Philadelphia Police Department
The Philadelphia Police Department (PPD or Philly PD) is the police agency responsible for law enforcement and investigations within the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The PPD is one of the oldest municipal police agencies, fourth largest police force and sixth largest non-federal law enforcement agency in the United States. Since records were first kept in 1828, at least 289 PPD officers have died in the line of duty. The Philadelphia Police Department has a history of police brutality, intimidation, coercion, and disregard for constitutional rights, particularly during the tenure of Frank Rizzo as police commissioner (1967–1971) and mayor (1972–1980). The patterns of police brutality were documented in a 1978 Pulitzer Prize–winning Philadelphia Inquirer series by William K. Marimow and Jon Neuman. History Philadelphia established a night watch in 1797, and employed its first police officers to patrol the streets in daytime in 1833. The two entities were combined in 1854 to form the Philadelphia Police Department, which was modeled on London's Metropolitan Police. In 1870, a Philadelphia policeman shot and killed Henry Truman, an unarmed Black man in an alley. He was found guilty of manslaughter. In 1887, the police department was put under control of the city's Department of Public Safety. Two years later, the PPD inaugurated its mounted patrol, which was disbanded in 2004 but restored in 2011. In 1913, L. M. Gillespie became one of the first women police officers in Philadelphia. Major race riots broke out in 1919 and 1964. In 1970, a well publicized raid of the Black Panther Party occurred. During the weekend of August 29–30, 1970, seven Philadelphia policemen were shot during widespread racial tension. In 1974, the Pennsylvania Crime Commission's "Report on Police Corruption and the Quality of Law Enforcement in Philadelphia" concluded "that police corruption in Philadelphia is ongoing, widespread, systematic, and occurring at all levels of the police department. Corrupt practices were uncovered during the investigation in every police district and involved police officers ranging in rank from policeman to inspector. Specific acts of corruption involving improper cash payments to the police by gamblers, racketeers, bar owners, businessmen, nightclub owners, after-hours club owners, prostitutes, and others are detailed in the report. More than 400 individual police officers are identified by first name, last initial, and badge or payroll number as receiving improper payments in terms of cash, merchandise, sexual services, or meals." A 1978 Pulitzer Prize-winning Philadelphia Inquirer series by William K. Marimow and Jon Neuman documented extensive patterns of police brutality in the PPD. The tenure of Frank Rizzo as police commissioner (1967–1971) and mayor (1972–1980) has frequently been characterized as a period in which the PPD engaged in extensive police brutality and discriminatory policing. In 1985, federal judge Clarence Charles Newcomer criticized the PPD for indiscriminately arresting a number Spanish-speaking people after an officer was killed, calling the arrests "unlawful" and "disgraceful". In 1985, a residential eviction against an anarcho-primitivist organization called MOVE lead to a shootout between the group and the PDD. During the standoff, a PPD