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Thursday, October 30, 2008
Fan Watch: A police show of force on Broad Street

By 1:30, police began to move on Broad and Sansom-Walnut, the most troublesome site.
The officers came from three directions, from South Philly, where dozens of officers had assembled at Broad and Washington and moved north; and from both sides of Broad Street.

Along the way, the officers went by Chestnut just west of Broad, where there were  some reports of minor  looting of some of the stores there.

Many of the officers on hand were being redeployed from the other hot spots, including Frankford and Cottman Avenues, which by 1 a.m. had largely quieted down.

Police had almost cleared Broad Street south of City Hall. About a dozen mounted police, accompanied by officers on bicycles and motorcycles, cleared the street and forcied people onto the sidewalk and down the side streets.

 

 

 

Posted by Inquirer Online Desk @ 1:42 AM  Permalink | 20 comments
Comments   
Posted 01:53 AM, 10/30/2008
gman1966
People come on now why must people do these dumb things It's a time to celebrate what goes thru peoples minds when they do this it's amazing Thank you Phillies
Posted 02:01 AM, 10/30/2008
js5180
Yo you can't just wreck and burn everything. Looting? Come on. That's not a celebration even in this town.
Posted 02:14 AM, 10/30/2008
phillytrax
Setting off M4s and fireworks, lighting dumpsters on fire along Broad Street, knocking down streetlamps and traffic lights and running off with them, destroying decorative planters and smashing SEPTA bus windows - it's been a while. I don't condone the damage but really - what else could have been expected.
Posted 03:07 AM, 10/30/2008
ksensenig
Broad St. was crazy from 10pm till around 2am. Cars were overturned, dumpsters burned, the music store on Broad and Sansom had its windows smashed as well as many other stores close by including the Commerce Bank. For the first hour or so, there was almost no police activity. Then a group of riot police marched down Sansom to Broad, and more followed. There less than 100 for another hour or so, and they roamed from one burning dumpster to the next, with little control of the situation. Then more riot police came in yellow school busses, making their way through the excited crowd. Soon the number of police began to swell; cops on bikes, joined the riot police and began flanking the streets and moving everyone off of Broad, to the east and west. I saw several altercations at the point. There was one rough officer in plain clothes who began fist fights with several members of the crowd. At one point, he drew his gun and began waving it at the crowd. I was about 5 feet away, but quickly ducked and ran before he opened fire. Luckily, he did not discharge his gun. However, I saw the same undercover officer several times throughout the night in fist fights with various members of the crowd. The reason I believe he must have been a cop is that he was always engaging in fights with a large number of riot police behind him. I'm assuming that if he was not an officer, once he drew his gun, the actual police would have done something so nobody would get hurt. Unfortunately, Center City has been completely trashed, with thousands of dollars of damage, if not more.
Posted 03:17 AM, 10/30/2008
ksensenig
By 1:30am there were at least several hundred, if not thousand police down Broad and the intersecting streets. I observed between 100 to 200 bicycle police on these streets. Many members of the crowd threw glass bottles at the groups of riot police. Broad St. was almost completely cleared by 2am, with several hundred police officers gathered in the center median. The bicycle police by and large were the ones at the front line, pushing the crowd East and West off of Broad, followed by groups of riot police. Many people were lightly beaten when they did not move immediately.
Posted 06:46 AM, 10/30/2008
Nezhy
Shocked cops werent there to protect Avenue of the Arts. There were 5000 cops in south Philly, almost too many. Not good dispersion of police forces there commish.
Posted 07:36 AM, 10/30/2008
Dierte
Cops said this wasn't half as bad as other celebrations in passt years....calm down people
Posted 07:37 AM, 10/30/2008
Dierte
ksensenig - you wrote that post at 3:00 AM I bet it was right after you did all the vandalizing!!!
Posted 07:40 AM, 10/30/2008
BillyPenn
I was at Broad and Tasker the crowd was rowdy but controled, Nothiing got burned down this end, center city, must have been all the suburbs kids.
Posted 07:45 AM, 10/30/2008
mikec22
The police on Broad St and in center city did a great job, some people were unfortunately acting like idiots. It could have very easily gotten out of control, the police were way outnumbered until the backups arrived. Thank you Phillies and people let's behave on Friday.
Posted 09:33 AM, 10/30/2008
goJ0E v2.0
Eh, that's why everyone pays for insurance. Let them handle the claims...let us celebrate the 2008 WORLD CHAMPS!!!!!
Posted 09:36 AM, 10/30/2008
KensingKING
Blacks and Latinos riot because of injustice. Whites loot and riot because of Sport teams winning...LoL...
Posted 09:43 AM, 10/30/2008
Philatonian
We WON, let's destroy OUR city. And I love how this article makes it sound like "minor looting" is an expected occurance. The police should have been lining Broad Street on horse back an hour before the game ended.
Posted 09:48 AM, 10/30/2008
BigJoeBlanton
Posted by kimb 03:55 AM, 10/30/2008 This report is wildly exaggerated. I was there, on Broad between Locust and Chestnut, from midnight to about 1:30am when the police pushed us down Broad and off to the side streets. The riot police got off their buses around 12:30am. Before that, the crowd was huge but well-behaved and joyful. Even the drunken louts were happy and well-behaved. An officer I spoke to at Spruce around midnight said that the crowd had been good all night. The mood change quickly when the riot police arrived - it was suddenly tense because of their presence, not before it. There was some damage - every one of the giant, round terracotta planters along Broad, from Spruce to City Hall, were turned upside down in the street with happy people standing on them for the view. A few kids had climbed on top of newpaper kiosks. Newspaper dispensers were overturned everywhere. I saw one bike that got trampled. Three or four small bonfires of newspapers were started here and there but sputtered out quickly. There were some lovely starburst fireworks, shot over the crowd (not into it!) at Broad and Chestnut. The one shocking incident was a small red sportscar flipped upside down on Walnut at Broad - that was the one serious act of hooliganism I saw. There was only one flipped car. Between 12:30am and 1:30am, lines of riot police charged back and forth through the crowds at Chestnut and Broad. Only once did I see anything thrown at them - about 4 small items were tossed after one charge, none of them bottles. One young man climbed a street light pole to lead the crowd in a Go Phillies chant, but the riot police rushed up and beat him down with their batons - a bit of unnecessary force, frankly. I live two blocks off Broad and am no hooligan: 48 yr old, female, college prof. If the scene was anything like the kind of mayhem (falsely) implied by the reporter's claims above, I wouldn't have been there. This report is ridiculously overstated.
Posted 09:55 AM, 10/30/2008
BigJoeBlanton
Ksensig... Your post makes it clear that it's really all about how you report things. I copied and pasted a post from another Blog describing the same scene, but with a much different take. I was at Broad and Walnut until about 1 - 1:30 when the SWAT team showed up. You're only portraying the .01% of bad stuff that happened. 99.9% of what happened last night was safe, fun celebrating. You're right, there's no excuse for the flipped car, broken windows, and trying to fight the cops, but your posts make it sound like the whole atmosphere was an insane war zone. That is simply a false representation. Those few incidents were a small minority of what what happened last night. Like I said, it was 99.9% a big, fun, safe party and that's a fact that should not be lost.
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