'Philly 10' who protested Tate-Brown's death opt for trial
The 10 defendants were arrested on a summary charge of disorderly conduct at a town-hall meeting last month in Lawncrest.
TEN PEOPLE arrested last month at a Lawncrest town-hall meeting that turned into a melee opted yesterday to head to trial on their disorderly conduct charges.
The self-described "Philly 10" showed up at the March 19 meeting, at which District Attorney Seth Williams and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey were present, to protest the District Attorney's Office decision not to file charges against two cops who had fatally shot Brandon Tate-Brown in December.
The 10 had a status appearance in front of Municipal Court Trial Commissioner Marsha Floyd. A trial date was scheduled for April 23 before a municipal judge.
Lawyer Brian Collins, who will be representing the 10 with Lawrence Krasner and Michael Coard, said afterward: "Everybody who was at the protest [in Lawncrest] that day is frustrated by the way that they feel the police are interacting with their communities. They were there that day to express that frustration . . . They're taking this to trial because they feel that they were there legitimately exercising their First Amendment rights."
He said each faces up to 90 days in jail if convicted on the summary disorderly conduct charge.
The 10 are Caleb Gallus, 30; Asa Khalif, a/k/a Earl Pittman, 44; Durmel Coleman, 23; Carmen Spoto, 22; sisters Megan Malachi, 33, Morgan Malachi, 32, and Mallori Malachi, 27; Joseph Quinn, a/k/a Quinn Dougherty, 22; Scott Williams, 26; and Rufus Farmer, 32.
Khalif, Tate-Brown's cousin and the founding president of the activist group Racial Unity USA, said afterward that he believed that Tate-Brown was "murdered" by cops who were "racial profiling."
Gallus said: "We are still demanding to know the names of the officers who pulled the trigger who ended that young man's life . . . We demand that they drop all the charges against us."
D.A. spokesman Cameron Kline said the melee at the town-hall meeting was an "excellent example" of why authorities are not releasing the names of the police officers. "Obviously, there's a safety issue involved," he said.
Hours before the town-hall meeting, Williams announced that evidence in the case showed officers had stopped Tate-Brown, 26, on Frankford Avenue near Magee about 2:45 a.m. Dec. 15 because he was driving a car with just its daytime-running lights. They then tried to arrest him after one cop saw a handgun jammed between the console and driver's seat, authorities said.
Tate-Brown refused to be cuffed and began to fight the cops, at one point lunging into his car's open passenger-side door to reach for the gun, when one officer shot him in the back of the head, authorities said.