Investigation Story: Philadelphia Trash Police

Cherri Gregg Mincey reports on the Philadelphia Trash Police. (This package was created during my internship at NBC 10)

Building Profile

Historic Firehouse: Another Example of vacant and neglected city property

The 117-year old firehouse located at 1221-25 N. Fourth Street sits vacant and neglected.

For more than one hundred years, paper mills, tanning mills, textile mills and other industrial factories employed hundreds of workers near the corner of North Fourth Street and Girard Avenue in Philadelphia.  People from Puerto Rico, Cuba and other Spanish speaking countries immigrated to the United States to live and to work in this section of what is now referred to as Kensington South.

In 1893, the City of Philadelphia built a three-story firehouse at 1221-25 North Fourth Street to protect the scores of four and five story buildings in this bustling area.  Located in the heart of the mill district, this bronze-stoned building housed more than 15 career firemen.  It was designed to hold the early 20th century hose and ladder trucks needed to save lives in a part of the city where industrial fire hazards were common.

“This was such a nice part of the city back then,” said Ramona, smiling.  “In the summer, the fireman used to open the windows wide because they didn’t have air conditioning.  You could see them sliding down the brass pole to the [fire] trucks on the first floor.”

Ramona, who declined to give her last name, moved onto North Fourth Street and has lived across the street from the firehouse since the 1960s. Click here to read on.

Investigation Story

A Crack in the System: Asset Forfeiture in Philadelphia

Last year, Philadelphia police made nearly 1,300 arrests for drug-related crimes.  When police arrested these drug suspects, many times, they seized assets or property, including cash, cars or real estate believed to be involved in the alleged drug activity. What Philadelphians may not know is that this seizure of property did not require that the property owner be convicted of a crime, or even that the police file criminal charges.

“Civil forfeiture exposes property owners to liability even if they have done nothing wrong,” says Louis Rulli, Law Professor and Director of Clinical Programs at University of Pennsylvania Law School.

According to Rulli, when the police confiscate movable property, such as cash, the property is forfeited and becomes the subject of a civil action.  It is then up to the property owner to defeat the civil action and petition the Court for return of the property.  This procedure is very time consuming and can take months, or even years.

“The district attorney’s office has the burden to demonstrate a legal [connection] between the property and the wrongdoing,” says Rulli. “[But], 80 percent of individuals facing civil forfeiture never contest those proceedings.”

Click here for the full article and and related video.