened, I said, our time has come.” MORE RELATED: Mike Fox, 27, of Haddon Heights, who recently finished a seven-year hitch in the Army, explained the Guy Fawkes mask on the back of his head, saying it represented “Anonymous” – a name used by activists behind the recent uprising in Egypt. MORE PHAWKER: Dear Peter Mucha […]

[Illustration by JAY BEVENOUR] EDITOR’S NOTE: The following report — the product of a partnership between Phawker and PW and funded by a grant from J-Lab and the William Penn Foundation — ranks the city’s 10 worst drug corners the way Philly Mag ranks pizza or bars or bikini wax salons. Sarcasm aside, the story is no joke, rather it is the product of six months of old fashioned shoe leather reporting, arrest statistics crunching, and and dozens of interviews with the police,academics, neighbors, drug dealers and drug buyers. The hope is that we can spark a new conversation about […]

PHILADELPHIA MEDIA NETWORK: PMN announced today that it entered into an agreement with Tower Investments, Inc., owned by Bart Blatstein, to sell the building that is home to PMN headquarters at 400 North Broad Street, in addition to the sale of an adjacent parking garage and lot. The purchase price is not being disclosed. PMN is exploring options with respect to their future space, including the possibility of remaining at the 400 North Broad Street location or identifying new space in the region. “As Philadelphia Media Network continues its successful digital transformation, the efficient utilization of our assets will be […]

BY JEFF DEENEY In yesterday’s Inquirer there was another article in a long series of familiar articles telling us yet again that the city’s homeless shelter system is a dismal failure. The shelter system cannot provide even basic services to many who engage it, let alone make a start towards the city’s stated goal of ending homelessness. There’s really nothing new, here; we all know how this story goes. Though the unique twist in this particular article was its focus on the groaning, overcrowded family shelters, reporting that they are already at capacity early in the system’s peak summer months […]

U.S. EMBASSY KINGSTON JAMAICA: The Penn Relays track and field meet in April of each year is a major athletic event that is a significant cultural milestone for many young Jamaican athletes. Hundreds of high school and university students apply for visas each spring to attend the meet. However, many mala fide applicants apply for visas to attend the meet as well, disguising themselves as student athletes. MORE RELATED: In January, FPU intercepted a group of sixteen  performers who had close ties to the Caribbean Alliance Group, a petitioner known to FPU to have associations with drug trafficking.  While this […]