Daniel Faulkner

TIME DOES funny things to men and memory. It creates cracks in the pavement and lines under eyes; it grays the strands of our hair and softens what were once the sharp edges of our minds. Time steals and robs and carries away grief and pain; it settles and soothes and makes us sit up and ask, "Why?" or forget to ask altogether. Thirty years ago, a young policeman lost his life on a Philadelphia sidewalk. At 3:52 a.m. on Dec. 9, 1981, the message was loud, brutal and jarring - a violent slap in the face to the city.

U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Phila.) doesn't think Mumia Abu-Jamal got a fair shake from the legal system that convicted him of killing Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner. But Fattah, a mayoral candidate, voted Wednesday to condemn the French city of St. Denis for renaming a street after the celebrity inmate - a renaming that proponents said was intended to focus world attention on the same alleged injustice long criticized by Fattah. Fattah's vote, on a purely symbolic resolution sponsored by outgoing U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.)

Nearly 25 years after the slaying of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, the racial divide over his killer's conviction was reflected yesterday in a vote on a State Senate resolution. The Senate overwhelmingly passed the measure condemning the French city of St.-Denis for naming a street in honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was sentenced to death in 1982 for shooting Faulkner during a traffic stop. But the resolution prompted rare debate and ended in a 44-4 vote split along racial lines.

Attorneys for Mumia Abu-Jamal want the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to personally hear from their star witness - a man who says he is the true killer of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel J. Faulkner. "We are asking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to allow us to bring Arnold Beverly before [the justices] so he can explain to them how he killed Officer Faulkner and how Mumia Abu-Jamal had nothing to do with it," defense lawyer Eliot Lee Grossman said at a news conference yesterday.

Sometime soon, maybe by this summer, signs may go up renaming a portion of Roosevelt Boulevard for slain Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. That's a good thing. It's good because Daniel Faulkner and, by extension, all the men and women who have lost their lives protecting ours deserve at least that. It's good because there is something laudable about the efforts of those who struggle to keep this blameless man's life from being obscured in the continuing controversy over the fate of his convicted killer, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

There has been much said about the impending death sentence handed down by the courts to be imposed upon Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was tried and convicted of the brutal murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Some say he did not get a fair trial. Hollywood types and politicos who perhaps honestly believe this or have their own agendas have come out in support of him. It is not clear whether these individuals are stating that he is innocent and did not commit the act that all evidence points to, or whether they are implying that he was framed by a Police Department anxious to charge him with this crime because of his self-proclaimed revolutionary ideals, or both.

The call she was dreading woke Maureen Faulkner a little after 7 a.m. on the West Coast. It was Hugh Burns, a prosecutor from the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, with news: A decision on Mumia Abu-Jamal was in. "He just gave me the facts," Faulkner, 51, said in an interview yesterday from her home north of Los Angeles. But the news pulled her back to the early morning of Dec. 9, 1981, when her husband, Daniel Faulkner, a Philadelphia police officer, was shot to death near 13th and Locust Streets.

What if Mumia Abu-Jamal had never been arrested for murdering a police officer, never gone to jail, never become a left-wing cause celebre? What if he were still who he was in 1981: a cab driver, a radio reporter without a job, briefly a member of the Black Panthers, an associate of the cult-like organization called MOVE? Can anyone conceive that the graduating seniors at Antioch College would consider that person a useful source of advice on their selected commencement themes: how an individual can impact the world and the true meaning of revolution.

TRENT LOTT'S comments were off base, but calling for his resignation is a little too much. Remember when John Street said, "The brothers and sisters are running this city"? Where was the call for his resignation, where was the flak directed at him after he apologized? Nowhere. It just didn't happen; a week after he said it everyone forgot about it. Can you imagine what would happen if Ed Rendell had said, "The brothers and sisters are running Philadelphia"? I guarantee he would not be governor for very long.

Maureen Faulkner has sat quietly in court, trying not to get emotional over spectators who have made a daily habit of cheering and applauding the man convicted of killing her husband. It happens every time Mumia Abu-Jamal enters or leaves Judge Albert F. Sabo's courtroom. And with every ovation praising the death-row inmate, Faulkner, her husband's family and cops all over the city die a little bit inside. "Have you ever seen anything more disgusting?" asked a young off-duty officer the other day, as Jamal's side of the room rose to its feet.

AN OPEN letter to David Eisner, CEO of the National Constitution Center: Thirty years ago a young Philadelphia Police Officer, Daniel Faulkner, #4699, was shot on the streets of Philadelphia by a coward named Wesley Cook, but who chooses to be called Mumia Abu-Jamal. As the officer lay on the sidewalk outside 1234 Locust St., bleeding and incapacitated from a gunshot wound to the chest, Cook stood atop this gravely wounded officer and shot him in the face, ensuring that Faulkner would never go home to his young wife, Maureen, again.

TIME DOES funny things to men and memory. It creates cracks in the pavement and lines under eyes; it grays the strands of our hair and softens what were once the sharp edges of our minds. Time steals and robs and carries away grief and pain; it settles and soothes and makes us sit up and ask, "Why?" or forget to ask altogether. Thirty years ago, a young policeman lost his life on a Philadelphia sidewalk. At 3:52 a.m. on Dec. 9, 1981, the message was loud, brutal and jarring - a violent slap in the face to the city.

THE DEATH-PENALTY debate may be over for Mumia Abu-Jamal, but the controversy over the case will probably live longer than the 57-year-old cop-killer does. Here's a quick summary of what they're saying on both sides. Why he should be free: * Abu-Jamal supporters insist there's plenty of reasonable doubt whether the one-time radio journalist killed 25-year-old officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. They point, for example, to a mysterious fourth man they claim was at the crime scene - Kenneth Freeman, whose driver's license application they argue was found in Faulkner's pocket.

After speaking with the widow of slain police officer Daniel Faulkner, District Attorney Seth Williams said he would appeal a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals here yesterday awarding convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal a new sentencing hearing. Williams will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court's decision and reinstate Abu-Jamal's death sentence. The D.A. said Maureen Faulkner was "devastated" by the ruling. Abu-Jamal, 57, was convicted in 1982 of first-degree murder in Faulkner's slaying and was sentenced to death.

Tuesday was Day One for Kimmy Pawlowski, less than 24 hours after the end of an agonizing sentencing hearing for the man who admitted killing her husband, Philadelphia Police Officer John Pawlowski. The outcome - life in prison with no parole for Rasheed Scrugs, not death by lethal injection, because of a deadlocked Common Pleas Court jury - left her feeling disappointed, betrayed, and angry. Yet here she was, sitting in a cramped office at the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 on Spring Garden Street, preparing to attend an afternoon federal appeals hearing for Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted and sentenced to death 28 years earlier of killing Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Just got off the phone with Philadelphia filmmaker Tigre Hill, whose documentary The Barrel of a Gun , which gives an uncompromising perspective on Mumia Abu-Jamal, premiered this week at the Merriam Theater. One of the things I admire about Hill, whom I've known for more than 10 years, is that his work is always provocative - whether you agree with it or not. But I've got to admit, I left the screening of his movie shaking my head in disbelief. And I had to tell him so. Let's see. On one side, you've got the do-gooder prosecutor and the stalwart Police Department.

Mention "Black Panthers" to a young person today and if the words have any resonance at all, they might bring to mind the two knuckleheads who made a scene outside a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008. But there was a time when a powerful revolutionary movement of the same name - with infinitely more damaging consequences - actually did infiltrate urban America. Tigre Hill's new movie, The Barrel of a Gun , which premieres Tuesday at the Merriam Theater, is a grim reminder of that era. The movie is a full-screen documentary about the murder of Daniel Faulkner by Mumia Abu-Jamal on Dec. 9, 1981.

K IJAFA FRINK , fiancee of Eagles quarterback Michael Vick, and Carmena Ayo-Davies, of 3BG Marketing Solutions, are looking for gold-diggers. Frink, a North Philly native who sells accessories and jewelry at PNKElephant.com, has been with Vick since 2001, when both attended college in Virginia. She and Ayo-Davies are consulting producers for "Sugar Babies," a reality show pilot, which is looking for "attractive" women 21 to 35 who date wealthy men and "know and live for the good life.

AS THE PREMIERE nears of Tigre Hill 's "The Barrel of a Gun," about the controversy surrounding the 1981 murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner and his killer, Mumia Abu-Jamal , rival filmmakers are seeking funds to complete "Mumia 101. " Hill has said that his movie contains new insights suggesting that Abu-Jamal's murder of Faulkner was premeditated. The Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal calls Hill's film "a slick work of propaganda posing as documentary, thin on facts and thick with emotional manipulation.

The legal pendulum that for almost 30 years has kept convicted police killer Mumia Abu-Jamal between execution and life in prison swung slightly back toward lethal injection yesterday. In a 51-word paragraph, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a federal appeals court ruling that threw out Abu-Jamal's death sentence because of confusingly worded verdict instructions that arguably led the jury to a sentence of death over life in prison. The high court returned the case of the convicted killer of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit for a new hearing.