FOP Fury Aimed at Philadelphia Judge

[larrymeyer]

http://www.officer.com/web/online/Top-News-Stories/FOP-Fury-Aimed-at-Philadelphia-Judge/1$43521

FOP Fury Aimed at Philadelphia Judge

Posted: Thursday, October 2, 2008
Updated: October 2nd, 2008 12:47 PM EDT

By DAVID GAMBACORTA & WENDY RUDERMAN
The Philadelphia Daily News

It looked as if Edward Burgess had gained the upper hand during a life-or-death struggle with Officer Stephen Mazzoni in a dank North Philadelphia alley last Nov. 11.

After beating Mazzoni senseless, Burgess leaned on top of the cop and tried to grab his gun, according to police records obtained by the Daily News.

Then the 38-year-old career criminal made himself perfectly clear: He would kill Mazzoni before ever being hauled back to jail, the records state.

Luck was on Mazzoni's side that day, as backup officers arrived and arrested Burgess before the showdown could get any worse. It's unclear, though, if justice is on the veteran cop's side.

On Sept. 22, Common Pleas Judge Rosalyn K. Robinson ordered Burgess, who had 13 prior arrests, to be released on house arrest to await the start of his trial, which is scheduled for March 25, 2009.

The judge's decision - which came just a day before Highway Patrol Officer Patrick McDonald was slain by convicted felon Daniel Giddings in North Philadelphia - infuriated police officials and union leaders already at wit's end over the rising tide of violence aimed at police.

Law-enforcement sources said that the District Attorney's Office immediately filed a detainer to keep Burgess behind bars, and is preparing to file a motion for reconsideration.

"This is one more example, I think, of a judge not making the right decision," Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said in an interview last night.

"This person assaulted a police officer, tried to take the officer's gun and threatened to kill him, and he was put on house arrest? It's ridiculous."

Burgess - whose arrest record stretches back to 1988 and includes seven convictions - was pulled over in November by Mazzoni and his partner on Westmoreland Street near Germantown Avenue for a traffic violation, according to police.

The cops allegedly found a crack pipe and several empty crack bags in Burgess' car and ordered him to get out. He fled down an alley, where he beat Mazzoni and punched another officer, while stating that he had AIDS, police records show.

The sources said that Robinson's decision was likely prompted by Rule 600, a state regulation that maintains that no defendant should be held in pre-trail incarceration for more than 180 days.

Burgess' case has been plagued with several continuances since February, including some attributed to Mazzoni not being well enough to make it to court, sources said.

"That right there tells you this was no minor incident," Ramsey said. "If anything, it's all the more reason to hold the guy and not trust him to abide by some house-arrest rules."

Robinson did not return a phone call to her office from the Daily News late yesterday. A former prosecutor, she was elected to the bench in 1997 and earned another 10-year term last year.

Earlier this week, leaders of the city's Fraternal Order of Police sounded a warning to judges they deemed as too lenient.

"That wasn't just for show," FOP President John McNesby said last night. "We're going to take a proactive approach and hammer judges who let people like [Burgess] go.

"We're going to assign someone to watch the courts and work with the D.A.'s office. We're going to make sure our officers and our citizens are protected."

In response to the FOP's salvo on some judges, Common Pleas President Judge C. Darnell Jones II said that "blaming the judiciary is not an appropriate response to this type of terrible criminal conduct." *

[WhiteFeather]

Lets turn the time clock back and read this one from Philadelphia Police Department Chief Inspector Joseph Fox, that no one wanted to listen to the solution back then.

We don't have a gun control problem,
.............WE have a CRIMINAL CONTROL PROBLEM

It backs up larrymeyer post

http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news....d=580169&rfi=6

Michael P. Tremoglie Talks
10/25/06 Gunning For A Proper Solution
By: Michael P. Tremoglie, author of the novel, "A Sense Of Duty.", Special To The Evening Bulletin
10/25/2006

There was a municipal epiphany on TV recently - one that provided a modicum of optimism that someone, somewhere, in Philadelphia's criminal justice hierarchy, has a degree of common sense and a realistic idea of what it will take to curb gun violence in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia Police Department Chief Inspector Joseph Fox appeared on the Oct. 22, 2006 edition of "Speak Up!," a public affairs program on The CW television network's local affiliate. This program concerned the vexing problem of gun crime in the city.

Fox, when asked what can be done to solve the problem, quite frankly stated that, unless the people who commit the crimes actually go to jail, and remain imprisoned, there can be no solution. Even when the vivacious host, Natasha Brown, tried to lead him into the dogmatic liberal forest of "we need more and stricter gun control" that is standard fare for Philadelphia's liberal Democratic Party political machine and their claques of community leaders, he reiterated that while anything is helpful, nothing will happen until existing laws are enforced.

He informed Natasha that, currently, the best chance to get a criminal to go to prison was to use the federal court system where there are mandatory minimum sentences. Fox proffered that the thugs who are terrorizing the communities of Philadelphia are fearful of the federal court system and implied that they are rather dismissive of the local court system, where conviction and punishment is a chimera.

Fox recounted how a recently arrested drug dealer was wearing an ankle bracelet, a device used to monitor those sentenced to home confinement while on probation. Fox's aggravation with Philadelphia's ridiculously lenient court system was apparent from his expression if not his words.

Last June 6, I wrote a piece for the Bulletin stating Mayor Street is a "Neo Nero." He is fiddling while the city burns. The tune he is playing is the same old "get rid of the guns and you get rid of gun crime" fallacy liberals have performed for years. Mayor Street is illustrative of whom former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan described when he said, "As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound."

Instead of placing gun-using criminals in prison, Street thinks it would be better to place the guns in prison. This is a feel good, "let's get tough on those evil, greedy, capitalists" mentality that does not work.

It is tantamount to squeezing a balloon. The part you squeeze will shrink while another part will expand. A prohibition on guns may - and I stress may - have the effect that some crime may decrease. However, others will increase since people will not have the ability to deter criminals or defend themselves from them. Indeed, the most comprehensive study of the correlation between guns and crime determined that more gun ownership actually decreases crime.

What is missing from the equation, and always is from Philadelphia's leadership, is that those who are convicted of crimes need to go to jail. As Fox said so eloquently - sometimes fear is the only weapon you have, and the criminals fear being prosecuted in federal courts because they know they will do serious prison time.

Yet, you will have a difficult time convincing Mayor Street and the liberal intelligentsia of this. They would rather spend more time, more resources and more thought organizing marches on Harrisburg, as they did Sept. 26, to conduct a rally urging tougher gun laws.

Ironically, two days after the Sept. 26 rally, a West Philadelphian, Wayne Hogue, aka "Imam Wadir" was arrested for selling guns and ammunition, including hollow-point bullets, between May 9, 2003, and March 23, 2004.
Hogue is a convicted felon - which automatically prohibits him from possessing firearms. Among the weapons he sold were two Norinko 7.62 mm assault rifles and an AR-15 .223-caliber rifle with sawed-off barrel.

How would tougher gun laws have prevented Hogue from owning and selling guns since he was already prohibited from doing so? Another law would not have made a difference. Strictly enforcing existing laws would have.

This is all too common an occurrence in Philadelphia, a city with a reputation for lenient courts, incompetent bureaucrats and political corruption. After all, less than six months ago, a police officer was killed by a gunman with a prior arrest - and acquittal by a Philadelphia judge - for shooting someone.

Yet, Street and the acolytes of liberalism will demand that guns - not criminals - be removed from society. They will insist that gun manufacturers - not gun toting criminals - are the villains. They will proclaim that safety will be the result of prohibiting innocent people - not convicted criminals - from owning guns.

They cause one to recall what President Ronald Reagan said about liberals. He said, "It isn't that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so much that isn't so."