With this post, I am shutting down comments on this site.

I don’t have the energy or desire or time to freak out about what goes on here any longer. It’s not worth it. No matter how many of us see what’s wrong with this city, it will never change. The mentality is too ingrained in the majority of Philadelphians. Go back to the infamous throwing snowballs at Santa forty years ago and you’ll realize that the attitude here is nothing new. It’s passed down from generation to generation like a malignant heirloom. We outsiders can’t change that. All we can do is try our best to not let it get to us and not allow their behavior to make us negative as well.

Those of us who are stuck here for various reasons simply have to get over our anger at what we experience. This shit hole isn’t worth having a coronary over.

Thank you to all of you who have posted comments venting your own frustration. Knowing that I’m not alone in my feelings has been a tremendous comfort. I hope that reading this blog has helped you as well. In particular, I’d like to give a big hug to Marie, Mel, Suzy Q, Krista, Vijay, Manny G (even though your last comment to Vijay was a little harsh – if he could get out now obviously he would), and any other frequent commenter I’ve forgotten to mention. My fervent wish for you all is that you can find peace within yourselves while living amidst the muck.

Thank you to all those who have posted intelligently either in defense of your city or in agreement that you realize that there’s so many things wrong here. You show that there are good, sensible people here, even though our views might differ. As I’ve said from the beginning, not everyone in Philadelphia is an asshole.

Thank you to all who have left irate, senseless, vulgar, combative, threatening comments defending your city. Reading those comments always made me laugh.

In the end, no matter how you try to candy-coat and make excuses for it, Philadelphia is a mess of a city. Statistics are impartial; they don’t lie. The information in the article below is just one more example of why this is NOT a nice place to live. Let’s leave it at that.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/136418593.html?cmpid=15585797

Kill-adelphia: Yet again, city tops list of homicide rates

BY STEPHANIE FARR & DANA DiFILIPPO
Philadelphia Daily News

ON THE DOOR into the Uceta Mini Market in North Philadelphia, a sign warns shoppers, “No Weapons Allowed.”

Inside, the message on a sign sandwiched between cigarette ads is even more blunt: “Stop. Shooting. People.”

The market sits at Stillman and Somerset streets, just steps from the scenes of two recent gun slayings that remain unsolved. But in the store, where you can buy everything from milk to motor oil, the signs are an ignored, endured part of everyday existence – just like the homicides themselves.

This is among the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, where violence is as ingrained as the futility many feel that it will ever abate.

“I know a lot of people who got killed, maybe 10, I don’t know how many,” Marcus Henry, 29, said yesterday as he got his morning coffee.

Murders are up again this year in Philadelphia, and the city still has the highest homicide rate of the nation’s 10 most populous cities, according to stats provided by each city’s police department. At the same time, fewer murders are getting solved.

With a few days left in the year, the city’s homicide tally stood at 324 Wednesday, including the eight victims allegedly killed in previous years by West Philly abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Last year, 306 people were killed, and the year before, 302.

But despite the jump in homicides this year, city officials prefer to focus on the past. When they compare numbers, they go back to 2007, when murders in Philly were at the five-year high of 392. Looking at it that way, they get a 17 percent decrease in the murder rate from 2007 to 2011.

Police spokesman Lt. Raymond Evers said the department compares this year’s tally with 2007′s to see long-range trends. “It’s hard to get a trend between two years,” he said.

But John Coleman, shopping at the Uceta market yesterday, wasn’t buying the spin.

“They lyin’,” said Coleman, 25.

Mayor Nutter, at a debate during his 2007 campaign, pledged that he wouldn’t seek re-election if the 2010 homicide tally was more than the 288 killed in 2002. Then at his inauguration in January 2008, he set what turned out to be an overly ambitious goal of slashing the city’s murder rate by 30 to 50 percent in three to five years. He won re-election this year.

So, number nitpicking is de rigueur at City Hall.

“We’ve been pretty much flat for about two years, if you take the Gosnell numbers out,” said Everett Gillison, deputy mayor for public safety, who spoke for the Nutter administration.

Gillison said the city had been making progress, but when the economy tanked, the mayor was unable to implement some of his plans for reducing crime.

“We’ve had to make some adjustments to our plan,” he said, “but we’re committed to extending our commitment” to reducing homicides.

Comparing murder rates with the rest of the 10 most populous cities, Philly comes out on top, with 20.7 homicides per 100,000 residents. The next closest are Chicago, 15.7, and Dallas, 10.9.

New York’s rate is 6.1, and even notorious Los Angeles’ is only 7.8, though rates for some smaller cities – like Detroit, New Orleans and St. Louis – are much worse than Philly.

Numbers aside, officials have no unexpected explanations for what’s driving the trends. Some observers point to demographics.

Black citizens comprised 84 percent of homicide victims from January to June 2011, according to police statistics. Evers said he expects that trend will remain consistent once numbers are crunched through December.

“Responsibility has to be taken by members of the African-American community to address the issues that deal with this particular problem,” Gillison said. “African-American males killed by other African-American males is literally the elephant in the room.”

Chad Dion Lassiter, president of the Black Men at Penn School of Social Work, agreed: “Some of the black politicians in Philadelphia sit quiet on institutional racism and the black homicide rate. If I was giving them a grade, they’d all be in summer school.”

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey laments the state’s lack of strong gun control. Firearms were used in nearly 82 percent of the city’s murders this year. Although shootings dropped more than 3 percent, more injuries ended in death, Ramsey said.

Retaliation also continues to be a problem, he said. Argument was the most common motive for murder, followed by what are categorized as unknown reasons, highway robbery and retaliation, according to police data from January to June.

Lassiter partly attributes the violence to the economy.

“People who have jobs don’t commit crimes usually,” he said. “Someone might drive [drunk], but working people for the most part don’t pull guns on one another.”

As for the falling murder-clearance rate, Evers said the department has made 221 murder arrests this year, down from 271 last year. “Our clearance rate was definitely better last year,” he said. “Unfortunately, when you have more homicides, there’s more jobs to go around to the same number of detectives.”

http://cbs3.com/local/move.bombing.philadelphia.2.1687315.html

Philly Neighborhood Scars Unhealed From 1985 Bomb

25-Year’s Since Philadelphia’s MOVE Bombing

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ― Gerri Bostic lost all her material possessions 25 years ago when police dropped a bomb on her block, killing five children and six adult members of the militant group MOVE and incinerating 61 row homes.

Perhaps her biggest losses were her peace of mind and sense of community.

Her West Philadelphia neighborhood—now nearly vacant and eerily quiet—never recovered from the city’s horrific botched attempt to arrest the MOVE members on May 13, 1985. The violent confrontation was a rare bombing of American citizens by civilian authorities in the United States.

Today, after spending more than $43 million on redevelopment, the city has two blocks of boarded-up eyesores to show for its efforts. The homes built to replace those lost in the bomb-ignited inferno were so shoddy that officials stopped making repairs and offered buyouts.

“There’s nothing nice about this block anymore,” said Bostic, 89. “All the people are gone.”

And now that a long-running lawsuit over the replacement houses has ended, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell says the city needs to put the past to rest on Osage Avenue and Pine Street.

“It’s time to make peace with it all and fix up the properties,” Blackwell said.

It won’t be easy; Philadelphia has many blighted areas competing for attention. And developers of these blocks will have the added challenge of winning support from embittered residents whose American Dream of homeownership has been a nightmare.

“We’ve been victimized twice,” Osage resident Milton Williams said.

Some might say Williams and his neighbors have been victimized three times—the first being when MOVE arrived around 1981.

The revolutionary back-to-nature group came to the city’s Cobbs Creek section after a 1978 shootout with police at its previous home. One officer died in the firefight; nine MOVE members went to prison, and others moved to Osage Avenue.

They soon turned their middle-class row house into a fortified compound, with a bunker on the roof and wooden slats over the windows. Reeking garbage attracted vermin, and loudspeakers blared obscene daily rants against authorities for jailing their peers.

“You really couldn’t get any rest,” said Connie Renfrow, who still lives on Osage. “The kids couldn’t do their studies.”

Her husband, Gerald Renfrow, said neighbors at first tried to address the problems directly with MOVE members, all of whom used the surname Africa. When talking failed, residents called authorities—but to no avail.

“They just let it fester,” he said.

Police decided to move on MOVE in mid-May 1985, obtaining arrest and search warrants on the belief the group’s house contained illegal weapons and explosives. Authorities evacuated the block on May 12, telling residents there would be a police action the next day.

When they were refused entry to serve the warrants on May 13, police began an hours-long siege using water cannons, tear gas and bullets. A state police helicopter flew overhead carrying Philadelphia officers and a canvas satchel loaded with explosives.

The bomb ignited a gasoline-fueled conflagration that killed the MOVE militants and children and obliterated two blocks of homes. Ramona Africa, then 29, and Birdie Africa, then 13, escaped with major burns.

Residents, who had been told to take just a change of clothes with them, came home to find ruins.

“Nothing but brick and rubble,” recalled Gerald Renfrow, 64.

After more than a year in temporary housing, residents returned to their rebuilt homes in the fall of 1986. That winter, the roofs started leaking.

Next came discoveries of defective plumbing and wiring, bad flooring, nails popping out of walls, burst pipes, flooded basements and backyards and broken appliances. Replacement trees have since uprooted parts of the sidewalk and are strangling pipes.

Milton Williams, 61, has had five stoves, four roofs and two living room ceilings. Today, his front and back windows look out on boarded-up homes.

“It’s embarrassing to invite people over here,” he said.

After 14 years of unending repairs, then-Mayor John Street decided in 2000 that the houses were beyond salvage. He offered owners $125,000 each plus $25,000 in moving expenses; 37 people took him up on it. The homes were then worth about $75,000 each.

But 24 residents sued for breach of contract for stopping the repairs, which had been promised by Street’s predecessor. A federal jury awarded each homeowner $534,000, but a judge slashed it to $250,000. An appeal brought the settlement to $190,000 per house in 2008.

Sixteen homeowners, including Williams and Bostic, accepted the deal. Bostic, though, said it is not enough money to move off Osage and, in any case, she is too old to start over. She turns 90 in September.

“I think if I have to move it will kill me,” Bostic said. “Why couldn’t they fix the houses like they should have?”

Williams said he won’t spend any money on his house while the city-owned homes are abandoned.

“I’m not going to invest any more in this place not knowing what they’re going to do with these homes,” Williams said.

Eight homeowners—including the Renfrows—have refused to accept the settlement, saying to do so would wrongly imply the city had made things right.

The Renfrows say the money would not allow them to buy an equivalent house in an area with the amenities they have now—a park, public transportation and proximity to downtown, shopping and entertainment.

And while they’ve paid off their mortgage, they cannot tap the home’s equity. The house is valueless and unsellable, they say, as long as it needs repairs and sits amid blight.

“They promised to make us whole,” said Connie Renfrow, 63. “They haven’t even made us halfway whole.”

Blackwell, the councilwoman who represents the area, says developers have expressed interest in the lots but never followed through—in part because of the legal baggage and lack of support from the city.

Still, six months before the homeowners’ suit settled, Blackwell wrote to the new mayor’s chief of staff to say it is “long past the time that we have a plan for these properties.”

“I think we have all been fortunate that no one has broken into these homes and created another disaster,” she wrote in March 2008.

Neighbors agree. They say Osage, which once hosted huge community block parties, has become a street for illicit sex and drug deals because of the blight.

“They think that no one lives here,” Gerald Renfrow said. Blackwell repeated her warning in a letter last December to Mayor Michael Nutter, the fourth city leader to deal with fallout from the bombing. But little has been done.

Nutter spokesman Doug Oliver said in a statement that, unfortunately, the city has many blighted areas demanding attention.

“In the long run, our best hope to redevelop these neighborhoods is to continue building a vibrant city with a strong tax base that will enable us to rebuild these communities,” he said.

The MOVE survivors and victims’ relatives collectively received about $5.5 million in compensation from the city. Some MOVE members now live in a blue-and-white Victorian in the city’s Clark Park section, about two miles from Osage Avenue.

There are no slats, no roof bunker, no loudspeakers—just a few dogs.

Ramona Africa, now 54, said the group of about three dozen members continues to fight what it considers the unfair incarceration of eight members for the 1978 officer killing. A ninth died in prison.

“There is no justice in the legal system,” Africa said. “Not just for MOVE, but for anybody.”

Meanwhile, their former house on Osage was rebuilt and sits among those boarded up.

For 20 years after the bombing, it was occupied first by the city’s redevelopment authority, then by a round-the-clock police detail to ensure MOVE did not return.

Today, phone books are piled on the stoop, a decrepit sawhorse sits by the front door and the window blinds are drawn.

The police, too, have moved out.

This story broke during my absence. It’s old news at this point but still deserves to be here.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/90997579.html

Lawyer: Laptops took thousands of images

By John P. Martin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

The system that Lower Merion school officials used to track lost and stolen laptops wound up secretly capturing thousands of images, including photographs of students in their homes, Web sites they visited, and excerpts of their online chats, says a new motion filed in a suit against the district.

More than once, the motion asserts, the camera on Robbins’ school-issued laptop took photos of Robbins as he slept in his bed. Each time, it fired the images off to network servers at the school district.

Back at district offices, the Robbins motion says, employees with access to the images marveled at the tracking software. It was like a window into “a little LMSD soap opera,” a staffer is quoted as saying in an e-mail to Carol Cafiero, the administrator running the program.

“I know, I love it,” she is quoted as having replied.

Those details, disclosed in the motion filed late Thursday in federal court by Robbins’ attorney, offer a wider glimpse into the now-disabled program that spawned Robbins’ lawsuit and has shined an international spotlight on the district.

In the filing, the Penn Valley family claims the district’s records show that the controversial tracking system captured more than 400 photos and screen images from 15-year-old Blake Robbins’ school-issued laptop during two weeks last fall, and that “thousands of webcam pictures and screen shots have been taken of numerous other students in their homes.”

Robbins, a sophomore at Harriton High School, and his parents, Michael and Holly Robbins, contend e-mails turned over to them by the district suggest Cafiero “may be a voyeur” who might have viewed some of the photos on her home computer.

The motion says Cafiero, who has been placed on paid leave, has failed to turn that computer over to the plaintiffs despite a court order to do so, and asks a judge to sanction her.

Cafiero’s lawyer Thursday night disputed the suggestion that his client had downloaded any such photos to her home computer. Lawyer Charles Mandracchia said Cafiero has cooperated with federal investigators and is willing to let technicians hired by the district examine her computer if the judge so orders.

He also said Robbins’ attorney had never asked him for Cafiero’s personal computer. “He’s making this up because his case is falling apart,” Mandracchia said.

Since the Robbinses sued in February, district officials have acknowledged that they activated the theft-tracking software on school-issued laptops 42 times since September, and a number of times in the previous school year – all in order to retrieve lost or stolen computers.

But they have stopped short of specifying how many students may have been photographed and monitored, or how often – information that could shed light on whether Robbins’ experience was unique or common.

An attorney for the district declined to comment last night on the Robbinses’ latest motion, except to say that a report due in a few weeks will spell out what the district’s own investigation has found.

“To the extent there is any evidence of misuse of any images, that also will be disclosed,” said the attorney, former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. “However, at this late stage of our investigation we are not aware of any such evidence.”

The Robbinses’ lawyer, Mark S. Haltzman, said the new details emerged in tens of thousands of pages of documents and e-mails the district turned over to him in recent weeks.

Three district employees have also given sworn depositions in the suit. A fourth, Cafiero, declined to answer Haltzman’s questions, asserting her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

According to the latest filing by the Robbinses, officials first activated the tracking software on a school-issued Apple MacBook that Robbins took home on Oct. 20.

Hundreds of times in the next two weeks, the filing says, the program did its job each time it was turned on: A tiny camera atop the laptop snapped a photo, software inside copied the laptop screen image, and a locating device recorded the Internet address – something that could help district technicians pinpoint where the machine was.

The system was designed to take a new picture every 15 minutes until it was turned off.

The material disclosed by the district contains hundreds of photos of Robbins and his family members – “including pictures of Blake partially undressed and of Blake sleeping,” the motion states.

Through Haltzman, the Robbinses last night gave The Inquirer a photo they said was among the Web cam images turned over by school officials. The picture shows Blake asleep in bed at 5 p.m. last Oct. 26, the lawyer said.

Robbins and his parents say they first learned of the technology on Nov. 11, when an assistant Harriton principal confronted the teen with an image collected by the tracking software.

Robbins has said one image showed him with a handful of Mike and Ike candies – which the administrator thought were illegal pills.

The family’s lawyers have argued that neither Blake nor many of the other students whose laptop cameras were activated had reported those laptops missing or stolen. According to the motion, an unspecified number of laptops were being tracked because students had failed to return computers or pay a required insurance fee.

The district has said it turned on the camera in Robbins’ computer because his family had not paid the $55 insurance fee and he was not authorized to take the laptop home.

U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois has ordered all parties in the case to meet by Tuesday, the latest step toward a settlement. Meanwhile, federal and county investigators are examining whether the laptop security program violated any laws.

Also Thursday, Sen. Arlen Specter (D., Pa.) introduced legislation to close what he said was a loophole in federal wiretap laws and prevent unauthorized monitoring. Specter recently held a hearing in Philadelphia on the issue.

“Many of us expect to be subject to certain kinds of video surveillance when we leave our homes and go out each day – at the ATM, at traffic lights, or in stores, for example,” Specter, who is running for reelection, said on the floor of the Senate. “What we do not expect is to be under visual surveillance in our homes, in our bedrooms and, most especially, we do not expect it for our children in our homes.”

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/Phila_man_arrested_for_setting_family_puppy_on_fire.html

Phila. man charged with setting family puppy on fire

By Sam Wood
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

A Northeast Philadelphia man who allegedly poured rubbing alcohol over a puppy and lit it on fire was arrested today by Pennsylvania SPCA officers and Philadelphia police.

John William Fleet III, 33, was taken into custody at his home on the 1100 block of Sanger Street in the city’s Oxford Circle section and charged with animal cruelty, police said. Additional charges are pending.

The 5-month-old pit bull mix, which the family had for about 60 days, was burned “very badly,” said George Bengal, the SPCA’s director of law enforcement.

Its neck and ears were charred, its whiskers were burned off, and one of its corneas seared, Bengal said

“It’s going to be disfigured and maybe also blind in one eye,” Bengal said. In addition to the burns caused by the flaming alcohol, Bengal said the animal also had been burned repeatedly with a lit cigarette.

The puppy, which rescuers have named Rudy, was being treated tonight at the SPCA facility on East Erie Avenue.

Fleet told investigators the dog was burned accidentally. But his children told a different tale – they said it was deliberate, Bengal said.

“He actually had them hold the dog while he did it,” Bengal said.

The traumatized children, ages 6 and 12, told a counselor at Harding Middle School this morning that their father became enraged at the puppy Thursday night after it nipped at them, Bengal said.

The counselor called police who then notified the SPCA.

When officers arrived at the house, Fleet would not come to the door.

“We knocked and banged,” Bengal said. “We had to break in through a second-story window to gain entrance.

Bengal found the dog stowed in the basement.

“It was constantly shaking its head because it was in pain,” he said. “The burns were hard to see because the dog is dark brown.”

Investigators collected additional evidence and may pursue arson charges, Bengal said.

“When he set the dog on fire, the couch caught fire also,” Bengal said. “It also burned up part up a rug. We had to remove all that.”

The children last night were staying with their mother at another location.

Fleet, who was charged last year with aggravated assault and firearms counts, is scheduled to go to trial February 8 on those charges, according to court records.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Eagles-players-honor-Michael-Vick-with-award-for?urn=nfl,210601

Eagles players honor Michael Vick with award for courage

By Chris Chase

According to Philadelphia Eagles players, the most courageous man on the team in 2009 was one who started the year serving time in prison for an act of extreme cowardice.

Today, the Eagles announced that Michael Vick was the 2009 winner of the Ed Block Courage Award, an honor given to a player who shows courage in the face of adversity. Vick’s teammates voted for the award, thus demonstrating how tone-deaf and out-of-touch NFL players are with reality.

According to the Ed Block Courage Award Foundation Web site:

Each year, the Ed Block Courage Awards honors those National Football League players who exemplify commitments to the principles of sportsmanship and courage. Recipients are selected by their teammates for team effort, as well as individual performance.

The Ed Block Courage Award recipient symbolizes professionalism, great strength and dedication. He is also a community role model.

One recipient is selected from each NFL team, usually for things like coming back from injury, doing good work in the community or long, dedicated service to a franchise. I’d be surprised if the award’s founders intended for the honor to be given to someone doing community service as part of the terms of his parole or for showing courage in the face of reporters asking legitimate questions about federal crimes.

The Eagles’ vote is not only a slap in the face to the Ed Block Courage Award Foundation, but to the other 31 players who won the award for their respective teams. Some men are truly deserving of the honor, like Ravens safety Dawan Landry(notes) who was nearly paralyzed last year, but has come back in ’09 with four interceptions and a touchdown or Mike Furrey(notes) of the Browns, who does extensive volunteer work in his community. Adding Vick’s name to the roll makes the award seem illegitimate and meaningless.

Apparently Philadelphia players confuse Vick handling dogfighting questions and booing with a measure of class as some sort of courage. That Vick only got a chance to show this mild courageousness because of the extreme cowardice it takes to murder helpless animals isn’t something that crosses their mind. They confuse Vick’s desperation with some sort of integrity.

I’m all for second chances and find myself rooting for Vick to redeem himself both on and off the football field. He’s served an appropriate sentence (and then some) and I see no reason for him to keep paying for his past transgressions. But I also see no reason to celebrate his character.

Michael Vick(notes) is very much a work in progress. A few years from now, I hope he will be deserving of such an honor. At this time, however, he has only just started down the path to redemption.

Eagles name Vick their Ed Block Courage Award recipient

Posted by Mike Florio on December 23, 2009 9:48 AM ET

Every December, we begin to receive e-mail announcements regarding the recipients of each team’s Ed Block Courage Award.

The Eagles’ recipient of the Ed Block Courage Award is quarterback Mike Vick.

Really?

The Ed Block Courage Award Foundation’s web site explains that the organization “is dedicated to improving the lives of neglected children and ending the cycle of abuse.” The group “raise[s] public awareness and support[s] child abuse prevention with our radio public service announcements.”

The web site also explains that the recipient of the award “exemplify commitments to the principles of sportsmanship and courage,” that the recipient “symbolizes professionalism, great strength, and dedication,” that the recipient is a “community role model,” and that the recipient “will be identified as a team player in helping abused children and families in crisis.”

So why Vick?

This isn’t about whether a man who engaged in a six-year pattern of animal abuse, including ghastly acts of killing dogs that he deemed unfit to fight other dogs, should receive a “second chance” in a profession that pays him a large amount of money.

This is about whether that man should be celebrated.

In our view, he shouldn’t be — not based on his cameo appearances during the 2009 season, not for his ability to stay out of trouble during his ongoing federal probation, and not for whatever efforts he has undertaken to help abused children and families in crisis.

We’ll wager that he has done, and will do, nothing to help abused children and families in crisis, mainly because the focus of his off-field efforts has been to help abused dogs and canines in crisis.

Maybe there simply was no one else on the team worthy of the honor. Or maybe the players voted without a real understanding of what the honor means. Or maybe they simply wanted to give critics of Vick a collective middle finger.

Either way, we think the Eagles made a huge mistake on this one.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/72250012.html?cmpid=15585797

Self-defense, or gun-happy cop?

By STEPHANIE FARR
Philadelphia Daily News

PORT RICHMOND residents said yesterday that an off-duty officer who fatally shot a young man during a large street fight Saturday night is a bully who’s maced their kids and brandished his gun around the neighborhood for years.

Police said that the officer had been trying to break up a street brawl about 11 p.m. when he was attacked, leading him to shoot unarmed William “Billy” Panas Jr., 21, once in the chest.

But Port Richmond residents, who identified the officer as Sgt. Frank Tepper, said that the fight had spilled out from a party at Tepper’s own home on Elkhart Street near Edgemont, and that many of his relatives, including his own son, had been involved.

Several neighbors also claimed that Tepper was visibly intoxicated when the shooting occurred.

“He just shot my son in the heart,” said Panas’ father, William Panas Sr. “He’s supposed to serve and protect, not kill.”

Travis Marko, 19, one of eight friends with Panas on Saturday night, said the group had decided to get Chinese food when the fight on Elkhart Street caught their attention.

They decided to walk by the fight and one of the members of their group was sucker-punched by one of the fighters, Marko said.

Their group then got swept into the fight. Marko said that Tepper had punched him and that the officer had come out of his house holding a clear plastic cup.

“You saw clearly that he was drunk,” Marko said.

When the punch leveled Marko, his friends dragged him away from the fight, he said. He claimed that as they were leaving, Tepper pointed his gun at them and said: “Back up or I’ll shoot you.”

Panas Jr. was fighting with someone on the ground as Marko and the others ran away, he said.

They were a few houses from the scene when he heard the gunshot that killed his friend, he said.

Panas Sr. said that his son was fighting with Tepper’s son on the ground during the melee and that he didn’t run when Tepper allegedly made the threats.

“He said, ‘I’ll shoot you,’ and my son said, ‘No you won’t,’ ” Panas said that witnesses told him. “He said ‘Oh, no?’ And then, boom!”

Lt. Frank Vanore, police spokesman, would not comment on whether Tepper had called 9-1-1.

Police confirmed that members of Tepper’s family had been involved in the fight but declined to say if Tepper had been intoxicated.

Neighbor Chris Bolduc, who watched the police response after the shooting, said that police had put Tepper in the front seat of a patrol car.

“He was obliterated out of his mind,” Bolduc said. “I definitely know for a fact that he was drunk.”

Vanore said several independent witnesses had said that Tepper identified himself as a police officer before the shooting, though Marko denied that claim.

“I know there is a contrary side to all these things,” Vanore said. “Until this investigation is complete, I can’t get into the details.”

Panas said numerous people had contacted his family to claim that Tepper had harassed them or their children.

Debbie Spencer said that in 2002 Tepper, dressed in civilian clothing, walked by her then-17-year-old son and his friend on the street and demanded to know who they were.

Tepper did not identify himself as a police officer, Spencer said, so her son demanded to know who he was. Tepper then fired pepper spray in the face of her son and his friend, she said.

Blinded, her son started swinging his arms and hit Tepper, not knowing he was a cop, she said.

Tepper called for backup and had Spencer’s son arrested for assault on a police officer, she said.

Spencer said that within 25 minutes of the altercation, she went to Tepper’s house, where he claimed that he wasn’t required to identify himself as a police officer to her son. Spencer said that she could smell beer on Tepper’s breath and that he appeared intoxicated.

“My father was a cop for 36 years in Philadelphia,” Spencer said. “My son respected police up until that day.” Spencer said that she never filed a civilian complaint, out of fear for her son, she said.

“But my son was one of the lucky ones,” she said. “My son lived. It could have been my son that was shot.”

Christine Killian said that in 2001 her son was playing basketball in the park across from Tepper’s house about 10 p.m. Tepper came outside brandishing his gun and telling him to get off the court and be quiet, she said.

Killian said that she and her boyfriend confronted Tepper, but because he still had the gun in his hand during their conversation, they decided to walk away.

She said they went to the local police district and filed a report, but nothing ever came of it.

“It’s sad,” she said. “Something has to be done because he’s been getting away with this for years.”

Calls by the Daily News to the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau about civilian complaints filed against Tepper were not returned yesterday.

Other residents talked of a video of Tepper shooting an opossum on city streets and how they didn’t feel like it was safe to park their cars in front of his house or even to tread on his sidewalk.

According to city payroll records, Tepper was hired in 1993. Last year, he made $67,688 – $4,811 of which was for overtime, records show. Tepper is a member of the Civil Affairs Unit, which is responsible for policing demonstrations, picket lines and other forms of public assembly.

Prior news reports indicate that Tepper shot a robbery suspect during a foot pursuit in March 2002. Tepper claimed that the suspect, who survived, had fired at him first.

Vanore would not comment on Tepper’s record.

In Saturday’s case, Tepper was the only one armed, police and neighbors said. Police reported no arrests in the crowd for the alleged assaults against Tepper.

Panas Jr.’s only arrest was for driving under the influence, according to court records. A status hearing in the case had been scheduled for January.

His family said that he was a loving son who helped care for his mother during her recent battle with cancer. He had just received his barber’s license and was planning to open his own shop, said his aunt, Debbie Ditro.

“He had the biggest heart you could ever imagine,” she said. “And now his own parents’ hearts have been ripped out.”

Tepper has been placed on desk duty while an investigation is conducted by Internal Affairs and the District Attorney’s Office.

Through a family member yesterday, Tepper declined to comment about the case.