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With the tragic collapse of 22nd and Market four months behind us and every civil lawyer in town pointing grieving families at the biggest pots of dough, nothing has gotten any simpler.
In the real world this would be complicated. But this is Philadelphia where complicated is the status quo.
City Hall has ruthlessly kept its own Licensing and Inspection department out of the equation despite the fact that the office was the sole governing body in charge of granting this permit and despite the fact that one of its own committed suicide in the days following the collapse.
In the wake of the chaos, those in the city scrambled to find a warm body to pin this on. They struck gold with crane operator, Sean Benschop, high on pot and prescription pills at the time of the collapse. Our own mayor's office went as far as to pronounce Benschop's guilt before a trial date had even been set, before any evidence had been presented.
It certainly paints a picture of a town when its top leader is the first to cast the stone of mob justice.
While the city's managed to keep its nose clean despite many in the media calling for L&I's head, the latest complications may be aimed at the city's mismanagement.
OSHA and the Federal Department Labor have subpoenaed documents from the site's architect, Plato Marinakos. Marinakos has officially pleaded the Fifth Amendment, which always sounds shady.
While everything that surrounds this project and investigation just reeks of shade, with the mayor's office and City Hall throwing everyone under the bus, can you really blame Marinakos for resisting the urge to incriminate himself on behalf of the city's mismanagement?
Think of it like this. Any documents Marinakos employed in the demolition site would have been approved by L&I before demolition began, L&I would have their own copies, copies that should have been reviewed both times a 311 call reported a violation.
Marinakos' has reason to be skeptical of any investigation in which the city plays a role, a city in bed with L&I. In this instance his Fifth Amendment right may have been executed to consult with lawyers before Nutter puts him on the chopping block in the middle of City Hall.
The city doesn't want to be involved. In fact, it can't afford to be involved.
If L&I finds itself as part of prosecutors' investigations, development in Philadelphia ceases. L&I grants every license and permit for demolition and construction in the city. If that department were to be investigated by any agency, all projects would come to a grinding halt until the investigation ends.
What's worse, if the investigation were to find any misdeeds on behalf of L&I at this or any other project - and if their reputation is any indicator, it likely would - it begs to question when every other project in the city would have the green light to resume.
Would every project approved by L&I need to be re-evaluated by an independent agency? Would previous projects need to be investigated? How long would that take?
It would be a nightmare for the city. Considering this potential scenario, City Hall's ruthless efforts to keep L&I out of the discussion at all costs starts to make sense, however unethical.
The request for Marinakos' documents wasn't made on behalf of the city, it was requested by Federal investigators. If the Feds are sniffing around, this could mean more trouble for the city than it means for Marinakos, Benschop, or any private defendant named in this whole tragedy.
OSHA and the Department of Labor know that the documents used in the demolition of 22nd and Market should be on file with L&I. In the wake of Marinakos' Fifth Amendment claim, couldn't they just pull the same files from the city?
Well, they likely already have, or have already discovered that L&I didn't file anything. If they're going straight to Marinakos for documents, they're not going after Marinakos. They're trying to find out who screwed up at L&I.
As the dust settles at 22nd and Market, the fallout is spreading through Center City. Sean Benschop was the crane operator at the site and tested positive for marijuana and pain killers at the time of the accident, and will likely be charged with six counts of involuntary manslaughter.
The straight dope is that Benschop shouldn't have been driving a crane at the time. But Philadelphia's seemingly run by as many unfit criminals as it employs, and every city agency remotely tied to this disaster is doing everything in their power to deflect the spotlight from their own role in the collapse.
L&I has been on damage control shutting down Rosewood, a new bar all the way across town near 13th and Walnut because it employed Griffin Campbell Construction, the same contractor demolishing 22nd and Market. It's a cheap way for L&I to say, "look, we're doing our jobs," despite the fact that they not only granted Griffin Campbell a demolition permit on West Market Street, but didn't shut down the site after calls about the unsafe conditions were placed to Philadelphia's 311 non-emergency service.
L&I made various claims regarding the 311 calls, from confusion over the address reported to simply verifying that the site did indeed hold the permits that they themselves granted. Philadelphia's big, but it's not as if a misplaced digit in the 2100 block of West Market Street could cause confusion over the location of the site. So many demolition projects aren't taking place on Market Street that those in charge of safeguarding our addresses would be scratching their heads and saying, "Huh?" In fact, it's the only demolition project actively taking place on Center City's Market Street anywhere.
That's obvious, of course, which is likely why as soon as people starting pointing their fingers at L&I, L&I swooped in and shut down a loosely connected business. Of course, let's not forget that L&I is the sole organization that licensed these creeps in the first place. Maybe it's time to shut down L&I, a difficult endeavor when they're responsible for shutting things down. After five years in office, have Nutter's balls drops?
Not likely. City Hall is doing it's own damage control, and it's perhaps even more opportunistic than L&I's. After all, L&I is just covering their ass. But City Hall is full of politicians, more callous and criminal that any pot smoking crane operator.
Clarke is playing politics the old fashioned way, one voters in this city seem to routinely ignore. He's proposed a 10% tax on vacant property owners. If you don't know anything about Councilman Clarke you might be thinking, "Great!" But if you're reading this, you're likely familiar with the fact that Clarke presides over one of the most blighted wards full of property hoarding slumlords, and it's a common perception that he does everything in his power to keep it that way, including allowing the Divine Lorraine to be all but sold for scrap.
So why would Clarke want to slap a 10% tax on his most powerful constituents? Well he already proposed the idea more than a decade ago and it was never enforced because (for reasons I can't figure out) it's not legal. In other words, Clarke knows the proposed tax will fail and so do his cronies, so he sit back and tell his voters, "Hey, I tried, blame bureaucracy."
It's a cheap political tactic that City Hall has been peddling since the beginning of time and for some reason it still works here. Street did the same thing when he openly opposed the smoking ban, telling business owners and the lingering smokers he was looking out for them while everyone knew it was inevitable.
We expect these games when we're talking about unions or business licenses, but when politicians use the tragic death of six people for their own gain, it's beyond disrespectful. It's detached and sick.
Meanwhile City Council hasn't said one word about L&I's role in the tragedy, and likely won't, at least not yet. That doesn't mean the aftershock won't find its way to all responsible. L&I's infrastructure is about as stable as 22nd and Market and City Hall still operates under the delusion that its voters still buy print journalism.
The whole story is surfacing and those responsible don't even see it. L&I will have to do a little more than shut down one bar and City Hall will have to do more than charge one crane operator with the whole disaster to save face, they're going to have to step up and admit their roles, and the administration will have no choice but to act.
News spread like wildfire this morning over the botched demolition of the former Hoagie City that collapsed onto an occupied Salvation Army on 22nd and Market. Tragically one person died, while 12 others sustained minor injuries, and a remaining person is in unknown condition.
CNN did a fine job chasing the ambulance this morning causing a storm of comments criticizing the United States' aging infrastructure, with many going as far as comparing Philadelphia and the entire country to Bangladesh.
What's obviously mindboggling about the age of the internet and its media is its audience's utter lack of respect for tragedy. With a 24 hour newsfeed and every intern's Google Alert set to go off when the word "collapse" appears, it's not surprising to see this making the national circuit's Breaking News.
What's sick are its readers' detachment from very real situations that unfortunately can and do happen all over this and every other country, regardless of what "world" that country is classified.
Before the dust settled at 22nd and Market, rampant trolls were taking to their laptops to cite this as "proof" that America is fast becoming a third world nation, despite the fact that they're bitching from a laptop in a coffee house in that same country.
From tragedies like this to tornadoes in Oklahoma, the campaign to expose a nation's flaws are instantaneous to blame everything from the President many in the campaign elected to the wrath of God on gay marriage in another state; and the media is a worthy adversary when each of it journalists are morbidly hoping to be the one to break the next 9-11.
Unlike the United Kingdom, those in the United States have not yet come to terms with just how yellow our journalism has become. The unfortunate parents and grandparents who reluctantly joined Facebook that assume CNN.com is synonymous with a 1982 USA Today are feeling the wrath of a generation who callously view the world from behind a computer monitor.
I'm certainly not saying blogs like this are the answer. Philly Bricks is my pet exercise in extreme narcissism, unadvertised to my friends, and available only to those who wish to sift through the crap to find their own facts or simply laugh at my recycled Seinfeld jokes.
But to those who've come to realize that the trifecta of national tabloids - CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News - is about as objective as the Huffington Post, unfunded homeschooled journalism is quickly becoming the informative source of choice. At least you know what you're getting into.
I guess my point is, let's keep it in perspective people. Someone died today. We're lucky to live in a country that doesn't see that loss times the thousands with every earthquake, flood, or tornado. We're lucky we are not Bangladesh. But one loss is one too many, and family and friends experienced loss nonetheless. There are plenty of platforms for political statements, and the tragedy at 22nd and Market is not it.
*update: a second fatality has been reported.
