In 1972, John Africa founded a black liberation group in west Philadelphia called MOVE. Many black people joined the organization and changed their surname to Africa. They shunned all the modern technology and materialism and vowed people to return to the nature.
The first conflict with law enforcement occurred after six years, when policed tried to evict from their house. One police officer was killed and many people were injured from both sides. Nine members were sentenced to a period of hundred years in prison for the murder of the police officer. The group moved to a row house on Osage Avenue in 1981, where they built fortified rooftop bunker and broadcasted their agenda and political lectures with bullhorns at all hours. The members of MOVE also possessed arms illegally. The mayor and police commissioner declared them a terrorist organization.
On morning of May 13, 1985, police raided the houses to arrest four members of the MOVE. The police ordered them to come out peacefully, but the shooting started from the house. In response the police fired ten thousand rounds of ammunition in 90 minutes, but the MOVE did not surrender. The City mayor and State Senator Hardy Williams plead for de-escalation, but the police commissioner, Gregore Sambor, dined and gave the order to bomb the house.
At 5:28 p.m., a satchel bomb composed of FBI-supplied C4 and Tovex TR2, a dynamite substitute, on a 45-second timer was dropped from a state police helicopter, detonating near the fortified pillbox on the roof of the house. The blaze raged out of control, spreading down the block of row houses and hopping the narrow streets. By the time it was extinguished four hours later, 61 houses had been razed. Eleven members of MOVE including the founder John Africa, five adults and five children between the ages of seven were killed.
I find MOVE interesting not so much because the police bombed it (police have dumb ideas all the time), but because someone provided them with the explosives.
Thanks for the info; I checked out Wikipedia for more information. According to eyewitness accounts, it is likely that the officer killed in 1978 was accidentally destroyed by police fire.
One of the survivors describes how police fired at them as they tried to escape the burning building. Already, the police were violating constitutional rights and murdering children, so I’m not surprised. Taxpayers had to pay millions of dollars to the victims since police were not held accountable.
Right? It must have been so many points in the chain of disaster that somebody could have just taken five seconds to think, “should we set off a bomb in a residential neighborhood?” and realized how stupid that is.
I’m amazed at how different the narratives are between people who lived in Philadelphia during the two MOVE incidents and people who have heard about them
This is something that I remember very well. It’s one of a long list of reasons I do not like or trust the police.