On Tuesday, Commissioner Ramsey expressed his frustration over “flash mob” incidents blamed for a number of violent attacks. At least four people were assaulted, including an officer, during the latest flash mob incident on South Street Saturday. Surveillance cameras in the area show hundreds packing the street.

A pizza worker said he was punched and kicked dozens of times while attempting to retain the overwhelming crowd.

“I’m not in the social work business here, we’re police officers, we are gonna lock ‘em up. They can go crying to their mother and father a little later on,” said Ramsey.

The police commissioner even lashed out at parents of teens involved in the melee.

“You had them, you raise them, you take care of them. When they come to me, I got something else for them,” Ramsey said

Should parents be held accountable for the actions of their kids who participate in these flash mobs? I think the kids might behave a bit better if they knew their actions would cause them grief at home. What do you think?

This is another of those nasty street games that kids have come up with to amuse themselves. Its called “Catch and Wreck,” . In the game, a group of children congregate to beat, strike and stomp adults they believe may be homeless. In the two recent attacks at Finnegan Playground at 69th Street and Grovers Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia neither victim was homeless.

Police learned about the “catch and wreck” game when they brought a large group of neighborhood youths to Southwest Detectives for questioning Friday night after Moore was assaulted. “They were all saying the same thing, laughing at us, like we didn’t know what it meant,” Walker said. “They said, ‘It’s something stupid we do for fun.’” Police, he said, believe it’s a new phenomenon.

This is just another example of parents not knowing what their kids are doing..or maybe they don’t care what they are doing. This isn’t throwing snowballs at cars..this is serious stuff. This is the kind of thing that happened when Jon Venables and Robert Thompson abducted a two year old boy in England and beat him to death with bricks and iron bars before laying him on the railway track where he was cut in half. When questioned the boys..who were 10 years old and the youngest to be charged with murder …said ” We had nowt ( nothing) better to do”.

When kids think this sort of thing is “fun” you have to wonder about their home life. Don’t tell me that its not the parents fault..don’t tell me its societys fault..these kids haven’t been taught the basic values. How can beating someone sensless be ” fun”. How do they even come up with hurting people because they have nothing better to do?

Several Philadelphia City Council members expressed concern about how the soda tax would be collected and whether it would simply be spread around to everything consumers buy.

“Can the revenue department collect this tax?” Councilman Jack Kelly asked city budget director Stephen Agostini. “We can’t dictate to people how and what they’re going to buy and how they’re going to buy it.”

Kelly raised the point of fast food restaurants, which frequently offer self-service soda fountains. How could they charge different prices for regular soda and diet soda?

Nutter Administration officials have repeatedly said that taxing soda would not only raise needed revenue, it would help fight childhood obesity.

“Why target one particular industry?” asked Councilman Bill Greenlee. Although not in favor of it, he mentioned taxing Tastykakes or Cheesesteaks, since they also are not healthy.

Other council members expressed frustration that the mayor has not trimmed the size of city government enough.

“There’s just no cuts,” said Councilman Bill Green about the mayor’s budget proposal. He said the Nutter Administration still has not detailed what cuts would be needed if taxes are not raised.

http://cbs3.com/local/soda.tax.philadelphia.2.1568225.html

A real brew-haha has beer lovers in the City of Brotherly love frothing over with anger.

To one side, the suds uproar is borne out of typographical errors, hard-to-spell beer names and archaic, Prohibition-era liquor laws. To the other, it’s a simple matter of making sure bars and beer manufacturers aren’t scamming the system.

It all came to a head after an anonymous complaint that a Philadelphia bar was selling beer that had not been properly licensed with the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, an agency created after Prohibition in 1933 to regulate the sale of alcohol.

That tip led to raids last week at three upscale bars, where police confiscated three quarter-kegs and 317 bottles of beer that were not believed to have been properly registered with the state. Raids at Memphis Taproom in Philadelphia’s Kensington section, Local 44 in west Philadelphia and Resurrection Ale House downtown caught the couple who run them by surprise.

“I feel like there are a lot of typographical errors that caused this,” said Leigh Maida, who received calls from staff around midday March 4. “The laws were really developed before there were so many kinds of beers.”

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100312/D9ED1S3G0.html

When did St Patricks Day turn into ” Drunk Week” in Northeast Philly? Every St Paddys Day..the weekend before actually..all hell breaks loose on Frankford Avenue and the surrounding area. Why? Because the weekend before St Patricks Day people are allowed to roam the streets with open cups and bottles of beer, harassing passersby, climbing lamp posts, cursing, making lewed gestures and generally making a drunken nuisance of themselves.

Yes, I know the bars love it, they get to sell a lot of booze. They even run buses..The Shamrock Express up and down Frankford between bars so that people getting absolutely blotto on booze have transportation between bars. You may think this is fun, but to those of us who have to shop on Frankford or who just want to go for a walk in our own neighborhood its bloody hell. When did St Paddys Day become Drunk Week and who sanctioned the open beer cups ? There were four police cars sitting at Cottman and Frankford all yesterday. Wouldn’t these police officers be better employed chasing criminals instead of having to baby sit a bunch of drunken louts? It just makes me sick.