#phillyjesus

It seems like the arrest of Philadelphia's Michael Grant, a.k.a. #phillyjesus, has gone viral. Gee,
who knew that would happen?

I'm not really a fan of religion. It doesn't jive with my hippie upbringing. What I am a fan of is a man who managed to recover from two of the most horribly addictive substances - heroin and crack cocaine - and attempts to inspire others to do the same. How he got there isn't relevant. 

While the city's most unfortunate have been lining the streets in growing numbers, as the weather gets colder and less hospitable, so, it seems have our civil servants. Despite those who panhandle for change by holding doors, those who walk through train cars in military fatigues asking for money, Grant entertains and occasionally inspires. 

According to Grant, who frequently poses with visitors, he doesn't ask for money but he does accept "tips." After a free skate at Dilworth Park's new rink, Grant went to the aptly named LOVE Park to do what he does: spread his notion of the gospel and pose for pictures. 

This apparently enraged one Philadelphia police officer, one who, as Grant claims, has had it out for him since his days of crime and drug abuse. Grant was arrested for disorderly conduct and failure to disperse after refusing to leave the park. Handcuffed and escorted to the officer's patrol car, Grant served less than two hours behind bars. 

It's hard to imagine a reasonable arrest, even if what he does is technically illegal. Actors are routinely fined in Hollywood and New York City for illegally impersonating trademarked characters in exchange for "tips." But Jesus Christ isn't a trademark nor is Philadelphia a Hollywood overrun with Batguy and Elmert.

Attorney Charles Gibbs has decided to represent Grant. While Gibbs has made no bones about grandstanding, already using the on-the-nose word, "crucified," I doubt Grant actually faces any enforceable charges.

What's perhaps most offensive is the police officer's tactic. In an era in which one can go from a nobody to an accidental anti-celebrity with the click of a phone, I don't understand why police officers aren't better versed in handling potentially newsworthy situations with the utmost professionalism. 

I'm certainly not saying individuals like Grant should be given a free pass for illegal activity, but when that same activity is ignored in countless others soliciting throughout the city, step back and think, "is it worth it?"

Social Media Wins the Day

Last Thursday's brutal attack on two gay men near Rittenhouse Square was slow to make traction in the news. The papers buried it under stories about casinos sixty miles away and when it found its way on television, it was wedged between the weather and puff pieces.

One of the victims suffered skull fractures, a deep laceration on the face, and has his jaw will be wired shut for eight weeks.

However, the Philadelphia Police Department and the online community took it a little less lightly. After the police released very clear video surveillance footage of ten to twelve suspects, social media proved just how little we rely on newspapers and the six o'clock news. Even more, it proved just how swift we can be when we work together.

In a matter of hours, Facebook and Twitter turned these suspects into Philadelphia's Most Wanted. The Citizens Crime Commission initially offered a $1000 reward for information on the suspects, followed by three local businesses putting a $10,000 bounty on their freedom.

For a few tense hours, ten to twelve of the tristate's worst citizens must have been shitting their pants as they watched their faces walk across surprisingly clear surveillance footage. But that's when things took a 21st Century twist and went all Justice Leaguey, virtually speaking.

Shortly after posting the video on his Twitter feed, @greggybennett, former cast member of Real Housewives of New Jersey received and posted a photograph from a "friend of a friend of a friend" that showed a group of individuals matching those in the surveillance footage. 

The red vest is undeniable, and several others can be clearly made in the rest of the surveillance video.

It was almost immediately retweeted by @FanSince09. Minutes later followers had noted that the restaurant was Rittenhouse's La Viola. 

@FanSince09 used Facebook Graph Search to find profiles checked in at La Viola prior to the attack and managed to match a number of faces and clothing to the surveillance footage and the photograph which, at the time, was still available on Facebook and conveniently tagged by a few of the suspects.

By the time Detective Joseph Murray was contacted by @FanSince09, the hunt was essentially over. Late last night, lawyers representing a few of the suspects had contacted the PPD to make arrangements to surrender to questioning this morning. The police have not yet announced any arrests or additional information, short of deserved praise for @FanSince09, @greggybennett, and social media in general.

Despite the excitement that unfolded last night and the expectations many may have had this morning, Murray was quick to remind everyone that this is not an episode of Law & Order. With upwards of fifteen suspects likely to be brought in for questioning, it will take time to interview them all and sift through the evidence. It may be days, even a week, before arrests can be made.

As it is, it looks good for the victims (at least in terms of justice) and bad for those who chose to lawyer up late last night. Unfortunately, hate crime legislation that includes LGBT victims was struck down in 2002 and failed again in 2009. As it stands, the maximum sentence for aggravated assault that causes, or attempts to cause, serious bodily injury is twenty years and $25,000.

Without clear footage of the attack, it may seem it would be hard to prove which suspects were directly responsible for the injuries. However, given the large group of suspects, there is no question that two or more will sing like canaries and sell out their friends. And given the outrage spanning the nation last night, no District Attorney can afford to tread lightly. 

In the mean time, let's all sit back and think about the victims and their families. And on a slightly lesser note, what it's like to be part of a socially networked group of superheroes bent on spending their evenings hunting down the villains trying to ruin our Great City.

Molly's Daily Kiss

Broad Street Median Parking

I live on a small residential street near Chinatown, an odd court cornered by a main house that shares a garage. Recently after arriving home from a flea market with a large dresser tethered into the back of my busted Beetle, I pulled on the sidewalk to unload, in front of the garage addressed to my house, turned on my blinkers, and quickly ushered the piece behind the gate on my court.

I know how ruthless the PPA can be on my street. Most of them are polite though. I've lived here for five years and they know me and my car. They smile.

This wasn't one of those days. Within the >3 minutes I was out of sight, a meter maid had ticketed my car and vanished. Legally it's understandable. I was illegally parked. But my hazard lights, open trunk, and open gate indicated that I was clearly loading, on a street with no proper loading zone. Still, it was technically illegal.

But there are other parts of the city where cars park illegally, and the illegality is not so technical. It's unnerving to receive a ticket when I was clearly loading on a small residential street for less than five minutes, then drive down the city's most prominent boulevard to find cars, many not even registered with the Philadelphia Parking Authority or even the state, parked along the Broad Street median, or even atop the concrete median on Oregon Avenue, all without a ticket.

Apparently the problem with the illegally parked cars along Broad Street and Oregon Avenue isn't as simple as the PPA letting the cars slide. Like most nonsense in the city it comes down to various agencies claiming it's someone else job. The PPA is responsible for cars parked at corner, in front of stop signs, or overstaying their limit in loading zones. Parking atop a median isn't a parking violation, it's a traffic violation, which defaults to the responsibility of the Philadelphia Police Department.

Five years ago a South Philadelphia Division Police Inspector told the South Philadelphia Review that the Broad Street median parking tradition was "done." Five years later those cars remain. As it is today, cars are occasionally ticketed but only at the discretion, or availability, of a police officer with nothing better to do.

But the ultimate problem has nothing to do with the PPA's inability to ticket cars in the middle of the street or the Police Department's reluctance to do so. It's in the minds of those who reserve their parking spaces with lawn chairs as they drive a block to the 7-11, those who won't park in a space that can't be seen from their front window, and those whose relatives visit their 20 foot wide row house and somehow expect a space near the door.

It's the definition of unreasonable.

In the best of cases, these people think it's a headache to park a block away. In the worst, they'll tell you that saving spots with pieces of furniture is a "Philadelphia tradition." But not only is doing so an illegal tradition, it's unfair to the other forty people who live on the same block, fairly hunting for the same space.

Truly eliminating the illegal median parking along South Broad Street would likely exasperate the alleged woes of those who expect curbside parking, but it would also introduce them to the reality of having a car in one of America's densest cities. South Philadelphia and other neighborhoods where our unusual parking traditions abound pose equally unusual obstacles, which have likely led to the PPA and the Police Department - along with midcentury malaise - to overlook the violations.

South Philadelphia is one of the city's densest neighborhoods, but it's also one of our flattest. Unlike similar neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. or New York where occasional apartment buildings and parking garages offer street parking a bit of retrieve, South Philadelphia is almost exclusively single family row homes.

It's not a problem without a solution, but the solution is not one brought to us by architects and developers. It's a solution that involves an evolving mentality and abandoning unjust traditions. Forcing the hundreds of cars illegally parked along Broad Street and Oregon Avenue into their neighborhoods will force neighbors to accept the fact that parking a few blocks from their house isn't that bad.

But how do you force the city to finally address this antiquated ignorance? Next time you receive a parking ticket, suffer the indignity of traffic court with a photograph of South Broad Street's median lined with hundreds of unfined traffic violations. The PPA will likely tell you that ticketing those cars is not their job, but they might also drop or reduce your own fine. Once this happens more than a few times, the city's Police Department will find themselves pressured to finally resolve the issue.

Livability Court

After Travel + Leisure added "almost trashiest" to Philadelphia's list of accomplishments, the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. was so offended that they pulled advertising from the magazine. Well, as unreliable as any newsstand survey may be, you don't fight back by pulling our city's presence from one of the top travel magazines in the world.

I wasn't offended by the results of the survey, I was annoyed. Not because some bias survey put us at the top of another list of broken cities, but because it's absolutely true. The only reason New Orleans bested us in filth is because America's Atlantis is still drying out. 

Philadelphia is a dump. Literally. It might be the nation's most expensive landfill. 

I know people hate to hear that but I refuse to engage in blind pride when I see uniformed police officers throw trash out of patrol car windows. We can fill the city with high tech trash cans, but no amount of technology is going to change why Philadelphia is so littered: Philadelphians. 

Yes. You.

Everything from cigarette butts to refrigerators, you, Philadelphians, seem to think that there is something acceptable about throwing your waste on the sidewalk, in the gutter, or using vacant lots as dumpsters.

Even our nation's least enlightened cities are so far beyond the anti-litter campaign of the 1970s that recycling programs dominate the civic landscape. Yet somehow thousands of our seemingly normal, law abiding - even law enforcing - citizens didn't get the memo...forty years later.

But what are you going to do? 1.5 million people have been trained to throw their hoagie wrappers on the ground. It's been so unacceptably bad for so long that it's become unacceptably acceptable.

We don't see it. I've been here for nearly a decade and I don't see it. That is until I go upstate, down south, or out west. Pick a direction.

It's just us. We're disgusting.

How do you solve an epidemic that is as Philadelphian as the Liberty Bell? I'll tell you what you do. Turn it into a way to make money.

That's right. Remind people that their slovenly behavior is illegal and make a few bucks off of it. Sure, our entire judicial process is so overworked that hundreds of outstanding warrants sit idle while violent criminals kick back and wait to be arrested.

But don't start shopping for excuses. There are none. If Gulf cities and Tornado Alley towns can clean up the trash Mother Nature dumps on them and still keep Faygo cans out of their gutters then we can keep broken toilets out of my backyard.

It's called Livability Court. Started appropriately in Charleston, S.C. in 2002, "America's Most Polite City," like Family Court, Livability Court is solely responsible for tackling one specific problem: Those citizens who are determined to make their city unlivable.

If a city as clean as Charleston, S.C. can justify the need to target litter, graffiti, vandalism, and illegal dumping, then targeting Philadelphia's cretins is well worth the investment. With our internationally renowned trash problem, we have a well stocked pool of turds that could generate more revenue for the city than any real estate tax hike.

It may sound like the pessimistic ramblings of someone who's lived in Philadelphia for a little too long, but don't confuse me with those that say we're buried too deep. Philadelphia isn't the worst place in America, so why should our citizens be allowed to treat it like it is?

Urban tumbleweeds signify a lack of respect for our own property. Clean neighborhoods are safe neighborhoods, and safe neighborhoods make safe cities.

If people aren't willing to take out their own trash, it's the city's duty to take it out for them. Cite them, fine them, and set a precedent that let's the trash know that a lot of us actually like Philadelphia.

Most importantly, lead by example. Philadelphia has developed a reputation of caring very little about Philadelphians, which is evident when you see a police officer drop a Snickers wrapper on the ground three feet from a trash can.

We'll never look like Disney World but we shouldn't want to. We have our own magic in our grit, but grit is in the rusted patina lined with street performers, eclectic architecture, and colorful characters. All of which is almost impossible to see to the unspoiled eyes of our visitors when they're knee deep in our sewage.