Philadelphian mythos

Mythology can grow to dominant proportions, and when it does, that’s not a validation of the myth as truth, but of the willingness of people to accept falsehoods.

Rioters and looters are back in the news in Philadelphia, in destructive response to the police shooting of a convicted violent criminal named Walter Wallace Jr. after Wallace refused officers’ orders to drop the knife he was holding.

The fact that this incident is in any way used to prop up accusations of systemic racism by police is insulting to intellectual honesty and objective analysis. And for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to shamelessly weigh in and fan racial flames is an obscene affront to statesmanship.

It’s noteworthy that neither Biden nor Harris bothered to express sorrow over Barry Torrance or his family. Torrance, who is also Black, was found shot in the head by his aunt on Monday in west Philadelphia. He became Philadelphia’s 400th murder victim of the year, and like the 399 before him, died in relative anonymity.

After three years of increasing homicides, Philly locals worry that the old derogatory “Killadelphia” descriptor is rising again. Their fears are well-founded; the city’s murder rate is more than five times the national average and climbing. In addition to the 400 official murders, there are another 132 suspicious deaths being investigated that may wind up including many more homicides.

On the very day Biden and Harris released their “our hearts are broken” statement over Wallace’s death, another four people were murdered in Philadelphia in three separate fatal shootings.

Two men were shot multiple times in a car in west Philly, another man was shot twice in the northern part of the city, and another man, reported to be in his 20s, died in southwest Philadelphia after he was shot five times. Immediate news reports were scarce on detail involving race, but 90% of all Philadelphia murder victims are Black. All four likely left grieving families and relatives.

Also conspicuously absent from Biden and Harris was any expression of sorrow to the family of James O’Connor. O’Connor was a Philadelphia police officer honored posthumously last Friday for 23 years of service that tragically ended in March when he was shot and killed while serving a murder warrant.

The mythologizing surrounding Wallace goes far beyond Biden and Harris. Just when you might have thought soundbite shams couldn’t get any worse, news headlines are calling Wallace a “family man.”

While it’s true Wallace had fathered eight children, with a ninth on the way, that phrase denotes more than mere progeny. It popularly conveys the notion that a man is lovingly devoted to the provision and care of his wife and children.

But in the barely nine years after achieving adulthood, Wallace had already been arrested more than 18 times, pleaded guilty twice, served time for violent crimes, and was awaiting trial on a charge of terroristic threatening with intent to terrorize. Police had been called to his home 31 times since May, including three different times on Monday afternoon.

Wallace was arrested for stabbing the mother of his children in March, and had at least three standing protection orders filed against him by her and his own mother.

The more appropriate moniker in his instance might be “career criminal.”

And the hard truth is, lifelong criminals who carry guns, point them at people during robberies, wield knives at home and threaten to kill family members usually wind up at odds with police.

Police have a primary duty to protect potential domestic victims when they get calls like the one received from Wallace’s home on Monday.

We can’t know who Wallace might have later hurt or killed had police simply left him alone. What we do know is, statistically, domestic violence always escalates. Men first threaten women, then attack and assault women, and frequently eventually kill women.

A recent example occurred only two weeks ago and just a few blocks from Wallace’s home, where neither Philadelphia police nor the justice system was able to save Marilyn Zellars, a 54-year-old Black woman, from being stabbed to death by her husband.

The husband, who turned himself in and confessed to her killing, had 16 prior arrests, including five cases of alleged domestic abuse against Zellars.

Mental health issues are not uncommon among criminals, but as almost every single expert is quick to emphatically clarify, the vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent. Indeed, researchers routinely cite data showing that persons with mental illness are 10-12 times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime, not the perpetrator.

The reality for all people, of all races, is that if you’re holding a deadly weapon and police officers with drawn guns order you to drop it, your failure to obey is an affirmative act that places your life in imminent danger.

The disingenuousness of career politicians who eagerly spread selective myths on volatile issues — to sow divisiveness on which they hope to capitalize during elections — is disgusting.

The common people’s tolerance for indulging and even embracing the intended polarity — when greater unification is so desperately needed — is dismaying.