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More police, fewer fans kept city orderly

The Phillies repeated as National League champions, but their fans performed no encore of the violent revelry that happened after last year's World Series win.

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey and a line of mounted police keep the peace during postgame celebrations in Center City.
Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey and a line of mounted police keep the peace during postgame celebrations in Center City.Read moreKRISTON J. BETHEL / Staff Photographer

The Phillies repeated as National League champions, but their fans performed no encore of the violent revelry that happened after last year's World Series win.

The reason? More police. Fewer fans.

"It went extremely well," said Inspector Edward Kachigian, commander of the Central Police Division.

Of course, it was not a World Series win. But imagine what it would be like if the Phillies were to beat the odious New York Yankees.

"Yankees and Phillies, and the Phillies win? I can't even imagine what we're going to wind up with," Kachigian said.

The police plan to be ready, as they were late Wednesday night into yesterday morning, for fans spilling onto the streets in South Philadelphia, Mayfair, and Center City, where Kachigian oversaw crowd control.

Kachigian said this time there were fewer fans - though still in the thousands - in Center City compared with last year. There was no official estimate of how many Philadelphians turned out to celebrate.

To bolster the police presence in expected hot spots, officers were called in on their day off, others stayed late or came in early for their shifts, and some were called in from other police divisions. The state police added support and their horses.

There were also precautions, such as removing trash receptacles and greasing poles and trees to prevent climbing. "We learned [last year] that when you get somebody up there, it incites everyone," Kachigian said.

And there was a coordinated effort with universities to discourage students from marching to City Hall. Many still came down Broad Street from Temple University, but police turned away students trying to cross bridges from West Philly into Center City.

Even with fewer fans, it could have gotten out of hand.

Kachigian recalled that fans last year had posed for pictures with police officers early in the celebration but that later the mood changed and people turned hostile.

"This year, it didn't change," he said.

As Game 5 edged into the ninth inning, more than 1,000 fans at Citizens Bank Park massed outside the third-base gate, shouting and cheering in anticipation of a National League title.

Some climbed onto the Mike Schmidt statue. Others shinnied up light poles. A security fence kept fans back from the stadium. Behind the fence and the turnstiles, as a second line of defense, stood a row of about a dozen police officers. Twenty yards away, another dozen motorcycle officers stood beside their bikes, parked on 11th Street.

Two brawny young men walked toward the motorcycle officers, shouting: Why the police presence? An officer flicked his wrist, extending an expandable steel baton. The men stepped back.

In Center City, a huge scrum of people filled the intersection of Broad and Walnut Streets, mostly cheering and chanting, though a few people set off fireworks and crowd-surfed.

At one point, Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey stationed himself along with Sgt. Raymond Evers and Lt. Frank Vanore - the department's two main spokesmen - in front of the Robinson Luggage store that was looted during last year's celebratory chaos.

This time, Kachigian said, "we didn't lose a single window."

In Mayfair, the intersection of Cottman and Frankford Avenues was teeming with revelers and surrounded by walls of police officers.

The police stayed back from the crowd for the most part, intervening only when someone set a baseball cap or something else on fire, which happened several times.

Officers did not discourage women who climbed aboard others' shoulders and flashed their breasts, but the police surged into the mob and broke things up when some men tried to put their hands on one flasher.

Shortly before 2 a.m., all but a few hundred people had left the intersection when the mood of the crowd turned slightly. A few fistfights broke out. Glass bottles, not a common sight throughout the previous hours, started flying high into the air, often in the direction of the police.

Officers moved in on the crowd, telling people to go home and move away. Soon, hooves sounded as mounted officers approached to disperse the last of the revelers.

Police formed a solid wall across Frankford Avenue and moved forward until the street emptied.