Police leaders, Abraham challenge "anti-snitching" culture

Responding to a weekend of violence that left seven people dead and 36 wounded, Mayor Street and top law enforcement officials took aim yesterday at the silence that is allowing killers to roam free.

The focal point of their outrage was the shooting triggered by an argument that left three men dead and a fourth critically wounded early Sunday in Abay Wheeler's Bar in the Kingsessing section.

Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson said that even though there were about two dozen people in the bar on South 62d Street near Reedland when the shooting erupted about 1 a.m., they all fled, and none has stepped forward as a witness.

Street, accompanied by Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Ross, even went to the bar yesterday, where he said, "We're fighting an attitude."

The harshest words came from Johnson, who warned that "nothing will change" in Philadelphia unless witnesses to crimes find the courage to step forward. He said no witnesses had come forward in the other weekend slayings, either.

District Attorney Lynne Abraham, while criticizing the Street administration's crime-fighting strategies at a Center City appearance, echoed the call for witnesses to come forward, according to KYW Radio.

"We need the public to be so incensed, so outraged, that they will join as one," she said. "And they can beat and overcome this mentality of people who think they can shoot anybody and get away with it because everybody is frightened."

With more than 230 homicides in the city this year, Philadelphia is on pace to surpass last year's total of 406 killings and reach the highest total in a decade.

As Street and Ross visited the bar, detectives were investigating the latest homicide in the city: the shooting at 1 p.m. yesterday of a 26-year-old man during an apparent robbery in a combination barbershop-variety store at 63d and Race Streets in West Philadelphia's Haddington section.

But in that case, police were questioning three witnesses.

Both Street and Johnson pointed to the proliferation of guns in the city as a driving force behind the rising homicide rate, but their messages focused on the destructive power of an "anti-snitching" culture that protects killers.

"There have to be witnesses," Street said outside the bar, where yet another memorial of stuffed animals and handwritten notes had been erected. "Someone knows who did this."

Street said the city would padlock the bar until witnesses come forward.

"It's not snitching; it's cooperating," Ross said.

Street said the city cannot overcome the crisis only through arrests.

He said that over the weekend, 9,074 inmates were in city jails, the highest number he could remember in 30 years as an elected official.

The weekend death toll for the 72-hour period that started at 12:01 a.m. Friday rose to seven yesterday when the name of Kyel Nottingham, 22, was added to the homicide log book.

Nottingham, of the 100 block of South 61st Street, and another man were shot about noon Saturday at 58th and Sansom Streets in West Philadelphia for reasons that were under investigation. Nottingham died Sunday afternoon at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Police also identified the victims of two other homicides over the weekend.

Tyrone Campbell, a 20-year-old SEPTA maintenance worker from West Oak Lane, was shot and killed during an apparent robbery around 5:15 a.m. Sunday on the 1700 block of Dauphin Street in North Philadelphia, officials said.

Detectives were still seeking a motive in the fatal stabbing Saturday night in Franklinville of Joseph Harrington, 18, of Juniata Park.

Johnson said police were working "around the clock" to solve the crimes, and he pointed to an arrest last week in the fatal assault on 69-year-old Kwok Ho in Oxford Circle as an example of what can happen when witnesses help investigators.

"This thing about being afraid kind of bothers me," the commissioner said. "We're not afraid to go to Afghanistan. . . . We're not afraid to go to Iraq, but we're afraid to stand up for our own communities."