Posted on 09/04/2009 7:38:55 AM PDT by Travis McGee
Thomas Fitzgerald never knew what hit him.
One minute he was riding home from his night-shift job and stopping his bike at Broad and South Streets to watch a mob scene that appeared to be getting out of control.
The next, he told a Philadelphia judge yesterday, he was waking up four days later from a medically induced coma, with his hearing impaired and his memory scrambled.
Two other witnesses yesterday helped piece together Fitzgerald's lost minutes as they described how, about 11:30 p.m. May 30, the 53-year-old bicyclist was set upon by eight young males, beaten, and left unconscious and in the middle of a violent seizure.
Rest of article at link.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Dear God, what is this country coming to? I hope they send those punks to prison for a long, long time!
I thought I remembered Larry Niven writing about the concept:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Crowd
All the way back in 73!
Good points, Trav.
Two concepts that aren’t-so-commonsense are Prior Planning and GSE.
Prior planning lets you identify trouble spots before you get into them - i.e. bike riding home through questionable areas at night. Sometimes the routes you must take are limited, but don’t let yourself fall into patterns. If we’re presented with a single alternative, such as this fellow probably was, then we should take steps to prepare ourselves in the event of unpleasant encounters.
GSE = “Go Somewhere Else” - trust your instincts and leave troubled areas as soon as you possibly can. Gut feelings should not be ignored. Trusting my instincts once got me out of a bank (through a back door, the closest exit from my spot in line) about 90 seconds before three crooks pulled out guns and robbed the place. There was no apparent reason for me to leave, but as soon as the hair went up on the back of my neck, I was gone. (unarmed at the time since the local Ruling Soviet had figured guns were bad, and no way to warn anyone in the place without triggering something). The cops were there in about 8 minutes, and the goblins were gone in about 4...
(not directed at you necessarily, Trav, but others who might benefit from experiences)
Kit
Napoleon proposed the solution for mobs long ago.
I don’t think THAT would fit in my purse.
As of about 10 years ago, when years of Demograft, liberal welfare management and punitive taxation finally drove the majority family-oriented middle-class to distinct minority status, the Philadelphia Mayor's office and City Council have become almost entirely racial- and gender-identity politicians, and policing has been compromised by liberal b.s. policies. It is a very "blue" city of politically ignorant but die-hard Democrats. The culture of corruption around bribing officials over parking tickets, building code variances, liquor and gambling is legendary.
The intersection in this story is on the main north-south artery, Broad Street, which crosses the route to the main center-city nightlife area, east South street. It is just below one of the City's main cultural centers containing the University of the Arts, Wilma Theater, the Academy of Music and Kimmel Performing Arts centers, all within a couple of blocks. The riot took place just 7 blocks from the City Hall at the exact center of town -- but it's also where there is a huge group of "public housing" townhouse blocks, otherwise known as "da projects."
Broad and South has always been a danger zone; but using cellphones and text messages to assemble other thugs to a riot is a very new and very dangerous phenomenon, signalling even further breakdown of civil society in the age of liberal re-tribalism.
Flash Mob vs. Critical Mass. Now that’s a pay-per-view I would watch.
Given that the police are ‘piecing together’ what happened, the victim’s own memory isn’t reliable, and the eye-witnesses only saw fragments, I’d say that the contention that he stopped to watch is little more than an educated guess.
I can easily see the victim stopped at a light when grabbed from behind by the perps as they converged on the intersection.
Looks like the detectives have enough to hold the guy on theft charges while they build the assault & battery case.
If the city and state are interested in protecting citizens, they will bring in a two strike law to jail repeat offenders.
Then they will authorize the good citizens to carry and use a gun.
Apparently Florida laws now allow you to cap a thug outside your home or your vehicle if he tried to assault you.
“I know if I am in a car being attacked I will close my eyes and hit the gas pedal!”
It is hard to aim your vehicle correctly if your eyes are closed.
See post 66.
Just think of it as bowling.
As Rush would say, they are “Just returning the wealth of this country to its rightful owners”
New tag line invoked.
I know someone personally who was mugged at gunpoint at that same intersection while her car was stopped at a light on a summer day. Guy put an automatic in the rolled-down window of the driver's side, on the side street as she faced Broad Street, with no witnesses. She lived to tell about it, but always drove with air conditioning and the windows up afterwards -- not very "green."
Liberals should do something about crime to be more "green." Crime costs the environment.
could they be “guests” at the g20 in P-burgh later this month?
"Stopped at the traffic light and saw..." would have been more accurate.
Well citizens need to form “flash shoots” where they use cell phones and firearms to swarm into an area where there is a flash mob and shoot holes into the mob participants. Flash mobs would become a thing of the past in a hurry.
I would venture to say that no person has been seized by a mob in Center City Philadelphia between 1962 (the MLK riots) and the past year, when there has been a rash of unprovoked attacks on innocent victims, almost entirely black-on-white stranger crimes. There have been several of these attacks in Baltimore as well, one by middle-school children on a white woman riding public transportation. This indicates a new pattern of aggression by young people who have grown up with the "entitlement victim" mentality. Individual use of a firearm would have a limited usefulness against a mob.
And of course, Pennsylvania's governor (and former two-term Democrat Mayor of Philadelphia) Ed Rendell wants to sue gun manufacturers and rid PA of guns -- at least among the law-abiding.
I agree instead with WestwardHo's post #17, "Bring back the death penalty," and with GeronL at 18 who says the media glamorize this activity by calling it "flash mob" instead of "gang of thugs."
I think CCW can only work if there are at least two CC's together -- one against a mob is certain death. There has to be a society-wide clamp-down with real pain in the thug community. We also need to eliminate the current legislation that allows the ACLU to get paid by the taxpayer whenever they win a case. In view of today's post-liberal demographics, lots of luck with that, Urban Cities.
See also post 66.
An excellent post -- thanks.
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