By Isaiah Thompson
Philladelphia City Paper
At about 10 o'clock yesterday morning, Philadelphia police officers from the 9th District, including plain-clothes detectives and a police captain, showed up at a worn-down building on Ridge Avenue and 17th Street and began knocking.
Daniel Moffat, a 28-year-old resident and co-owner of the building, answered the door. It was not long before he was taken outside and detained. Moffat watched from the squad car as the officers entered the building and detained three other residents who were inside.
Then a funny thing happened: Homeland Security showed up. And more detectives. And then the Crime Scene unit. And then more detectives. And the Fire Marshall. And Licensing and Inspection. And then more detectives. All day long and into Friday evening, the building was crawling with officials from one agency or another.
Why the fuss?
9th District Captain Dennis Wilson told the four detained — and later insisted to City Paper — that he and his officers came to respond to a simple complaint that people were staying in a vacant house. It was only after his officers entered, he says, that he found further cause to detain the residents and, indeed, call in Homeland Security and a small army of detectives.
"Everything's wrong in here," he told CP gravely from the building's doorway. "We're still investigating this property and we're still investigating these people."
Indeed. At least three police officers at the scene, including Wilson himself, confirmed in one way or another that — whatever the initial motivation for their visit — they were now busy investigating the residents, whom they accused vaguely of being "terrorists."
"Lemme ask you this," said one Crime Scene officer. "Why's there literature about killing cops in there?" He declined to be more specific.
"Propaganda against the government," chimed in officer John Taggert, also with Crime Scene. Taggert, who was nice enough to grant CP "three questions, and only three questions," didn't elaborate on the nature of the "propaganda."
Captain Wilson took the accusations a step further. "They're a hate group," he asserted. "We're trying to drum up charges against them, but, unfortunately, we'll probably have to let them go."
Let them go they did — 12 to 14 hours after the residents had been detained, they were mysteriously set free without charges (the police released the last two, both female, at 3:30 in the morning, says Moffat).
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http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20080616210525284