Despite being charged with more than two dozen disciplinary violations in prison, and spending much of two years in solitary, Giddings was paroled last year. Just weeks ago, he fled his halfway house. It took him hardly a week to get into an altercation with police, who pulled him over in a stolen car.
He scuffled with officers and eluded arrest. Police later kicked down his mother's door looking for him. Too bad they missed him.
Giddings was already a wanted man when he executed McDonald. And Philadelphia has an epidemic of fugitives.
There are 61,969 warrants for 47,469 individuals outstanding - and that doesn't include arrest warrants or those issued by the state parole board or federal authorities.
Three days after McDonald was slain, police finally ended a 72-day manhunt for Donald Guy when they found the suspect hiding under his grandmother's bed. He was wanted for the July murder of two Feltonville shopkeepers.
When bad guys aren't taken off the street, they do more bad things. Andre Butler, 16, charged with killing Officer Isabel Nazario earlier this month, had been wanted since June after missing a Family Court hearing.
Eric Floyd, one of three men involved in the slaying of Officer Stephen Liczbinski last spring, was considered a fugitive at the time after escaping from a halfway house. John Lewis, Officer Chuck Cassidy's killer, was a suspect in a string of violent robberies leading up to his confrontation with Cassidy last year.
And how about Solomon Montgomery, who killed Officer Gary Skerski in 2006? Wanted in California on a robbery charge.
