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As soon as the city knew MOVE had no guns or explosives, they began modifying and restating the terms of the agreement. It soon become apparent that DA Ed Rendells's promise to dispose of all pending MOVE cases within 4-6 weeks was a blatant lie. The 90 day period, which had been described to MOVE as a work- ing timetable, was misrepresented to the media as an absolute deadline. The promise to assist MOVE in finding a new place to live was never completed, and the city began demanding that the house had to be razed.Judge Fred DiBona, who only had jurisdiction in the civil suit still pending from three years earlier (page 9), suddenly began issuing orders to MOVE regarding the criminal case that were never a part of the agreement. MOVE had found DiBona to be particularly arrogant in the past, and as his conflicting directives and unagreed-to demands became intolerable, Phil and Sue Africa attempted to resolve the problem by going to see the judge on My 23rd. Although it was not a legal court hearing, but an informal meeting in the judges chambers, DiBona wound up citing Phil for contempt and revoking his bail status previously set by the terms of the agreement. Before long the city wa funneling the entire MOVE dispute through DiBona's courtroom, bypassing other judges not as closely aligned with Rizzo.
At a hearing on August 2, 1978, DiBona ruled that MOVE had violated the 90-day "deadline" and should have vacated the house. Police surveillance officers could testify to only actually seeing three members present at the house that morning, yet the city was so bent on hunting down and framing MOVE members that by the time the hearing was over, DiBona had sentenced attorney Oscar Gaskins for contempt and signed bench warrants authorizing police to arrest practically every known MOVE adult, including Robert, Conrad, Jerry, and Sue Africa. These four and most other members were not in the house and couldn't possibly have violated an order to vacate.
On August 5th, Philadelphia authorities, in collaboration with Virginia police, staged a midnight raid on the Richmond home of two MOVE women and 14 children. Storming in at gunpoint, they arrested Gail and Rhonda Africa. The legal justification for these arrests was Gail and Rhonda's failure to leave a house they weren't within a hundred miles of.
By August of 1978 the government had: 1) Searched MOVE's house to insure the absence of weapons and explosives, 2) Continued to keep the house under surveillance after the search, 3) Manufactured the appearance of a legal basis to arrest MOVE, and 4) Kept legal improprieties out of media coverage while making MOVE out to be the villians with a 90-day deadline myth. Rizzo was now in a position to use his favorite solution to civic conflicts: Brute force and lots of it.On Tuesday, August 8th, hundreds of cops in flak jackets and riot helmets surrounded the 33rd Street location at dawn and ordered MOVE to surrender. Police then rolled in specially modified construction vehicles and tore down the fence and smashed out windows. Just before 7:00 am, MOVE was notified by bullhorn: "Uniformed officers will enter your house for the purpose of taking each of you into custody. Any resistance or use of force will be met with force." In the nest hour a total of 45 armed police entered and slowly searched the three story house only to find that MOVE was barricaded in the basement. Around 8:00 am, firemen pried off the boarded up basement windows and turned on water canons. MOVE adults were soon wading in rising water with children in their arms in danger of drowning. Suddenly, gunshots rang out and police throughout the area opened fire. In the short period of sustained fire, Officer James Ramp was fatally wounded. Three other policemen and several firemen were also hit. (The minutes of a police staff meeting two days later noted one captain's opinion of "an excessive amount of unnecessary firing on the part of police personnel when there were no targets per se to shoot at." One of the stake-out officers later admitted under oath that he had emptied his carbine into the very basement from which he heard screaming women and crying children.) After the gunshots subsided and tear gas was fired in, MOVE adults began carrying children out of the basement and were immediately arrested by angry cops.
Later in the day, the large crowds that had gathered in the area were chased down and broken up by police on horseback. Many people were knocked to the ground and brutally beaten. Others were chased into their very homes and assaulted by police.
As police grabbed the twelve adults and eleven children coming out of the basement, MOVE mothers had their babies snatched from their arms before being handcuffed and taken away. All the adults were mistreated and beaten by arresting officers eager to vent their rage. One such arrest was captured on film unbeknownst to officers Joseph Zagame, Charles Geist, Terrance Mulvihill and Lawrence D'Ulisse. As Delbert Africa emerged from a basement window empty-handed with outstretched arms (top of page. click on pic to return), Zagame, without provoca- tion, smashed him in the face with a police helmet as D'Ulisse connected with a blow from the butt of a shotgun. Knocked to the ground, Delbert was then dragged by his hair across the street where the other officers set upon him, savagely kicking him in the head, kidneys and groin.Initial denials of police brutality became difficult to maintain after video tapes of the beating were broadcast. Only after the resulting public outcry arose did the DA's office take any action. A special grand jury was impaneled which eventually handed down indictments. Not until a few years later were Zagame, Geist and Mulvihill brought to trial on assault charges. On February 3, 1981, just before the jury was to start deliberating, Judge Stanley Kubacki made a surprising departure from normal pro- cedures and ordered the jury dismissed and the officers acquit- ted, despite irrefutable photographic evidence that they had indeed beaten Delbert. Ed Rendell's office never brought charges against Office D'Ulisse, though his identity and participation in the brutality were well known and documented.
Three months after the aquittal, Geist's wife, Carolyn, who was also a police officer, shot him during a domestic dispute. He went into a coma and died 8 months later. It was revealed that she had been battered by her abusive husband on many occasions but the police supervisors she had pleaded to for help had urged her to keep quiet so as not to expose his sadistic tenden- cies while he was on trial for beating Delbert. (Zagame, D'Ulisse, and Mulvihill all took part in the 1985 MOVE confrontation, each carrying an automatic weapon and firing it during the course of the day. Mulvihill committed suicide in May of '89.)
Immediately following the August 8th assault, the standard police version of events was that MOVE fired the first shot. Yet the limited number of civilian eyewitnesses, mostly reporters, who had been allowed past police barricades had different accounts. Radio reporters Richard Maloney and Larry Rosen both recalled hearing the first shot come from a house diagonally across the street where they saw an arm holding apistol out of a second floor window.Although destroying the evidence of a crime is illegal, police sent in bulldozers and had the area leveled by noon, destroying the house, the foundations, and the trees in the yard. No efforts were made to preserve the crime scene, inscribe chalk marks or measure ballistic angles.
With his typical showmanship and bravado, Rizzo held an afternoon city hall press conference around a prominently displayed table of weapons said to have been removed from the now demolished house. As to whether or not this was the last Philadelphia would see of MOVE, Rizzostated, "The only way we're going to end them is - get that death penalty back in, put them in the electric chair and I'll pull the switch." (Before the years end, Pennsylvania did reinstate the death penalty, but not retroactively.)
Prior to August 8th, at the request of attorney Oscar Gaskins, Judge Calvin Wilson had issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the house from being demolished, but City Solicitor Seldon Albert had ignored it. At a preliminary hearing on a motion to dismiss based on destruction of evidence, MOVE argued that the destruction of the house prevented them from proving that it was impossible for any MOVE member to have shot Officer Ramp. The Illinois case of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark was cited, where the preservation of the crime scene enabled investigators to prove that all the bullet holes in the walls were the result of police gunfire. Judge Merna Marshal denied MOVE's petition and held them over for trial. (Her health failing, Marshal was unable to preside to the end of the hearing and died of leukemia December 30, 1979.)
ran dumb mode
