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Why did the cops not just keep shooting tear gas in until they came out?

Because they had a bunker on the roof of the building and in a previous confrontation with police in 1978 one cop, officer James Ramp, was shot dead, and 16 other police officers and firefighters were injured from the firefight. Firefighters were working a water canon to distract them and flood the basement of the house. Officer safety was a real problem.

MOVE was an anarchist group that used their children as hostages in the standoff with police. They called themselves a "back to nature group", while living in a squalid urban house without plumbing. After the '85 incident the joke locally was that MOVE members didn't need to go to bars because they could stay home and get bombed.

“Because they had a bunker on the roof of the building and in a previous confrontation with police in 1978 one cop, officer James Ramp, was shot dead, and 16 other police officers and firefighters were injured from the firefight. Firefighters were working a water canon to distract them and flood the basement of the house. Officer safety was a real problem.

MOVE was an anarchist group that used their children as hostages in the standoff with police. They called themselves a “back to nature group”, while living in a squalid urban house without plumbing. After the ‘85 incident the joke locally was that MOVE members didn’t need to go to bars because they could stay home and get bombed. “

Good answer to my question. The whole damn thing was bizarre.