Posted on 05/14/2024 2:49:03 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen
May 13, 1985 is a day that changed Philadelphia forever.
On that day, police dropped a bomb on the MOVE compound on Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia, near Cobbs Creek, leaving 11 people, including children, dead. The ensuing fire destroyed the neighborhood and left decades of scars for everyone involved.
The armed confrontation between Philadelphia authorities and the radical group MOVE has boiled for years. The day before it escalated and by Monday morning the shooting had begun and ended as a bomb was dropped from a state police helicopter onto the group's row house at 5:27 p.m., igniting a fire that destroyed about 60 neighboring homes
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Thank you.
Nice to have a gentlemanly correction.
I wouldn’t have dropped a bomb on them. Like I said, I would soak them out.
It was not clear from other replies. I appreciate the clarification.
I figured that’s what you were referring to.
And therein lies the issue with these cases. When the siege at Waco happened, my frame of reference was the MOVE "bombing." Locally, we all followed the story of MOVE, and (IIRC) we watched everything unfold on TV. I had, and still have, zero sympathy for the grown MOVE members who created mayhem. But, everyone was sorry for what happened to the innocent people. We were devastated to learn that children were killed by the fire. Heartbreaking. And we were angry on behalf of the neighbors who lost their homes.
So, years later, when the feds moved in on the Branch Davidians in Waco, to me, it was pretty much MOVE all over again. Some differences, but also similarities.
Yet, the Left and the Right line up on opposite sides.
And you also know that the philadelphia police department did not have a helicopter at that time. Also, it is unlikely that the philadelphia police department kept a stash of c4 on hand for just such an occasion.
And everyone who has ever owned a house in philly knows that even tho old Ben required the houses be built with bricks to prevent massive fires, the local roofing experts slop the tar over the firewalls of each roof insuring that you will get a continuous burn down the line.
Did the state police have a ready supply of c4 in a satchel charge for just such an occasion. It mostly reeks of FIBS and later waco.
Me thinks the FIBS used the gasoline crap as an excuse when they dropped a load of C4 on a tar roof. tar if anyone actually knows is a petroleum product. no gas just a pile of heated up tar. like no kidding it does burn. see my other posts on the great job philly roofers do to defeat the fire breaks on all the brick houses.
As for the police dropping a bomb on them, the police didn’t know the perps were storing cans of gasoline on the roof to have them ready for the generator when the power was cut.>>> Well for one thing i don’t think police anywhere keep a satchel of C4 on hand and two what happens when you drop a satchel of C4 on a tar roof. At about 500 degrees It will melt petroleum based tar on a roof. IT was a FIBS op all the way and there was no gas.
I agree and suspect most leftists look at MOVE the way we do, but think Reno was justified with incinerating the compound, and that Weaver chick thought bad thoughts. In other words, they are untethered to a fixed morality, and that’s what separates Us from Them in large measure.
Re-reading this thread, I think most of us Deplorables GENERALLY line up on the side of the individuals vs the govt.
In the case of the Davidians, they were kooky but that’s not a crime (and today, kooky is a badge of honor). Randy and Vicki Weaver were bigots but, again, that doesn’t warrant getting gunned down.
MOVE was the most “bad” behaving group of the three. However, protections and guarantees for ALL are there, in part, because we don’t want the govt being the arbiter (and eliminator…) of “bad” when it’s subjective. Also, as noted, Rendell et al got away with murder AND Fast Eddie went on to become an unrepentant Mayor, Governor, and DNC head.
I watched it too from my house clear on the fiver side of the city and the MOVE assault under Goode was FIBS all the way. Rizzo handled it on his own.
Ah, that’s right... The FBI was involved, too, wasn’t it?
I think they killed a cop in the late 70s, if I’m remembering right. Caused a bit of a sh*tstorm.
I'd like to believe so. But, in reality, most people on both the Left and the Right practice selective outrage.
Not all of us do, though.
Per wiki, From a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, Philadelphia Police Department Lt. Frank Powell proceeded to drop two 1.5-pound (0.75 kg) bombs (which the police referred to as “entry devices”) made of Tovex, a dynamite substitute, combined with two pounds of FBI-supplied C-4.
I never read that the FBI also provided admin and strategic support. Remember this is 1985 and Reagan probably considered this a local problem, not to mention “why help a Dem Machine in a town that I lost to Mondale by 30 percentage points?”
This has the fingerprints of a pure Dem fustercluck.
My husband fought that fire.They were shooting at the firemen.I think one fireman was hit.They had to lie down and hold the hoses or they would have been shot.Firehouses took turns in going to the fire.I was terrified for the men.
Oh, I know and agree. One Of Those Types is on this thread, basically saying the oh so patient City had no choice but to kill those commie Africans yet this was not like Waco or Ruby Ridge. “Very reasonable to drop a satchel charge.” Uh huh.
I pulled this quote for our FRiend:
“One of the truths that we will never be able to get to is what was the right thing to do, because we don’t know is whether (they) would have done it two weeks later… without any provocation. And we would have been blamed for not acting.
“All that we can do in law enforcement where we deal with human beings who do different things and march to different drummers is make the best judgment we can based on the information we have available, pursue it, and then do everything we can to get to the truth and to determine what can be done to avoid such tragedies for the future.”
MOVE was awful and militant. Anyone running for Mayor in Philly in 1980 KNEW there was a bigly chance MOVE would rear its ugly head again. How about developing a playbook? Maybe open lines of communication….I mean, Northern Ireland ended hostilities. Indeed, a search for “standoff ends peacefully” pulls up scores of instances.
The quote sounds like the type of weasel wording we’d expect from the Goode Admin to defend the attack and murders, right?
Right….except it’s from Janet Reno, about Waco. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/aug99/reno27.htm.
Ruh roh.
And any federal LEO who DIDN’T plan for the worst is incompetent at best, and playing for the other team at worst.
But Waco bad, MOVE good.
As I wrote on an unrelated thread, one of the benefits of non-censorship is I can flag the low information types and ignore their nonsense - you could say, leave it in the desert. Mission accomplished.
You’re right about that Janet Reno quote. It could apply to both cases - the Branch Davidians and MOVE.
On the one hand, law enforcement had to do something. Both standoffs were like hostage situations because there were children inside. IMO, MOVE and the Branch Davidians were primarily to blame. But, in the end, in both cases, the feds/law enforcement made a bad decision that led to a catastrophe.
With MOVE in Philadelphia and the Branch Davidians in Waco, the people and places were different, but the situations were very similar, and the outcome was the same.
Then, there’s Ruby Ridge. Everyone has biases, and I’m no different. I try to keep my own biases in check. One example is Ruby Ridge. I will never manage to dredge up any sympathy for the Weaver parents with their beliefs, but I felt very sorry for the boy who was killed by the agents. So, when I look at what happened there, I think about the boy. That case is different from the other two because it was about one family. Weaver was caught in an undercover operation, and (IIRC) the agents snuck up to their property which caught the boy by surprise.
But, there are many cases with sting operations and no-knock raids where the police kill someone. The main difference was the people and place. Ruby Ridge was in the Idaho wilderness, and it caught the attention of the Right. Other cases catch attention from the Left. Yet, all those kinds of cases are pretty similar.
Firefighters are amazing. True heroes.
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