April
10, 2008 - Issue 272 |
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After
30 Years, the MOVE 9 Must be Paroled Color of Law By David A. Love, JD BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board |
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Seven years before the 1985 bombing
of the radical Black collective MOVE - in which the On August 8, 1978, officers of the
Philadelphia Police Department were involved in a confrontation with
MOVE members at their Now the eight remaining members are up for parole. They have been exemplary prisoners, and should be released. But many would argue that they should not have been imprisoned in the first place. The judge said that he had “absolutely no idea” who killed Officer Ramp. Moreover, he reasoned that since the MOVE defendants called themselves a family, he decided to sentence them as a family. Some observers have concluded that
the officer was a victim of police gunfire. While the ballistic report
claims that the officer was shot from a downward trajectory, the MOVE
members were in their basement at the time of the incident. “But let’s
think about this for a minute. You don’t have to be a ballistician to
figure this one out. It’s just common sense,” said Linn Washington,
Jr., veteran journalist with the Philadelphia Tribune and professor
at In an interview with journalist Hans Bennett, Washington - who was on the ground reporting on the 1978 siege - noted that according to police sources, Ramp was killed by police. “You’ve got four male MOVE members in the basement allegedly armed, according to police testimony. A basement by its very nature means it’s below ground level.… So, anything they’re shooting out of the windows has to be at an upward trajectory. They would have to shoot up to get out the window. Ramp was directly across the street at ground level. So how could something hit him, in what was said to be a downward type angle, when MOVE members were firing upward from that basement?” There were other problems with the
case, including the destruction of evidence by police. The police destroyed
the MOVE house after the siege, despite a court order barring them from
doing just that. Unfortunately, although this act of official misconduct
is reprehensible, it is not surprising. After all, this was the Throughout the nation during this
period, in To the untutored, the term political
prisoner conjures up images of the old In reality, prisons are Meanwhile, no efforts imaginable would allow the MOVE 9 to regain the 30 years they have lost languishing behind bars. However, parole would be a step in the right direction. Their supporters are signing an online petition, and contacting the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole to make their voices heard. BlackCommentator.com Editorial
Board member David A. Love, JD is a lawyer and journalist based in
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