PHILLY RIOTERS GO TO WAR WITH POLICE
30 officers hurt, 90 arrests after black man killed by cops
Philadelphia erupted in violence Monday following the police shooting death of a knife-wielding black man, sparking a night of rioting that left 30 cops injured.
By Tuesday, the Trump administration had offered to send in federal troops and the state’s governor had activated the National Guard in anticipation of another raucous night.
At least 90 people were arrested during protests over the death of Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old man who was killed by cops after refusing to drop a knife at around 4 p.m. Monday, according to police.
Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said three protesters were issued citations for failure to disperse, 11 were charged with assaulting police officers and 76 were charged with burglary, including three suspects who were armed. The mob also turned on journalists, charging at three TV cameramen and trashing an ABC News van.
Left-wing groups appeared to help coordinate chaos by monitoring publicly accessible police scanners and announcing officers’ movements on social media.
“We’re monitoring the situation closely,” White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah said on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday. “If necessary we’ll be standing by and prepared to deploy federal resources.”
Asked if the administration would wait for a request for help from Philly Mayor Jim Kenney, Farah said “that’s a question for DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security.”
Meanwhile Tuesday, it was revealed that
officers had been at Wallace’s home twice earlier on Monday on domestic-disturbance calls before they returned for the third time, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Tuesday.
The family’s final call of the day wasn’t to cops, but for an ambulance to respond to a spiraling mental-health issue, the Wallaces’ attorney, Shaka Johnson, told the outlet.
When two police officers nonetheless responded to the home, Wallace’s pregnant wife told the officers that her husband suffered from bipolar disorder and was in crisis, Johnson said. The officers shot Wallace when he refused to drop a knife he was holding, with parts of the fatal encounter caught on video.
The family on Tuesday questioned why police shot him, with his father telling reporters his son was on medication.
“They were advised that he had mentalhealth issues,” the dead man’s cousin, Anthony Fitzhugh, told the Inquirer.
“I understand he had a knife, and their job is to protect and serve,” Fitzhugh continued. “By all means, do so, but do not let lethal force be the means by which you de-escalate the situation. You could have still kept your gun drawn while another officer Tased him.
“It didn’t have to happen this way,” he
added. “At what point do you draw a line and say, ‘OK, I’m going over a limit. This no longer falls under my job description, this is murder?’ ”
Just hours after the shooting, protesters were torching police cars, looting stores and charging at lines of cops in riot gear.
“This completely caught us off guard in the sense that, one, no one can predict that there’s an officer-involved shooting,” Outlaw told the Inquirer. “And, two, once we arrived there we saw that there would be civil unrest.”