Williamson bitterly recalls the "little smirk" of Timothy Scott, the 22-year-old man whom police have charged with holding up the Caprice Villa. But she is also upset at a court system that could not keep him behind bars despite multiple arrests.
"We all know the dockets are full. They're behind. We know all that," she said. "Whatever they're doing, stop letting them out."
Before the robbery, Scott had skipped out under the courts' "deposit bail" system, which requires many offenders to pay only 10 percent of their bail while signing IOUs for the remainder. In the early 1970s, it replaced a system run by largely corrupt private bail bondsmen.
The current system is overseen by the courts' top judges - Municipal Court President Judge Marsha H. Neifield and the two leaders of Common Pleas Court, President Judge Pamela P. Dembe and Administrative Judge D. Webster Keogh.
In Scott's many brushes with the law, arraignment magistrates were the ones making decisions that put him back on the street. Magistrates follow guidelines that try to weigh the severity of the crime and a suspect's history of skipping court.
When police say Scott walked into the Caprice Villa, he was a repeat fugitive from justice.
Scott has been arrested 10 times since turning 18. He's locked up awaiting trial on charges of robbing the bar and a state liquor store the following night.
His defense lawyer, Holly C. Dobrosky, says that he's innocent of the robberies and that two victims who picked him out of a police lineup are mistaken.
But before his most recent bust, he racked up eight bench warrants as he skipped court again and again - only to be arrested, hauled before the magistrates, and released anew.
Scott is in custody now on high bail. But at last count, there were 47,000 other Philadelphia fugitives on the loose.
