Posted on 05/08/2005 12:30:21 PM PDT by baseballmom
Twenty years ago this Friday, Philadelphia became "The City That Bombed Itself."
On the evening of May 13, 1985, in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia, police dropped explosives onto the headquarters of the radical group MOVE. The explosion started a fire that city officials allowed to burn.
When the blaze was out, 61 homes were gone and 11 people, five of them children, were dead inside MOVE headquarters.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
I can't recall this event, wait, I can't recall the 80's anyway lol. Good post, I'm gonna do some reading on this . Be well :)
Jeff
Can you ping the list Tribune7?
Thought you and others would enjoy the front page in the Inquirer today.
Still no talk about a statue to Wilson Goode??? I'm shocked.
One of the more bizarre LEO moments.
From bugmenot - login.
be82096@coolgoose.com
2003md
my pleasure.
Ping
I remember that day.
I'm glad that all of the police officers who had to contend with those urban terrorists, went home to their wives and children that day.
That was a time when we placed a higher value on the lives of the men who keep law and order, over those of urban terrorists and their children. The shame of those children's deaths rest squarely on the shoulders of the urban terrorists.
No sleep lost here over this.
As in "just Move along, nothing to see here?". LOL
That's 10,000 rounds in the middle of an urban neighborhood! JFC!
They were a whacky bunch, but law violations were limited to city health code violations, residency permits, truancy of the kids(they were being homeschooled very well!), and some failure to appear warrants from the preceding civil code junk.
When the city shut off water or electric, they just ran a hose from a neighbor's property or extension cords. The cops tried to starve them out as well. Neighborhood sympathizers were tossing groceries and supplies over the fence and in the windows whenever they could.
Rizzo was the first to deal with MOVE. Nobody died and he was a racist thug mayor, right?????(sarcasm)
Exactly. Rizzo dealt with them first, just after we moved to Phila.
A horrible day in the history of Philadelphia.
I was 25 at the time and that was my field service territory. I followed it very closely.
The nauseating part was that because a black mayor was in office, it was just jiggy to murder everyone in the house and burn down the entire neighborhood. The small arms fire which the fire department claimed kept them from handling the situation was all being fired by the cops. Almost like a thousand deer hunters in a circle, shooting at one target. Cops shooting so hazardly that they all were taking rounds thru cars, windows, and debris flying everywhere. Absolute mayhem.
Before the eradication of several blocks from Cobbs Creek section in Phila, several of the MOVE male members were serving time at the State Correctional Institute at Graterford while I was a corrections officer. This was, and probably still is, one of the largest maximum security prisons in America.
Regardless of it's size or the caliber (worst of the worst)of the inmates, I have fond memories of whenever a MOVE member walked into one of 5 cell block's cafeterias, while several hundred inmates waited in line to be served. It was as if Moses was parting the Red Sea.
These guys were absolutely filty! No one could stand the stench or want to be within 10 feet of them.
They refused to bathe or practice any type of hygene. We correction officers, while covered in full rain gear, had to physically restain them, cut their clothes off and carry them into the block shower rooms. This was only after the hot water was turned on full force and the spigot handles removed. They were literally 'steamed cleaned'.
Block inmate janitors were then ordered to remove EVERYTHING, including the bedding, from their cells and taken to the prison incinerary. This was done on a monthly basis.
it was just jiggy to murder everyone ...in English please???
I used to board my horse in Fairmount Park, Chestnut Hill. I became very good friends with a lot of the mounted police division at Northwestern Avenue. The mounted cops were amazingly critical of the administration, privately. The roundhouse and city hall are so corrupt and full of idiots, I would find it impossible to work for the city. It seems as though paychecks for doing nothing, and being in lockstep with a city government without ethics is so urban chique in Philly. Or should I say suburban chique, because all the do nothing city managers live outside the city(which is illegal). Thos black city cars fill the driveways from about 11:00AM until 3:00PM every day, and then again at 5:00PM when they come home for the day.
"The two sides - the city government and MOVE, an eccentric, self-described back-to-nature group obsessed with defending itself against the world - had clashed once before with deadly results.
In that 1978 confrontation, a police officer, James Ramp, was killed and several of his colleagues were wounded. And a MOVE member was beaten and kicked by police in full view of news cameras.
Nine MOVE members were convicted of the killing, even though there was some dispute whether any of them fired the fatal bullet. Eight of them remain in prison today; the ninth died of cancer in 1998. The officers involved in the beating were acquitted of all charges.
So when the remnants of the organization regrouped several years later at 6221 Osage Ave. - and began fortifying the house, brandishing weapons, and berating the neighbors with obscenity-filled tirades day and night - Round 2 seemed all but inevitable."
from the article
Curiously the children, several with diabetes were no longer insulin dependant on a MOVE diet. Why the hell they couldn't have moved to Chester County or some place in Bucks County where they wouldn't be at such proximity to others puzzles me? Ever smell Amish? Very ripe as well. Almost as bad as Hassidic jews in the summer.
Well, it was OK because with Goode in power, all the rebuilding contracts went to minority owned construction firms who replaced $40,000 homes at a price of over $280,000 a copy. A lot of money was made by many on the deal and it bought silence.
Smelly black folk posess a somewhat reduced appraisal value when it's a black mayor who kills them. Who weeps for those MOVE kids? Not a single person IMHO(other than Irv Homer, who's on his last pulminary beat any moment)
Is Ramona out yet?
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