In Case You Were Wondering: Cops On South Street Are Still Outrageous Dicks
The video at right will probably be just one piece of the puzzle considered at 4PM today at the Police Advisory Commission offices, when higher-ups review just what the hell happened last night behind the TLA. And good luck to them with that, because this is the kind of thing that seems like it will breed conflicting accounts and much, much attempted covering of asses. Here is what we do know about last night: The Bamboozle Road Show let out, and all hell broke loose. As best we can put it together from the video — and from accounts here and here — the South Street patrol responded in typical fashion, hassling a bunch of white hippie kids from the suburbs because it is easy and fun, and frequently, pretty profitable for the city. (Which is also why, we are told by friends close to the force, some officers on that patrol hold onto their gigs despite internal investigations of incidents like this on South Street year after year.) For us, whether these kids were innocent or guilty is almost beside the point. Almost. What this case will open up, hopefully, is some kind of change-affecting debate about the culture of policing on South Street as it stands today. Because at this point, almost everyone we know has some kind of story about the mall-cops-gone-wild environment the Philly PD has engendered on what was once the hippest street in town. It’s anti-business, it’s anti-tourism, and if the video here is anything to go by, it’s also anti-human.
April 27th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
As my hippie hubby would say, not the kind-head way. South Street has enough trouble getting people to come there and spend money. This is not helping. About 5 different layers of wrong. My heart goes out to the people involved.
April 27th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
reminds me of the MSTRKRFT show a couple of weeks ago. A friend of mine got his cellphone snapped in half by a cop for taking picture of the bullshit they were doing. he was then was arrested on the spot for absolutely nothing. cops where looking for any excuse to fuck people up, to the point of making up excuses. sorry that theres no room on the sidewalk outside the tla when 300 people are trying to leave a sweaty dance show at once. no need to for the cops to exercise that level of force.
April 27th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
When you call cops “faggots” and “assholes”, say “nice bikes” to bike cops, or taunt a large group of cops by saying “you’re not going to do dick”, you can really only cry but so much when things go downhill. Not saying that it wasn’t excessive, but again, when you refuse to stop talking shit to cops, you do so with the knowledge that things probably won’t end well.
April 27th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
No, there’s no excuse for abusing authority. It’s not outside the realm of effective, civil law enforcement to suck it up, act with maturity and enforce laws while ignoring perceived indignities to their authority. You don’t need to chase away kids with cameras if you’re behaving correctly. Sorry.
April 27th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
if i may, for a second, share my very first experience with the philadelphia police force, south street division (also, unfortunately, my neighborhood police officers, both at the time of this story and also at this very moment).
this was (i believe) in 2003, on a summer day not altogether unlike the one we had today. my boyfriend and i had a nice afternoon together, and were walking home (home at this point in my life was 8th and Bainbridge) down south street. this was around 6 or 7pm. daylight.
between 9th and 8th street a group of 5 large, obnoxious, very probably COKED UP men walking behind us swarmed around us and as they passed by made some mean comment i never actually caught about my boyfriend and i. my boyfriend, in return, made a sassy but altogether harmless and lighthearted comment back. as soon as he opened his mouth, one of the men spun around and punched him in the face. the moment the fist connnected to face, the whole group of men went NUTS and just started beating the shit out of both of us. the next thing i remember is being thrown on top of a parked car while screaming for help and begging them to stop. they did not.
luckily for the two of us, the car i was thrown on top of had literally *just parked* and the people were still inside of it. they got out of the car and started shouting as well. the group of men took off running, and one of the people from the car stayed with us while the other ran off to find the police. within a few minutes, the police rounded up most of the men who were beating us and had them in the back of police cars. hooray, right? no.
at this point, we were on the corner of 8th and south, a block away from my apartment. the police parked their cars (containing our assailants) on 8th street. right in front of our apartment. now, both of us were bleeding all over. when the police asked us for our version of events, i was the only one who could do so, as my boyfriend could not physically move his jaw. as soon as i got to the point in the story where it became obvious that my “friend” was a lot more than that, the police officer asked me if we had been holding hands when they attacked us. i should have known then this was not going to go well. but i was young, still sort of new to city life, and honestly believed they were there to help. so i said yes, we were, and that yes, that was likely the major factor in why they attacked us. i wish i could remember the exact words he said to me then, because it was approximately “well then this is sorta your fault, you shouldn’t have done that.” i was stunned. they asked me if i wanted to press charges (keep in mind, still covered in blood) and i said absolutely, of course i do. they said we would need to come to the station to do that. i told the officer that my boyfriend needed to go to the hospital, he couldn’t move his jaw and i was concerned, and could we come by the station after visiting the E.R?
then the cop started yelling at us.
he told me to “stop wasting (his) time” and that i had to make a choice between pressing charges or going to the hospital. i asked why we couldn’t do both, and he said if we didn’t press charges immediately, they would release everyone. we were both a mess and i was really worried about my man’s jaw, and was bewildered by this response from the police, so i decided dealing with these characters really in fact would be a waste of time, so we chose the hospital. and then suddenly, there are our assailants exiting the police vehicle. and standing around right in front of our door. we had to go past them to get in the house to grab some things before going to the hospital, and walking past them knowing that they now knew where we lived was a terrifying experience.
in the end, we both healed, there were no serious injuries, we moved on. but neither of us walked down south street again, for any reason at all, for a very very very long time. and still to this day, sometimes i get very nervous walking home and am amazed i continue to live here.
i understand that this neighborhood can become a zoo, and it is a weekend dumping ground for the human trash from across the city. i get that policing these people is hard work and that most of the cops around here are decent folks just trying to do some good. but to be honest, there are a few who are also total assholes, who have no business behind a badge, who choose authority over compassion. and in the four times i’ve ever needed a police officer in the eight years i’ve lived in this city, it just so happens that the total assholes are the ones i keep ending up having to deal with, and i’ve never once been satisfied with the outcome. in most situations, it’s not even worth calling the police around here in my opinion.
the large majority of my friends could tell you of at least one personal philly-cops-abusing-authority story. quite a few of them involve the asshole cop who is always wearing the white sunglasses, even at night (how is that allowed in the dress code? how do you police anything at night while wearing sunglasses? how do you expect a community to respect your authority when you don’t even know the difference between day and night, literally?) but aside from catharsis, what good is telling these stories going to do? how the fuck to we GET RID of these bad apples? what does it actually take to finally take the badge from someone who EVERYONE KNOWS (including his coworkers, amusingly enough) has no business bossing *anyone* around? if anyone has suggestions i’d love to hear.
April 27th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
What this case will open up, hopefully, is some kind of change-affecting debate about the culture of policing on South Street as it stands today.
With all the more serious shit with which the police have been caught red-handed, and I’m not talking about Officer Thrasher, you really think a South Street’s detail’s heavy handed arrest of a guy is a police priority?
This video, I see someone getting arrested, TLA staff cooperating with the arrest and trying to assist with crowd control, and a bunch of folks and YouTube documentarians
thinking they can change-affect something right then and there. Anywhere in America, anywhere in the world, everyone except for some folks stumbling out of the TLA apparently know that failing to comply with verbal order to disperse is actually an arrestable offense, and all the other behavior in this scenario would give an even more aggressive group of police grounds to arrest on obstruction.
(Where’s Connor to school your lot on what actual civil rights violations look like).
I’m really sorry the girl’s camera was broken, but really this is not all hell breaking loose, even by South Street standards.
Don’t get me wrong, arrest is humiliating and feels oppressive, and I can understand fans of Bamboozle Road Show sympathizing with anyone taken into custody for minor infractions. I don’t see much controversy here, though, and I don’t see this video going very far with the Police Advisory Commission (who aren’t higher ups, rather they’re community officials who give the police feedback, but have no control over actual discipline being meted out).
Sorry Sonny, while cameras are legal at the scene of an arrest, taunting/scolding the officer from behind the camera with a crowd is contributing/inciting a bad situation and its very much with law enforcement’s right to demand such an element disperse from an arrest. If they were just documenting, I’d call foul on the cops too. That’s not what was going on here.
dx’s account is actually much more poignant to the problems of Philly PD’s community relations than whatever b.s. was captured in this vid. There are quite a few citizen efforts at police reform / relations improvement on both sides. They’re not hard to look into.
April 28th, 2009 at 12:45 am
wow dx i completely feel for you. In fact i completely agree with you C. the real question is why is the news reporting about this issue NOW? http://tinyurl.com/ckg3cs
I’m curious to see what happens to these officers compared to others…
http://www.aqwrd-e.blogspot.com
April 28th, 2009 at 2:13 am
re cheesesteak: they are not in fact hard to look into. but they are also completely powerless and by extent *useless*. so i repeat, what will it take to actually, truly, SERIOUSLY, fix this?
May 3rd, 2009 at 11:03 am
i spent some time slammed up against a wall in front of tattooed mom’s this friday after being pulled out of the bar by a cop.
this, of course, happened because i walked outside to see 12 cops surrounding my one female friend and i remarked “oh, 12 cops to one girl, sounds about right”
the force was unnecessary and completely ridic. not to mention embarassing and painful.
to make matters worse, the guys screaming in my face for 5 minutes was wearing a bike helmet and sunglasses at night. i can’t respect that authority.