Fanfics Fact Resources ::SPOILERS::

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/2006/05/20/news/front/14624649.htm

Posted on Sat, May. 20, 2006
Police: Suspect planned to flee Phila.
Solomon Montgomery was charged yesterday with the murder of Officer Gary Skerski.
By Barbara Boyer and Julie Shaw
Inquirer Staff Writers

As police were racing Thursday afternoon to catch the man who they said killed Officer Gary Skerski, their number-one suspect got a tip: Police were closing in. He kissed his sister goodbye and left her East Germantown apartment armed with two pistols, police said.

Outside, police were watching a gray Volvo SUV they thought was the getaway car used in the Frankford bar robbery in which Skerski was slain.

Solomon Montgomery, 23, of North Philadelphia, got into the Volvo, but instead of making a clean getaway, he crashed into two police cars, got out, and started running. Police caught up with him, but only after shooting him three times when he made a move for one of the pistols.

It seems the police task force that arrested Montgomery moved just in time.

Police believe that he had been planning to leave the city. Bus tickets to North Carolina were found in the apartment where Montgomery was staying. Montgomery's mother lives in South Carolina.

"This is a death-penalty case without hesitation or reservation," said District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham, who stood with Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson and more than 20 other top area law enforcement officials at a late-afternoon news conference.

Said Johnson: "We have a cop-killer off the street."

Johnson said he was grateful no other officers were injured during the apprehension.

The capture ended a 10-day manhunt that began when Skerski, 46, a 16-year veteran and married father of two, was killed by a shotgun blast to the neck as he responded to a May 8 bar robbery in Frankford. He received a hero's funeral in the midst of the most intense search in recent city history, an effort that included a multi-agency task force, the use of sophisticated police technology, and a $125,000 reward, the largest ever offered in this area.

The investigative work and reward apparently led to the arrest. John Apeldorn, a former Philadelphia homicide commander and now president of the Citizens Crime Commission of Delaware Valley, said three tipsters - whom police did not identify - likely would split the money.

Abraham praised investigators for their work and vowed, "You have my word that this is only the beginning, not the end."

On May 12, the crime commission received a promising tip that was passed along to police. It was not a name, officials said. From Wednesday night into Thursday morning, officials learned Montgomery's name, that he was wanted on a warrant for weapons offenses in California, and that he had been in Philadelphia at the time of the shooting.

Several tipsters, including relatives of Montgomery's, contacted police, authorities said.

One of them turned over a picture of Montgomery wearing clothing similar to the attire of the robber caught on a surveillance video at Pat's Cafe on Castor Avenue.

The videotape captured the nine minutes that the gunman was in the bar, ordering about 12 customers to hand over their money and valuables as he waved a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol, sometimes at the victims' heads.

Although the video did not record the shooting, it did show the arrival of Skerski and his partner, Officer William Alexander, as they responded to a 911 call of a robbery in progress. Alexander was at the front door and Skerski at the rear when the robber blasted his way out, striking Skerski and firing at Alexander, who was not harmed.

Skerski, who had been assigned to the 15th Police District as a community-relations officer, had been working overtime as part of the city's Operation Safer Streets.

After police learned Montgomery's name, they contacted his mother. She was not the one who turned him in, authorities said yesterday.

Police initially had looked for Montgomery in the 2200 block of North Bancroft Street, where he once lived with his mother. But this week, police found out that he had been staying with his sister at the Manor apartments at Ogontz and Olney Avenues.

Authorities say they believe his family tipped him off that police were seeking him just before he left the apartment.

During the Frankford robbery, the gunman said he was a wanted man who would not be caught. He warned he would kill police, the victims told detectives.

When he fled Thursday in the SUV - which had been reported stolen May 7, the day before Skerski was shot - he did not get far. Montgomery ran briefly from Ogontz to Chew and up Kemble Avenue to an alley behind the 5700 block of 19th Street.

Police said Montgomery was struggling to get one of the two weapons - a .22-caliber and .32-caliber pistol - that were tucked in his back pockets when officers fired three shots, hitting him in an arm, a leg and the torso.

He remained at Albert Einstein Medical Center in stable condition and was being held on the California warrant before Philadelphia authorities charged him yesterday.

After his capture, police searched the apartment where Montgomery had been staying with his younger sister, Nancy Fleming, her boyfriend, and their 7-month-old baby.

Fleming said that the allegations against her brother were not true.

"I don't understand what's going on," she said. "All I know is they shot my brother up and he's in the hospital."

Authorities would not detail all the evidence collected but said that inside Fleming's apartment they found numerous shotgun shells, a box of .22-caliber long bullets, and another box with 9mm bullets. Among clothing they found were two New York Yankees baseball caps, similar to what Skerski's killer wore.

Chief of Detectives Joseph Fox, who headed the investigation, said the weapon that killed Skerski and a jacket with the stateproperty logo seen on the videotape had not been recovered. He did not elaborate on the evidence used to file murder and robbery charges.

At 15, Montgomery, who dropped out of Fels High School in 2001, was charged with dealing drugs, found guilty, adjudicated delinquent, and sent to a juvenile facility.

In 2001, he was accused of robbing a man in Olney, shoving a handgun into the victim's mouth and shooting him. He was acquitted by Common Pleas Court Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes in a nonjury trial.

Johnson, who visited with Skerski's widow last night, said he hoped the murder charges ensured that Montgomery would never be free again.

"This person, hopefully, will never see the day of light in the city of Philadelphia or any other place for the rest of his life," Johnson said. "And I'll leave that in the hands of the district attorney."

Memorial Fund

A memorial fund to benefit Officer Gary Skerski's family has been established at Polonia Bank. Donations may sent to Polonia Bank, Officer Gary Skerski Fund, 3993 Huntingdon Pike, Huntingdon Valley, Pa. 19006. Donations may also be made at Polonia Bank branches: 2646 E. Allegheny Ave., 2628 Orthodox Ave., 8000 Frankford Ave., or 2133 Spring Garden St. Checks may be made payable to the Officer Gary Skerski Memorial Fund.

---

Contact staff writer Barbara Boyer at 215-854-2641 or [e-mail]. Inquirer staff writers Craig R. McCoy and Julie Stoiber contributed to this article.

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/15062326.htm

Posted on Tue, Jul. 18, 2006
Editorial
A STATE OF EMERGENCY

IS IT FINALLY TIME to declare a state of emergency in the city of Philadelphia - including calling in the National Guard?

The bloody evidence is mounting that yes, it finally might be time.

Yesterday, within 21 minutes - less time than it would take to watch your average sitcom - three people were shot dead in the streets of Philadelphia, including a cabbie who wanted nothing more than to fill his tank with gas.

This, after a weekend of carnage that included at least six homicides. We are well past matching last year's killing numbers at this point.

How did we reach this crisis? Because for too long this town's private and public leadership have been asleep.

Just last week, Mayor Street announced a new crackdown on curfew violations in South Philadelphia. Kids under 18 caught on the streets after midnight on Fridays and Saturdays and 10:30 p.m. the rest of the week will be sent home or to a curfew center manned by volunteers.

Good idea. While Philadelphia teens are not as heavily involved in gun violence as kids in some other cities, getting them off the streets will likely save their lives from random shootings.

Thing is, this kind of initiative almost never lasts. Remember when the city passed the Parental Responsibility Act, which gave cops, prosecutors and judges the ability to fine parents $300 if their kids busted curfew or property? Judges tell us that tough sanction has almost never been imposed.

No one wants to make the hard decision. Or he takes too long making it.

Take cops, for example. There aren't enough on the street. After some dithering among the mayor, Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson and City Council,100 more are being hired, but will take time to train. Meanwhile, roughly 60 city officers continue to be assigned to patrol the state highways that run through Philadelphia, a job that anywhere else in the commonwealth would fall on state troopers.

After years of arm-twisting, Gov. Rendell has finally cleared the way so that Philadelphia cops can go back to patrolling the streets. But that took nearly a decade of advocacy through the usual channels.

Back in May, the Philadelphia legislative delegation pleaded with the governor to send at least 50 state police officers to help stem the gun violence.

They are still waiting for a response.

Maybe it's time to aim higher and get the National Guard, and by extension the federal government, involved.

If President Bush can request the Pennsylvania National Guard be sent to patrol the Mexican border to keep illegal immigrants out, how about using them to curtail illegal activity here?

If keeping cheap labor out of the U.S. is an emergency worthy of the Guard, why isn't it an emergency that life is now cheap in Philadelphia?

Is calling for the Guard too extreme? Maybe.

Too bad we can't ask the dead of Philadelphia what they think.

© 2006 Philadelphia Daily News and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com

[r2k]

Wow! These are interesting stories. Always nice to get a feel for a different city, especially Philly. I thought Chicago was rough.

[boxman]

r2k said:

Wow! These are interesting stories. Always nice to get a feel for a different city, especially Philly. I thought Chicago was rough.

I'm glad you like reading them, R2K. I think the Philadelphia Inquirer has some really good writers on their reporting staff. They tell a news story like how one would with really good fiction, and I like reading them myself because of this.

[boxman]

This tragic story of a young murderer is almost reminiscent of "Saving Patrick Bubley".

www.philly.com/mld/philly/15153507.htm

Posted on Sun, Jul. 30, 2006
Childhood of tragedy and 2 lives devastated
Robert Moran
Inquirer Staff Writer

In 2003, the city was shocked when a 15-year-old shot another teenager in the neck, paralyzing him, for his Allen Iverson jersey, police said.

The gunman was Raymond Ferguson, who fled with four accomplices without taking Kevin Johnson's jersey.

Raymond is at Pine Grove prison, near Johnstown, serving 15 to 30 years for attempted murder. He pleaded guilty, but now, at age 19, says "that don't mean I did it."

"To me, to shoot somebody over a jersey? That's not me. That not even what it's about."

The prosecutor said the real reason had more to do with a girl and getting "respect."

"The act was monstrous," Raymond's older half-sister told the judge at his sentencing. "But these kids are not monsters."

A teen with a tragic family history, Raymond candidly admits to dealing drugs, making money, getting respect.

"I think I was about 12 when I started," said Raymond, a solid 210 pounds in his brown prison jumpsuit. When he was 15 - and declared an adult by the state for the shooting - he weighed 140 pounds.

Both his parents had AIDS.

Before dying, his father left the family. When Raymond's mother went into hospice, he was not allowed to see her.

He was 6 when she died.

A social worker's report says Raymond was an emotional child, crying sometimes over minor things. After his mother died, he cried all the time.

Raymond can barely recall his mother. "It bothers me," he said. "It's like a struggle to remember."

At 11, his half-brother Samir, 19, was murdered. His great-grandmother woke him with the news.

"She just came in our room. She said, 'Your brother got shot.' And that was it. It was straight to the point."

The next year, his younger sister, born with HIV and later brain-damaged, went into a nursing home. Raymond remembers playing with her in the backyard, the only place outside they could go on weekdays.

His grandmother and great-grandmother, raising them, knew the dangers of the Street.

"They didn't want us hanging around outside," he said. But "as soon as they turn around, I'm outside anyway. Of course, when I come back in I'm on punishment. But after two weeks I'd do it again."

The Street was his escape.

"I been through so much before I turned into a teenager," he said. "My mind was a blank. I didn't care what happened."

Until middle school, Raymond stayed out of trouble. "I was doing good, I can remember, until the sixth grade."

Court records show that, through sixth grade, Raymond had seven unexcused absences.

They soared to 89 in seventh and eighth grades. In eighth grade, he was suspended eight times; his aunt had him put in a disciplinary school.

"That's where I really started to lose focus," he recalled. His focus turned to the Street.

"Everybody was out there trying to make money, someway, somehow," he said.

His family "wouldn't give me money for expensive things," he said. "If I wanted a $100 pair of Timberlands, I'd go out, make some money, go get some Timberlands."

He started selling marijuana at the corner of his block.

"Maybe I'd come home from school, check in with my grandmom, then go back out to the corner," he said.

Then he moved to a busier venue - playgrounds, for one.

He was with a group that also sold crack, powder cocaine, and prescription drugs such as Xanax, though he says the only drug he personally used was marijuana.

And Raymond appreciated guns. "When you had a gun, you felt like you couldn't be touched," he said.

Now, he could afford the expensive Coogi sweaters made popular in a best-selling rap by Notorious B.I.G., a former drug dealer who became a hip-hop legend after he was shot to death in an ambush.

If a member of Raymond's family asked where he got his clothes, "I could say somebody gave it to me, couldn't fit 'em."

Raymond was smoking weed and drinking Olde English malt liquor, gin and Hennessy cognac - "the only thing that people I hung out with drank."

He had access to cars - friends stole them or he could rent one from a crack addict.

"If you had a car, you was guaranteed to get some girls, some attention," he said.

With one of those girls, he had a child, now 3 years old.

As for his first gun, found when he was 11 at a playground - he sold it three months later.

"Somebody is always going to need a gun," he said.
Contact staff writer Robert Moran at 215-854-5983 or [e-mail].

© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/philly/15384750.htm

Posted on Tue, Aug. 29, 2006
In city, 1 in 4 report childhood sex abuse
The Joseph J. Peters Institute released the study. Everyone in Phila. likely knows a victim, an institute official said.
By Vernon Clark
Inquirer Staff Writer

Nearly one in four adults in Philadelphia reported having been sexually abused as a child, according to a study released yesterday.

And only about two out of five people who reported being sexually abused as a child ever reported such abuse to an adult, according to the Joseph J. Peters Institute, a Philadelphia nonprofit that focuses on preventing child abuse.

"We're talking about 270,000 adults in Philadelphia who were abused as a child. That's a lot," said Michael Stinson, director of prevention services for the institute, at Broad and Chestnut Streets.

He said the study, conducted between March 15 and April 23, used a statistically random telephone survey of about 600 people. "We broke the city down by zip code to make sure we got an array of opinions," Stinson said.

He said the study has a margin of error of 21/2 to 4 percentage points. Stinson said the national average is slightly lower than that of Philadelphia.

Based on the survey, it is likely that everyone in Philadelphia knows someone who has been sexually abused as a child - "a friend, a neighbor, perhaps a family member or even themselves," Stinson said. He said that, nationally, about 500,000 children are sexually abused each year.

Stinson said the study was conducted to "show Philadelphians how underreported child sexual abuse is" and how it often occurs close to home.

"In 90 percent of the cases, the child knows the offender, so it's not strangers who are doing this," Stinson said.

Children who are sexually abused are more likely to suffer from depression, become delinquent, and abuse alcohol and drugs later in life, Stinson said. When those children grow up, they are less likely to hold a job or keep a family intact, he said.

"When you add up the cost to society, we're paying a big price for this," Stinson said.

Shelly Yanoff, executive director of Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth, a child-advocacy organization, said she was surprised that the number of adults who reported being sexually abused as children was so high.

"We are increasingly learning about children who are sexually abused," Yanoff said. "They are less physically healthy and emotionally healthy.

"We, as a society, have to make it safer for people to report" child sexual abuse, Yanoff said. "And we have to provide more prevention to help kids know it's OK to say no and to provide the protection they need."

Resources for victims can be found on the Institute's website.

Contact staff writer Vernon Clark at 215-854-5717 or [e-mail].
© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/philly/15390532.htm

Posted on Tue, Aug. 29, 2006
Penn: Prof accused of child porn will not teach
By Patrick Kerkstra and Robert Moran
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

Wharton School professor Lawrence Scott Ward - who was arrested Sunday morning at a Washington airport after he allegedly tried to enter the country with child pornography - will not teach again at the school, the University of Pennsylvania said in a statement.

In a statement released this afternoon, the school said:

"We learned yesterday of the arrest of Scott Ward and the charges that were filed against him in Virginia. We have made arrangements to ensure that he will not be teaching at the Wharton School or elsewhere at the university this semester and he will not teach at Penn in the future."

Ward, 63, who has a 1999 conviction in Montgomery County for attempting to solicit sex from an undercover agent posing as a 15-year-old boy, was arriving on a United Airlines flight from Brazil when he was flagged in a sex-predator crackdown for having taken "excessive" trips to Thailand, a haven for sex tourism, authorities said.

In Ward's luggage, customs agents discovered three mini-DVDs showing the renowned marketing professor performing sex acts with boys who appeared to be 14 to 16 years old, according to an affidavit filed in federal court.

Ward, a native of Pittsburgh, had taught at Harvard Business School before joining Wharton in 1980.

Customs agents on Sunday also discovered a video on Ward's laptop computer showing two children who appeared to be as young as 8 engaged in sexual activity, according to the affidavit.

Ward was taken into custody, and a video camera, a mini-DVD disc, a portable memory drive, and $3,126 in cash were confiscated. Ward could not be reached today.

The affidavit states that Ward "did unlawfully, knowingly and intentionally import into the territory of the United States child pornography."

The affidavit does not specify charges or penalties.

Contact staff writer Patrick Kerkstra at 610-313-8111 or [e-mail].
© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/philly/15451955.htm

Posted on Wed, Sep. 06, 2006
Rocky wins split decision to stand near Art Museum
By Michael Vitez
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

By a split decision, the Rocky statue has won the right to stand below the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

By a 6-2 vote, the city's Art Commission voted in favor of relocating the 2,000-pound, 8-foot statue of Rocky Balboa onto a cement foundation on the lawn, just north of the Art Museum steps.

Plans call for the statue to be moved tomorrow and unveiled Friday at a 6 p.m. dedication ceremony.

Sylvester Stallone, writer and star of Rocky, is expected. And Jimmy Binns, a longtime advocate of moving the statue to the museum area, said he expected "hundreds of thousands" to attend.

As the sun sets, Rocky will be shown on the museum steps.

A favorable decision was anticipated, but, as with a boxing match, the final decision remained in doubt.

Just last month, six of the members deadlocked, 3-3.

The mayor, the Fairmount Park Commission, and the Art Museum had all approved moving the 25-year-old bronze statue of Rocky Balboa - created as a prop for the movie Rocky III - to the new site.

And events have been planned all week, including a Rocky and Adrian look-alike contest tomorrow sponsored by the Philadelphia Daily News, as part of the first-ever "Philly Loves Rocky Week."

Today, the commission gave all those plans a big thumbs-up.

"In terms of this as a cultural icon over thirty years, it has beared the test of time," said commission member Emanuel Kelly, who voted for the move.

There was little debate, but each of the eight voting commission members in attendance gave an explanation. One opponent, Miguelangel Corzo, said to him the issue was not whether the statue was considered art. He said there is a urinal inside the museum that is considered art.

To him it was more a question of the role of the commission, and doing what's best for the city. He felt the idea of Rocky and the inspiration it provided was already represented by the steps themselves, and the people who run up them every day, and didn't need a phsyical symbol.

He also wondered whether the Rocky statue itself would stand up over time on the Ben Franklin Parkway along with statue's like Rodin's thinker, or the Seasons.

But most commission members felt the statue was beloved and belonged near the museum.

City officials said they had to make some preparations - like pouring a foundation - before the Art Commission's vote today.

"If we waited until we had the vote, we couldn't be ready," said Stephanie Naidoff, the city's commerce director. "This is a reasonable step because it could be undone easily.

"We are very respectful of the Art Commission and of its role," she added, "and we didn't want to go ahead and put up the pedestal and statue and do all the things that should have been done... to beautify the area."

Plans call for walkways to and around the statue, which will reach its arms up 13 feet as its stands on a new bronze pedestal. The statue, city officials said, is in need of washing and waxing, as well as other small repairs. The relocation and repairs are all to be paid for by Stallone, city officials said.

"It's a wonderful symbol of what people can accomplish with hard work and dedication, and this is what Philadelphia stands for," Naidoff said.

The statue, created by artist A. Thomas Schomberg, was dedicated by the fictional mayor in Rocky III at the top of the Art Museum steps, made world-famous in the original movie 30 years ago when the character ran to the top and celebrated his transformation.

After the filming of Rocky III, Stallone made a gift of the statue to the city, and hoped it would remain permanently at the top of the museum steps.

But the Art Commission in 1982 rejected the idea, and a compromise was reached to move the statue - which depicts boxer Rocky Balboa in a victory pose - outside the Spectrum, where Rocky fought Apollo Creed in the original movie and the first sequel.

The statue was returned to the top of the museum steps briefly in 1990 for the filming of Rocky V, but spent the next 16 years back at the Spectrum.

It was taken down earlier this year - in anticipation of use in the latest sequel, Rocky Balboa, due in theaters Dec. 22.

The statue was not used at the steps in the new movie, and remained in storage awaiting its fate. City officials proposed moving it permanently near the bottom of the steps, and Stallone endorsed the idea.

Contact staff writer Michael Vitez at 215-854-5639 or [e-mail].

[boxman]

CAUTION: This story is not for the faint-hearted. It's so mind-blowingly violent and senseless that I wasn't going to post it here. But this actual case could form an excellent Cold Case episode if the killer wasn't caught. THANK GOD HE WAS. Good people who keep aware of what's going on in the neighborhood, and swift actions by the Philly PD caught the perp in minutes.

www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/15413908.htm

Posted on Fri, Sep. 01, 2006
'You could call it an execution'
By DANA DiFILIPPO
[e-mail] 215-854-5934

IT ALL STARTED with a creepy stare from a stranger.

An 18-year-old woman waiting at a Fern Rock bus stop late Wednesday got nervous enough about that leer that she fled across the street.

But the thug followed, and within minutes, a tragedy exploded that left two Good Samaritans in the morgue, the teenager in the hospital, a murderous rapist in jail and three shattered families in agonizing heartache.

The violence began shortly before midnight near 10th Street and Olney Avenue with the teenager's desperate flight from her perverted pursuer.

The man, whom police identified yesterday as Kevin White, 28, of Fairhill Street near Luzerne, Fern Rock, pounced on the girl in a nearby alley, flashed a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun and demanded her money, said Chief of Detectives Joseph Fox.

The teen had no money, so her depraved assailant dragged her into the dark, secluded walkway behind Anthony Burno's rowhouse, where he began raping her, Fox said.

Just then, Burno and his girlfriend, Kira Derrick, 29, arrived home after a night out, Fox said.

As they parked behind Burno's garage, the rapist hurriedly ordered his victim to put her pants back on and pretend she was his girlfriend until the couple went into Burno's home, Fox said.

But the victim, compliant at first, tore free of her attacker as the couple neared, screamed for help and warned them that her rapist was armed, Fox said.

Before they could respond, the thug began firing, Fox said. He chased the trio into Burno's small, weedy back yard, where he shot the three as they tried to hide, Fox said.

"You could call it an execution," Fox said.

The teen limped to neighbor Terrell Mackey's back door, and began pounding on it and shrieking for help.

"I let her in and called the cops and then went around [the house] to check on everyone to see if they were cool," said Mackey, 18, adding that he had not realized until later the extent of the carnage outside.

Outside, Burno and Derrick lay dying, and their killer had vanished.

But he didn't get far. Police Officers Richard Redanauer and Timothy McGonigle were on routine patrol nearby when they heard a radio call of gunfire, Fox said.

They spotted White sprinting down 11th Street, and collared him after a brief struggle, Fox said. The officers found a handgun shoved in White's waistband, and his victim identified him at the scene as her attacker, he added.

White, free on bail awaiting trial in the sexual assault and beating of his girlfriend's 6-year-old son, now is being held without bail on charges of murder, aggravated assault, rape and related offenses.

The teen was hospitalized with wounds to the leg and arm. She was expected to survive.

Yesterday morning, a dried pool of gore, discarded latex gloves and other medical gear, and police chalk markings indicating where spent bullet casings had fallen, attested to the carnage.

Relatives of Burno, reluctant to witness such graphic evidence of his violent death, huddled in the alley, tearfully remembering him as a carefree man who loved to sing and cook.

Burno, 48, was a chef who started a new job this week - he'd worked only a day - in the student center cafeteria at Temple University and had another culinary job at a Center City restaurant, relatives said.

He had previously worked at a lunch truck outside the Social Security building on Spring Garden Street near 4th, and other restaurants in the city, they said.

Derrick, a mother of two, had been dating Burno for about six months, his relatives said. Her blue Ford Explorer remained parked outside Burno's rowhouse yesterday, with two baby seats, a Dora the Explorer doll, kids' school papers, a toy black Cadillac Escalade and other child-related items strewn in the back.

Derrick did clerical work in the Social Security building and got to know Burno as a lunch-truck regular, Burno's relatives said.

That sounded familiar to Wadiyah Burno, his estranged wife, who met him when she worked for Prudential. She said she had been happily married to him for four years and was separated the last two.

"He used to make my breakfast, lunch and dinner, and bring it to my desk for free," she said.

Yesterday, Burno said she had remained close to her estranged husband and his relatives despite their marital troubles. Her cheeks shone with tears as she remembered Burno's love of singing.

"He sang me down the aisle," she said, smiling as she remembered his tenor version of the Whispers' "I'm Gonna Make You My Wife."

Burno sang so well, he often won cash, show tickets, trophies and other prizes in contests at Sid Booker's club on Broad Street near Belfield Avenue, his estranged wife said.

Gail Graham Burno, 50, his sister-in-law, laughed as she remembered his love of fashionable clothes - including a long 1970s-style, white-fur coat he wore to a New Year's party.

His relatives said he typically worked until 8 p.m., and the couple probably were returning home from a date when they were shot dead.

Kira Derrick's stepfather, Marshall Smith, of Fayetteville, Ga., described her as a "very quiet person. In a crowd, she would be that person standing back in the crowd."

Smith said Kira's main focus was on her children - Tarik, 4, and Taylor, 2.

He said she had put in for a transfer back to the Atlanta area recently because "she didn't have the support" she needed in Philadelphia.

"Her mother [Hazel] is here," Smith said. "They had a very, very close relationship. They talked two or three times every day.

"We knew something was wrong early today [Thursday] when we couldn't get in touch with her. Her mother called the job" and was told Kira hadn't come to work.

They were informed later of what had happened when, he said, "someone else called us who saw it on the news."

Smith said Kira was an only child but had stepbrothers after "we became a family in '91."

Kira grew up in Philadelphia. The family moved to Texas when she was a junior in high school and returned to the Philadelphia area in 1998. She lived for a time in Atlanta and moved back to Philly in 2005.

Denise Severe, owner of Denise's Soul Food, the lunch truck where Burno had worked, said: "He was a good person. He showed up for work on time. He would argue a lot; very argumentative but, overall, a good guy."

Severe said that she couldn't remember when Burno started at the truck but that he left last month.

She said her daughter runs the truck and had to tell the other employees that Burno had been murdered.

Burno's relatives were upset when they learned about White's criminal record.

White was scheduled for an Oct. 2 preliminary hearing on the assault case involving his girlfriend's then-6-year-old child in December 2004, according to court records. He was freed on $5,000 bail, records show.

Authorities said White had been watching his girlfriend's child while she worked. He was unemployed.

White's family couldn't be reached for comment yesterday.

Fox said the crime points to problems in the system, in which serious offenders dodge serious punishment and return to the street to commit new crimes.

"You get the same people back on the street in days or weeks, committing the same crimes time and again," Fox said. He complained that low bail and lax sentencing keep dangerous thugs in the community.

"There's a breakdown in the system. [Judges] need to get their heads out of the sand."

Staff writers Theresa Conroy, Damon Williams and Gloria Campisi contributed to this report.

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/family_guide/15559679.htm
Posted on Wed, Sep. 20, 2006

Violent crime up in the city
Phila. was No. 1 among big U.S. cities in '05. Some say numbers can deceive.
By Barbara Boyer and Peter Mucha
Inquirer Staff Writers

When it comes to violent crime among America's largest cities, Philadelphia is the worst, the FBI reported this week.

However, when overall crime, which includes nonviolent offenses such as burglary and theft, is considered, the city drops to No. 5, while Dallas tops the list.

On Monday, the FBI released 2005 crime statistics showing that from 2004 to 2005, the violent-crime rate in the United States increased 1.3 percent, while property-crime rates decreased 2.4 percent.

In Philadelphia last year, violent crime was up 3.4 percent, including a 15 percent increase in homicides. Other violent crimes include forcible rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults.

This year, homicides are up slightly. The number of shooting victims is up about 13 percent, while overall violent crime is up about 4 percent. Overall crime, which includes property offenses, is up 2 percent, according to statistics recently released by the Police Department.

At least one local crime expert and several law enforcement officials - reviewing national numbers yesterday - said violence in Philadelphia is not as bad as it appears based on the FBI numbers, which they say can be deceiving.

Lawrence W. Sherman, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania's Jerry Lee Center, said that rankings among the city's 10 largest cities make Philadelphia look bad, but that there are far more dangerous cities.

"They're sticking out like a sore thumb because some of the larger cities have become some of the safer cities," Sherman said.

If Philadelphia, with a population of 1.47 million, is compared with cities closer to 100,000 in population, not just those with about one million or more, the city is nearer to the middle of the list in violent crime, Sherman said.

Detroit, for example, has a population of 900,000 and doesn't make the list of the top 10 largest cities, but would replace Philadelphia as the worst of the worst if the list were expanded to the 12 largest cities.

Detroit has 2,358 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, compared with Philadelphia's 1,467 per 100,000 residents.

New York, which has a population of 8.1 million, and which has seen a slight increase in homicides this year, had 673 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2005.

Camden, with a population of 80,125, had 21 crimes per 1,000 residents, making it among the most dangerous cities in the country.

Among the larger cities, Sherman said, Philadelphia has a high crime rate for various reasons. "We have the poorest population," he said.

In addition, he said, the commissioner in Philadelphia does not have the same freedom to deploy police and make top appointments as do law enforcement officials in other cities, such as New York and Los Angeles.

Influence by the mayor and City Council and restrictions in labor contracts limit Philadelphia's commissioner, he said.

In the list of safest cities for overall crime among the 10 largest in the nation, New York was at the top - the safest. For most violent crime, it is No. 6 on the list of the safest, while San Jose, Calif., is No. 1.

Philadelphia Deputy Commissioner Richard Ross said it was important to look closely at overall crime and not just violent crime. Philadelphia, he said, aggressively classifies crimes that other cities may not classify as violent.

"Overall, crime is down over the past five years," Ross said, adding that Philadelphia had been hit hard in recent years by the number of guns on the street, which are responsible for 85 percent of the city's homicides.

"You can't ignore the proliferation of handguns in this city and the proliferation in comparison to some of the other cities that are larger than Philadelphia," Ross said.

In 2004, Philadelphia had nearly the same number of confiscations of illegal firearms as New York did, even though New York has a population more than five times the size of Philadelphia's.

Contact staff writer Barbara Boyer at 215-854-2641 or [e-mail]. This article contains information from the Associated Press.

Camden, New Jersey is just across the Delaware River, east of Philadelphia, and considered to be one of the surrounding counties that make up the "Greater Philadelphia Metropolitan Area". So it doesn't really reflect well for Philly that Camden's one of the most dangerous city in the US.

[boxman]

Many of you are already aware of the fatal schoolhouse shooting that occured earlier this week in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, sixty miles west of Philadelphia. Several of the young girls that survived the shooting are being treated at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The following article is one that doesn't seem to have reached the national news outlets. It's a very touching story in the midst of this tragedy...
www.philly.com/mld/philly/15696176.htm

Posted on Fri, Oct. 06, 2006
Amish sisters asked to die first, family friend says
By Keith Herbert
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

GEORGETOWN, Pa. - A 13-year-old Amish girl killed by the gunman in the Lancaster County schoolhouse asked to be shot first in an attempt to buy time for the younger students, according to a close family friend.

The girl's 11-year-old sister then said, "Shoot me next."

The account of what occurred inside the West Nickel Mines Amish School on Monday was related this morning by Rita Rhodes, a Mennonite nurse-midwife who had delivered 13-year-old Marian Fisher, who was buried yesterday.

The younger Fisher girl, Barbie, survived the assault and told her family what happened from her bed at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where she is being treated for wounds to her shoulder, hand and leg.

Marian had been bound with the other children by Charles Carl Roberts IV in the West Nickel Mines Amish School. "They were already tied up, they knew they were going to be shot," Rhodes said, and "Barbie says that Marian said she'd be first. And then Barbie said, 'Shoot me next.'

"The older girls were trying to save the younger girls, thinking that if they offered themselves, maybe the gunman would spare the younger girls.

"I think it was just an amazing display of courage. God really had to be present in that schoolhouse to give them that courage," said Rhodes, who heard about what happened from Ruben Fisher, the girls' grandfather and the father of Emma Zook, the teacher who escaped from the school before the five girls were killed and five others wounded. Roberts also killed himself.

"Barbie said somewhere during all the conversations" in the one-room schoolhouse, Roberts "asked the girls to pray for him," said Rhodes, a lifelong resident of nearby Quarryville who also delivered Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, who was to be buried today.

"He said he hated God, but yet he must have realized that God was going to decide his future, and that the girls had a link to God. So he asked them to pray for him."

Contact staff writer Keith Herbert at 610-313-8007 or [e-mail].

© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/15939127.htm

Posted on Mon, Nov. 06, 2006

Gang turf wars plague Phila. neighborhoods
Violent street "crews" contribute to city mayhem.
By Robert Moran
Inquirer Staff Writer

They call themselves the Lemon Crew, the Scorpions, Tiny Rascals and 60 Lansdowne Crips, and there are dozens of others, laying claim to blocks and neighborhoods across the city.

They are Philadelphia's gangs, and some are extraordinarily violent, contributing to the surge in shootings and murders engulfing the city.

While officials debate the scope of the situation or even the definition of a gang, U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan is certain.

"There is a gang problem," Meehan said.

The Police Department's Criminal Intelligence Unit, which had focused on the Mafia and biker gangs, now monitors Philadelphia's neighborhood gangs. "Because of the rise in shootings, [the unit] started including some of the more violent street groups," Capt. Charles Bloom said.

While gang problems are growing in Reading and Allentown - and places such as Camden, Trenton and Bucks County are seeing an infiltration of a national gang, the Bloods - Philadelphia's gangs are largely homegrown.

Typically small, loosely organized, and often with no official leader, they identify with a particular neighborhood intersection or block. Instead of "gangs," they call themselves "crews," "sets" or "clicks" - as in cliques.

As such, they are an echo of the city's gang heyday of the 1960s and 1970s, when large, highly organized groups like the Moon in West Philadelphia and the Valley in North Philadelphia ruled the streets.

What some share with the worst of the old gangs is a track record of deadly violence.

Look at West Philadelphia, where juvenile and adult males affiliated with 60th Street and Lansdowne Avenue are engaged in deadly combat with nearby Master Street.

Last year, Henry Snell, 19, a Lansdowne guy, was murdered by a Master Street guy, police said. On what would have been his 21st birthday this September, Snell's friends created a teddy bear and T-shirt memorial at the corner of Redfield Street and Lansdowne Avenue, where he used to hang out.

One T-shirt shows a photo of "Hen," as he was called, and declares: "60 Lansdowne Crips." Another T-shirt warns: "Master Don't Forget It Ain't Over."

So far this year, three more young men have been killed because of the gang war and at least four others, including a couple of 14-year-olds, have been shot.

On May 6, Evan McDowell, 19, a reputed member of Master Street - or "M-Block" - was murdered.

On May 26, Devon English, 19, a reputed Lansdowne member, was shot. His friend, Algie Dennis, 19, was killed in the same incident.

On Sept. 22, English was shot again - this time mortally - near 62d and Lansdowne. An 18-year-old with English was shot but survived.

A 19-year-old reputed Lansdowne member was shot in the 6200 block of Master on Oct. 11.

At 6 p.m. on Oct. 23, two 14-year-olds were shot a block west of 60th Street and Lansdowne. Police said one of the boys had a note in his pocket stating he had planned to shoot somebody from Master at 8 that night.

"It's a turf war," said Officer Dominick Cole, of the 19th Police District, which covers the disputed territory. Cole has been in the 19th for a decade, and the gun battles were raging back then.

"How it started became obsolete," Cole said. "Now all they know is you live at 60th and Lansdowne and he lives at 59th and Master."

Malik Aziz, a 1970s gang member who is now an antiviolence activist, said the two sides are a modern version of the rivalry between the old Moon and Hilltop gangs in the area, though they may not have a direct link to the original gangsters.

"The gang mentality never really left Philadelphia," he said.

While national gangs such as the Latin Kings have a presence in the city, there is disagreement among law enforcement officials as to whether the Crips and the Bloods have begun to infiltrate.

Police believe 60 Lansdowne Crips simply adopted the name and mimic the Crips attire, such as wearing a blue handkerchief in a back pocket.

Regionally, however, the Bloods have become a major problem in New Jersey and have made inroads into upper Bucks County, Meehan said. Mexican gangs are growing in Chester County.

In Philadelphia, some neighborhood gangs are involved in significant drug trafficking.

Others, such as 60 Lansdowne and Master Street, seem more preoccupied by the mayhem they create. Police say both sides engage in a small amount of drug dealing, robberies and burglaries, but the shootings do not appear to be related to money.

Lansdowne and Master have just come to hate each other.

Teens in both areas declined to discuss the situation. Older residents shrugged, claimed not to know any details, said it was a terrible situation, and went on with their daily routines.

On the side of the corner grocery at 60th and Lansdowne is a vivid mural of Terrell Robinson, who was 19 when he was shot in the back of the head outside the store in 2001.

"Rel" lived on Lansdowne and was popular with many youths in the neighborhood, but was not regarded as a member of the gang there, Officer Cole said.

His shooting stemmed not from the war with Master Street but from a dispute with another group. Robinson wasn't involved and tried to walk away when he was killed - three weeks away from graduating Overbrook High School.

"He was trying to better himself out here," Cole said.

Beverly Robinson, 65, Rel's mother, said the young people who perpetuate the violence "have no conscience. They take a life like you step on an ant."

The spray-painted mural, with a 60th and Lansdowne street sign over Rel's left shoulder and the late teen wearing a Celtics cap to match his green eyes, features a scroll that quotes from Psalm 34:14.

"Depart from evil, and do good. Seek peace, and pursue it."

For more coverage of violence in Philadelphia, visit go.philly.com/violence.
Contact staff writer Robert Moran at 215-854-5983 or [e-mail].

© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com

[boxman]

This one's good! "The Philadelphia Accent":
home.comcast.net/~plutarch/phila.html

The Philadelphia Accent
Version 0.27
Copyright © 2005-2006 by Zack Smith.
All rights reserved.

News
Check out my nascent page on frugal living in the Philadelphia region, which is here.

Introduction
There is a distinctive accent that many people in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania region speak with, and although it may have legitimate historical origins, deriving from Welsh immigrants and so on, it is not uncommon to hear outsiders complaining that the Philly accent is, or has become, rather ugly.

An additional complaint is often subsequently lodged that the Philly accent is an incorrect and unstable manner of speech that besides grating on the ears also involves word alterations and apparently requires awkward ad hoc fixes as a result.

Some might argue that the Philadelphia accent could one day be corrected, taking the attitude that it is no different than a few crooked teeth and that it can and should be repaired. Yet even if this were possible, in order to change a thing, one must first know a thing. Thus the purpose of this web page is to serve as an information repository about the accent.

Yet one should ask, does Philadelphese need to be corrected in the first place? Because if the Philadelphese is becoming a dialect, the obvious answer is no. Dialects by definition are legitimate and correct in and of themselves.

If Philadelphese it is a dialect, it should like other dialects not be confined to the spelling practices of the mother language. It is to that end as well, of codifying the forms of Philadelphese using a new spelling paradigm, that this webpage is also dedicated.

Pronunciation Guide
The good news is that the Philly accent is basically spoken with a comprehensible set of systematic differences from standard American English, including of course the ad hoc irregularities that it necessitates. However it does include a number of altered word forms, some of which I list below. I'm not a linguist, so fortuitously for the reader I will not encumber you with unfamiliar technical terminology, but rather on this page I shall provide a practical lay analysis, which is a work-in-progress.

Proposed New Spellings
Since typically new dialects of a language receive their own system of spelling, to avoid confusion with other dialects, I am hereby proposing my own spellings of common new word-forms.

Legend:
* ea = "eah" as in standard American English "yeah"
* oa = overemphasized "oh" sound, peculiar to Philly/Maryland speech
* uh = weak "u" as in "butt"
* y = both consonant "y" and "ee" vowel
* rr = overemphasized and 'heavy' r consonant
* nn =overemphasized and 'heavy' n consonant
* aa = long "ah" vowel, like the "o" in Holland

The Word List

Note!
A key vowel in the Philadelphia accent is "eah", as in "yeah". It is used as a replacement in many instances for stronger vowels. In my new Philadelphese spellings, I have denoted this sound as simply "ea".

Word	Philadelphia pronunciation	New Philadelphese Spelling
about	uhbeah't	aabeat
across	uhcraws(t)	aakraws(t)
actually	akshlee	akshly
after	eah'fter	eaftr
all	awwl	awl
all right	aayt, uhyt	aayt, uhyt
always	uhwweez or uhw'wayz	uhwyz
and	ennd, enn, eah'n	ennd, enn', ean
area	ehrry-uh	errya
ask	eah'sk	eask
bad	beahd	bead (note, English "bead" becomes beed)
bagel	beggle	begl
birthday	buhrth-deyy	buhrthdey
calculator	kak-uh-layder & keahk-a-leyder	keakaleyder
call	kawl	cawl
can	ceah'n	cean
Can I?	Kai?	Ca'I
class	kleahs	cleas
contrast	kawn-treahst	cawntreast
copay	kowe-pehy	coapey
daily	Delhi	delly
daughter	dawder, daw(t)er	dawdr
day	deyy	dey
Diana	Dah-YEAH-nuh	Dayeanuh
down	deah'n	dean (personal name Dean becomes deen)
during	door-ing	doring
Eagles	Iggles (rhymes with wriggles)	Iglz
et cetera	ek-set-tra	eksetra
Erik	Uhrr-ik	Uhrik
Fall, fall	fawl	Fawl, fawl
fancy	feah'ncy	feansy
far	fawr	fawr
fight	fuhyt	fuyt
forward	foe-ward	foawrd
found	feah'nd	feand
gallon	geah'lin	gealin
glad	gleah'd	glead
go	gowe	goaw
going 1	gawn	gawn
going 2	gowe'in	goayn
had	heahd	head (spelling of std. English "head" becomes hed)
half	heah'f	heaf
high	huyy	huy
hold	hode	hoad
hold on	hoe-dawn	hoadawn
how	heahw	heaw
How are you doing?	Heah'ya-doo'en?	Hea' yuh dooan?
hurry	herry	herry
insurance	in-shore-ins	inshorins
intermittently	inner-mi-int-lee	innermiehntly
Italy	IT-lee	itlee
Italian	ih-TA-yin	itayin
it's like	s'luhyk	s'luyk
last	leah'st	least (std. English "least" becomes leest)
library	lie-berry	laiberry
later	layder	leyder
legal	liggle (rhymes with wriggle)	ligl
like	luhyyk	luhyk
little	liddle	lidl
lost	lawst	lawst
March	mawrch	mawrch
may, May	muhy (sound uh is same as u in put)	muhy
millions	miyyunz	miyuhnz
mine	Mayan	mayan
nice	nuyys	nuhys
noise	nowe-eez	noayz
now	neah'w	neaw
office	awfiss	awfis
OK	Uh-kay or ukkei	UK (ukkei)
OK	nnn'kuhy	N'kuhy
ounce	eahns	eans
out	eah't	eaht
off	awwf (overemphasis on w)	awf
pass	peah's	peas (std. English "peas" => pees)
Pennsylvania	pencil-VAIN-ya	Penslvaynya
Phillies	Phuh'leez (sounds like pullies)	F'leez
Philadelphia	Phul-DELF-ya	Fldelfya
phone	phowe'n (emphasis on w sound)	foaan
powerball	peah'rbawl	pearbawl
quarter	corder	corder
radio	reddy-ohw	reddioa
rasberry	reahz-burry	reazbuhry
really	rilly, ruhlly	rilly
realtor	rilla-ter or rillter	rillatr, rilltr
ridiculous	ree-dik-a-liss	ridihkalis
separate	sep-a-rit	separit
sports	spew-erts	spewrts
stand	steah'nd	steand
store	stew-er	stewr
say	seyy	sey
serve	suhrrv	surrv
Steelers	Stillerz	Stillerz
to him	too'eem (when appended to another word)	to 'eem
totally	toad-a-lee	toadalee
tour	TOO-wer	toowr
town	teahn	tean
trail	tray-ul	treyal
trailpass (product name)	trell-peahs	tre'lpeas
ultrasound	ohwe'ltra-seahnd	oltraseand
voice	voe-ees	voays
volume	vah-yume	vaayoom
was	wuhz	wuhz
water	wood'er	weuder
world	wuhr-rald	wuhrrald
yeah	yeh, yeah, yee-uh	yeh, yea (archaic English "yea" becomes yey)
you	yuh	yuh
you'd	yuh'd	yuh'd
yours [noun]	yor-unz	yorunz

Systematic "Mistakes"
1. Often at the beginning of a word, the first vowel with be converted to a weak and barely pronounced "uh" sound (as in butter), excepting the case where the vowel is normally pronounced "uh" (as in butter) in which case it is spoken with more emphasis normal.
2. The short "a" in all and similar words is extended into a long "aww" dipthong.
3. Certain beginning vowels which in normal American English are strong e.g. ee and ay sounds, are converted to the soft i sound as in "swim". Meanwhile words that ought to begin with the weak i are overemphasized.
4. Many single-syllable words are bizarrely chopped in two and thus pronounced as if they had two syllables. For instance mine becomes like Mayan and voice becomes voy-ees.
5. Words containing "br" can end up reversed into "ber" or similar. Hence library becoming lie-berry.
6. Harder-to-pronounce words can become muddled, as with calculator becoming kak-uh-lader.
7. Some words that should contain a soft "uy" sound, such as "rights", are spoken in the Philadelphia accent with a very deep and overly long "uy" sound.
8. Word combining is common in the Philadelphia region. This is not in and of itself an unpleasant phenomenon and it occurs also in Dutch and German. For instance, the expression "Can I?" become "kai".
9. The suffix "ia" as in Pennsylvania is not properly pronounced as ee-uh but as ya.
10. In many words that contain a strong "oh" sound, like phone, Philadelphia-area people pronounce it with a "w" at the end of the oh, thus overemphasizing and lenghthening it. For example, phone becomes phowe'n.
11. The a in pat/that/sat is often converted into an "eah" as in yeah.

Instability
The Philadelphia accent seems to me to be unstable, for the simple reason that it seems to require more on-the-fly or ad hoc solutions by speakers to make it sound less awkward than other accents of English. For example, the same person might say "trailpass" as "trell-peahs" but in the next breath say "trail" as "tray-uhl" because "trell" by itself sounds awkward. Almost all other accents or dialects of English don't require this particular ad hoc repair, but the Philly accent does seem to require such fixes in larger numbers.

---

There's two that I like that's not on his list:
radiator = rah-dee-ayedor

and

"Did you eat (yet)?" = 'jeet?

(The last one is from a highway billboard. )

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/16187345.htm

Posted on Fri, Dec. 08, 2006
Power to the murals
Philadelphia's wall art is something all can be proud of.
By Kristin Granero
For The Inquirer

With bright colors, bold statements and intricate designs, Philadelphia's murals are a can't-miss attraction along city streets.

These oversize, often unexpected pieces of art are much more than a distraction from gridlock. Each represents an unlikely collaboration of artists and the surrounding communities, who join together to paint the city with positive change. And they have an inspiring story to tell.

Just ask the Mural Arts Program, the organization responsible for the creation of more than 100 murals a year since 1984. The program began as a component of the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network as a way to reach out to graffiti writers and redirect their energies into mural-making.

The Mural Arts Program employs artists from different backgrounds to ensure that the city's murals represent various cultures. The artists then work with neighborhood youths, who are given the opportunity to channel their creativity into something positive by painting portions of the murals.

Community involvement translates into community respect. Director Jane Golden says that out of more than 2,600 murals, only six mural walls have been vandalized.

"I think there's a way to do beautiful work and grapple with issues of the city. I have seen that really vigorous programs for young people can have a serious impact on their lives," says Golden, who recalled several troubled students who left projects talking about their plans to go to college.

Mural Arts led trolley tours throughout October, so people could learn the stories, individuals and triumphs behind the paint. They're still booking seasonal tours, and the October publication of their second book, More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell, by Golden, art professor Robin Rice, and Inquirer reporter Natalie Pompilio, allows people to do some of their own touring of the "City of Murals."

Murals like Urban Horsemen (3222 W. Montgomery Ave. in Strawberry Mansion) - created by Jason Slowik and finished in fall 2005 as a tribute to Philadelphia's black cowboys and buffalo soldiers - certainly have a story to tell. Depicting a buffalo soldier from the Old West riding through a golden sunset, it shows the Fletcher Street stables, where hundreds of children once crowded for a glimpse of a horse.

"It makes such a huge difference in the neighborhood. It talks about the history of the neighborhood," says Tatiana Granados, 31, whose brother-in-law, Keir Johnston, helped with the painting.

Perhaps the biggest stories aren't what the murals depict, but the efforts behind them. For Pompilio, one mural that stands out is My Life, My Path, My Destiny (2157 E. Lehigh Ave. in Port Richmond/Fishtown), painted by Cesar Viveros and finished in October 2005.

The 300-by-35-foot wall, depicting the journey, struggles and triumphs of city youth, was created by juvenile offenders, inmates at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford, and community members who worked on the project together seven days a week for months at nearby St. Anne's Church.

"Knowing how the neighborhood came together and how emotional the prisoners were at the dedication is really touching," Pompilio says.

Legacy (707 Chestnut St.), by Josh Sarantitis, is billed as the largest Venetian glass tile mural in the world. The February 2006 Center City mural came with the challenge of creating an abstract image of Abraham Lincoln, mastering cutting-edge technology, and, of course, getting one million pieces of Venetian glass tile on the wall. Sarantitis estimates the total labor at 30,000 hours, and several artists, students and inmates at Graterford had their work cut out for them (so to speak).

Sarantitis says the mural sends a great message: "I hope over time it has more impact on people as far as understanding the impact slavery has had in our lives and the abolition of slavery as well."

The first step in understanding the murals' impact is to spend some time, even part of a Saturday or Sunday, checking them out. The next time traffic jams on Market Street, don't fret. Sit back and enjoy one of the city's most fascinating art displays, free of charge.

Mural Arts Events

Holiday mural tour with Santa. Saturday: 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. beginning at Macy's, 13th and Market Streets, through neighborhoods in Center City and South Philadelphia. Concludes back at Macy's for the store's holiday light show. Tickets: $35, includes boxed lunch. Reservations: 215-685-0754.

Book signings. More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell by Jane Golden, Robin Rice, and Inquirer staff writer Natalie Pompilio.

Saturday: 1 p.m. Center City mural tour followed by documentary screening and book signing at 2 p.m., St. Peter's School, 319 Lombard St.

Sunday: 3-5 p.m., Barnes & Noble Rittenhouse Square, 1805 Walnut St.

Thursday: 7 p.m., Borders Books, Chestnut Hill, 8701 Germantown Ave.

Dec. 15: 6-8 p.m., Barnes & Noble Bryn Mawr, 720-730 Lancaster Ave.

For information, call 215-685-0754 or go to www.muralarts.org.

For more photographs of the city's murals, go to go.philly.com/phillymurals.

---

© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com

---
Some photos here:
inquirer.philly.com/slideshows/Features/061208murals/

Amazon link:
www.amazon.com/More-Philadelphia-Murals-Stories-They/dp/1592135277

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/16192011.htm

Posted on Fri, Dec. 08, 2006
OPEN-&-SHUT CASE THAT WON'T CLOSE
Still no resolution for either side of Abu-Jamal debate
By WILL BUNCH
[e-mail] 215-854-2957

IT IS A MURDER STORY that - at least based on the forensic evidence - would not seem to make for a particularly compelling script for a crime show like "CSI: Miami" or "Cold Case."

A cab driver is identified by several eyewitnesses as the killer of a Philadelphia police officer. The slain cop was shot by a .38-caliber gun like the one owned by the cabbie, and the driver was discovered at the scene of the murder, struck by a bullet fired from the police officer's gun.

Case closed?

Not when the man convicted of the killing and once condemned to death is Mumia Abu-Jamal, a charismatic and articulate former radio journalist who had ties to the radical Black Panthers and MOVE.

And not when the murder took place in the Philadelphia of the early 1980s, a city seething with racial tension and controversy over a police department dogged by allegations of brutality.

Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the murder of the police officer, Daniel Faulkner, and with Abu-Jamal serving what is now a life sentence in a western Pennsylvania prison - his death sentence was overturned in 2001 - it is difficult to say what is most remarkable about the case at the quarter-century mark.

Is it the fact that Abu-Jamal's conviction remains as controversial today as the day it was handed down at his 1982 trial and maybe more so - thanks in large part to something that barely existed at that time, the Internet?

Or is it the global reach of the case, with the facts of Abu-Jamal's trial and imprisonment almost better-known on the wide streets of Paris or Hamburg than on the narrow alleyways of his native Philadelphia?

"With the Mumia case, those grass-roots organizations that had been following the case since its beginning - and sustaining some of the conspiracy theories - were able to harness the Internet to spread these theories and advocate action across space and time," noted Michael Smith, a communications professor at La Salle University.

"I suspect that there may be another groundswell with the 25th anniversary."

Indeed, both sides of the seemingly endless debate over Abu-Jamal's guilt or innocence will seek to use the publicity over the anniversary to rally more support for their respective sides.

Opponents of Abu-Jamal's continuing appeal, including the officer's now highly visible widow, Maureen Faulkner, hold a fundraiser today at the Union League to honor District Attorney Lynne Abraham and to raise money for a scholarship fund. Tomorrow, busloads of Abu-Jamal supporters are slated to descend on Philly for a string of protests.

No one is more surprised at the staying power of the controversy than the man who went to crime scene on Dec. 9, 1981, as a reporter for the Daily News, Linn Washington, now a journalism professor at Temple University.

"Absolutely not," said Washington, when asked if he'd thought people would still be arguing about the case in 2006.

Washington over the years has become an advocate for a new trial for Abu-Jamal. He said that as the legend of the case has grown around the world - highlighted by the decision last year of a Paris suburb to name a city street after Abu-Jamal - he's given a lot of thought as to why that happened.

"Abu-Jamal is unique in terms of the people on Death Row," Washington said. "He can read and write and he is an articulate guy."

More importantly, Washington noted, every generation has its case that comes to define broader issues of race and justice - such as the famed Scottsboro Boys, black men accused of a rape in Alabama in the 1930s - and the Abu-Jamal case has become that case for the late 20th century and now into a new millennium.

With the Abu-Jamal case, there are so many intersections with the broader questions about race and justice in Philadelphia that for many, the cold, hard facts have melted into the background.

In 1981, the city was not only near the peak of a generation of urban decay and population flight, but it was still feeling the aftershocks of the divisive 1970s and the mayoralty of Frank Rizzo, who was tough on crime but also dogged by allegations of police brutality.

Abu-Jamal, now 52, born Wesley Cook, was at the center of that maelstrom. As a youth, he'd been active for a time with the Black Panthers. As a radio journalist with WHYY, he'd covered some of the major race-related stories of the '70s, most notably the running battle between the city authorities and the radical group MOVE. Over time, Abu-Jamal grew close to the MOVE effort. He even sought to have the group's founder, John Africa, defend him in his 1982 murder trial.

Most people who have followed the case believe that Abu-Jamal's association with MOVE has cut both ways - helping to publicize his case - especially after the notorious 1985 bombing that killed 11 MOVE members and burned a chunk of West Philadelphia - but perhaps not helping him win new allies here in Philadelphia, where many saw the radical group as a polarizing force.

Efforts by surviving MOVE members, such as Ramona Africa, to publicize the Abu-Jamal case eventually began to succeed with a small network of far-left political groups. They include the Partisan Defense Committee, a New York-based group that dates back to the Trotskyite movement of the 1930s, and the Maryland-based Quixote Center, a group with roots in the Catholic "liberation theology" that flourished in Central America during the 1980s.

While these groups are not well-known, their involvement and their ability to produce protesters began to have a cumulative effect. At the same time, many activists and some journalists were looking for someone who could personify the plight of America's growing Death Row population, and this attractive, dreadlocked and articulate former journalist seemed too good to be true.

One such journalist was Noelle Hanrahan, a radio reporter based in San Francisco who in 1992 was covering the first execution in California since the death penalty had been reinstated in America in the 1970s. As she prepared her coverage, Hanrahan said this week, "I thought that something was missing - the voices of Death Row inmates."

That's when she discovered both an article by Abu-Jamal and then a scratchy recording of him.

"I was stunned - I had done hundreds of interviews, and I never had recorded anybody who was so professional," Hanrahan said. Her association with Abu-Jamal led to the Prison Radio Project, an ongoing effort in which Abu-Jamal's recorded "radio essays" continue to receive distribution around the globe. That effort in turn caused National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" to offer the inmate a regular commentary slot - an offer that was withdrawn amid a firestorm of controversy from the Fraternal Order of Police and from conservatives.

That controversy was part of a kind of "perfect storm" in the mid-1990s. Abu-Jamal's ongoing criminal appeals gained a high-powered advocate in 1992 with liberal attorney Leonard Weinglass, and the NPR flap brought on board Hollywood celebrities like Ed Asner and Mike Farrell and well-known authors like E.L. Doctorow, who became high-profile Abu-Jamal advocates. For some of those advocates, the facts of Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial were clearly secondary to the broader issues. Asner has said he never read the transcript but told ABC News in 1998 that "I just know that the trial stunk."

Michael Smerconish, the Philadelphia attorney-turned-talk-radio-host and Daily News columnist, said that Abu-Jamal's growing group of well-known supporters "cobbled together a series of half-truths" and were able to sell to people outside of the city what sounded like "a convincing story of police brutality in a city known for police brutality."

Smerconish became a leader of a conservative backlash, but the irony is that by fighting back, the opponents of a new trial for Abu-Jamal have also helped to keep the story in the public eye. In recent years, advocates for Abu-Jamal have tended to focus more on the issue of whether he received a fair trial than on what happened on the night Faulkner was killed.

"It's not an issue of innocence or guilt, but an issue of guilty or not guilty," said Marc Lamont Hill, a Temple University professor of American studies and urban education who frequently writes about the Abu-Jamal case on his blog, "The Barbershop Notebooks." He compared the case, in that regard, to the O.J. Simpson case, saying the questions about the justice system and police conduct are what resonate with many African-Americans.

Indeed, the calls for a new trial already have become a hot potato in the 2007 mayoral race because one of the front-runners, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, has backed the call for a new trial, drawing intense criticism from the FOP. Opponents of a new trial say that not only would the passage of time make a fair trial even more difficult, but there's a broader fundamental question.

"It makes no sense," said Joseph McGill, who prosecuted the 1982 trial and is now in private practice, saying the judicial system can't grant new trials simply on the basis of popular opinion. He noted that at least 20 judges have reviewed Abu-Jamal's conviction and not one has sought to overturn it.

But those judicial rulings seem to have little impact on the public profile of a case that seems to have lost its appeal as a whodunit years ago, but continues to find life in a brand-new century as a political Rorschach test.

---

© 2006 Philadelphia Daily News and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com

---
More articles on this case up this weekend at www.Philly.com/

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/16286105.htm

Posted on Thu, Dec. 21, 2006
On the Waterfront
By Jeff Shields and Angela Couloumbis
Inquirer Staff Writers

Two casinos will rise on Philadelphia's waterfront. A mothballed steel plant in Bethlehem will be reborn as a gambling destination. A faded Poconos resort will reopen, and a Pittsburgh neighborhood will see new life.

All that could happen in the next two years if yesterday's decisions by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board survive a potentially nasty appeals process.

On the most anticipated day since the state Legislature authorized slots gambling in July 2004, the board handed out licenses for five stand-alone slots parlors: SugarHouse Casino and Foxwoods Casino in Philadelphia, Sands Bethworks Gaming in Bethlehem, Mount Airy Lodge in Monroe County, and the Majestic Star Casino in Pittsburgh.

The announcements inspired cheers by some Philadelphia residents and groans by others, and they set off a party in Gettysburg, where residents had lobbied long and hard to prevent a slots parlor from being built within a mile of the historic battlefield.

"This in some ways signals a huge new day for us in the city of Philadelphia," said Mayor Street, saying the casinos will be "a huge boost to the waterfront."

SugarHouse officials said they could have the first 1,500-slots phase of their $550 million, 3,000-machine facility operating by April 2008.

Foxwoods said it plans to break ground early next year on its $560 million, 3,000-slots casino on Columbus Boulevard in South Philadelphia; it plans to open by November 2008.

But the decisions were hardly 30 minutes old when Philadelphia City Councilmen Frank DiCicco and Jim Kenney announced an appeal to the state Supreme Court, saying Foxwoods was "by far" the worst site of the five proposed in the city because of the inevitable traffic jams it would create on Columbus Boulevard.

"My intention is to hopefully find out, by way of a lawsuit, exactly what caused the gaming board to make this decision, which in everyone's mind is the worst," DiCicco said.

DiCicco and others will have 30 days to appeal once an order is officially filed and the board issues an opinion detailing the reasons for its decisions. Neither chairman Tad Decker nor other board members would discuss their reasoning yesterday.

The appeals, which will go directly to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, are likely to take up to six months to resolve. The conditional licenses awarded yesterday will not become final before then.

SugarHouse said it would not start construction until any appeals are settled. Foxwoods said "our intention" is to break ground in February - before the appeals process is likely to end.

Yesterday, only one of the three losing proposals in Philadelphia - Riverwalk Casino, controlled by local minority investors and supported by Street - left open the possibility of appeal.

Riverwalk investor William R. Miller IV said he was "deeply disappointed" in yesterday's decision. "It was always about more than just a gaming license," he said.

"It was about opportunity. It was about the future. It was about whether we were going to be able to break the paradigm that exists in Philadelphia, to develop wealth and pass that on to other generations," said Miller, the owner of a public-relations business who has been active in civic affairs.

The other two losers, TrumpStreet Casino in Nicetown/East Falls and Pinnacle Casino Project on Delaware Avenue, said they would not appeal.

"I'm very disappointed in Gov. Rendell," Trump said by phone. "Here was a chance to turn a bad area into a really good neighborhood."

But Rendell didn't make the decision. His three appointees on the Gaming Control Board, with four other members appointed by Republican and Democratic leaders of the state House and Senate, deliberated for four hours Tuesday afternoon, Decker said, to come up with their picks.

It didn't take longer, Decker said, because "we've been thinking about this individually for months."

Critics yesterday accused the board of politics for picking two Philadelphia projects with sizable political clout.

"We're tired of living in a city where politics comes before the will of the people," said Vern Anastasio, a member of the anti-casino Neighbors Allied for the Best Riverfront, who is expected to challenge DiCicco for his Council seat next year.

The Foxwoods group was organized by developer Ronald Rubin, Camden entrepreneur Lewis Katz, and Ed Snider, chairman of Comcast-Spectacor, owner of the Flyers and 76ers.

SugarHouse includes Chicago billionaire Neil Bluhm, a Rendell campaign donor, and prominent Philadelphia lawyer Richard A. Sprague, who represents one of the state's foremost gaming advocates, Sen. Vincent J. Fumo (D., Phila.).

Rendell, Decker, Fumo and at least one financial analyst defended the integrity of the process.

"While political connections, local ties, degree of minority ownership, and other 'inside baseball' factors were supposed to play a big role in these PA license awards, at the end of the day we think, by and large, the best all-around projects won," Robert LaFleur, a gaming analyst for Bala Cynwyd-based Susquehanna Financial Group, wrote in an analysis of the vote.

SugarHouse partner Daniel J. Keating, whose Keating Group has built 20 casinos, said, "I don't think anybody outclassed us, outthought us, or had a better plan.

"We're hell-bent on proving to people that this is a good project."

Michael Thomas, chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, Foxwoods' owner, said his tribe intends to hire Philadelphians for 95 percent of the Foxwoods Casino workforce.

"There is no applicant that brings our sense of jobs for local people to the table," Thomas said. "It wasn't very long ago that we were in that position, waiting for that opportunity."

The choice in Pittsburgh of Majestic Star, headed by African American gaming developer Don Barden, answers the legislature's call for minority ownership in the state's new industry. The location is a block from Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and will help redevelop the city's lower Hill District.

The Bethlehem project is at the site of the former steel mill on the city's south side.

Rendell said he was confident that the winning applicants would generate the $1 billion in gambling-tax revenue needed to finance property-tax cuts promised by Rendell and the legislature.

In awarding the Poconos license to Mount Airy Lodge, the board stamped its approval on owner Louis DeNaples, the Scranton-area businessman who was convicted in 1978 of defrauding the federal government in a case involving the cleanup from Tropical Storm Agnes.

Casino opponents held a news conference yesterday afternoon to warn that South Philadelphia was threatened by quality-of-life problems associated with gambling.

"There are going to be prostitutes here, just like Atlantic City. We don't need an Atlantic City right here in our beautiful, historic neighborhood," said Anne Dicker of Neighbors Allied for the Best Riverfront.

Other community groups did not actively oppose any casino. Rich Levins, president of the New Kensington Development Corp., said that, under an informal agreement, SugarHouse has pledged at least $1 million to a fund controlled by neighborhood groups to alleviate the impact of the casino.

"That message [that SugarHouse has worked with the neighborhoods] has really been a little bit lost," Levins said.

Street said he understands community groups' concerns.

"The two casinos on the waterfront really raises the bar on the need to deal with the traffic problems," Street said, "but that is something we can do."
Contact staff writer Jeff Shields at 610-313-8173 or [e-mail]. Contributing to this report were Inquirer staff writers Joseph A. Gambardello, Patrick Kerkstra and Suzette Parmley.

© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/philly/16286069.htm

Posted on Thu, Dec. 21, 2006
Key source of lethal heroin discovered, officials report
By Troy Graham
Inquirer Staff Writer

Authorities have taken down a major supplier of heroin laced with the painkiller fentanyl, a potentially lethal mixture responsible for as many as 100 deaths across the Philadelphia region this year.

Police and federal agents discovered 300 grams of fentanyl and nearly a kilogram of heroin in a heroin-processing "mill" in the basement of a Pennsauken house during the summer, authorities said.

The 300 grams would have been enough to spike 40,000 doses of heroin, typically sold for $10 a bag.

"That represents half the population of Camden that could have gotten a bag of fentanyl," said Gerard P. McAleer, the Drug Enforcement Administration special agent in charge for New Jersey. "It was pure fentanyl. It hadn't been diluted."

The man charged with running the heroin mill - Jaime Castellar, 30 - supplied drug dealers in Camden and Philadelphia, the DEA said.

Although investigators could not say Castellar was the sole source of the heroin that sparked the overdose epidemic, deaths from fentanyl have dropped off significantly since the bust, authorities said.

"There is a cause and effect here," McAleer said in an interview yesterday. "It's interesting. Things did start to slow down after the seizure."

Investigators came upon the heroin mill after a naked man, yelling to neighbors for help, ran from the rented Union Avenue house on July 21. Workers in heroin mills typically are forced to work in the nude to prevent theft, McAleer said.

The man said robbers had invaded the small, two-story house.

"He actually said, 'Help me, but don't call the police,' " McAleer said. "Naturally, they called the cops."

Pennsauken officers discovered blood at the house and signs that heroin was being processed there. They obtained a search warrant and contacted the DEA.

Though he was not the man who was running, Castellar was hurt in the home invasion and treated at a hospital. He left before he could be detained. State authorities took out a warrant, but he wasn't arrested until October, when federal drug charges were filed against him.

Castellar remains in federal custody, and his attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment yesterday.

The DEA divulged the details of the arrest yesterday for the first time, as the investigation continued.

Investigators said that they did not know where Castellar had gotten the fentanyl, but that they believed it had been manufactured illegally - possibly in Mexico or another foreign country.

Fentanyl flooded drug corners across the nation in the spring and summer, causing dozens of death in Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh and along the East Coast. Fentanyl-laced heroin has been blamed for deaths as recently as Thanksgiving in Massachusetts.

"This is probably the biggest threat that I've seen to the public, and I lived through the crack wars," McAleer said. "The fentanyl problem is small now, but if it gets any bigger, it will be devastating."

The DEA has responded with Operation Undertaker, an initiative that not only includes law enforcement, but also training and education for police, paramedics, and chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

Fentanyl is a legal painkiller, described as 80 times more powerful than morphine, often used in surgery or given to terminal cancer patients.

But the fentanyl in heroin hasn't been stolen from legitimate sources. Illicit fentanyl was found in 95 percent of the 260 samples of spiked heroin tested in the summer in New Jersey.

Although the painkiller likely is being made across the border, DEA couldn't rule out a domestic source. In addition to pharmaceutical and chemical companies, the DEA has asked colleges with large chemistry departments to keep better track of the chemicals used to make fentanyl.

"In order to manufacture fentanyl, you have to have the wherewithal... . You have to have the white-coat education," McAleer said. "Anyone who has that ability, we're talking to."

Police and other first responders also have been warned about the dangers of fentanyl. Agents who went into the mill in Pennsauken were dressed in Level II protective gear that made them look like "scuba divers with machine guns," McAleer said.

If the fentanyl powder gets into the air, it can cause overdoses, he said. The drug is so powerful that K-9 dogs can't be trained to sniff for it.

The first victims in this region were found in April, many of them customers of Camden drug markets. Overdoses quickly followed in Philadelphia and spread throughout the region.

Fentanyl can paralyze the chest wall, stopping breathing. As little as 125 micrograms - the equivalent of three grains of salt - can be lethal.

Fentanyl was blamed for as many as 100 deaths on both sides of Delaware River this year, and an untold number of nonfatal overdoses.

The painkiller is added to increase the potency - and, thus, the popularity - of the heroin. Authorities in the summer were stunned to find that their warnings to avoid drug corners with spiked heroin only increased the demand from addicts looking for a greater high.

The problem, McAleer said, is that people working in basement heroin mills aren't exactly scientific about their methods, and they can easily put too much fentanyl in a bag.

"They don't have any technical measurement equipment," he said. "A typical mill, they're sitting around, using tiny spoons."
Contact staff writer Troy Graham at 856-779-3893 or [e-mail].

© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com

[boxman]

Huh. I didn't know that the Cold Case episode was based on a true Philly case.

www.philly.com/mld/philly/16303312.htm

Posted on Sat, Dec. 23, 2006
'Boy in the Box' cop says he's clean
Veteran detective with positive drug test chose retirement over a costly legal fight.
By Robert Moran
Inquirer Staff Writer

A highly regarded homicide detective who tested positive for cocaine last week and then retired said yesterday that he has never used illegal drugs, but was forced to leave the police department because he could not fight the drug-test result.

Thomas Augustine, who is 60 and said he takes two medications for high blood pressure, was informed Dec. 14 that he came up "hot" for cocaine. He submitted for retirement the next day.

"I've never used drugs," he said.

Augustine, best known for his dogged pursuit of the famed "Boy in the Box" case, had been with the department for nearly 40 years.

Deputy Commissioner Richard J. Ross, who oversees Internal Affairs, said Augustine's test result showed a very high level of cocaine.

Asked about the possibility that the test yielded a false-positive result, Ross expressed doubt because the test result was so high.

"I'm not saying he did or he didn't, but I know what the test said," Ross said.

Augustine, in a nearly one-hour interview and a follow-up interview, explained that he came to work on Dec. 11 and was asked to take a police inspector's car to be washed.

As he was leaving, he met a sergeant from Internal Affairs who informed him that his name came up in the department's random drug-screening process.

He said he was given the impression that he could take the test after the car wash, but he took it immediately. He said if he was high on cocaine, he would have submitted for retirement then.

On Thursday, "that's when my world came crashing down," he said.

While working in the homicide office at Police Headquarters, he was told by a lieutenant and sergeant that Internal Affairs was coming because he tested positive. He was ordered to surrender his gun.

He said he spoke with a lawyer and the lawyer recommended that he avoid a big, costly fight and retire.

He said he can't explain why he tested positive for cocaine and has been searching the Internet for an explanation.

He said he doesn't drink coffee or tea. "I drink Diet Coke. I drink Tropicana orange juice, lactose-free milk and Coors Light," he said.

After word spread of the test result, "every eye in the building, every eye in the parking, was on me," he said. He said people who were his friends were ignoring him or barely acknowledging him in passing.

"It was like getting hit in the chest with a sledgehammer," he said.

Augustine said he served 39 years, eight months and 25 days in the department. In the late 1990s, Augustine took on the case of a 1957 murder involving a young boy whose battered body was found in a cardboard box in Northeast Philadelphia. The "Boy in the Box" mystery, which has become part of Philadelphia lore, remains unsolved.

Since being confronted about the drug-test result, he said he has endured a "horrible" amount of stress.

"I know I was a good cop," he said.

Contact staff writer Robert Moran at 215-854-5983 or [e-mail].

© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com

[boxman]

*sigh* I wasn't really sure about posting articles like the following two, but this city is definitely going to set a record amount of murders this year like it hasn't seen in a long time...

www.philly.com/mld/philly/16325574.htm

Posted on Wed, Dec. 27, 2006

Philly's drug dealers: Younger all the time
AS DEADLY YEAR NEARS THE END, A LOOK AT 2 OF THE HUNDREDS OF TEENS WHO SELL DOPE
By SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM
[e-mail] 215-854-5324

DRESSED IN A black Dickies suit and black Timberlands, the chubby-faced 17-year-old crack dealer paced around the desolate lot working another graveyard shift.

In the darkness, a steady stream of addicts ambled toward him to make a buy. Then he saw a familiar face: his close friend's mom. "I need a nick," she mumbled to him. Without hesitation, he sold her a nickel bag - $5 worth of crack.

"I was surprised that she was a smoker," Mikey recalled, months after that night. Today he calls it "the deal I will never forget."

"I was thinking that a real friend wouldn't sell to his mom," said Mikey. "If he found out, how would he feel? But that is life. If she won't get it from me, she will get it from somewhere else."

On the toughest, meanest streets of Philadelphia, hundreds of youngsters like Mikey live by the rule that money is thicker than anything - even loyalty.

It is one of the most appalling features of Philadelphia's deadly year of crime: The youngest drug dealers are getting younger.

Cops consider Mikey a veteran dealer. (It's not his real name; he asked that his identity be obscured to protect him from other dealers who don't want the details of their business exposed.)

Drug dealing now attracts children as young as 10, and top police brass admit they are only beginning to scratch the surface of the kiddie drug world.

More children selling drugs means more children being shot. Among the biggest increases in shooting victims this year are 14-year-olds, police said.

Sometimes, the innocent are caught in the crossfire: The men behind the shooting death of 5-year-old Cashae Rivers - who was killed in her family's car on a Strawberry Mansion street in September - had drug records that stretched back to their teens.

"Drug corners are every police officer's problem," Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson said. "I am holding everyone accountable. This is the new focus."

Seeking to understand why some Philadelphia kids risk their lives to sell poison, the Daily News spent weeks with a teenage drug dealer in the Abbotsford Homes public-housing complex in North Philadelphia, and also visited a busy drug corner in West Kensington filled with high-school hustlers - and found that:

• Kids are lured by cheap promises of cash and respect - currency hard to find elsewhere in a city in which 40 percent of public-school kids drop out and the supply of menial jobs for those without a diploma is shrinking.

• All too frequently, the corner life is the entrance door to violent crime. Young dealers often carry guns and stand exposed to thugs twice their age, who are quick to pull triggers and spill blood to win turf.

Mikey started selling at 12, the age when he also bought a revolver from another kid in exchange for $50 worth of weed. He has sold marijuana and crack cocaine off and on for five years. He has one gun arrest.

Mikey and other young drug dealers say they don't fear death.

"Most people don't stop hustling," Mikey said. "They are scared of the real world. So they stay on the streets."

Another dealer, "Donnie," 16, and his corner crew laughed when asked about murder. Donnie is proud of being a "corner boy." He said he and his pals sell crack around Clearfield and Hartville streets in West Kensington, where the only open businesses are bodegas and barbershops.

"I am not scared," Donnie said, his skinny frame hidden under his tan Edison High School uniform and an oversize black Rocawear jacket that reached his knees.

"I don't care," he shrugged. "You are going to die anyway."

Donnie excused himself. An emerald-green Oldsmobile driven by a man in his 20s pulled up to the corner. Donnie slinked into the back seat.

"That's his old head," said one of the boys, using street slang for mentor. He was Donnie's boss.

The car sped off.

How to buy six pairs of white Nikes

A desire for designer clothes and shoes drove both Mikey and Donnie to the street corners, or so they say.

Their families couldn't support their hunger for blue jeans, Nike sneakers, Lacoste shirts. The boys said they had no other choice but to find the easiest and closest job available: hustling.

"I had to do me," said Donnie, explaining in street slang that he had to survive. The lanky teen boasted that he'd bought six pairs of $75 white Nike Air Force sneakers after his first crack payday at age 14. That way, he wouldn't have to clean his old pair.

Rule One of urban chic: Keep your sneakers spotless.

Those reasons seem superficial, but the truth is that drug dealing can seem an appealing career in tough city neighborhoods void of healthy businesses and jobs.

Forty percent of city residents over age 15 are out of work and not collecting unemployment, according to U.S. Census data. One-quarter of Philadelphians live in poverty, which can be difficult to escape.

Computers have become central to most city businesses, yet too many kids can barely read at the grade level for their age group, said Elijah Anderson, an urban sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Four of 10 public-school students never earn a diploma, according to a recent report on Philadelphia's dropout epidemic.

"They feel alienated," Anderson said. They embrace the street life because "it is functional. You rely on yourself."

And so, in many tough neighborhoods, the economy is made up of low-wage jobs, government-funded checks, and an "idiosyncratic, irregular underground economy of bartering, hustling, and begging," Anderson said.

Complicating that mix, single mothers and their children have lost a legal source of income to welfare reform that put five-year limits on assistance.

"In this distress, drug dealers are becoming younger and younger," Anderson said.

One narcotics cop said recently that teen dealers typically don't know their Social Security numbers. Some mfay not have them.

Since 2004, more than 2,000 Philadelphia juveniles have been arrested for selling cocaine-based drugs, the most popular product among young dealers. The largest increase in those arrests has been in the 10-to-12 age group.

More than 800 children under 18 have been arrested in Philadelphia for gun crimes since 2004, and kids are being shot at a record rate. Fourteen-year-olds have had one of the highest jumps, said Deputy Police Commissioner Patricia Giorgio Fox. Cops counted 14 shooting victims in that age group during the first eight months of 2006, compared with six victims during the same time in 2005.

"This is our future," Fox said. "Something has to make these kids see differently."

Yet Mikey thinks hustling leads to success faster than a high-school diploma.

Mikey proudly cited one 30-something dealer he knows who invested his drug money in several North Philadelphia barbershops. Another dealer opened up a recording studio.

"They went legit," Mikey said with a proud smile.

Andre Chin, 26, case manager in the probationary program Don't Fall Down in the Hood, said Mikey is one of 50 boys with whom he works who have been charged with gun and drug crimes. The youngest, he said, is a 13-year-old boy charged with selling drugs.

Mikey told him how hard it is to turn his life around, Chin said: His mother was too sick to chase after him, his father was gone, and the streets were more welcoming than his own house.

Mikey and the other boys in Don't Fall Down can save themselves only if they stay away from older drug dealers and focus on school, Chin warned.

"A lot of these kids need a father figure in their lives," Chin said. "They only have a mother at home who is busy raising four or five kids on below a minimum wage. Then there is a man on the corner who can give these boys the money that their mothers can't give them."

Pre-teen and dealing

Mikey had a rough start in life.

His mom, relatives say, busted her knees as she escaped from a West Philadelphia apartment fire with her two young daughters, three years before Mikey's birth. His mom told a Daily News reporter she's in too much pain to talk about her son.

Mikey's father lives in the Midwest and never talks to him. His two older sisters, ages 32 and 26, moved out of Abbotsford years ago, leaving their baby brother to fend for himself.

By 12, Mikey rarely went to class.

Instead, he spent his mornings hanging around Abbotsford Homes with his role model - a drug dealer with wads of cash.

The young man taught Mikey the fun side of being a hustler. He bought Mikey a PlayStation and took him on drives in his blue Pontiac and his orange Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.

He introduced Mikey to the essence of being a man in their neighborhood - hustling while armed.

"You can find an old head and he don't care that much about you," Mikey said. "He knew I had potential to stand on the block with a gun on my hip."

Mikey heeded the advice and started to sell weed.

"I didn't notice it at first," said Mikey's oldest sister, Shirley, 32. "My brother could do no wrong." (Her name has been changed to protect Mikey's identity.)

Shirley wanted to confront the older men in Abbotsford, but she knew better than to get involved with hustlers.

"They would protect him," she said. "I guess they are respected because of their quote-unquote power."

His family caught wind of his new job and sent him to live near Harrisburg with one of his adult sisters.

But Mikey couldn't give up the fast money.

His Philadelphia connections set him up with a dealing gig in his new housing project outside Harrisburg.

Mikey needed protection. He traded $50 worth of marijuana for a stolen "cowboy gun," a .22-caliber revolver.

"That is how it is in the drug game," Mikey said. "You need a gun so nobody will mess with you."

During his trips back home, Mikey studied crack: how to package it, how to make it, how to use gimmicks to persuade addicts to come back.

At 14, he was ready for a promotion.

Mikey's Abbotsford contact handed him pre-packaged baggies of crack to sell in Harrisburg. He had trouble pricing it.

"I was selling big $20 rocks for $5," he said. "I was messing my money up."

Still, Mikey became tough.

He broke juvenile curfew and cost his family a $375 fine. He pulled his cowboy gun on a group of boys who shouted in his face. A warrant was issued for his arrest.

Mikey moved back to Abbotsford and enrolled as a freshman at Roxborough High School. But instead of going to class, Mikey made money without a middleman.

He bought 8-balls, or 1/8-ounce bags of cocaine, from various dealers across the city. He carried the white powder back to Abbotsford and usually paid an addict $10 worth of the finished product to use the addict's kitchen.

The two mixed the concoction with baking soda, boiled it down with water, cooled it off, and smashed the rock into tiny pebbles.

Mikey hated the salty smell of the cooked drug, but his helper liked to take deep breaths as the white paste simmered on the stove.

At 15, Mikey had a routine. His workday began at 3 p.m., even after a typical morning of skipping school. As users called his pre-paid cell phone with their orders, Mikey raced around Abbotsford on a minibike with his crack baggies stuffed in his pockets.

When he got tired, he went to his usual spot.

"I would just walk down the strip or stand on top of the hill," he said. "People know where I would be at."

In darkness, the tree-lined complex is hidden from the city. It sits atop a nondescript hill where the grass is always cut and children play tag in the streets.

Shiny new Mercedes and Cadillacs sit doubled-parked on the complex's curvy roads. The SUVs belong to the older dealers, who often return to Abbotsford to show off their wealth, Mikey said.

He wanted to live like them and one day open a business.

When Mikey worked hard, he made more than $1,400 a night. He usually aimed to clock 15-hour shifts, especially at the beginning of the month, when addicts received their government checks.

He bought mostly clothes and fast food with the cash. Not wanting to look like a thug, he typically dressed in preppy clothes such as tapered blue jeans, Lacoste shirts and white Adidas sneakers.

Mikey, whose chubby cheeks, bright eyes and wide smile give him an innocent look, never seemed like a criminal.

But, he said, "once money touches your hand, that is all you think about."

Giving up freedom

In September 2004, cops nabbed Mikey near the old Budd Co. building on Hunting Park Avenue in East Falls with $200 worth of crack in his pockets.

Authorities learned of the outstanding warrant for his gun charge. Mikey's decision to pull out his cowboy gun had caught up with him.

Ten months later, Mikey was sentenced to Don't Fall Down in the Hood, the juvenile probationary program.

He hated it. "I'd rather do my bid" - his jail sentence - he always said.

Mikey left Roxborough for De La Salle Vocational School in Bensalem. The school gave him the chance to graduate with a high-school diploma and earn a certificate in general carpentry. Teachers told Mikey that carpenters can earn more than $90,000 a year. But Mikey didn't care. He rarely went to class and continued to sell drugs for another six months.

This past March, Mikey's mother found a pile of crack baggies in her daughter's old bedroom. Mikey admitted he sold drugs despite being on probation. Still, Chin pushed for Mikey to stay in the program and asked Mikey to promise to quit.

"He needs a male figure who is constantly there," said Chin, who believed in Mikey.

When Mikey ditched Don't Fall Down classes at Temple University, Chin drove around Abbotsford to find him.

When Mikey complained that he didn't have enough money to ride SEPTA to the university, Chin gave him tokens.

Still, Mikey became broke and frustrated.

He managed to save $4,200 during the winter, but loaned his last $800 to a friend for bail money. He was tempted to hustle. Mikey struggled to avoid the streets. He even contemplated working at a Bensalem McDonald's that paid about $7.50 an hour.

"If I got a job, I would want to hustle again," he said, explaining that he'd use hard-earned money to buy drugs and sell the dope for more.

Donnie, meanwhile, disappeared. By the end of the summer, he had left his West Kensington corner and couldn't be reached again.

In September, Mikey gave up. He saved himself the only way he knew how. He turned over his freedom, telling a judge at a scheduled hearing that he didn't want to be part of his probationary program anymore and was willing to enter a juvenile institution. Mikey knew that he didn't have the family support or the will to stay off the streets.

Mikey is now serving a minimum six-month sentence at Saint Gabriel's Hall in Audubon, Montgomery County, a boarding school for young criminals.

"I always say that a kid who asked to be placed is showing signs of maturity and is also a cry for help," Chin said. "Maybe things will work out for him."

Staff writer Christine Olley contributed to this report.

© 2006 Philadelphia Daily News and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com

[boxman]

www.philly.com/mld/philly/16325578.htm

Posted on Wed, Dec. 27, 2006

401, 402, 403... and climbing: Death takes no holiday in Philly
By CHRISTINE OLLEY & DAVID GAMBACORTA
[e-mail] 215-854-5184

Death is not taking a holiday this Christmas season: The fatal shooting of a 23-year-old man yesterday pushed the city's homicide toll to 403.

The unidentified man was shot once in the head shortly after 1 p.m. on Delancey Street near 52nd in West Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, cops are still trying to solve the puzzle of who killed Reginald Branham, a computer-whiz-turned-bar-owner who became the city's 402nd homicide victim on Christmas night.

Branham was discovered shot several times inside his establishment, the Cognac Corner, after he'd opened up his bar at 21st and Dickinson streets shortly after 10 p.m. Monday. He was rushed to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania but pronounced dead 30 minutes later.

Branham's family declined to speculate on a possible motive behind the entrepreneur's murder, focusing instead on his trademark passion and creativity.

"He was a visionary of sorts," said the victim's brother, Kevin Branham. "He enjoyed seeing his ideas materialize. He had setbacks, but he stayed true to his vision."

While at Overbrook High School, Branham participated in the NAACP's academic and technological Olympics, ACT-SO. At an age when most of his peers were obsessing over the prom, Branham built two computers and programmed the machines to talk to each other.

Branham was awarded a four-year scholarship to Drexel University, and went on to become a computer security expert as president of Cyberlock Data Intelligence Inc. Five years ago, Bran-ham migrated to Xlibris, where he became vice president for information technology. The firm helps authors publish and market books.

But a short time later, his family said, Branham moved on to buying and renovating clubs and bars.

His plans to turn his Point Breeze establishment into a top-notch sports club were marred - plasma-screen TVs were stolen almost immediately after they were installed - but Kevin Bran-ham said his younger brother was dedicated to creating an establishment that local residents would feel proud to patronize.

Over the years, Kevin said, his brother renovated more than a half-dozen bars and clubs.

"Each venture brought new challenges," he said, "but one constant throughout our lives is that he was always 100-percent committed to his ideas."

In yesterday's West Philly slaying - the city's 403rd - officers on patrol heard gunshots and then found a man bleeding on the ground - while a white vehicle was fleeing the scene. The cops gave chase and caught the occupants a short distance away.

"We heard three shots and then saw the chase begin," said Yussuf Diakite, who runs a computer shop nearby.

Cops said the vehicle was stopped on Melville Street near Spruce, and an unidentified woman and her boyfriend were taken into custody. A weapon was recovered.

Police have yet to make an arrest in the year's 401st homicide, which happened early Sunday morning. McKennon Pigford, 24, was shot once in the head at 2 a.m. on Woodland Avenue near Paxon in Southwest Philadelphia.

Anyone with any information about these incidents is asked to call 215-686-3334 or 215-686- 3335.
Staff writers Will Bunch and Tom Schmidt contributed to this report.

© 2006 Philadelphia Daily News and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
www.philly.com