Mayor Kenney Orders Cops To Stand Down As Squatters Erect Tent City On Scenic Ben Franklin Parkway

By Ralph Cipriano

for BigTrial.net

As a band of homeless activists set up a tent city on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway yesterday, Mayor Jim Kenney ordered police to stand down and do nothing.

Activists set up less than a hundred tents at the base of the Von Colln Memorial Field, at the corner of 22nd and the Parkway, where spectators used to gather to watch Fairmount kids play ball. 

Signs went up proclaiming "Housing Now!", "Black Lives Matter" and "Defund and Disband" the police. 

Cops were furious about the mayor's stand-down order. "We are under a tyrannical dictatorship," one cop said about Kenney. "The people of the city want and frankly deserve and should demand better."

Amen.

Under Kenney's disastrous leadership, he and his rookie police commissioner were totally unprepared for the riots that began May 30th, and left Center City, the 52nd St. corridor, and other commercial sections of town boarded up with plywood and still smelling of arson fires.

Now Kenney has given up a baseball field on the scenic parkway to hundreds of protesters, who in just a couple of days, have doubled the size of their tent city. 

Mayor Kenney's been groveling and pandering and trying to appease the protesters since before they even came to town, but it's clearly not working.

On Wednesday night, demonstrators were picketing the mayor's penthouse at Third and Race. They've got another demonstration planned outside Kenney's penthouse for Sunday night. Maybe the rest of the citizens should join in.

Meanwhile, the city, which already has a budget deficit of $650 million, has been spending more than $1 million a day just on police overtime. That's an additional expenditure of at least $14 million in the two weeks since the protests began on May 30th.

And that's just the start of the costs of the civil unrest that the mayor has allowed to continue unabated.

Does anybody remember that before the protesters came to town, the city was under an emergency lockdown because of the coronavirus. Law-abiding citizens were prohibited from opening their businesses, or going to church, or to work, or to restaurants. They also were prohibited from assembling in groups larger than 10, a limit that's recently been raised to 25.

 But under the Progressive leadership of Kenney, all of the coronavirus rules under the emergency lockdown have been thrown out the window so that the protesters can gather in the streets, and pretty much do whatever the hell they want. 

The takeover of Von Colln Field was reminiscent of the Occupy Philadelphia movement that desecrated Dilworth Plaza back in 2011. After months of occupation, the cops finally had to clear out a tent city, but not before the protesters squatting there did more than $1 million worth of damage. 

In reaction to the latest outbreak of lawlessness, the local news media continues to treat both the mayor as well as the protesters who have taken over the city with kid gloves.

The headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Philadelphians experiencing homelessness build protest encampment on Ben Franklin Parkway: 'We all matter.'"

The newspaper reported that the protesters had reached out to the Workers Revolutionary Collective for support, and that local residents were donating food, clothing and medical supplies, which was sure to extend the stay of the squatters.

Meanwhile, the Kenney administration continues its double standard --  for law-abiding citizens a lockdown, and for lawless protesters, appeasement and anything goes.

Besides the mayor, Philadelphia's other official disaster is District Attorney Larry Krasner. He just announced that he's going to appoint a task force to investigate the more than 2,000 arrests made by the police during the demonstrations. Krasner's goals -- free the demonstrators and indict as many cops as he can.

"Peaceful protest is not a crime," Krasner said at a virtual press conference. He claimed that most of the protesters that were arrested were between the ages of 18 to 24, had been cited for curfew violations, and typically didn't have any prior records.

On the other side of Krasner's double standard, he said he's anxious to indict more cops.

"We take the obligation to investigate instances of violence by police officers," Krasner told the media.

On Twitter, U.S. Attorney William McSwain responded, "Anybody who is familiar with Krasner's methods could see this coming a mile away. He is setting the stage for letting the rioters, looters, burglars and arsonists who rampaged through Philadelphia off the hook."

Kenney and Krasner, a Progressive recipe for disaster.