Funding for Frontline is provided by this station and other public television stations
nationwide and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Tonight, on Frontline, a blood feud between a radical group and city officials leaves
eleven people dead.
As the mayor of this city, I accept full and total responsibility for decisions made.
A black neighborhood is destroyed and sixty-one innocent families are left homeless.
What is it, a crime to be black in this country?
Tonight, the bombing of West Philly.
From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York,
WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit, and WGBH Boston.
This is Frontline with Judy Woodruff.
Good evening.
Two years ago this month, the Philadelphia police attempting to arrest members of a radical
group called MOVE dropped a bomb on a West Philadelphia row house.
Eleven people were killed, 250 people were left homeless.
Tonight, our inquiry into the crisis.
We ask what happened and who was responsible.
We should note that the mayor of Philadelphia has refused to talk to Frontline, as have
police and fire department officials.
Our program is called The Bombing of West Philly.
It is reported by Leon Dash and produced for Frontline by Martin Smith.
And I must warn you, this program contains graphic language and scenes of violence.
What is it, a crime to be black in this country?
I mean, is this the penalty for being black in this country?
I mean, is Mayor Goode, does he forget that he was once a black person too?
Did he forget what the struggle about freedom is all about?
I don't know where he lost his roots, but I'll tell you one thing, you better go back
and get him.
We call it institutionalized racism, and that's exactly what it was.
Because we were black, and because the institution has a way of handling black people, you understand,
through the system, you understand, it didn't matter whether Wilson Goode was black or whether
Wilson Goode was white.
It's the institution, it's the governmental institution.
This is the way we handle black people.
To sacrifice us to cover up their mess was not fair.
I didn't do anything to these people.
I didn't do anything.
All I wanted was help.
And just to strip me of my happiness was not right, was not fair.
Where is the justice?
This is a story about a feud between the Philadelphia police and a radical group called MOVE.
A feud that spanned over ten years and took the lives of one police officer, six MOVE
adults, and five children.
A feud that city leaders allowed to disrupt and finally destroy a neighborhood.
This is the story of how it happened and who was to blame.
As a mayor of this city, I accept full and total responsibility for decisions made to
in fact go in and to evacuate the Osage Avenue house.
I stand behind those persons who made those decisions.
I support my commissioners, I support my managing director, and I want the people of this city
to judge me by that decision.
A little over a month after the May 13, 1985 confrontation, Mayor Goode appointed a commission
to investigate the incident.
Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
I do.
Over 140 hours of hearings included testimony from the mayor, the city's managing director,
the police commissioner, and the fire commissioner.
You wanted to act in a comprehensive fashion.
In its final report, the commission cited the mayor for abdication of responsibility
and gross negligence.
We have to remember that this nation fought wars to prevent bombs from being dropped on
its people in this country.
And we sit by and allow a little city government to borrow a helicopter and concoct a bomb
with high military explosives, C4, and drop it on our people.
What kind of people are we?
That's the issue.
When they begin to charge us, when they begin to throw stuff, we're going to take a morning.
The origins of the move confrontation date back to the 60s and 70s, when Philadelphia,
mayor police chief and eventually mayor Frank Rizzo tolerated a police force with one of
America's worst records for brutality.
This is MOVE when this is 309 North 33rd.
MOVE is a totally revolutionary organization.
And the purpose of MOVE is to exhibit by its activity the purpose of revolution.
The young blacks and some whites who joined MOVE came of age in this era, and they vowed
to destroy the system under which they grew up.
Their leader and founder was Vincent Leaphart, alias John Africa, a freelance handyman who
advocated the abolition of all manmade laws.
In the early 1970s, about 30 MOVE members lived in a two-story house in the Poulton
Village area of West Philadelphia.
MOVE's philosophy called for lots of exercise, a raw food diet, and rejection of all technology.
The policemen who confronted MOVE found them difficult to understand.
These people are just neurotic.
It's like insane.
There was no principle.
There was nothing behind them.
Nobody even know what it meant, MOVE.
They still don't.
And so somebody said they got it because when they were kids growing up, every time they
seen a cop, he'd say, MOVE.
So they called themselves MOVE.
I mean, I don't know how they got it.
Profanity was their biggest weapon.
Demonstrations like this protest in front of a Philadelphia police precinct inevitably
led to arrests.
You don't see something that's profaned?
You can't use a pretty word.
Motherfuckers.
Now you have to understand that MOVE selected the time and the date and the place when they
were going to get arrested.
They decided that today is an activity, we're going to get arrested, and we go out and we
protest, and we'll do this and that, and who's going to get arrested and wherever have you.
Charles Patton was a Philadelphia police officer until 1984.
As he told frontline correspondent Leon Dash, arresting MOVE members only passed the problem
to the courts.
MOVE literally, I believe, tied the court system up.
Just a mere fact, we locked them up for failure to disperse, right?
And this holy condom.
When it went into the court system, as it's all their actions, calling the judge Misfit
MF, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, the judge held them in contempt of court.
Now we may only locked up a few of them, but then the spectators in the audience, other
MOVE supporters and other MOVE members, they would disrupt the court.
Now the judge in turn would hold maybe six or seven or eight or nine or maybe even ten
of them in contempt of court.
So you have one person on trial and end up with maybe ten being held in contempt.
What we do, we go to court and we start sounding the judge.
Judge would come in, the court bailiff would say, all rise, and the first thing everybody
sees is us sitting there.
Delbert Africa, a former Black Panther, joined MOVE in 1972.
Understand, MOVE went to court with a confrontation unit.
This is what we called it, because not everybody went to court, got arrested, okay?
We went to court with a confrontation unit of at most 15 people, all right?
Those 15 people had a total of over 800 and something cases, well over millions of dollars
of bail, and it didn't take no whole lot of us.
Like I say, it wasn't but 15.
Can you imagine that example if everybody went to court and said, I don't care what
you do, give me contempt.
So what?
I have just as much right, and my brother got just as much right to speak as you.
So what you doing arrogantly gaveling us down?
Delbert practiced his courtroom tactics in MOVE mock trials.
Understand this, our freedom is in jeopardy, and we will do anything to protect that freedom.
You cannot put any restrictions on our freedom.
Mr. Africa, this is not a forum for your political views.
Do you understand that?
Do you understand that I was brought here because of my beliefs, because of my views?
So obviously this is a forum for it.
I think the witness at this point is badgering the judge.
In March 1976, one incident triggered a rapid escalation of hostility between MOVE and the
city.
MOVE claims the police killed one of their babies.
Delbert and Jerry Ford Africa were there.
This baby was murdered.
It had been beat on the head with the sticks when the cop was trying to beat Janine down.
And to have that happen, I think it resolved MOVE members to the point where it said we
ain't backing up.
We felt at that particular point that our organization had to make a statement to the
city, to the world, that we were no longer going to tolerate the abuse and the killing
of our membership.
We contacted city officials, state officials, everybody complaining, you know, look what
you've done.
I agreed to go because I wanted to help them.
Councilman Lucian Blackwell was one of several city leaders invited over to the MOVE house.
We were just about finished when Delbert Africa had read a note.
He started to circulate a note.
And when it got to me, I read it and he said the baby has arrived.
It was then that I started to suspect something.
And we went upstairs in one of the empty rooms.
There was, appeared to be the body of a dead baby in a box.
We didn't touch it.
We didn't get close to it.
We didn't have it.
We couldn't turn the lights up.
There were no lights in there.
So it could have been a baby.
It might not have been a baby, but according to them, it was baby.
Councilman Blackwell pressed the city to investigate the incident, but the city never took action.
Over the next year, MOVE grew more militant.
On May 20th, 1977, they showed up on their front porch armed with rifles and handguns.
The city set up 24 hour surveillance.
It was the beginning of a 14 month long standoff.
If the police come in here with their hands, we'll use our hands.
If they come in here with clubs, we'll use clubs.
But if they come in here shooting and killing our women and children and our men, we will
shoot back in defense of our lives.
When I finally saw them on the porch, I did some soul searching as to what is this all
about now?
Because certain things were taking place and I thought I was knowledgeable what MOVE was
doing, what they were all about.
And so from all of a sudden, they appear on the porch with the guns and so forth.
Because all in the past, they spoke on a peaceful revolution type thing and confronting system
in a peaceful manner.
After the gun thing, I kind of say, hey, you know, it's a new ball game now.
We didn't know the consequences of what we were doing in terms of spelling out step by
step what it would be.
We had a belief that everything would work out, okay?
And we knew that day that we came up on that platform with them guns, that it would bring
everything to the forefront because the city had been beating and killing us all along.
But this demonstration would make it so that they couldn't do it in secret no more.
We're going to put the blockade in.
We're going to shut off all your utilities.
There'll be not a fly get through.
After many months and $3 million worth of police overtime, Mayor Rizzo tried to starve
MOVE out.
But MOVE held fast.
Ultimately, the blockade failed.
So did attempts to negotiate a surrender.
We're not about surrender.
It's just surrender to say we're guilty.
We're not guilty.
We're innocent.
Many people now saw MOVE as victims of a racist city government.
Mayor Rizzo watched as MOVE gained community support.
Then on August 8th, 1978, the mayor, convinced nothing else would work, sent in the police.
It would be the first full scale confrontation between MOVE and the city.
The police will be in there to drag them out by the backs of their necks.
There will be a confrontation this time.
There will be no barricades.
I don't know what's up to them whether there's no barricades, Mike.
They're going to be taken by force if they resist.
No question about that.
Children or not.
Some supporters came around to our house early in the morning saying, hey man, the police
is massing around the corner.
They're coming up.
We all throughout the house were awake.
We gathered everybody together, the kids, children, and we rushed on down to the basement
to prepare for them coming.
Well when we got there, we moved into position.
The ultimatums were given, the barricades were knocked down, the front porch was knocked
down, the front window, basement window on 33rd Street was exposed, and I was right next
to the window.
The window being right here, I was to the wall.
There's a dog there showing his feet to me.
They fired first.
They definitely fired first and fired a lot of sustained fire.
The police didn't fire back until given the orders to fire back because what they were
doing was they were scrambling.
One police officer lay dead.
Four other policemen and four firemen were wounded.
Of claims they never fired a shot.
I know the cops fired the shots throughout the whole thing.
Ain't no doubt about it.
We didn't fire.
Who killed Officer Ram?
One of them cops.
And that's why they want to cover it up.
That's why they want to cover it under the Rizzo regime right then and there.
Anywhere in the world, he would admit that his hand picked Gestapo had shot each other
to death.
But them frantic cops admitted that they were shooting off rounds all throughout there.
All right.
He was going off for five, 10 minutes.
All right.
One cop, he's now FOP president, Bob Hurst.
He admitted that he looked through our window, saw a group of women and children.
He said women and children, unarmed, and he emptied his damn carbine at him.
Delbert, Africa, yesterday told me that you had seen some women and children through the
basement window and then emptied your carbine rifle into through that window.
No.
Absolutely not.
Delbert knows better than that.
What I seen was Chucky Africa.
Seen him clearly coming right up to the window.
And I seen him with that mini Ruger 223 and I said that.
And that's what I seen.
The only time I seen the women and children is at the time they were coming out of the
window when it was all over.
I never seen the women and children in there.
You could hear them.
Delbert's right on that.
I mean, I knew they were in there.
Were you afraid that you could hit any of the women and children?
There was a possibility.
How did you feel about the possibility?
Well, I didn't like that possibility at all.
I mean, I don't like that.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't like that, but I don't know who's firing back at me either.
I mean, you don't know what's in the opposite center, the opposite end of that barrel.
You just don't know.
So you have to neutralize any adversary.
Any adversary has to be neutralized.
A group of people came out, there was a pause, then the last of us went out.
And I, myself, I was trying to go out the front with everybody else when a cop in the
back window put his gun at my head and said, bring your ass out here.
And I looked and I dug, I had no other choice.
So I come out on the side, on Pearl Street, and that's when the cops jumped up and down
on my head, in my groin, the whole bit, right in front of international TV, okay?
These the same cops that tried to say, I come out of their arm.
He's hitting him, he's hitting him.
Kicking him on the head.
I have no idea, I just couldn't see.
Shut up!
You're making a mistake there, aren't you?
Your ass, they are.
As far as Delbert, Africa, and the frustrations of those police officers, and having their
leader come out there, as defiant as he did, after having slaughtered our own people, and
then expect a society to turn around where no emotion, you strip it, they're sterile,
and you're not supposed to touch the guy, it's a wonder the man ever walked.
How in God's name can anybody just say, well, treat him properly, forget it, emotions are
free, don't do anything, pick up your dead, pick up all your wounded, walk away, everything's
okay, he did his thing, but it's okay, you don't do your thing?
Well, you can put a badge on all day long, but you still have a little blood pumping
in you, you still have the emotion and the frustration of seeing your own people slaughtered,
and then this thing comes out here, like a milk-fed quarterback, and he wants to be a
star?
A star?
I'd have buried him, I'd have buried him.
He killed somebody who he couldn't carry his jockstrap, a 30-year Marine, two wars, all
the blood and everything else that this man saved in the streets of Philadelphia, and
that garbage, that trash, because he had a cause that he couldn't even spell, wants to
just blow everybody away and come out and say, I got rights, got rights, he's got to
be mad, I know he's mad anyway.
Three officers who beat Delbert Africa were indicted and tried for assault.
A Philadelphia judge found them innocent.
Delbert and eight other MOVE members were convicted of murder.
Each was sentenced to 30 to 100 years in state prison.
Over the next few years, MOVE disappeared.
It was not until three years later that some fugitive MOVE members were discovered living
in Rochester, New York.
John Africa was one of them.
He and the others had fled Philadelphia before the August 8th confrontation.
Federal and local prosecutors in Philadelphia hoped they could put MOVE away forever.
They did not succeed.
MOVE sympathizers are celebrating the acquittal of their leader, Vincent Leaphart, also known
as John Africa.
Leaphart was asked how he felt when the verdict was read.
I was asleep.
What are your plans in terms of staying in Philadelphia in terms of trying to continue
the MOVE cult?
It's not a cult, it's an organization.
After the trial, MOVE members not in prison took up residence in a black middle-class
neighborhood a couple of miles from their Powelton Village shootout.
All was quiet for the first couple of years.
But in the summer of 1983, a second MOVE confrontation started to take shape.
Our first confrontation with the MOVE people really came about with the children.
First the neighbors complained about children eating out of their garbage cans and about
stray dogs, roaches, and smell.
Trash and the animals were back there and the summertime they had raw meat back there.
There were also stories of verbal and physical attacks.
Mo Africa, he ran and punched me in the back of my head.
The neighbors expected the city to act.
They threatened to kill my 17-year-old son.
They threatened me.
What did they say they were going to do to you?
They said they were going to kick my doorway, rape my wife, and kill my children.
This city did nothing to stop these people.
All they got were promises.
They told us what we wanted to hear, the city officials.
We will take care of this problem, don't worry about it, let's don't get nothing going until
Mary Good gets elected.
All of us, from all neighborhoods, from all walks of life, white, black.
Wilson Good was Philadelphia's first black mayor.
His election seemed to signal a departure from the past.
Working together can solve the problem facing our city.
Neighborhoods that had been politically written off had reason to be optimistic.
Move had different ideas.
A few weeks before Good's inauguration, they boarded up their house and mounted a bullhorn
outside.
It was Christmas Eve, 1983.
And I went to bed, and about one o'clock after, I said, oh my gosh, I got a rowdy block, Tom,
you know?
I got a rowdy block.
And you could hear voices, but then I opened the window, and the first thing I heard was
M.F.
Santa Claus.
I said, what the?
It was M.F.
Santa Claus.
Why did Move harass the neighbors on Osage Avenue?
First of all, we did not harass the neighbors on Osage Avenue.
I met with them last night, some of them, about 20 of them, and they said that you harassed
them.
They were saying, essentially, in a major confrontation on Christmas Eve, 1983, by setting
up a bullhorn and announcing Move's position to the neighborhood for hours on end, keeping
their children away, and also subjecting their children to profane language, which they objected
to.
Okay.
Now, Nick, you finished with that?
Yes.
Well, what took place on December 24th, 1984, was the confrontation that Move had initiated
against the city of Philadelphia.
Concerning the use of the bullhorn and the use of profanity, well, it's unfortunate that
our confronting the system in the way that we did was to impose on their rights, but
certainly it wasn't.
In fact, it was to insure them.
I went over to the Move house and talked with Frank James and Conrad and Teresa and Rhonda
Africa about what their reason was to have all of this confusion on our block.
They said, well, we are trying to get our people who are in jail unjustly because of
the Poulton Village incident in 1978.
They said, we want to get them released.
They said, if we make you angry enough as residents, as our neighbors, then City Hall
has got to respond.
What led to the neighbors' complaints is the position that we took that we have innocent
people in prison, and we want them out.
And our demonstration is to get our people out of prison.
We talked on the loudspeaker, yes, we did.
We told people that we were pushed to take the position that we're taking, that if they
wanted to do something to eliminate the situation, to relieve it in some way, that they should
be down City Hall complaining.
We encouraged people to go down City Hall and complain.
They said, we're going to put pressure on you until you put pressure on City Hall.
And make them let our people go.
On Memorial Day of 1984, 15 Osage Avenue residents went down to City Hall to meet with the mayor.
When we had a meeting with the mayor, we all went out there.
I know right then in my heart, I knew there wasn't nothing he was going to do for us because
he said to us, why can't you all deal with it?
It's blank on blank.
He didn't want to deal with us at all.
He had just like we was a bunch of bombs sitting there, and he was talking to a bunch of bombs.
That's the feeling you got.
That's the feeling I got.
And I think we all got that same feeling.
That he was talking down to you.
Right.
He didn't even want to talk to us.
We were wasting his time.
We were wasting his time that Sunday morning.
I don't know how to solve a problem at this point.
I cannot, as mayor of this city, take an illegal action in order to begin to deal with the
concerns of a plot.
I sensed very early that we did not have the expertise to do what had to be done.
At hearings held to investigate the city's handling of the 1985 move confrontation, city
officials described how the city dealt with neighbors' complaints.
Did you yourself or through your committee bring it to the attention of other agencies?
No, we did not.
Was this just too hot to handle?
I think that's a good summary for it, sir.
Mr. White, if this was too hot to handle, what help was available to those neighbors?
If the city couldn't help them, who could?
Well, you're saying the city.
You're asking me.
I'm obviously not communicating.
And Mr. White, I don't want to prolong this.
Did you call anybody up and say, look, we got a bad problem out on Osage Avenue?
No, I did not.
And someone had better do something about it?
No, I did not.
To respond to neighborhood complaints was part of a policy of avoidance.
Even when the mayor was informed that outstanding warrants on some move members justified making
arrests, the mayor chose to avoid confrontation.
I did not see that going in and making arrests of two, three people on misdemeanors' charges
would in fact solve the problem and would in fact do nothing more than aggravate the
problem and make the problem worse.
With the city not taking action, move continued to put pressure on the neighbors.
In the fall of 1984, they went so far as to construct a fortified bunker on their roof
complete with gun portals and a new and larger bullhorn.
This is unreal that I have to deal with this.
And at that point, Cliff and us got together, we're going to have a news conference, then
we're going to do something.
We've got to get bats and guns and do something ourselves because we were fed up by that point
enough was enough.
We had waited a whole year and watched them build this stupid bunker up there, you know?
I mean, dragging logs and trees all apart up the street to fortify this place and nobody
done anything.
But the police right there, 24 hours a day, watching everything that goes on.
Is it a confrontation?
In my certainty, it's a confrontation once strategized by Giant Africa years and years
and years ago.
There's been talk that there are explosives in this house.
Is there any truth to that?
It's only people's, you know, hallucination because they have not been inside this house
so they would not know what is in this house.
What is in this house is the strategy of Giant Africa that is very explosive.
In the spring of 1985, the neighbors fed up called upon the governor of Pennsylvania for
help.
Mayor Goode was forced to take action.
Like Mayor Rizzo before him, he turned the matter over to the police.
The final point I gave to the police commissioner was take your time, prepare a good plan.
We can then proceed with a tremendous amount of order.
On Mother's Day, May 12th, the police evacuated the neighborhood and told residents they could
return in 24 hours.
Well, I was told to leave because you don't know what the extent of this is going to be,
you know?
What do you think?
I think, believe it or not, I think we'll have to kill all of them.
We want them out and I feel that whatever has to be done has to be done, whatever means
are necessary and that's what I want.
By early Monday morning, May 13th, there were 500 policemen surrounding the house.
Some of them had confronted Move before in 1978.
This time they came more heavily armed.
At 5.35 a.m., the police gave four Move members named and arrest warrants 15 minutes to surrender.
The police believed there were at least six adults and as many as 12 children in the house.
When Move refused to surrender, the police opened up with tear gas, smoke, and water
under the roof of the house.
Get your horse out of there!
Come on, get that horse out of there!
Dude, where is this dude?
Come on, get out of here!
Let's get back!
Let's go folks, get out of here!
Get out of the line, please, get back!
The gunfire lasted for 90 minutes.
Move wasn't surrendering.
The mayor was not on the scene.
He relied on TV news and telephone reports from his second-in-command,
City Managing Director Leo Brooks, a former U.S. Army general.
Brooks knew little about what was going on.
You could, I assume, from your command post,
or at least when you went outside, hear gunfire.
Oh, absolutely.
Did it sound to you like automatic gunfire?
Oh, absolutely.
Did you know prior to hearing the automatic gunfire
that the police would be in possession of
and possibly using automatic weapons?
I knew they would have M16s.
Did you know they'd have Uzi's?
I did not.
Did you know they'd have.50 caliber weapons present?
I did not.
Okay.
Did you know that they'd have an anti-tank gun?
I did not.
Did you know they'd have an M60?
I did not.
While Brooks was supposedly in charge,
the mayor was at home with some local politicians
who he'd invited over to help him monitor the morning's events.
From the mayor's kitchen, they could hear the gunfire.
I arrived about 4.30 along with President Coleman, City Council.
I met State Senator Hardy Williams
and State Representative Pete Truman.
We sat there with the mayor for a long time.
With the mayor periodically turning to us
and saying everything's all right and nobody's hurt.
One time he said that they're not firing in the house
in response to the fact that we were a little worried
about hearing the gunfire and rapid gunfire,
which sounded like automatic weapons,
and said that they're firing over the house but not in the house.
At any time during that morning,
did Mr. Brooks report to you
whether or not police were returning fire at the house
or were shooting above the house?
My understanding from one conversation I had that morning was
that the police were shooting above the house.
The mayor was misinformed.
The police fired at least 10,000 rounds,
not over but into the house.
At the same time, police assault teams were using powerful explosives.
You understood they were going to use explosives
that would only put three-inch holes in the wall?
Yes.
When was the first time you learned, sir,
that explosives had pretty much blown off the front of the house
of the porch area of 6221?
Sometime subsequent to May 13.
And how did you learn that?
From reading news accounts.
Are you positive that you told the mayor
that you were going to use explosive charges?
Yes, sir, I did.
Did the mayor seem to you to be paying attention to what you were saying?
Yes, sir, because he asked me if it was safe.
After a morning of gunfire and explosions,
a 10-hour standoff followed.
The police had prepared no backup plan.
With move holding fast, the police discussed alternatives
but did not consult any of the city's trained crisis negotiators.
Meanwhile, the mayor went down to City Hall
and in mid-afternoon held a press conference.
We intend to evict from the house.
We intend to evacuate from the house.
We intend to seize control of the house.
We will do it by any means necessary.
Mayor, do you have any plans?
We don't have any plans beyond at this time,
Russell, beyond taking control of the house.
Do you have any plans to go to the scene, to go to Osage Avenue?
No, I think it's inappropriate for the executive to be there.
I have three very capable people there.
Leo Brooks, managing director,
Greg Samboyd, the police commissioner,
and Bill Richmond, the fire commissioner.
I don't think I'm needed at the scene.
Mayor, I want to understand you quickly. You're saying that if we push Samboyd
to do anything he wants at this point,
that you will not say yay or nay either way?
I'm saying to you that the police commissioner is a police commissioner
and he's in charge of police operations
and that he will be, in fact, listened to in terms of how he wants to proceed.
At 5 in the afternoon, a new plan was conceived.
I told the mayor that it was going to be difficult to secure that area during the night.
That the neighbors were clamoring to return to their homes,
and that the commissioner wanted to drop a device on the roof
to destroy the bunker and penetrate the roof.
After he said to me he was going to blow the bunker off,
I paused, I guess, for 30 seconds to absorb what he was saying to me,
and the next word I said to him was,
does Mr. Samboyd know about this?
He says yes, it was his idea.
This, in my estimation, was the best way to go.
Did the managing director concur in your decision to use the helicopter
to drop the explosive?
Yes, sir.
Did he then call the mayor?
He did.
Did you tell the mayor that it was going to be dropped from a helicopter?
I did.
And you recall yesterday that he testified that his recollection differed?
Yes.
Are you positive you told him that it was going to be dropped from a helicopter?
I'm positive.
Director Brooks' understanding of that conversation differs from mine somewhat,
in that he recalls having said to me that they were going to use a helicopter to do this.
That is not my recollection.
At 5.27 p.m., without warning move,
a bomb containing powerful military explosives was dropped.
Expecting move from the helicopter to drop it from a helicopter,
it was decided that it was going to be dropped from a helicopter.
It was decided that it was going to be dropped from a helicopter.
A bomb containing powerful military explosives was dropped.
Expecting move to flee, police stakeout teams took up positions in the alley behind the house.
T. O'Brien from Channel 3 came in.
She said, Lucian, what's going on?
I said, well, we've got an impasse.
Nothing.
She said, oh, no, Lucian, we just heard an explosion out there.
We turned on this television here and we saw the helicopter circling.
We saw the fellow drop the bomb and boom.
I stood there and watched.
At first, while I was concerned,
I felt that they had this thing under control and they figured,
well, maybe they're trying to smoke him out.
They figured if enough smoke filled up the house that they would run out in the street
and they would probably capture them.
Then after a while, we saw the fire.
We went down and we saw the mayor.
He was coming out of his office and I said, hey, you know,
he said, everything's under control.
He said, we have it under control.
Don't worry about it. Everything's all right.
There was still no sign that Move would leave the house.
The police and fire commissioners now agreed to use the fire as a tactical weapon.
Commissioner Sambor said to me, something to the effect, can we control that fire?
And my response, and I'm a cautious person by nature, I said, I think we can.
He said, let's let the bunker burn.
I did tell him, in essence, in communication,
I communicated to him that I would like to let the fire burn.
I mean, the bunker burn.
Why didn't you get Mr. Brooks on the phone and say, put out the fire?
I did.
When?
At 6 o'clock.
How about it's 6.30 and 7 and 7.30 and 8 and 8.30 as we all watch the television.
We talked about that throughout the evening, and we kept calling back and saying,
what's going on? Why can't you put the fire out?
And the mayor said, I'm looking at the television.
That fire is getting hotter. I mean, it's getting larger.
Put that fire out.
And I said, I just finished talking to the commissioner, told him to put the fire out.
After that order was given to put the fire out, to turn the water on,
did you convey that order to anyone else?
Yes, sir.
To whom?
Fire commissioner was still there.
I category deny that.
I had no knowledge of an order from General Brooks to extinguish that fire.
An hour after the fire started, the bunker fell into the second floor.
According to one of the survivors, a child named Birdie Africa,
moved women and children were huddled under wet blankets in a basement garage,
while a police video crew took these pictures.
They won't call the police commissioner and mother fire.
I'm 1830 hours, 6063.
Over the next hour, the fire moved down through the house and began to spread to adjacent homes.
It wasn't until 90 minutes after the fire started that MOVE members tried to escape.
At that time, witnesses heard gunshots coming from the back alley.
Your first attempt to get out of the garage, you turned back because of the gunfire, right?
That's right.
What was happening?
Could you hear the bullets around you?
Yeah, I could hear them very distinctly.
I could hear them hitting all around the house, all around me.
Some shooting started, could you hear shooting?
What did it sound like?
It was like that.
Police gunfire forced MOVE to stay in the house.
MOVE made another attempt to escape about 10 minutes later.
This time Ramona says there was no shooting.
As soon as I thought that I didn't hear that type of fire anymore,
we tried to get out again.
That's when we started yelling, the kids coming out, and then they opened the garage door.
I know they heard us. I know they heard us.
We were saying, we want to come out.
And what did the other children do? Did they do the same thing?
Yeah.
Were any of the children crying?
Yeah, we all were.
Then what happened?
Ramona went out and then she said, it's all right, we're going to come out now.
And then we started rushing out.
Other members followed you out?
That's right.
How many?
I don't know how many exactly. I know it was several people that came out.
So Ramona was out, was she the first one out?
Mm-hmm.
And then who was out next?
Tree.
And then who went out?
Phil.
Phil?
And then who went out?
Me.
I'm saying I know that more than Bertie and I was outside of that house,
and there is no reason in the world for me to believe that anybody would voluntarily just go back into a house and stay there.
What did Phil and Tree do?
They was running. She told them to run.
Which way did they run?
Down the alley.
Were they down the alley towards Cobbs Creek or down the alley towards 62nd?
Cobbs Creek.
Towards Cobbs Creek. Did you see them running down the alley?
I don't remember really how many went toward Cobbs Creek, but we've got to cut this out. I'm going to talk about this some more.
Did you ever see Tree or Phil again?
Bertie and Ramona were taken into police custody, rushed to nearby hospitals, and treated for burns.
Police had notified the hospital to expect two other children. They never arrived.
Soon after the escape, houses rapidly caught fire across Osage Avenue and behind the alley.
A total of 61 homes burned down before the fire was declared under control at a quarter to midnight.
At a press conference three days later, reporters asked about gunshots behind the house.
The police commissioner gave them two versions of what happened.
First, he claimed his officers fired shots in self-defense at a move man with a rifle.
Fire was returned as for the fact as to whether or not we killed anybody. That information is not at this present available to me.
Later in the same press conference, the commissioner reversed his story.
Let me clear one thing up to the question about the firing in the alley.
About what?
About the return or the alleged return of fire by the stakeout officers against the people in the alley.
There was no fire returned by the police officers for fear of hitting the child.
If anyone knows for certain what happened in the back alley, they have not yet come forward.
The accounts of Bertie and Ramona that they saw others running from the house are unexplained.
All 11 bodies were reportedly found within the house walls.
But there is other evidence.
A pathologist found bullet fragments in three move bodies. Because the fire partially consumed, some of the bodies recovered, evidence of other gunshot wounds was possibly destroyed.
Also, witnesses heard automatic weapons fired at the time of the escape, gunfire that could only have come from the police.
In the ruins of the move house, police search teams found only the remains of two pistols, a.22 caliber rifle, and a shotgun.
Move had no automatic weapons.
There are also questions concerning when the mayor gave the order to put the fire out.
Reexamination of the facts indicates that the order may have come much later than the mayor claims.
Why didn't you get Mr. Brooks on the phone and say put out the fire?
I did.
When?
At six o'clock.
According to the mayor, his order to extinguish the fire was given at around six o'clock, at a time when the fire was still easily controllable.
Then the mayor testified seeing on live television water immediately turned on the fire.
But according to fire department logs and TV videotapes, water was not turned onto the move house until six thirty.
That places the mayor's order a critical half hour later than he claims.
By then, the fire was raging out of control.
And despite the mayor's initial order, the water was soon turned off.
Firemen deferring to the police did not fight the fire in any conventional way until after nine thirty.
Had the mayor's order been given and followed at six, 11 lives and 61 homes might have been saved.
At this time, we pleaded, we begged to come in and solve a difficult problem that is getting worse and worse and worse.
Way before you made a decision to drop a damn bomb on my house, you ruined my life.
And here I am sitting, can't go back to my house behind the bullshit these people down here trying to put.
They didn't come in here with no sensitivity to anybody.
They didn't care.
They sent people over there to try to clean up a mess that they made over there.
And we're just supposed to take anything from these people.
This is what they expect us to do.
They don't care about us.
They say, well, let them suffer, let them right.
Not for a day or a week, but for years and years.
And we go down and approach the mayor about some solution and what he says.
Well, we're working on it.
We don't know exactly what to do.
Wait, wait, wait.
And then he take all the time to try to make a decision.
And what does he do? Comes in and says, OK, attack the house, fire 10,000 rounds of ammunition.
Talking about he's interested in protecting the kids.
What kind of protection of kids when you fire 10,000 rounds of ammunition in there?
And when they let the bunker, they decided physically, decided to let the bunker burn.
They knew they was going to burn down the whole neighborhood.
Who gave them people that power?
They let them get away with it this time.
Guess what?
They'll have another neighborhood burnt down, another black neighborhood burnt down.
And that's what these people better understand out here that are listening to us tonight.
I'm bitter. I'm very, very bitter.
And I make no bones about it.
And I don't care where chips fall because I know one thing.
If it would ever happen in a white neighborhood, they would have snuffed it out right in the beginning.
I don't know what else I can say other than, Mr. Rupp, I'm sorry.
That wasn't the question. That wasn't the question.
The question is, we have to find if somebody made mistakes.
Mr. Rupp?
And I didn't hear that today, and that's what I'm asking.
I'm sorry, sir. Would you repeat your question?
We have to write a report that says whether or not someone or some people or some leaders made mistakes and assessed responsibility.
And we have to go off and do that. That's all.
Is your question, sir, whether or not you feel...
I think you've answered my question, sir. I really do.
The answer to your question is that, yes, I made mistakes in this process.
Mr. Rupp, if I may?
Soon after the fire, Mayor Good's managing director, Brooks, resigned.
A few months later, Police Commissioner Sambor retired.
Fire Commissioner Richmond and Mayor Good remained in office.
Ramona Africa was tried and sentenced to up to seven years in prison for riot and conspiracy.
The child, Birdie Africa, now lives with his father, who never was a MOVE member.
Birdie's mother died in the fire.
There are presently two grand jury investigations, one local, one federal, into the events of May 13, 1985.
A decision by the local grand jury to hand down possible criminal indictments is due soon.
A third grand jury has been impaneled to investigate construction delays and cost overruns in the rebuilding of the neighbor's houses.
After waiting over a year, most residents returned to Osage Avenue last fall.
Please join us again for Frontline. I'm Judy Woodruff. Good night.
The pain and isolation of emotional illness.
See, I'm mentally ill. I'm hard of hearing, and I'm different. See, I got all that on me.
Mental illness strikes one out of five American adults. How do these people feel about their lives?
Little kids laugh at me, think I'm a clown. It hurts.
Watch A Matter of the Mind, next time on Frontline.
For a transcript of this program, please send $4 to Frontline, Box 322, Boston, Massachusetts, 02134.
Frontline is produced for the Documentary Consortium by WGBH, Boston, which is solely responsible for its content.
Funding for Frontline was provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide, and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Schools, colleges, and other organizations interested in purchasing or renting video cassettes of this program may call 800-424-7963 or write PBS Video.
Post Office Box 8092, Washington, D.C., 20024.