Philadelphia's Zombies

[WhiteFeather]

http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news....d=576361&rfi=6

Inside Today's Bulletin
Philadelphia's Zombies
By: Michael P. Tremoglie, The Bulletin
11/16/2007

"It's worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring."

You mean like Democrats?" (from the 1940 Bob Hope movie "The Ghost Breakers")

While watching Mayor John Street make yet another vapid, fatuous pronouncement that more gun laws are the solution to the mayhem in Philadelphia, one would have to believe that he is exactly the type of Democrat Bob Hope was talking about more than 60 years ago.

Hizzoner, once again, pointed the finger at guns as the culprit after yet another shooting of police officers. They were plainclothes narcotics officers serving an arrest warrant at a house, in Philadelphia's Frankford section, from which illegal drugs were being sold. The juvenile shooter was described as making a living dealing drugs.

These were the fourth and fifth Philadelphia police officers shot in the past several weeks - one fatally. Two retired Philadelphia police officers were shot and killed in Northeast Philadelphia while working as armored car guards.

After every incident, Mayor Street blamed gun laws as the reason for the slaughter. Yet the one thing besides using a gun the shooters all had in common - the one thing that Mayor Street, his myrmidon Commissioner Johnson and the media claques all repeatedly ignore - is that all the shooters had prior criminal records.

Mustafa Ali was the killer of the two retired officers. He was convicted in 1993 of robbing a bank at gunpoint. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III to only seven years in federal prison followed by five years' supervised release, despite the fact he was eligible for at least 111?2 years according to sentencing guidelines.

However, Mustafa's attorney, Patricia McInerney, now a Common Pleas Court judge, plea bargained the case with the government so that he did not get the sentence for which he was eligible. Indeed, ultimately Mustafa did not even serve the entire seven years of the more lenient plea-bargained sentence.

Antonio Coulter, the shooter of Officer Richard DeCoatesworth, had a prior arrest record for illegal drugs and assault. He was arraigned Nov. 1 and scheduled for another arraignment for additional charges Nov. 26. Perhaps this time the judge might keep him in jail - presuming he is convicted.

Jerome Whitaker, the shooter of Officer Mariano Santiago, had a prior arrest for murder. He pleaded guilty to the 1994 shooting of a 6-year-old. Mr. Whitaker's defense was that he fired at an unoccupied vehicle as payback for an earlier clash. The little girl was killed by a stray round.

Mr. Whitaker served all of 11 years in state prison before being paroled in July 2006. He was arrested about a year later for violating parole yet was subsequently released a few months later - only a few weeks before shooting Officer Santiago.

John Lewis, who shot and killed Officer Charles Cassidy, had a prior arrest record for illegal drugs. He had no past arrests for violent felonies, yet he was filmed by a security camera robbing a store at gunpoint weeks before - the same store he was robbing when he killed Officer Cassidy. (The moral of this story is that just because shooting suspects have never been arrested for a violent crime does not mean they never committed one.) Incidentally, the person who helped Mr. Lewis flee police also has a prior criminal record.

Yet, somehow Mayor Street is oblivious to this very pertinent fact: Criminals, sometimes even those with a prior murder conviction, are routinely let out of jail and walk the streets of Philadelphia with impunity.

One reason may be that it is easier for Mayor Street to blame the chimera of guns and evil greedy gun manufacturers rather than confront the real problems of a defective criminal justice system that consists of feckless judges, capricious parole boards and unanswerable probation departments. These people are part of the mayor's political cronies. He cannot point the finger at them.

It is more convenient that he assign blame for violent criminality to a business. This is more appealing to the mayor's left-wing base. It is very easy for Mayor Street to deflect the blame from himself and his colleagues for the violent crime wave engulfing Philadelphia by playing to his liberal constituency.

Former Police Commissioner John Timoney testified before the U.S. Senate in 1999 that "the average national sentence for violation of federal gun laws is 77 months. This stands in stark contrast to the three- to six-month sentence now received in Philadelphia's state courts."

That was eight years ago. When will the courts and corrections systems, instead of manufacturers, be held responsible?

Michael P. Tremoglie is an advisor to the presidential campaign of Representative Duncan Hunter, who is seeking the nomination of the Republican Party. He was formerly director of managed care at Temple University Health Sciences Center.

[Shawn.L]

We would have more funding for law enforcment, more time to spend on violent crime, and more prison room for real crimianls if we where not using up vast resources on a fruitless "war on drugs".

Why do so few people see the obvious that gun laws only affect those that obey laws?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a6YdNmK77k

[larrymeyer]

http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news....d=576361&rfi=6


"
John Lewis, who shot and killed Officer Charles Cassidy, had a prior arrest record for illegal drugs. He had no past arrests for violent felonies, yet he was filmed by a security camera robbing a store at gunpoint weeks before - the same store he was robbing when he killed Officer Cassidy. (The moral of this story is that just because shooting suspects have never been arrested for a violent crime does not mean they never committed one.) Incidentally, the person who helped Mr. Lewis flee police also has a prior criminal record.

And no arrest warrent was ever sworn out for him on this robbery the week before. The police commissor said it must have been a slip up

[bushcraft]

Philadelphia is only going to get worse with the currently elected Mayor. They need a change, more police presence to stop this aweful violence. I hate to drive thru Philly anymore.

[larrymeyer]

The new police commissor is from Washington DC. You know the Washington whoses gun control ordinance is gooing to the Supreme Court. Because you can't have a gun in your house.

[larrymeyer]

News Story

Internal Probe Ordered in Philadelphia Officer's Death

Updated: November 16th, 2007 11:16 AM PDT


Most Read Most E-mailed E-mail Article Print Article


BARBARA BOYER and GEORGE ANASTASIA
Philadelphia Inquirer (Pennsylvania)



Nov. 15--Eleven days before Officer Chuck Cassidy was shot and killed, suspect John Lewis was identified to police as the gunman who held up a Feltonville pizza shop, but no arrest warrant was obtained.

After learning that from an Inquirer reporter yesterday, Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson ordered an Internal Affairs investigation to determine why the detective assigned to the case never got that warrant.

Had a warrant been issued, Lewis might have been in custody before Oct. 31 -- the day Cassidy was shot when he interrupted the gunman holding up a West Oak Lane doughnut shop. Cassidy died the next day.

"If we made no attempt to apprehend him, that's inexcusable," Johnson said. "It's very disturbing. But this still doesn't mean that it would have prevented Officer Cassidy from being shot."

In another development, police confirmed they had questioned Lewis shortly after the killing but released him because they had been focused on another suspect.

On Oct. 20, an employee of Oasis Pizza identified Lewis -- a regular customer -- as the gunman who had held up the eatery that night.

"If they had caught the guy," the murder of Cassidy "would never have happened," the 21-year-old worker, who identified herself only as Melendez, said last night. "They left me with the impression that they knew where he was at, but they never caught him."

Police would not identify the assigned detective or her supervisor, citing the internal investigation. Those familiar with the case say the detective, an experienced veteran, is distraught over Cassidy's death.

Six days into a massive manhunt, Lewis, 21, an Olney High School dropout, was captured in Miami and confessed. He has been brought back here and is facing murder charges.

Internal Affairs investigators are reviewing exactly what happened in the weeks before the fatal robbery and whether Lewis should have been off the streets.

Yesterday, after learning of the pizza-shop robbery, Johnson consulted top commanders, including Chief of Detectives Keith Sadler and Deputy Commissioner Patricia Fox, before ordering the Internal Affairs probe.

Johnson said no disciplinary action, if warranted, would be taken until the investigation was completed. The detective did act quickly to identify a suspect, he said. She had discretion on how to proceed, he said, but it remains unclear exactly what she did.

Said Sadler: "At that point, the detectives are obligated to take the case forward. Something was not done."

In the Oasis Pizza robbery, which occurred on a Saturday night, a male in a black hooded sweatshirt entered and demanded cash. He escaped with $150 from the shop, in the 4500 block of North Fifth Street. The employee told police that the robber was a regular who stopped by Tuesday nights.

The detective took the employee to Police Headquarters, at Eighth and Race Streets, and she combed through 641 mug shots on a computer. She identified Lewis as the gunman, police said.

The detective next put Lewis' mug shot in a photo lineup of criminals with similar appearances. Again, the employee picked him out, and signed a copy of the lineup, police said.

Last night, the employee said she had spoken with several detectives but could not recall their names.

"They told me they were going to get him, and evidently he didn't get caught," she said.

About a week after making the mug-shot ID, she said, investigators called to ask her to confirm the identification.

"They said they were making sure it was the guy," she said.

And that, she said, was the last she heard from police until Lewis was arrested in Miami. The next day, she said, investigators called and asked "when was the last time I saw the gentleman who robbed the store."

"I told them, 'At home on my TV, watching the news.' "

Sadler and Johnson said that even with a warrant, police might not have been able to apprehend Lewis, who regularly moved around, staying with relatives in the area of the robbed Dunkin' Donuts.

Johnson also noted that 10,000 warrants are out for people wanted in the city.

Meanwhile, another twist has emerged: Shortly after the shooting, Lewis' mother, a corrections officer, contacted police and said she thought her son was the gunman. At that time, there was no indication that Lewis was wanted for anything else.

Two days later, a man claiming to be the getaway driver in the Cassidy shooting identified a different suspect as the killer, and police thought they were close to an arrest.

Homicide investigators instructed authorities in the field, who had apprehended Lewis by then, to make a detailed report and forward it to the task force assigned to find Cassidy's killer.

"They did the right thing," Johnson said. "They did a detailed 48" -- a police report.

When police interviewed Lewis, he held out his hands to show that they did not have a tattoo of a spider or a spiderweb, as described by witnesses. He did have tattoos that read "HP" and "NP," for Hunting Park and North Philadelphia.

Lewis was let go.

Afterward, authorities realized the self-professed getaway driver was spinning a tale and charged him with obstruction of justice.

Authorities went back to other possible suspects. That was when Lewis' name surfaced again, from a tipster. On Nov. 3, police rushed to his mother's house, but missed Lewis by 30 minutes.

"We had a window of opportunity to catch him before he was on a bus to Miami," Sadler said.

That was where police got Lewis, on Nov. 6, after he checked into a homeless shelter under a fake name.

He admitted that he killed Cassidy. Then he apologized to the officer's family and said, "I never meant anything to happen like this."

Contact staff writer Barbara Boyer

at 215-313-3004 or bboyer@phillynews.com

[IRISH-Shooter]

The new police commissor is from Washington DC. You know the Washington whoses gun control ordinance is gooing to the Supreme Court. Because you can't have a gun in your house.

Not only that look where he started! "Ramsey is a Chicago native who worked in that city's police department for 31 years before going to Washington."

[bogey1]

its funny how mustaffa or what ever his name is only got seven years for robbing a bank in philly, i know a gut that did eleven years and not one day less for selling one pound of pot in a school zone. and that was about twenty years ago.... now thats fucked up....................

[Genaric]

there's no more room in jail for criminals. Cops are all fighting this dead end they call a "war on drugs", so basically, "Go ahead and kill some people, it's cool, no sweat, but so help you god if you smoke a joint afterwork on fridays, you should get life in jail. You disgusting pot head. Your the scum of society"

[markheck1]

I remember that Bob Hope clip, I just saw it the other day!!

Zombies indeed....maybe a better term than Sheeple