- On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on 6621 Osage Avenue which left 11 people dead, including five children, and burned down 61 homes.
- The building was the headquarters of MOVE, a radical West Philadelphia group whose ideology combined Black revolutionary ideals with environmental and animal rights.
- In 1988, a grand jury cleared then-Mayor Wilson Goode and other top city officials of criminal liability for death and destruction resulting from the incident.
- This month Philadelphia City Council voted to formally apologize for their decision to approve a bombing.
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Philadelphia City Council finally voted to apologize for their decision to approve a bombing, which left 11 people dead, including five children, in 1985, an outrage that has been all-but-forgotten.
On May 13, police dropped an explosive device on the roof of 6621 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia after a daylong confrontation with the Black radical group, MOVE, as officers tried to evict them from their compound, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The police fired 10,000 rounds of ammunition into the building before dropping the bomb from a helicopter onto the building’s roof, igniting the destructive inferno.
Gregore J. Sambor, the Police Commissioner who directed the bombing, resigned in November of that year. A grand jury in 1988 cleared then-Mayor W. Wilson Goode and other top city officials of criminal liability for death and destruction resulting from the operation, the New York Times reported.
However, W. Wilson Goode wrote in The Guardian: “The event will remain in my conscience for the rest of my life.”
Scroll down to find out more about the day the police bombed a black neighborhood.
