Yo, Philly in the News

• Recent corruption probes have supposedly made local politicians nervous and potential campaign contributors skittish. So the upcoming Mayoral campaign will be clean and fair, right? Yeah, uh huh. We'll believe it when we see it.
• A U Penn criminologist and three colleagues have built a computer model for predicting which existing offenders are most likely to commit murder. They're going to turn it into a piece of software and deliver it to the probation department next year, where clinical trials will begin in the spring. The best part is, the project is funded by a private grant, and the software is in the public domain, so the city gets it for free. Nice!
• East Germantown deli owner John Lee is not prepared to take any shit. When four men entered his store this past Saturday night with their hoods pulled tight, even though it was not particularly cold, he knew something was wrong. He asked them to take off the hoods. Then one of them pulled a gun. "So I shot them," he said. He fired five times, hitting three of the robbers, who dropped their gun and fled. The fourth robber he found hiding in the back of the store. "Then I beat him up and took his boots and called police." All the robbers, including their getaway driver, were eventually rounded up by police. He had yet to tell his wife about the incident Sunday morning, for fear of upsetting her. Holy crap. We want this guy on our side when the revolution comes.
• Believe it or not, on the biggest travel day of the year, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, there were no problems at the Philadelphia International Airport. Things went smoothly, and the day was uneventful. Crazy!

Photo of the Department of Precrime - a department the Philly police will perhaps soon need to add - by Flickr user Gea-Suan Lin