Meeting Bares Soul Of 60th St. After ‘ISIS’ Attack On Philadelphia Cop

by Tony West
Bryant Elementary School lies three blocks from where Police Officer Gary Hartnett was shot by Edward Archer last week – shot, Archer said on his arrest, in the name of the Islamist terrorist organization ISIS.

Tonight its auditorium filled with more than 200 people from the Cobbs Creek neighborhood of Philadelphia to learn the latest facts and process their worries with a panel of experts assembled by State Sen. Anthony Williams (D-W. Phila.). “I was stunned when this incident happened seven blocks from my home,” said the Senator. On the panel were Police Deputy Commissioner Myron Patterson, District Attorney Seth Williams, Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-Phila.), 3rd Dist. Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell and State Reps. Joanna McClinton and Vanessa Lowery Brown (both D-W. Phila.).

Andy DeVos of the City Behavioral Health Dept. was on hand to address community mental-health issues. Archer’s mother has reported he had been hearing voices before his assassination attempt.

But religion hung heavy in the air. Prayers were offered by a Protestant minister and also by the imam of Masjid Al-Mujahidin on 60th Street, where Archer had worshiped. About one-third of the crowd was Muslim, mostly from the Black American community.

Sen. Williams, who has been a strong supporter of police, hailed Hartnett’s courage in pursuing his assailant even after he himself had been wounded. He recommended to Patterson that Hartnett receive a promotion. Patterson thanked the community for its outpouring of support for Hartnett, who is still in the hospital.

But despite the Senator’s efforts to focus the discussion on international terrorism, neighbors harped on themes familiar to Black urban neighborhoods: fears of crime as well as anger about the way Black men in particular are treated by police.

“If you’re talking about terrorism, I’m terrorized every time I step outside my house,” Imam Asam Abdur-Rashid of Masjid Al-Mujahidin said.

“Are there enough police in Philadelphia?” a woman bluntly asked Patterson. When he turned the question back to the crowd, a groan of “No” went up.

Another man complained that 60th Street doesn’t get the intensive patrolling that 40th Street, in the University of Pennsylvania area, enjoys. That is true, Patterson conceded. Sen. Williams asked if the crowd was ready to pay more taxes to hire more police. Some said yes.

But others preferred to talk about police mistreatment of Blacks. “What about police terrorism?” one angry young man asked, citing several cases of alleged excessive violence against Blacks in Philadelphia and elsewhere. He was rewarded with roars of support.

Patterson pressed hard on the theme that he and his officers were there to serve the community. He acknowledged police behavior was not always perfect – “inappropriate language” was the complaint most often lodged against officers, he said – but he insisted that sensitivity training was ongoing on the force and he outlined the steps by which citizens can complain if they feel they have been treated unfairly by individual police officers.

Rev. Paul “Earthquake” Moore asked what in particular could be done to deal with the PTSD suffered by children and teenagers in the community in the aftermath of this and other crimes. DeVos nodded and said the community had now “tasked” him with the duty to get a psychiatrist into Bryant School to deal with youngsters’ trauma.

The meeting was clearly engineered to shelter local Muslims from backlash – although no anti-Muslim sentiment was voiced. Abdur-Rashid portrayed Muslims as concerned community activists who volunteer to combat litter and maintain standards in a neighborhood where disorder and decay permanently lurk as threats to the stability of this working-class neighborhood.

Aliyah Khabir, a Muslim, decried the “double standard” of the news media. “When a Christian shoots someplace up, the media don’t ask if we have a Christian problem in this country,” she said.

One Muslim woman described Philadelphia as “the most Muslim-friendly city in America.” Another claimed there were 250,000 Muslims in Philadelphia – an exaggeration, surely, but a reflection of a real trend in Black Philadelphia. “Every family has at least one Muslim in it,” she asserted.

But Christian voices were heard in solidarity with Muslims as well. “We are all our brother’s keeper,” said Blackwell.

“In this election year, there are a lot of people who will compete on negativity,” said Sen. Williams. “They want to divide us along racial, religious, class and regional lines. I will not stand for that.”