Category: Life in the Big City

Catholic H.S. coach fired in connection to gay attack

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

http://youtu.be/KD8MglUjA50

A fucking coach. Well, that figures:

CENTER CITY (WPVI) — The Archdiocese of Philadelphia says it has fired an assistant basketball coach at Archbishop Wood High School in connection with an attack on a gay couple in Center City Philadelphia.

The Archdiocese tells Action News the man was terminated Wednesday evening and will not be permitted to be a coach at any other Archdiocesan school.

Action News was at Philadelphia Police Central Detectives in Spring Garden Wednesday night as that man arrived with his attorney to be questioned by police.

We have blurred his face and have not identified him because he has still not officially been named as a suspect or charged with a crime.

“The investigation is in progress. We are cooperating with it. I think we would all be wise to wait the outcome of it,” said Brian McVan, the man’s attorney.

Earlier Wednesday, the Archdiocese released a statement acknowledging that several former students of the school, located in Warminster, Bucks County, are suspected in the attack.

“Earlier today, Archbishop Wood High School became aware that some of its former students were allegedly involved in the assault of two men in Center City last week. This afternoon, administrators communicated with the entire Archbishop Wood school community to make it emphatically clear that the school does not, under any circumstances, tolerate or condone the violent and hateful behavior displayed by those who took part in this senseless attack.

Administration also stressed that Catholic schools are centers of learning where students are expected to treat each other in a Christ-like manner at all times and that everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. The actions of those who took part in the attack are reprehensible and entirely unacceptable. They are not an accurate reflection of our Catholic values or of Archbishop Wood High School.”

Again, none of the suspects has been formally identified by police.

I’ll just add here that this kind of behavior really isn’t okay in a Catholic school, although of course it still happens. But it’s an automatic expulsion, and the schools really do their best to put students on the right path. You can lead a horse to water, etc.

Also:

City Councilman Jim Kenney has sent a letter to U.S. Attorney Zane Memeger calling on the Department of Justice to partner with local authorities to bring federal charges against anyone arrested for the attack on the gay couple last week in Center City.

Considering Pennsylvania’s lack of hate crime laws, Kenney requests that charges be brought up under the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hame Crimes Prevention Act.

In a press release sent out this morning, he states that, “This violent and vicious attack on two human beings because they are gay is clearly a hate crime. It’s a crime of violent bias that calls for the full weight of Federal prosecution by the United States Department of Justice … No citizen should fear for their lives when walking on a public street in any city in America. This is not Uganda. This is not Russia. We will not stand for this in our City.”

 

Local judge stands up to lying cops

~ susie

Made in America Festival 2014 3 twitter

And takes much criticism as a result, of course. Pretty shocking story, even to me. I can’t stand Lynne Abraham, she was a stain on the city’s reputation and I’m glad she’s gone:

“There’s an enormous inequity in a system that permits a police officer’s testimony to be unassailed and have absolutely no repercussions,” he warned. “No one man’s testimony should be elevated by any status in his life. It’s a charge we give regularly to our juries.”

Betts was not the first officer to have his testimony called into question by Rau. After taking the bench in 2001, she quickly became, the Inquirer reported, “one of Philadelphia’s most controversial judges — developing a reputation for refusing to believe sworn testimony from police officers and for throwing out key evidence.” It’s a reputation that’s rare among city judges.

District Attorney Lynne Abraham’s office, according to media reports, began to collect a “dossier” on her objectionable rulings. In 2002, she criticized Rau’s conduct as “horrible” and “grotesque,” accusing her of having an “institutional bias against police officers” and for handing out lenient sentences.

In one case, Abraham contended that Rau had not sufficiently explained her decision to suppress evidence of a handgun allegedly seized from a 23-year-old West Oak Lane man. But the two officers’ accounts of the incident differed, and Rau questioned their credibility.

“Judge Rau and others, they show no safe haven for any citizen in the city,” Abraham told the Daily News. “Sometimes the only thing to do to get them to do the right thing is to embarrass them.”

Critics say that Abraham wanted to instill fear in judges like Rau who dared to cross her and question police.

It’s about time

~ susie

Good:

Seven Philadelphia parents and the Parents United for Public Education group are suing over the conditions of Philadelphia’s public schools. The petitioners are represented by the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia.

In the suit, to be filed against acting Pennsylvania education secretary Carolyn Dumaresq, the parents say the state has failed in its constitutional mandate to “receive and investigate allegations of curriculum deficiencies.” Parents United says it delivered 825 complaints about school conditions to Dumaresq that were not followed up on.

Per the lawsuit, the allegations included “overcrowded classrooms, the lack of classes such as art, music, foreign language and physical education, cancelled programs for the mentally gifted, the absence of facilities such as libraries or school materials such as textbooks that resulted in loss of instruction for students, shortages of staff … and unsafe or unsanitary conditions that interfered with students’ ability to respond to the curriculum.”
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Taney wins during final play, 7-6

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

You need a little good news this Monday, right? Here it is: The Taney Dragons pulled it out in the very last second of last night’s game against Pearland, Texas to win, 7-6. And what a cardiac event this game was! From The Good Phight:

It was the bottom of the sixth in Williamsport, in a taut second round matchup between two of the first-round winners, Philadelphia’s own Taney and the team from Pearland, Texas, representing the Southwest.

Pearland led, 6-5, but the magic, multicultural local preteens showed no quit. Taney’s Scott Bandura led off with a bunt single, but a Jahli Hendricks strikeout and a Jared Sprague-Lott fly out to center left the kids one out away from a loss that would have meant a game tomorrow and a complicated pitching lineup that would have kept star pitcher Mo’ne Davis off the mound.

But Zion Spearman followed with a scorching ground ball past the shortstop that rolled all the way to the wall, and with Bandura running on contact, the game tied, and Spearman wound up on third, just beating the throw from the cutoff man.

With Spearman on third, Tai Shanahan followed with a groundball to shortstop that Texas shortstop Aaron Matthews fielded, but threw over the head of his first baseman as Spearman scored, and Taney walked off.

The game was played in perfect conditions in Williamsport, and a bus-trip aided throng of over 30,000 fans crammed every seat, nook, and hillside to watch the game, many of whom chanted “Let’s Go Taney!” throughout the game

If you skipped watching because Mo’Ne wasn’t pitching, you missed two-and-a-half hours of great edge-of-the-seat baseball. Jared Sprague-Lott (who I predict now as the series MVP) pitched a great four innings before giving up a three-run homer. But the pitchers who followed were solid, too.

I can’t imagine what it was like for young kids to play with that much pressure on them, with that many screaming fans. Williamsport is a four-hour trip from Philly, and there were so many Philadelphia fans made the trip, Little League officials decided they had to hand out tickets.
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Why cops lie

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

DSC_0470

I liked this NYT article, not the least because it agrees with what I was saying on my radio appearances last week: You’re not going to solve police brutality without changing the political pressures on their performance.

Police departments have been rewarded in recent years for the sheer numbers of stops, searches and arrests. In the war on drugs, federal grant programs like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program have encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to boost drug arrests in order to compete for millions of dollars in funding. Agencies receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence. Law enforcement has increasingly become a numbers game. And as it has, police officers’ tendency to regard procedural rules as optional and to lie and distort the facts has grown as well. Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs — in Tulia, Tex. and Oakland, Calif., for example — have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in.

THE pressure to boost arrest numbers is not limited to drug law enforcement. Even where no clear financial incentives exist, the “get tough” movement has warped police culture to such a degree that police chiefs and individual officers feel pressured to meet stop-and-frisk or arrest quotas in order to prove their “productivity.”
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This makes me happy

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

This is exactly what I hoped would happen. Inner city baseball has been dropping off for years (mostly because equipment is much more expensive than a basketball), but a story like Mo’Ne’s and the Taney Dragons is getting kids interested again. Hallelujah!

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The Taney Dragons baseball team is playing their 2nd game in this year’s Little League World Series at 7pm Sunday against Pearlman, Texas.

The Dragons and their star pitcher Mo’Ne Davis are inspiring a lot of kids from the Delaware Valley to get out and play some baseball.

On most Sunday afternoons 12-year-old McKie Walker is usually at home watching TV or playing video games, but this week he’s with a few of his buddies at Fairmount Park sharpening his baseball skills.

“I’m inspired to play better, so I can try and make it to the Little League World series,” he said.

McKie says his extra jolt of motivation comes from Mo’Ne Davis and those Taney Dragons. “She inspires me to throw better pitches than I can do,” he said. “I’m learning how to throw a better curve ball, because I see she’s getting a lot of strike outs throwing gas, curveballs and changeups.”

But the coach of the team Taney beat for the state championship is filing a complaint that Taney broke the Little League rules. He says Taney has an “unfair advantage” because they can draw from the entire city.

Man. When I think of the resources suburban Little Leaguers have as opposed to the city (here, they have to travel to different crappy playgrounds and no, their parents don’t normally send them to summer clinics with former MLB stars), I just have to laugh. Hell, they didn’t even have real uniforms.

No crying in baseball, fellas!

Another shutout for Mo’Ne in World Series opener

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

mone

Today, Mo’Ne Davis did it again. In their first outing at Williamsport, she pitched a complete game and back-to-back shutouts. Slugger Jared Sprague-Lott pumped out a three-run homer in the first inning, and the rest is history.

The irony is, the Taney Dragons Little League team is succeeding against the odds. Our city playground maintenance has been cut to the bone, and so has our public school budget, where most of the Dragons attend school. (They couldn’t even afford uniforms, they had team T-shirts. The Phillies raised money last week to pay for the trip to Williamsport.)

Philly’s schools superintendent just announced another $38M cut necessary to allow the schools to open on time next week.

So when Gov. Corbett congratulations the Dragons on their first World Series win, let’s put that in some kind of context. Fuck him, go Dragons!

Taney shirts, hats available now

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Also bus tickets to Friday’s game at Williamsport!

Click here.

I just found out today Mo’Ne Davis was discovered playing football!

The rest, as they say, is history. Or, at least making it. Davis will be just the 17th girl ever to play in the Little League World Series when the Taney Dragons take the field Friday afternoon in Williamsport. She will be the first American girl to play in the tournament in a decade.

It’s no small feat. Davis started pitching her first season playing baseball, the same year Bandura discovered her. She’s honed her skill since then, but right from the beginning she had a knack for throwing strikes. In the younger age groups, Bandura said, that’s all a player needs.

As she’s gotten older, though, Davis has improved dramatically. Bandura said the physical differences between male and female players usually kick in between 10 and 12, but that hasn’t been the case for 13-year-old Davis. She can throw a fastball. She can throw a changeup. She’s worked on her breaking ball this year, too. Her shutout propelled Taney to the tournament.

“From the beginning, she had good control,” Bandura said. “She has incredible spatial awareness, or kinesthetic awareness — whatever you want to call it. If she’s doing something wrong, she knows how to fix it, what to do with her body to fix it. She knows what she’s doing wrong. She knows how to correct it and she corrects it. Because of that, she always throws strikes.”

And that’s something special. Bandura has coached scores of baseball players over the years, both boys and girls. He’s overseen plenty of talent at all different positions. But considering her age and ability, Davis tops his list. He said he’s even more impressed at how well-rounded she is; Davis is an honor student at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, one of the best schools in the area.

“At this age, she’s the best pitcher I’ve ever had,” Bandura said. “I’ve had pitchers that are now in the minor leagues, but at this age, no one’s had the control to go with the velocity that she has and the command.”

Bandura doesn’t coach the Dragons. This week in Williamsport, he’ll “just be a dad,” he said (his son Scott plays catcher to Davis’ pitcher). But he’s been handling media requests for the team lately, and there’s been a lot of them for Davis.

“I had to talk to her and let her know that it’s important that she does the interviews because she’s a role model,” he said. “The more we can get her story out there, the better for other girls — other inner-city girls, any girls.”

NYPD blames everyone but themselves for Garner’s death

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

You have to admire their willingness to spin bullshit into blame!

In the wake of Eric Garner’s death via cop chokehold, the NYPD is coming under all sorts of additional scrutiny. This is in addition to the appointed oversight ordered by Judge Scheindlin after finding that elements of its infamous stop-and-frisk program were unconstitutional. Scott Greenfield has a very stark recounting of the incident, as well as a recording of Eric Garner’s last moments. (Here’s additional footage, which includes the officer who applied the lethal chokehold waving at the camera, as well as several officers gamely pretending Garner is simply passed out.)

The unexpected happened when the official medical examiner’s report failed to find that the 400-lb Garner (who is heard repeatedly telling officers he can’t breathe) had simply dropped dead of a heart attack or pre-existing health conditions — something that supposedly would have happened with or without a cop applying direct pressure to his windpipe. Instead, the report contained a word rarely found in examinations following in-custody deaths: homicide.

The largest union within the NYPD — the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association — couldn’t have been expecting that. But PBA president Pat Lynch still managed to find something spinnable about the entire situation, greatly aided by the convenient arrest of the cameraman on weapons charges.
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