Posted on 05/10/2015 10:56:41 AM PDT by Kid Shelleen
May 13 marks the 30th anniversary of a dark day in Philadelphia's history - an event that captured much national attention at the time but seems largely forgotten now, except by those who personally lived it.
On that day, a series of reckless actions (and cowardly inactions) by government and police culminated in a decision to bomb the Osage neighborhood in West Philadelphia, causing the deaths of 11 people (five of them children) and a conflagration that destroyed 60 homes. In an attempt to rid a black neighborhood of a disruptive group, also largely black, the city's law enforcement mechanisms brought devastation on the entire communit
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Who's fault is that?
Nothing like good old Democrat political machines! They’ve done wonders for so many inner cities! /sarc
An absolute moron.
Police fired more than 100,000 rounds that day and we dropped a flash bang bomb, not a grenade, but a bomb, on a rooftop piled high in gasoline containers. People trying to flee the house or "Compound" as gubmint likes to call someone's house they don't like......the police would shoot at them to force them either back into the burning building or to die from gunshots.
Rest in Peace, Irv Homer. We miss you!
Yes, we forget this. These people weren’t too sympathetic. But there would’ve been no Waco or Ruby Ridge without this.
“First they came for Operation Move. But I was not ...”
Seriously? I watched an old documentary on the SLA's last stand, and I think the estimate was cops 5K rounds, and the SLA 4K rounds, with ONLY the SLA types being hit and/or killed.
No LEOs, no gawkers/passersby killed or wounded. I was amazed.
Did the BTAFE and H0lder learn from Waco?
I'm not saying MOVE wasn't a part in their own disaster, but it was about 10% MOVE and about 90% government on adrenaline and rage.
Not a bad way to get some homeowner urban renewal courtesy of the taxpayer though! A whole lot of people got some really nice new houses from that mess.
What a bunch of revisionist bullcrap. Never thought is see the day that MOVE and the SLA would be “victims” on a conservative site.
And as for the childish comparisons to Waco and Ruby Ridge, remember both of those separated themselves, bothered nobody and were good neighbors.
Move turned a block into north Korea, and yes, they did build a compound.
I go back to visit in-laws once in a while and to take in Some Wawa, Amoroso's, Cisco's, Lee's, McNally's Pub, scrapple, and Tatykakes. We do not miss much else from Philly. Especially Fast Eddie.
“Thirty years later, news reports confirm that drones, armored vehicles with high-power weapons, tanks, and battlefield helicopters are being supplied by the Department of Homeland Security to local law enforcement personnel with little or no training in their use.”
The article lost all credibilty with this sentence. Department of Homeland Security did not exist thirty years ago.
“The firefighters could not arrive at the scene because of all the police gunfire.”
Bullshine,,, they kept shooting at cops the whole time. Black panther propaganda says they would have surrendered if the cops would just stop shooting. And gosh, they would have never shot at a firemen and couldn’t understand why the evil cops were trying to roast all the black poets in the building.
BS
the SLA? good neighbors??
The United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was an American self-styled left-wing revolutionary group active between 1973 and 1975 that considered itself a vanguard army. The group committed bank robberies, two murders, and other acts of violence.
Responding force is directly proportionate to the level brought in. Once a level of force becomes unmanageable in terms of command and control, it leaps to the destroy it all in chaos mode. Then that leaves the state to write the history and support their actions along with the bulldozing and destruction of evidence and witnesses.
MOVE was not a group absolved of their own demise. It was however not government acting responsibly and with much intelligence.
Thank you. Free Republic has gotten a bit twilight-zoney lately with this garbage popping up.
Apparently they could not even replace them properly.
New York Times
15 Years and Millions Later, Bombing Plagues Philadelphia
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
Published: August 13, 2000
That is the decision last month to send buyout condemnation notices to the owners of 60 replacement houses the city built as compensation for the victims of the police blunder in May 1985, when the city routed the MOVE group of armed radicals who had turned their house at 6221 Osage Avenue into a fortress.
. . .
There has been a scandalous epilogue to the disaster. The gleaming brick replacement houses for the 60 innocent homeowners on Osage Avenue and Pine Street turned out to have been built with construction flaws by a corrupt developer. The houses have cost the city a small fortune — more than $570,000 for each row house, including an endless wave of faulty repairs. Support walls cracked for lack of basic expansion joints. Cheap plumbing and wiring failed. Roofs leaked.
And now the city has suddenly discovered, after 13 years, that heating systems present ‘’imminent danger’’ to residents through leaks of carbon monoxide. “
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/13/us/15-years-and-millions-later-bombing-plagues-philadelphia.html
The most recent article I could find was from 2010.
Constantine Report
Philadelphia Streets Never Recovered from MOVE Bomb/For MOVE’s Neighbors, a Quarter-Century of Incompetence and Injustice
By Kathy Matheson
AP | May 13, 2010
Gerri Bostic lost all her material possessions 25 years ago . . .
Her West Philadelphia neighborhood – now nearly vacant and eerily quiet – never recovered from the city’s horrific botched attempt to arrest the Move members on May 13, 1985. . . .
Today, after spending more than $43 million on redevelopment, the city has two blocks of boarded-up eyesores to show for its efforts. . .
And now that a long-running lawsuit over the replacement houses has ended, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell says the city needs to put the past to rest on Osage Avenue and Pine Street.
. . .
Even the lefties that wrote the story only claim 10k rounds. I'll call you on the 100k. Got some legitimate source (commies don't count).
And you can put down my response as 'good end to some really bad dudes.'
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