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1. Crime in collar counties largely drops from ‘22 to ‘23, but auto thefts still stubbornly high

By Todd Shepherd
 

Crime in Philadelphia’s four suburban counties largely dropped in 2023 when compared to the previous year, but in a statistical sense, many of those gains are being wiped out by large numbers of auto thefts continuing to plague southeast Pennsylvania, according to a Broad + Liberty analysis of the Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Reporting database.

But auto thefts continue to be the outlier in southeast Pennsylvania, with the spike that started in 2021 yet to be contained. Over the last two years, law enforcement officials all across the country have blamed a large part of the problem on a TikTok video that exposed security weaknesses in Kia and Hyundai cars, showing exactly how easy it was to break into those vehicles.

Why It Matters. A Gallup poll from March showed crime is the second biggest concern for the country, right behind inflation. Even with the overall trends pointing down, crime still figures to be a prominent feature in the 2024 presidential, senate, and other races in Pennsylvania and across the country, with the election now exactly six months away.

Quotable. “The increase in auto thefts is something we continue to work on every day through investigations and initiatives, including steering wheel lock giveaways to help mitigate the number of thefts to the affected Hyundai or Kia models,” Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said. “Last year, detectives and prosecutors with this office led the takedown of a massive catalytic converter theft ring that we are hopeful will serve as a deterrent to anyone considering stealing vehicle parts or vehicles in Bucks County.”

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2. What the Chester County post-Covid analysis doesn’t say

By Beth Ann Rosica
 

Sometimes it’s what isn’t said that is most telling.
Chester County’s decision to conduct an “After Action Report” on its response to Covid-19 is laudable, yet also unfortunate in that the report failed to address the most controversial and embarrassing parts of the county’s response.

Through a Right to Know request, I obtained a copy of a report that Chester County commissioned to evaluate its response to Covid-19. Entitled Chester County Covid-19 Response After Action Report, the twenty-five page document identifies the county’s major strengths and major areas of improvement across eight categories.

The three county commissioners voted in October 2021 to approve a contract with outside vendor, Constant Associates, for over $144,000 to conduct the review. Despite this significant allotment of taxpayer funds, this report is not available to county residents unless they submit a Right to Know Request. It is unclear whether the report is available to county employees. 

Why It Matters. While the report includes the types of recommendations you would expect, the absence of certain issues is most telling. For example, one of the eight sections of the report is dedicated to Laboratory Testing. The report fails to acknowledge the debacle of spending $13 million dollars on Covid tests that did not actually work. The county is still involved in a legal dispute over the issue.

With that amount of mismanagement of funds and poor decision making, it seems an important point to include in an after action report.

Also notably absent from the report is a discussion of the Health Department’s impact on children’s education and how that could have been handled differently. The report cites “communications with schools and healthcare organizations who were critical to information sharing and unified messaging during the pandemic” as a major strength.

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4. Lightning Round

• Rob Mercuri: The joy of family and the importance of maternal health

• Guy Ciarrocchi: Parents and children versus politicians and teachers unions

• Thom Nickels: Swami Nostradamus Virato and the New Frontier

• Ben Mannes: Congress comes to Philadelphia to investigate violent crime

• Christine Flowers: Welcome to my world, Michael Smerconish

• Andy Bloom: Pro-Palestinian protestors are misinformed

5. What we're reading

At the Free Press this week, Kat Rosenfield looked at the weird affection some on the left hold for Vice President Kamala Harris, despite the seeming lack of objective evidence that she deserves it. “As a longtime Democratic voter,” she writes, “I had serious concerns about Harris’s White House aspirations when she entered the national stage with a brief, abortive run for the presidency, during which she never consistently polled above 15 percent….Amid the unique madness of 2020, Kamala Harris seemed like, if not a great investment, then a tolerable associate. In 2024, the thought of her ascending to the presidency is enough to make a principled liberal nervous.”