'Pure Chaos' On Sansom Street In Philadelphia As Killer Goes On Rampage

Aubrey Whelan a the Philadelphia Inquirer offers a piece on the pure chaos that a killer caused when he shot police officers and bystanders.

Nicholas Glenn strode up Sansom Street just before midnight with a 9mm Ruger in his hand. 

In his back pocket was an envelope with a feverish, rambling letter inside, and two words scrawled on front.

"DOOMED PEOPLE." 

It was Friday night, and down the street at the Maximum Level Lounge, the door was open and the drinks were flowing. A few blocks away, a young woman and her boyfriend pulled up to her apartment. Philadelphia Police Sgt. Sylvia Young, a 19-year veteran of the force, parked her squad car at the corner of 52nd and Sansom. Her shift was almost over. 

Glenn, a man with a long criminal record and an apparent grudge against law enforcement officers, walked up to Young's squad car and fired 18 rounds into the window.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20160918__Pure_chaos__on_Sansom_Street_as_killer_goes_on_rampage.html

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey's Last Day On The Job

Aubrey Whelen at the Philadelphia Inquirer offers a piece on Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey's last day on the job.

Charles H. Ramsey sat in an office with empty walls, behind a desk with empty drawers. His bulletproof vest slumped in a chair nearby. His bags were, quite literally, packed.

"I guess everything in life comes down to the last hour," he said.

It was 2 p.m. on New Year's Eve. At 3, he would walk through the doors of Police Headquarters for the last time as Philadelphia's police commissioner.

Ramsey, 65, was commissioner for just under eight years, brought in amid a skyrocketing murder rate and mayoral campaign promises to bring down crime in a city that seemed plagued with it.

Five officers were killed in the line of duty in his first 13 months. That part of the job never got easier. "It's still hard," he said

... For his successor, Deputy Commissioner Richard Ross, he will leave "some crime," he said. "Enough to stay busy."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://mobile.philly.com/beta?wss=/philly/news&id=363955371

Note: I met Charles Ramsey a couple of times over the years and I interviewed him in his office at the "Roundhouse," Philadelphia Police headquarters, on a story about homeland secuity for Counterterrorism magazine. You can read the piece via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/05/a-look-at-philadelphia-police.html

He Redefined What A Hero Is All About: Philly Cop Killed In Shootout With Two Armed Robbers

Emily Babay and Aubrey Whelen at the Philadelphia Inquirer report on the arrest of two armed robbers who murdered a Philadelphia Police Officer in a shootout during a robbery.

Two brothers have been arrested and charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Philadelphia Police Officer Robert Wilson III during an attempted robbery in North Philadelphia, police said Friday.

Homicide commander Capt. James Clark identified them as Ramone Williams, 24, and Carlton Hipps, 29.

Wilson, 30, was gunned down Thursday inside a GameStop store at 21st Street and Lehigh Avenue, where he had stopped make a security check and to buy a video game for one of his sons.

The two men entered the store in Philadelphia's Swampoodle section, intending to rob the business, police said, and Wilson was hit multiple times during an intense shootout just before 4:45 p.m.

The eight-year veteran of the department was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he died at 6:25 p.m.

"We're all in shock," Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said Friday morning. "We're all going to suffer this loss for a very long period of time

Ramsey called Wilson a hero, saying the officer drew fire away from civilians in the store and kept on fighting until he was shot in the head.

"He redefined what a hero is all about," Ramsey said.

Officials said Wilson's actions kept store employees and customers from harm, despite an intense gun battle during which more than 50 shots were fired.

"That's why you don't have more people struck," the commissioner said.

Police quickly apprehended the brothers.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150307_Ramsey__Brothers_charged_in_officer_s_killing.html

Note: The above photo of Officer Robert Wilson was released by the Philadelphia Police Department.  

Alleged Gang Member Wanted For The Brutal Murder Of Two Men In Philadelphia Nabbed By U.S. Marshals Service In Virginia Motel

 

Aubrey Whelan at the Philadelphia Inquirer offers a piece on the capture of a fugitive wanted in the brutal murder of two men.

Tam Minh Le had been on the run since August - when the battered bodies of two brothers were found in the Schuylkill with their throats slit and their limbs bound with duct tape. By the time authorities searched Le's Southwest Philadelphia house and named him as a suspect in the killings, he was already on the move. For months, authorities probed his associates for information and chased leads across the country. And, officials say, even as U.S. marshals burst into Le's motel room in Virginia on Tuesday night, the alleged gang member tried one last time to slip from authorities' grasp. The marshals found him in the bathroom, trying to remove panels from the ceiling. But after a brief standoff, he surrendered.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150115_Man_wanted_for_killing_two_men_by_the_Schuylkill_nabbed_in_Virginia_motel.html
 

Tainted Justice: Why An Accused Philadelphia Police Officer Is Still On The Force

Mike Newall and Aubrey Whelen at the Philadelphia Inquirer offer a piece on why a Philly cop remains on the force after being accused of several crimes that were covered in a Philadelphia Daily News series and subsequent true crime book called Busted.

The woman in the emergency room at Frankford Hospital told the detective that the police officer who sexually assaulted her was named Tom. After the attack, she said, the officer scrawled his cellphone number on a torn piece of paper and handed it to her.

Through personnel records, police traced the number to a 10-year veteran of the force, Thomas Tolstoy. Within hours of the alleged assault on Oct. 16, 2008, the officer was pulled off the street.
Three women who did not know one another would eventually accuse Tolstoy of assaulting them under strikingly similar circumstances. Of the three cases, only the one involving the woman from Frankford Hospital led to a full-blown inquiry.

The allegations were investigated by the Philadelphia Police Department's Internal Affairs bureau, the FBI launched an exhaustive inquiry, and the U.S. Attorney's Office convened a grand jury, yet no criminal charges were filed. When news broke this year that there would be no prosecution after years of investigation, many expressed outrage.

The city has paid $227,500 to settle lawsuits brought against the officer by two women who accused him of groping their breasts. But unless city prosecutors determine that there is sufficient evidence to file charges against Tolstoy in the Frankford woman's case - the only one in which the statute of limitations has not expired - he soon could be cleared to return to street work.

An Inquirer review of an extensive investigative file - along with detailed interviews of people directly involved in or familiar with the case - reveals how Tolstoy emerged from a joint local and federal investigation unscathed.

The documents show that in seven interviews with investigators, the then-24-year-old woman, from Frankford, never wavered on the central tenet of her story: that she had been sexually assaulted, and that an officer was responsible.

But the woman's case presented a challenge from the start. DNA evidence did not match Tolstoy, according to the documents. The woman was fearful of police, initially lied about her name and criminal history, and at one point changed certain details of the assault - all of which could be used to undermine criminal prosecution of her assailant.

The documents also show that actions the victim ascribed to two Philadelphia Daily News reporters who wrote about her assault further undermined the criminal case by damaging her credibility and complicating a federal investigation.

The woman told investigators that the reporters - whose account of the assault and other police abuses would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 2010 - provided her with gifts, paid her bills, offered her money to hire a lawyer, and told her that she could collect a financial windfall if she talked to them and not to law enforcement officials, according to the documents.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/272249261.html

I reviewed Busted for the Washington Times and I interviewed the Daily News reporters.

You can read my interview with the reporters via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/05/my-crime-beat-column-my-q-with-wendy.html 

Six Philly Cops Charged With Robbery, Kidnapping, Extortion

Jeremy Roebuck, Mark Fazilollah and Aubrey Whelen at the Philadelphia Inquirer offer a piece on the Philadelphia narcotics officers charged robbery, kidnapping and extortion.

Stories of shakedowns, brutality, kidnapping, and theft have dogged a group of the city's Narcotics Field Unit officers for nearly a decade. But despite multiple investigations, cases against them never stuck.

Federal prosecutors set out to change that Wednesday, laying out a sprawling racketeering case against six of the unit's former members. The charges paint them as rogue cops running roughshod over the rights of their targets, confident that few would believe anyone who dared complain.

As the years went on, the 26-count indictment suggests, Officers Thomas Liciardello, Brian Reynolds, Michael Spicer, Perry Betts, Linwood Norman, and John Speiser became only more brazen.

Between February 2006 and November 2012, it states, they stole more than $500,000 in cash, drugs, and personal property - all while using extreme force, and falsifying police reports to downplay their takes.
         

Targets who resisted, prosecutors say, were dangled over balconies, threatened with the seizure of their homes, held in dank hotel rooms for days, or beaten as the officers kept score on who could inflict the most debilitating injuries.

Speaking at a news conference Wednesday, Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey described the allegations as "one of the worst cases of corruption I have ever heard."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20140731_Sources__6_cops_arrested_in_federal_corruption_probe.html