11/01/2007 25-year veteran is known for devotion to family, job

He was a reassuring, familiar presence on the streets of East Oak Lane, all the more remarkable because after 25 years Charles Cassidy remained passionate and unjaded about police work.

Yesterday, those who know him were stunned to learn that the 54-year-old officer had become yet another victim of the gun violence washing over Philadelphia and other cities - wounded in the head when he walked into a robbery at a North Broad Street doughnut shop.

"Chuck just had a wonderful quality about him," said Kelly McShain Tyree, an East Oak Lane business owner and a member and former head of the Oak Lane Community Action Association. "He was a lovely man, and the fact that he was able to sustain that heart and soul after all the time on that job says a lot. He was doing all this for the right reason, and I'm heartsick for his family. "

Tyree, 40, said she would see Cassidy about four times a day driving in front of Under the Oak Cafe, at 804 Oak Lane, which she owns with her husband, Robert, and her brother, Devitt McShain.

About 4 p.m. Oct. 23, Tyree saw Cassidy up close when he was among the officers who responded to an armed robbery of her cafe. She had been tied up and left in the basement, and the robbers are still at large.

'Urban terrorism'

"This is urban terrorism," Tyree, fighting back tears, said of what is happening in the city. "This neighborhood is wonderful, and good people walk into this cafe every day, and we're saying, 'Hell, no! We are not going to let them take over our neighborhood. ' "

Cassidy, too, was determined not to let that happen, Tyree said.

"He made his views about this very clear," she said.

The Rev. Joseph Graham, pastor of St. Jerome church in the Holme Circle neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia and a friend of the Cassidy family, stayed at Albert Einstein Medical Center yesterday with Cassidy's wife, Judith, his mother, and other relatives until the officer came out of surgery.

Graham said Judith Cassidy had been watching television when she heard a news break about an "off-duty police officer being shot. "

"She thought, 'Well, it can't be Chuck because he's on duty. ' But the report was wrong," Graham added.

Graham, 71, St. Jerome's pastor for 17 years, said the Cassidys were active parishioners.

"If I can sum it up, he was really a wonderful father, a real family man, and a great husband," Graham said. "Everything he did was about caring for his family. "