Bad boys loose in Philly

Rico says the police have had their hands full, dealing with the 'flash mob' phenomenon in downtown Philly, and the Inquirer has the story:

Deejay Walker, 18, a senior at Strawberry Mansion High School, has traveled in after-school crowds since he was 16. Often, he said, he and his friends head for the Gallery. "Everybody hangs out here," Walker said. "We call this our territory." It's not uncommon for tempers to flare, he said, and on Tuesday afternoon, when, police said, about 150 teenagers took to the streets outside the mall and wreaked havoc on the neighborhood, it all started as a fight near the food court. "If you're somewhere and you see a lot of people, it just triggers something. You just act wild," Walker explained. "It's fun."
Yesterday, Philadelphia police responded by taking a "hard line" against young troublemakers. Officers and the mall's security guards swarmed the Gallery with radios and guns, patrolling walkways, leaning over railings to survey the crowds, and gathering at key positions to make their presence known. The officers were deployed to the mall and surrounding areas in response to a rampage Tuesday, when a mob of teenagers flooded the Gallery and spilled into surrounding blocks. The crowd vandalized the nearby Macy's store, started fights, knocked pedestrians to the ground, and turned a usually peaceful shopping district upside down for the second time in two months.
Trouble often starts, Walker said, when shoulders brush or bump. One or both people feel insulted, so they curse or shove back. "You can do whatever," Walker said. "Your boys will back you up." As he spoke, two men passing through the crowd knocked against each other. "Damn!" one snapped as the other hastily walked away. "You see?" Walker said. "It just happened."
Police say they believe Tuesday's fight, like several others in the last year, may have been organized in part through text messages and social-media sites.
Fifteen teenagers, ranging in age from 14 to 17, were arrested Tuesday and charged as juveniles with disorderly conduct and rioting. One girl was charged with assault, police said, and a 14-year-old boy was taken to the hospital, knocked unconscious. He has been released, police said.
Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said yesterday that teenagers who started trouble would be arrested and prosecuted, and police will encourage the school to expel or discipline the student. "This is unacceptable, and I don't think they realize what they're doing to the image of the city," Bethel said, adding that most teenagers who hang out in Center City do not cause trouble. "We need them to know there's going to be consequences."
Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said parents needed to get involved in curbing teen violence.
According to James Golden, chief safety executive for the Philadelphia School District, the students arrested were from eight high schools: Simon Gratz, George Washington, Bartram, Olney West, Lincoln, Mastbaum, Ben Franklin, and Ombudsman Hunting Park, a disciplinary school.
SEPTA also beefed up police presence, assigning officers at Center City subway stations and concourses, SEPTA Police Chief Richard Evans said, in case there were problems with large groups of youths that get pushed underground. During school days, SEPTA police overlap the day and evening shifts when school is dismissed, almost doubling the normal manpower. They focus their efforts on some "problem stations," but Evans said the closest subway stops to the Gallery, at 11th and Eighth Streets on the Market-Frankford Line, were not normally a problem.
Tuesday's incident was similar to one in December at the Gallery, which investigators said was organized on Facebook. Gangs of youths were turned away from the Gallery on 18 December and then roved through Center City. The teens assaulted some holiday shoppers.
Last May, more than 100 youths met near Broad and South Streets and started a melee, ransacking a corner store, attacking several taxis, and pulling a woman from her car. That, too, was planned in part on the Internet, police said they believed.
Courtney Poaches, 20, an employee at Payless Shoe Source in the Gallery, said that violence had become routine at the mall and that she feared security could do little to prevent it. "This is getting out of control. It's every day, every single day," Poaches said. "They outnumber our guards."
Tuesday's trouble started about 4:45 p.m. with a crowd of teenagers in the Gallery who were chased out by security guards, police said. The youths poured out of the mall and made their way to Macy's at 13th and Market Streets, where they rampaged, knocking over displays and causing about $700 worth of damage, police said. Macy's spokeswoman Elina Kazan said the damage was confined to displays and fixtures. "We're just glad no one was hurt," she said.
"I was walking through Macy's to the train at about 5:20ish when mobs of kids began swarming the store," said Sandy Astrono, 39, who works in offices above Macy's. "I ran to the shoe department, thinking someone had a gun," Astrono said. "Security guards were running, and some of the kids had their shirts off and were fighting."
After the teens left Macy's, about 60 of them headed west on Market toward City Hall, frightening pedestrians and knocking some to the ground. The crowd ended up at City Hall, where they engaged in a snowball fight and assaulted one another, Bethel said, until police moved in. The incident lasted about 45 minutes.
City Councilmen Jim Kenney and Frank DiCicco watched the mayhem unfold from Kenney's second-floor office, which faces Market Street on City Hall's east side. They saw throngs of teenagers flowing up the stairs from the subway, pouring briefly into Macy's, then emerging from the department store, fists flying. "It was nauseating and frightening, and sad that one young person would actually stand over another person and kick them in the face," Kenney said. He and DiCicco asked Mayor Nutter and Council President Anna C. Verna to sue the social-media sites involved, but said what they really want is a mechanism for detecting similar organized threats and alerting police. "The citizens of this city have the right to shop, work, use public transportation, and not be pummeled to the ground," Kenney said. "This is urban terrorism. If they're using those sites to conduct this thuggery, then I want to find out if it's true, and I want to get the appropriate legal action to get them to warn us."
School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said the district needed to find ways of reaching young people before another tragedy occurs. "What happened can't happen again," Ackerman said. "We were lucky nobody was killed. Something like that could happen again. For a short time, downtown was almost out of control."
On Friday, city, school district, and merchant association officials met to discuss how to deal with mobs of students at the Gallery, Golden said. District officials are now weighing whether to suspend or expel those involved in the mayhem. The student conduct code requires students to comply with school rules while riding a bus or traveling to and from school or to and from school-related activities.
Officials are also looking at how other cities deal with the problem of teens who cause trouble at malls. "We've seen a growing number of these incidents, although not an epidemic," said Ken Trump, president of National School Safety & Security Services, a Cleveland consulting firm. The nature of social media makes it "virtually impossible" for school officials to monitor, he added.
In public comments at yesterday's School Reform Commission meeting, Ackerman said she had spoken with Nutter and school officials, and some suggested that the district monitor Facebook and other social-networking sites for possible trouble. "I don't want to do that," Ackerman said. "I would like to work with young people to come up with a respect for human dignity and valuing other people just because we deserve it."

Rico says the news had a lot of video of young black men (hey, they were; in Philly, what did you expect?) 'wilding' in the streets. Rico humbly suggests that the police department ensure that every cop downtown is packing a Taser, and is trained in its use; a little Mace, a little Taser, and their enthusiasm for this sort of thing will fall off dramatically...