The shootings - the fifth and sixth police officers shot on the job in the last two months - rekindled the still-smoldering anger from the Cassidy killing.
Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said the two officers were shot with a stolen handgun - in this case, a Glock .357-caliber semiautomatic - as was Cassidy.
"We're having a handgun problem here in the United States," Johnson said, noting that in addition to the police shootings more than 350 people had been slain in Philadelphia this year. "It's not just [disregard] for police. It's human life - period."
"We see that this violence is being perpetrated by younger and younger people," Mayor Street said yesterday at a City Jobs Fair for Ex-Offenders at the Kingsessing Recreation Center. "We know there is a significant breakdown in the family structure in this country and these young people are not being taught the moral standards that they used to have, that the respect for authority is deteriorating dramatically."
John McNesby, president of Philadelphia Lodge 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, called on citizens to write their state legislators and "tell them that new handgun legislation, as well as stricter penalties for those shooting at police officers, is desperately needed."
The legislature has been loath to pass stringent gun-control laws. Police and District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham have pushed for a bill limiting handgun purchases to one a month, and another requiring gun owners to immediately report to police when a gun is stolen.
The two wounded officers - undercover drug officers whose names were not disclosed - were treated at local hospitals and released. One was shot in a leg, the other in a hip.
