DA: Framingham cop a whiz on the job
By Ira Kantor
October 1, 2010
An on-duty Framingham police detective accused of pulling over to relieve himself in a private yard, then drawing his gun on the home’s resident, has been indicted on criminal charges, the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office announced yesterday.
Detective Scott Brown, 38, of Mendon was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and making threats stemming from an April 29 incident taking place on private property in Framingham, said spokeswoman Cara O’Brien.
Prosecutors say Brown, who was on-duty but not in uniform and driving an unmarked vehicle, got out and began to urinate. A woman who lives at the unidentified address approached and asked what he and his partner were doing, O’Brien said.
After Brown allegedly told the woman to “stop looking” and returned to his cruiser, her husband - upon hearing the commotion - drove over in his golf cart and stopped next to Brown as he was pulling away, O’Brien said.
The two exchanged words, and Brown then got out and drew his firearm, pointed it at the victim, and said, “Move it or get shot,” prosecutors said.
The wife called 911. A video surveillance camera on the property captured the incident, O’Brien said. Messages left with Framingham police were not returned. Brown could not be reached for comment.
September 29, 2010
ORLANDO, Fla. -- All criminal charges have been dropped against an 84-year-old man whose neck was broken when he was thrown down by an Orlando police officer.
Daniel Daley's lawyer wants the grand jury to investigate the officer and he's going to sue police for as much as he can.
"We will be seeking the absolute maximum damages under the law and for every claim of action the law permits," Attorney Mark NeJame said during Wednesday's press conference.
NeJame told WFTV on Wednesday that, in addition to the neck brace supporting Daley's broken neck, a steel plate has been implanted to hold his head in place; Daley still might not make it.
With Daley's son at his side, NeJame came out swinging, saying Orlando Officer Travis Lamont is the only one who says Daley got physically aggressive with him, because all other eyewitnesses who came to the news conference said Daley did not.
"Mr. Daley was tossed high in the air and came crashing down on his neck and head with such violence and force that his neck was snapped and broken," NeJame said Wednesday.
NeJame wants the state attorney to take Officer Lamont's actions to a grand jury for criminal investigation.
"The actions taken by Officer Lamont were illegal, unjustified, constituted police brutality," he said.
The Orlando officer said the 84-year-old drew back his fist and that's when he took Daley down and arrested him.
"To be cuffed the way that he was, arms snapped behind him with the knee in the back, and then sat up Indian-style with his head hanging down, I will never lose that image," eyewitness Sean Hill said.
Police say Daley was drunk, with a blood-alcohol-level of .18, more than twice the legal driving limit. But Daley's attorney says police had no right to that medical information, because Daley wasn't driving, so he's also planning to sue Orlando police for invasion of privacy and slander.
Daley's family is devastated.
"To see him like that. Are you kidding me? I had to leave early the other night, because he's gagging for breath," Daley's son, Greg, said.
The state attorney said it has no plans to take the case to a grand jury and there will be no consideration of criminal charges against Officer Lamont for what happened unless a law enforcement agency investigates and sends a case to prosecutors.
The maximum Daley can sue for might be just $100,000 if the suit is taken to state court. There is a $100,000 cap on lawsuits against government agencies, unless the state legislature approves an exception.
But if the lawsuit is filed in federal court, the caps don't apply. A federal lawsuit against the Orange County jail, involving an inmate who died because the jail did not provide her methadone, brought a $3 million settlement from the jail.
A video uploaded to YouTube shows disturbing footage of a man on the ground being beaten by a Philadelphia Police officer, while other officers try to hold the man down.
The video begins with four Philadelphia police officers tackling a man on a sidewalk. As the man is on the ground, one officer in particular continues to beat the man on his head, back, arms and chest repeatedly with a metal-looking police baton.
The man being beaten, 29-year-old Askia Sabur, was standing outside a Chinese restaurant when police pulled up and asked him for his ID, according to Sabur’s attorney Evan Hughs. When Sabur turned to walk back into the Chinese restaurant, the police jumped out of the car and tackled him, Hughs told NBC Philadelphia.
Police tell NBC Philadelphia that Sabur was blocking the store's doorway and when they asked him to move, he refused and hit one of the officers.
“I didn’t do nothing wrong,” Sabur says repeatedly in the video.
At first friends yell at Sabur in the video to stop resisting the police, even though he’s already on the ground. But as the officer continues to beat Sabur, the people watching yell for the officer to stop.
“Yo, he’s not fighting! He’s not even fighting!” voices from the crowd shout.
The beating lasts for the duration of the 2-minute and 29-second video. At one point the officer pulls back and blood is visible on his shirt.
According to Hughes, the incident happened in the 19th police district. Sabur’s sister, Naimah Wilson, told NBC Philadelphia that it happened on Sept. 3 at about 9 p.m..
Police brought Sabur to Mercy Hospital after the incident, where he was treated for head trauma and a fractured left arm, according to Wilson. Wilson said that her brother was simply talking to men in the neighborhood while waiting for his Chinese food.
Now, Sabur is charged with aggravated assault, robbery and attempting to take an officer's equipment, firearm, but internal affairs is investigating the case to see if the use of force was within police guidelines, according to Philadelphia Police spokesperson Lt. Frank Vanore.
“There’s things that happen before the video and obviously things that happen after and we’ll have to get the whole picture together,” says Vanore.
City responds to LoDo police beating video
By Heidi Hemmatr
Story posted 2010.08.18 at 09:18 PM MDT
DENVER - Coloradans are outraged and demanding action from city leaders after seeing our investigative report about a dog owner beaten by two Denver Police officers.
It's a story FOX 31 News broke Tuesday night.
Now the Denver police independent monitor says he's responding to the public outcry and reviewing the video to see if a larger investigation is warranted.
Mark Ashford was walking his dogs near 20th and Little Raven, when he witnessed police pull over a driver for failing to stop at a stop sign. He told the driver he saw him stop and would be willing to testify in court.
His attorney, Will Hart, said the police officers overheard Ashford's comment and "weren't happy about it."
Hart said the officers demanded Ashford's I.D. and wouldn't let him leave. "They had no reason to stop him or detain him, that's a violation of his fourth amendment rights," said Hart.
Ashford then tried to take a picture of the officers to document the incident, but both the officers pulled his hand behind his back and attempted to arrest him. Ashford appeared to struggle before he was slammed into a railing, punched repeatedly in the face and wrestled to the ground.
Ashford was charged with interference and resisting arrest, but the charges were later dropped, "because the city attorney agreed his fourth amendment rights were violated," said Hart.
Excessive force complaints were filed against the officers.
A Denver police department spokesperson said the internal affairs investigation is closed, but the independent police monitor says he is reviewing the surveillance video to determine if the police officers used excessive force.
Richard Rosenthal said it is likely he will recommend a more thorough investigation.
Ironically, it's the police department's own surveillance camera that may provide the proof.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper was notified about the alleged beating caught on tape. A spokesperson tells FOX 31 the mayor is aware of the latest video.
Story posted 2010.08.18 at 09:18 PM MDT
Death of teen on bike shows risks of expanded use of Tasers
By Meg Laughlin, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, August 1, 2010
PENSACOLA
Late one night in October, a 17-year-old on a bike was chased by a police officer in a cruiser. When the boy refused to stop, the officer aimed his Taser out the driver's window and fired. The boy fell off the bike and the cruiser ran over him, killing him.
Victor Steen was the fourth person who died in Florida in 2009 in an incident in which a Taser was used. It was the 57th such death since 2001, according to statistics compiled by Amnesty International and the St. Petersburg Times. At the time this placed Florida first in the nation as the state with the most fatalities related to Tasers, a weapon that delivers an incapacitating electrical jolt.
Number 54 was a mentally ill man in Fort Lauderdale who was hit with a Taser in April as he wandered in traffic, refusing to go with police. He had a heart attack and died at a hospital.
Number 55 occurred in Bradenton one week before Victor's death. Police tried to stop him because he didn't have a light on his bicycle. When he ran, police hit him with a Taser. He died within 35 minutes. The autopsy showed heart disease and a small amount of cocaine in his system.
Four days later, police in Panama City fired a Taser "at least twice" at a man who tried to conceal cocaine by swallowing it. He went into cardiac arrest and died.
Taser International, the maker of the weapon, denies that these deaths were caused by its product. Yet, these four unconnected cases illustrate a worrisome trend in Taser use.
There is no question that Tasers frequently save lives by offering law enforcement officers a nonlethal means of stopping people who present a threat to the officers, the public or themselves. But as the four fatal cases from 2009 show, Tasers are also being used to subdue people who appear to pose no threat.
Victor lived with his mother, Cassandra Steen, in a two-bedroom house in West Pensacola. His father died a few years ago from diabetes. Victor had never been in trouble and was about to get his high school diploma, join the U.S. Army, then go to college in a few years.
Victor's pastors, teachers, family and friends repeatedly described him as "respectful" and "loving," with a "great sense of humor."
"I work with a lot of kids who need guidance, but Victor wasn't one of them. He has a very caring and considerate family and their light shone in him," said Pensacola pastor Guy Johnson, 54.
On the night of his death, Victor went to a high school homecoming football game then over to a friend's house to plan the birthday party of a child in the family.
"We wanted Victor's help because he was so good with little kids," said Victor's friend, Mike Moultrie.
About 12:45 a.m., said Moultrie, Victor left on a borrowed bike. From there to where the chase started was about 41/2 miles. But it was about 1:45 a.m. that Officer Jerald Ard spotted Victor. Where Victor went after leaving Moultrie's house is unclear.
Ard would later say that he tried to stop Victor because he had seen him at a construction site and thought he may have stolen something. But witness Victor Stallworth said he saw Victor ride his bicycle past the construction site without stopping. Months later, Ard gave investigators a different reason for stopping Victor: He didn't have a light on his bike — only two reflectors.
A video camera on the dashboard of Ard's squad car recorded the brief chase:
Ard spotted Victor and did a fast U-turn to stop him. When Victor didn't stop, Ard veered to the wrong side of the street and up on the sidewalk behind the teenager.
The officer revved the motor, his tires screeching, as he followed Victor into the side yard of an apartment building. With his flashers and PA system on, Ard yelled at Victor to "stop the bike."
It is unclear why Victor disobeyed the order to stop, but the teenager continued pedaling, trying to escape. Ard followed his every move, driving in and out of the wrong lane of traffic and up onto the sidewalk again. One minute and seven seconds into the chase Ard fired his Taser at Victor, who made a turn into a parking lot. About two seconds later, Victor fell to the ground and Ard ran over him.
Witnesses watched from in front of Sluggo's, a hipster vegan restaurant and bar directly across the street, about 50 feet from where Victor was killed. Elementary schoolteacher Rachel Moore said she saw the squad car on the wrong side of the street and heard the "loud click-click" of the Taser. She described the officer's driving as "careless" and said she feared he would hit the bicyclist.
"When the Taser clicked, the kid swung hard to his left over grass into the parking lot. The bike wobbled and he lost control. I don't know if the Taser hit him or the sound of it scared him. But he went down, and the cop turned into the parking lot and immediately ran over him," said Moore, who called 911.
Ard's cruiser dragged Victor, nearly breaking him in half. When the car stopped on top of a low concrete barrier in the parking lot, Ard called for an ambulance and jumped out of the car, yelling, "Dude, you all right? Are you alive? You hear me?"
• • •
Before her son's funeral, Cassandra Steen joined about 125 people in the parking lot where Victor died. Some were family and friends, but most were Sluggo's patrons haunted by what they viewed as the officer's recklessness.
James Lopez, who works in a bookstore, told the St. Petersburg Times: "If you or I hit someone and killed them, we'd be facing vehicular homicide. I don't want this wrong to be dropped."
Jorge Torrens, a sound editor for the local public radio station, saw the end of the chase from his seat at Sluggo's. Torrens, along with about a dozen other patrons, frequently rode his bicycle to Sluggo's.
"The police never stop us," he said. "You have to wonder if it's because we're white, and Victor was ordered to stop because he's black. Did this tragedy have anything to do with racial profiling?"
Victor's mother was so grief-stricken her knees kept buckling and she had to be held up by two friends. One told her: "Look at all of these different people coming together for Victor."
"Yes, yes, I know," she sobbed, "but it hurts too much."
The day after the funeral, Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigator Eli Lawson called Cassandra Steen's newly-hired attorney, Aaron Watson, and told him that TV news was about to report that a paramedic had found a gun in Victor's pocket.
A video, taken from the dashboard of another officer's car, recorded what happened in the minutes before the discovery:
Three officers squatted next to Ard's car, looking under it at Victor. Ard unlocked the passenger side of his car and got something out. The object is light-colored and floppy, but isn't clearly visible. Ard, holding the object, crawled under the car next to Victor's body and stayed there for 40 seconds. Two minutes later, paramedics found a 9mm silver and black semiautomatic in Victor's pocket.
Lab tests showed the gun had been wiped clean. No fingerprints were on it — not Victor's, not anyone's. Victor's family, as well as his pastors and friends, were aghast. Victor was scared of guns, they said. He would not have carried a gun around.
Aaron Watson, who wondered if the gun might have been planted to make the teenager appear dangerous, worried aloud that it would be a distraction from the officer's "reckless pursuit."
"The focus here," Watson told the Times, "should be on why Ard was pursuing Victor in the first place and why he fired a Taser at a kid on a bike from a moving vehicle. The gun really has nothing to do with the issues."
Lawson, the FDLE investigator, was suspicious enough of what he had seen in the video to ask the four-year officer about it.
"Did you put that gun on Victor Steen?" Lawson asked in a taped interview.
Ard answered no, and the investigator changed the subject.
• • •
At first, Cassandra Steen said she didn't want Ard punished, but suspecting the gun was a plant, she became less forgiving.
"Victor died a horrible, brutal death and, after that, his reputation was ruined by the gun. Someone besides Victor needs to be held accountable," she said.
A coroner's inquest was held in February so a Pensacola judge could decide who that should be. An assistant state attorney asked questions of witnesses and law enforcement. As is standard in an inquest, Steen family lawyers were not allowed to verbally question or cross-examine anyone.
Escambia County Judge John Simon concluded: "Mr. Steen desired to avoid apprehension on Oct. 3, 2009. That desire led to Mr. Steen's ill-advised decision to ignore lawful commands … and enter a dimly lit parking lot unaware that a potential hazard was present i.e., the existence of a raised curb. Once Mr. Steen struck the raised curb, he was ejected directly into the path of Officer Ard's vehicle. … It was impossible (based on perception reaction time) for Officer Ard to avoid striking Mr. Steen."
The judge did not find Ard's driving or firing the Taser out of his car window to be questionable in any way.
"Mr. Steen was actively fleeing Officer Ard. … Officer Ard violated no traffic laws in light of the fact that he was actively pursuing Mr. Steen."
Afterward, Victor's lawyers spoke on the courthouse steps: "This ain't the old Wild West. It's Pensacola 2010. It's absolutely outrageous that a boy would be run over and killed for no tail light on a bike," said Bill Cash.
On Oct. 3, when Victor died, the Pensacola Police Department policy didn't specifically prohibit firing a Taser from a moving squad car at someone on a bike. But less than a week later, the deputy chief issued a memo, saying: "Firing a Taser from a moving vehicle or into a moving vehicle is prohibited."
Officials said nothing about whether it was appropriate to use a Taser in cases in which there was no threat to public safety.
At the request of the St. Petersburg Times, nationally known use-of-force expert Dave Klinger, who is a retired Los Angeles police officer and now a senior research scientist at the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C., reviewed documents and videos related to the case.
It didn't make sense to fire a Taser at Victor on the bike, said Klinger, because of the likelihood he would get hurt. Furthermore, he said, Victor was not a suspect in a serious crime.
"You don't Taser people in circumstances that increase the likelihood of injury unless they're a suspect for something like rape or murder," said Klinger.
One Taser probe was found embedded in an outer T-shirt Victor was wearing over another T-shirt. The second probe was on the ground. The medical examiner was unable to determine if the probes pierced Victor's skin because so much skin had been scraped away. And, while the Taser can shock through two inches of clothing, it was impossible to know whether Victor felt the jolt of electricity through his clothes.
"You can hear (the Taser) cycling, sending juice along the wires, but nothing tells you — not the sound or anything else — whether it embeds in his skin," Klinger said. "The moan and wobbling bike before Steen hits the concrete bump suggest he is affected briefly by it, but it's not certain. You just can't say one way or the other."
Maybe, said Klinger, the Taser shocked him — either through skin contact or through his clothes — or maybe the sound of the Taser firing was enough to make him lose balance.
"Something caused the bike to wobble before he hit the bump," he said.
The use-of-force expert didn't understand the officer's driving: "Why doesn't he stay in the appropriate lane and broadcast for help to set up a perimeter?"
And: "He has one hand on the steering wheel and is looking out the window when he fires the Taser, which means he doesn't have complete control over the car. What will happen if Steen falls off the bike?"
In an April memo suspending Ard for two weeks without pay, Pensacola police Capt. Jay Worley faulted Ard with exposing Victor "to unreasonable risk of harm and injury."
From that memo: "Ard drove his cruiser so close to the suspect's bike that it would have been difficult if not impossible for him to stop if the suspect fell from the bike. I also found it disturbing that Officer Ard attempted to Tase the suspect on a bike as he rode next to him."
Dave Klinger: "What the memo says is true, but the department is blaming the officer to overcome problems with its own policy. The focus should be on omissions in the policy at the time of the death."
Klinger's conclusion: "The kid should have stopped. But he shouldn't have died because he didn't."
BY Rocco Parascandola
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF
Wednesday, July 28th 2010, 4:00 AM
A Brooklyn teen who was about to start college spent four days in a coma after he was slammed to the ground by cops in a post-barbecue beatdown, his mother and lawyer say.
Rahiym Holmes, 18, suffered a fractured skull and brain damage in the July 11 incident.
He cannot walk without help and may never fully recover, said his lawyer, Leslie Kelmachter, who will file a notice of claim against the NYPD today. "We want there to be a full and thorough investigation," Kelmachter said. "We believe there should be criminal charges.
"There was no evidence that Rahiym was doing anything wrong when he was tackled."
The NYPD said Internal Affairs is investigating the incident.
Police would not say why Holmes was stopped or why he was issued a desk appearance ticket for misdemeanor reckless endangerment.
His mom, 37-year-old Channell Barber, said it pains her to see her son, a high school football player who was about to start classes at Kingsborough Community College.
And it is just as frustrating to explain the incident to her 11-year-old son, Donte, she said.
"I always stressed to them to keep a clean record, stay in school and do good," said Barber, who works for Con Edison. "For something like this to happen, it's very, very difficult."
The circumstances around the injury are still murky. His family said Holmes was not able to speak about the incident and did not remember what happened.
That night, Holmes was at a barbecue at the Canarsie Pier when police arrived about sunset to disperse the crowd.
Holmes and two friends set out to walk the mile back to East New York, where they live.
Witnesses told Kelmachter that at some point, uniformed officers taunted Holmes, then got out of their patrol car on Cozine Ave., near Pennsylvania Ave.
Holmes put his hands up, Kelmachter said, to no avail.
"The officer - and we don't know why he zoomed in on Rahiym - he basically body-slammed him," she said. "He struck his head on the ground and was vomiting and bleeding at the scene."
It is unclear why Holmes was given the ticket, which was handed to his mom at the hospital. Holmes spent four days in a coma and has since been transferred to Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. The notice of claim accuses police of excessive force, assault, false arrest and false imprisonment.
LOS ANGELES -- A former Bay Area transit police officer on Thursday had trouble remembering key details of the events leading up to the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a fellow officer on an Oakland train platform.
Marysol Domenici, who was fired in March from Bay Area Rapid Transit, testified that when she heard the gunshot - she described sounding like "a firework" go off - she wasn't sure who may have been injured.
By the reaction of officers, "I knew it wasn't one of us," Domenici said. "No one had their guns out."
Domenici was the first officer who responded to the New Year's Day 2009 shooting and was called to testify at the trial of Johannes Mehserle, who is white and has pleaded not guilty to killing Oscar Grant, 22.
On direct examination by Deputy District Attorney Dave Stein, Domenici couldn't recall information she provided at a preliminary hearing last year. Stein read portions of her previous testimony in which she said she heard Grant and his friends tell her and other officers they were scared of being shot with a Taser stun gun.
"I don't remember them saying the tasing part, but I do remember them cooperating," Domenici said.
Mehserle's attorney has said his client meant to use his stun gun instead of his .40-caliber weapon. Stein has argued that Mehserle, 28, intended to shoot Grant and used his weapon because officers were losing control of the situation.
Domenici said she also didn't remember Grant grabbing her arm minutes before he was shot, but she said a video taken by a bystander showed it. Stein played the tape in court and the grainy resolution couldn't confirm Domenici's account.
SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle police say they'll review police tactics and training after an officer was shown on video punching a young woman in the face.
Acting deputy police chief Nick Metz said Tuesday that the department's civilian-led Office of Professional Accountability is investigating the 39-year-old officer's actions.
Officer Ian P. Walsh was trying to cite several people for jaywalking just before Monday's incident, which was captured on cell phone video.
Metz says two of the women who were stopped bear much of the responsibility for not cooperating and resisting arrest.
Seattle Urban League CEO James Kelly says the punch was an overreaction that brought to mind a video taken April 17 of two Seattle officers seen kicking a Hispanic suspect.
Attorney: Reality show video contradicts police version of raid that left Detroit girl dead.
By COREY WILLIAMS Associated Press Writer
DETROIT May 17, 2010 (AP)
An attorney for the family of a 7-year-old girl slain during a weekend raid at their Detroit home says video footage contradicts the police department's version of events.
Geoffrey Fieger (FI-ger) said Monday that footage shot by the A&E crime-reality show "The First 48" shows that police fired into the home at least once after lobbing a flash grenade through a window.
He says that contradicts the police department's explanation that an officer's gun fired during a confrontation with a resident inside the home.
Seven-year-old Aiyana Jones was shot in the neck and died.
Fieger says he viewed three to four minutes of footage but declined to say who showed it to him.
The police department says it is trying to acquire the video.
(CNN) -- Police in Detroit, Michigan, on Sunday expressed "profound sorrow" at the fatal shooting of a 7-year-old girl in a police raid.
Aiyana Jones was shot and killed by police executing a search warrant as part of a homicide investigation, Assistant Chief Ralph Godbee said in a statement.
"This is any parent's worst nightmare," Godbee said. "It also is any police officer's worst nightmare. And today, it is all too real."
The warrant was executed about 12:40 a.m. ET Sunday at a home on the city's east side, Godbee said. Authorities believed the suspect in the Friday shooting death of 17-year-old high school student Jarean Blake was hiding out at the home. Blake was gunned down in front of a store as his girlfriend watched, Godbee said.
Preliminary information indicates that members of the Detroit Police Special Response Team approached the house and announced themselves as police, Godbee said, citing the officers and at least one independent witness.
"As is common in these types of situations, the officers deployed a distractionary device commonly known as a flash bang," he said in the statement. "The purpose of the device is to temporarily disorient occupants of the house to make it easier for officers to safely gain control of anyone inside and secure the premise."
Upon entering the home, the officer encountered a 46-year-old female inside the front room, Godbee said. "Exactly what happened next is a matter still under investigation, but it appears the officer and the woman had some level of physical contact.
"At about this time, the officer's weapon discharged one round which, tragically, struck 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones in the neck/head area."
The girl was immediately transported to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Godbee said he and other officers went to the hospital while others stayed at the home to execute the warrant.
Aiyana's father, Charles Jones, told CNN affiliate WDIV, "She was sleeping and they came in the door shooting and throwing flash grenades ... burned my baby up and shot her, killed her."
Jones claimed the officers had the wrong house, but Godbee said in the statement the 34-year-old suspect in Blake's death was found and arrested at the home. In addition, a vehicle and a moped matching the descriptions of those involved in Blake's shooting were also found, he said.
The suspect's name was not released.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Gerri Bostic lost all her material possessions 25 years ago when police dropped a bomb on her block, killing five children and six adult members of the militant group MOVE and incinerating 61 row homes.
Perhaps her biggest losses were her peace of mind and sense of community.
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. The violent confrontation was a rare bombing of American citizens by civilian authorities in the United States.
Today, after spending more than $43 million on redevelopment, the city has two blocks of boarded-up eyesores to show for its efforts. The homes built to replace those lost in the bomb-ignited inferno were so shoddy that officials stopped making repairs and offered buyouts.
“There’s nothing nice about this block anymore,” said Bostic, 89. “All the people are gone.”
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.
“It’s time to make peace with it all and fix up the properties,” Blackwell said.
It won’t be easy; Philadelphia has many blighted areas competing for attention. And developers of these blocks will have the added challenge of winning support from embittered residents whose American Dream of homeownership has been a nightmare.
“We’ve been victimized twice,” Osage resident Milton Williams said.
Some might say Williams and his neighbors have been victimized three times — the first being when MOVE arrived around 1981.
The revolutionary back-to-nature group came to the city’s Cobbs Creek section after a 1978 shootout with police at its previous home. One officer died in the firefight; nine MOVE members went to prison, and others moved to Osage Avenue.
They soon turned their middle-class row house into a fortified compound, with a bunker on the roof and wooden slats over the windows. Reeking garbage attracted vermin, and loudspeakers blared obscene daily rants against authorities for jailing their peers.
“You really couldn’t get any rest,” said Connie Renfrow, who still lives on Osage. “The kids couldn’t do their studies.”
Her husband, Gerald Renfrow, said neighbors at first tried to address the problems directly with MOVE members, all of whom used the surname Africa. When talking failed, residents called authorities — but to no avail.
Columbia, Missouri Police Chief Ken Burton is apparently frustrated.
A reporter asked the chief what he has learned from the international attention generated by the youtube video of his department’s SWAT team conducting a drug raid last February.
