Ronnie Polaneczky: Nutter fumbled beating response, then rose to occasion

AS THE INVESTIGATION continues into the beatings last week by Philly cops of three alleged perps, so, too, does the feeling that Mayor Nutter took too long to come out strongly against the pummeling.

"We have no audio," Nutter said of the video that was shot by a Fox 29 news chopper, just two days after the murder of Philly Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski. "You don't know what was going on at that moment when the officers approached the vehicle. There will be an investigation and we will move on.

"This is very dangerous work," he added. "We had an officer assassinated on Saturday. . . . Everyone has to understand that this entire city has been affected."

He was determined to put the beatings into the context of a city and Police Department so tense and emotionally overwrought that, well, you could understand where the cops might've been coming from.

Wrong answer, Mayor. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Nutter finally got around to the right one a day or two later, eventually telling CNN, "We have a standard of professionalism for our police officers. Clearly, at least by viewing the tape, we didn't meet that standard in this particular incident."

To some observers - including, obviously, the families of the beaten men - the admission was too little, too late, given how damning the video is.

Nonetheless, as long as the investigation proceeds fairly, I suspect Nutter will be forgiven his verbal fumble.

Why?

Because his straightforward rhetoric otherwise has been precisely what a fed-up city has wanted and needed to hear from their mayor since the day Liczbinski was gunned down.

Here's Nutter, after calling on the NRA to apologize to Liczbinski's family for not supporting stricter gun laws: "There's no legitimate argument by the NRA. They need to get in the real world where the rest of us live and come to grips with these kind of issues."

Describing the assault weapon used to kill Liczbinski, he said, "These weapons are for one purpose only, to maim and destroy human beings."

During a press conference urging the surrender of Eric DeShawn Floyd, alleged accomplice in Liczbin-ski's murder, he commanded: "Face up to what you have done. We can do this the easy way or the hard way."

Later, when Floyd was captured, Nutter crowed, "I told you earlier today that we would drag him out from under whatever rock he was hiding behind and we would bring him to justice."

He then rushed to the Roundhouse because "I wanted to see the person who had done this. There are moments when I am just Mike Nutter, and I wanted him to know I am disgusted with who he is and what he has done. . . . I looked him dead in the eye when he came in. I told him how disappointed I was in him."

Later, at an FOP event, Nutter said a serious message needed to be sent to those who would pick up a gun to resolve differences. "Everyone may not have had a storybook childhood," he said, referring to perps who blame their lousy past for their felonious present. "Get over it."

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, who also seemed too measured in his initial evaluation of the Fox 29 tape, has otherwise been direct and plainspoken in a way that city residents have craved.

When a reporter questioned whether the gun that mowed down Liczbinski could be correctly described as an assault weapon, given that even the Wikipedia Web site doesn't classify it as such, Ramsey bellowed, "I don't care about Wikipedia or any other kind of 'pedias! If it's not an assault weapon, then add it to the frickin' list!"

Pause for a moment and try to imagine a time when our former mayor, the verbally meandering John Street, ever would have referred to an alleged perp as "hiding under a rock."

Or when our burned-out former police commissioner, Sylvester Johnson, would've used the word "frickin' " at a press conference to channel justified rage and frustration.

I know - they're just words. And time will tell whether Nutter's and Ramsey's words are catchy phases devoid of heft or truly indicative of the new day Nutter has promised to a city exhausted by violence.

But for now, I think they've helped create enough goodwill to get Nutter and Ramsey through a scandal brought upon us by policemen who - let there be no word-mincing about it - let rage get the better of them. *

 
E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:

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