Philadelphia police face rebuke from city, Wallace family

• Maryclaire Dale/The Associated Press
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(Philadelphia) — Philadelphia police faced rebuke Thursday from both City Hall and the family of Walter Wallace Jr. as an anguished city bemoaned the department’s response to a year of extraordinary, and sometimes violent, civil unrest.

The City Council, joining leaders of other cities, voted to block police from using tear gas, rubber bullets or pepper spray on peaceful protesters after hearing hours of testimony from people injured or traumatized by them, including a group hit with tear gas as they were corraled near a highway overpass.

“It was undisciplined, it was indiscriminate and it hurt a lot of people,” said Council Member Helen Gym, who introduced the bill.

The moves follow days of protests, store break-ins and ATM thefts after the death of Wallace — a Black man shot by police — that led the mayor to lock down the city Wednesday night with an overnight curfew.

Later in the day, a lawyer for the Wallace family complained the police department sent “ill-trained, ill-prepared officers” to deal with his mental health crisis.

The family had called Monday for both medical services and police, but only the latter arrived, lawyer Shaka Johnson said. Less than 30 seconds into the encounter, Wallace was dead, felled by a blast of 14 bullets, he said.

Police have said the two officers fired after Wallace ignored orders to drop a knife. Wallace’s mother and wife were outside, shouting to police about his mental health problems, Johnson said.

He said the video shows “instant panic” from officers whose training taught them only how to open fire.

“What you will not see is a man with a knife lunging at anyone, that would qualify as a reason to assassinate him,” said Johnson, who reviewed the police body camera video and 911 tapes with family members and city officials on Thursday.

“The city has failed not only the Wallace family,” he said, “the city has also failed those police officers.”

The officers have not been named, but Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has pledged to release the video and audio tapes. In a news conference Wednesday, Outlaw lamented the lack of a behavioral health unit in a department she joined only this year.

She pledged to address that need and also told the council that she supports the goal of their bill, which she said aligns with current police policy. Mayor Jim Kenney also supports the ban in principle but wants to review it before signing it into law, a spokesman said.

The city had a strong record of accommodating protesters in recent years, until the Black Lives Matter protests erupted in the city on May 30, following the death of George Floyd. Chaos and violent clashes ensued, and broke out anew this week after Wallace’s death in a mostly Black section of West Philadelphia.

“The unjustified shooting of Walter Wallace Jr. this week has our city both raging and grieving, but also extraordinarily purposeful about taking action,” Gym said.

Several other cities across the U.S. have debated or enacted similar measures to limit the use of chemical sprays and rubber bullets against protesters.

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney William McSwain, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, announced charges Thursday against a Philadelphia social studies teacher and three others for their alleged roles in the torching of two police cruisers during the May 30 protests.

According to McSwain, 29-year-old teacher Anthony Smith and two others put “combustible materials” into a cruiser near City Hall that was already on fire. Another man was charged separately with setting fire to a second cruiser. Smith helped organize the Philadelphia Coalition for Racial and Economic Legal Justice, known locally as Philly for REAL Justice.

McSwain, in a statement, said he supports peaceful protests. However, he said, “If you engage in violent civil unrest and commit a federal crime in this district, we will come after you.”

Smith, who teaches in a city charter school, was awakened from his bed Wednesday morning and arrested, his lawyer said.

“This fits into the law and order narrative of trying to criminalize dissent, which the Justice Department has laid out under (Attorney General William) Barr for the last four or five months,” Smith’s lawyer, Paul Hetznecker, said.

He noted the arrest came five months after the incident and five days before “the most important presidential election of our time.”