Police Headquarters

The suspect in the killing of Philadelphia Police Officer Chuck Cassidy was ordered held without bail at a predawn hearing yesterday. John Lewis, 21, was arraigned via closed-circuit television and held in the detention unit at Police Headquarters. Lewis will not be jailed in Philadelphia because his mother is a corrections officer in the city, police said. No decision has been made about where he will be transferred while he awaits trial. Lewis had fled by bus to Miami on Nov. 3, three days after Cassidy, 54, a married father of three, was gunned down during a botched robbery of a Dunkin' Donuts on Broad Street in West Oak Lane.

A Coatesville police dispatcher was held at knifepoint on the afternoon of Dec. 12 by a young man who asked police to shoot him. Police gave this account: Kevin Maurice Blaylock, 18, of the 100 block of Broadview Court, entered the police building about 3 p.m. and walked into the employee section. After entering the office, Blaylock placed an 8 1/2-inch knife at the right side of Francis Pilotti's throat. Blaylock told the dispatcher to call police into the room. Pilotti sent out a radio call for assistance.

Man jumps from window at police HQ * 8th Street near Race A 21-year-old man being questioned by homicide detectives jumped from a window at Police Headquarters Thursday night, police said. The man hurled his body through the first-floor window and landed on an air conditioning unit, fracturing his ankle, police said. They added that the windows do not open manually. The man was in Jefferson University Hospital in stable condition. Police said the man, whose identity was not disclosed, was being questioned in connection with a fatal shooting on 21st Street near Tioga on March 13, in which the 27-year-old victim jumped from a second-story window and was pronounced dead on a porch roof.

A bomb blew up in a crowded waiting room at police headquarters here yesterday, killing one person and injuring 51 in the fourth bombing in Paris within a week. The explosion appeared to be part of a continuing campaign by Middle East terrorists to hold the city of Paris hostage in an attempt to win the release of three imprisoned comrades. It also took place less than 24 hours after the government announced a crackdown on terrorism, underscoring the defiance of the terrorists and the frustration of the French government in trying to stop them.

The suspect in the killing of Philadelphia Police Officer Chuck Cassidy was ordered held without bail at a predawn hearing yesterday. John Lewis, 21, was arraigned via closed-circuit television and held in the detention unit at Police Headquarters. Lewis will not be jailed in Philadelphia because his mother is a corrections officer in the city, police said. No decision has been made about where he will be transferred while he awaits trial. Lewis had fled by bus to Miami on Nov. 3, three days after Cassidy, 54, a married father of three, was gunned down during a botched robbery of a Dunkin' Donuts on Broad Street in West Oak Lane.

They resemble high-tech steam irons complete with miniature TVs. Only these handheld devices aren't for watching CNN while creasing a pair of pants. They're for fighting crime - and Philadelphia police soon will be pressing 10 of them into service in patrol and detective cars as part of a program to see how well they work. The white units, bristling with buttons and a stubby black antenna, are portable and allow officers to rapidly identify people without having to take them in, Deputy Police Commissioner Thomas Nestel said.

As the Republican National Convention soared to its climax yesterday, a week's worth of protests in Center City appeared to peter out in scattered scenes of wilting street theater. The possibility of a final showdown between protesters and police ended when about 200 people encamped in Franklin Square, at Seventh and Race Streets and about a block from Police Headquarters, left peacefully last night under police escort. After a two-hour candlelight vigil during which they heard from a variety of speakers, the protesters - and a contingent of three dozen police officers on foot and with bicycles - headed toward the Friends Center at 15th and Cherry Streets, where they had been invited to spend the night.

A suspect who said he had the skinny on a homicide case managed to shimmy through an air vent in the ceiling of an interview room last night and escape Police Headquarters. Police were searching for Hector Gomez, 28, of Kensington, who they said slipped through the ductwork of the Homicide Unit and then is believed to have walked out a door of the Police Department's headquarters at Eighth and Race Streets. "He probably acted like normal and just strolled out," said Lt. Frank Vanore, the department's spokesman.

No one is sure just what Jose Torres, a fugitive from a New York state prison, had on his mind when he walked into the Camden City Police Department and requested a background check on himself. "It would seem pretty stupid," Erin Cavanaugh, a spokeswoman at the New York State Department of Correctional Services, said yesterday. Torres, 25, had been serving time at the minimum-security Edgecombe Correctional Facility since March 1991 for second-degree robbery, Cavanaugh said.

For two weeks, Philadelphia police have been chasing anonymous callers who have made scores of phony bomb threats since the explosion in Oklahoma City. Yesterday, they made their first arrest. And the accused is a demoted cop who's still on the Police Department payroll. The arrest came after two calls were made to the Police Administration Building yesterday morning - one stating that explosives had been planted in the basement; the other, that a bomb had been set for Police Commissioner Richard Neal.

Late Tuesday, police said, Carmen Medina, 31, parked a gray Jeep SUV in the 200 block of East Gurney Street in Kensington and got out to talk to a man. Her 11-year-old son was in the backseat, along with another woman. Her boyfriend, Thomas Gorman, 39, sat in the passenger seat. Medina argued with a tall African American man, then turned to return to her car. Police said the man followed her, opened the driver's-side door, and shot her several times with a semiautomatic weapon.

Mayor Nutter told reporters Tuesday there had been no specific threats or incidents in Philadelphia, but he said local law enforcement and emergency personnel would be at "a heightened level of security" in response to the Boston explosions. The city still expects to see about 40,000 runners compete in Philadelphia's Broad Street Run on May 5, the mayor said, but he said there would be "a more visible security presence" in place to make sure that participants and spectators are safe.

Nearly three years ago, District Attorney Seth Williams' office began treating minor marijuana possession more like a traffic offense than a serious crime, saving the city plenty of money, man-hours, and excessive punishment. Unfortunately, his pragmatic, progressive approach hasn't caught on everywhere. In fact, it hasn't even caught on several blocks away at police headquarters. As it turns out, Philadelphia police are still arresting pot smokers like it's 1989. Even though the District Attorney's Office has stopped prosecuting most minor marijuana possession cases, the Daily News reported last week that police continue to take users into custody in large numbers, often locking them up for a night for being caught with small quantities of the drug.

The Philadelphia Police Department is missing one of its Vietnam-era M16 automatic assault rifles, and the weapon may have been stolen from its secure location, according to Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey. "The biggest fear is it was stolen by one of our own members," Ramsey said Monday during a news conference at Police Headquarters. "It is a federal offense. " Last Tuesday, the Police Department conducted a regularly scheduled audit of the 1,356 M16s it received in 2009 from the federal government.

To his classmates, he was B.J., a smiling, handsome, good-natured 10th grader, popular with girls and teased for his big feet, which he had only started to grow into. He was in JROTC and was the kind of student who helped if you were stuck in algebra. He had his first serious girlfriend and had talked about becoming a video-game designer. Now, he was gone. There was a hush Friday inside Overbrook High School as students gathered together weeping, whispering, unsure how to handle the death of Bernard Jamal Scott, 17, shot on a ball field across the street from school the day before.

Amanda Martinez was standing on a girlfriend's stoop in Kensington on Tuesday afternoon when the fighting started on Somerset Street. Martinez was on Water Street, a narrow one-way that runs into Somerset. She walked toward the commotion. "Leave it alone," a friend told her. "Don't go over there. " But Martinez wanted to take a look. There were about 20 to 30 people fighting on Somerset, police said, a melee that began between two women, then escalated to include men. According to witnesses and police, a man in the brawl fired a gun in the air, then another man fired into the crowd.

Amanda Martinez stood on a girlfriend's stoop Tuesday afternoon, one of dozens watching the fighting on East Somerset Street. There were 20 to 30 people brawling in the narrow street just before 6 p.m., police said, a melee that began between two women, then escalated to both men and women. Then, someone pulled a gun, "firing recklessly into the crowd," said Capt. James Clark of the Homicide Unit. Martinez, 20, who lived around the corner on Lauray Street, fell with a bullet in her chest, and three other men were shot and wounded.

Suspect kills Miss. detective, self in headquarters A murder suspect in Jackson, Miss., wrestled a gun away from the detective interrogating him at police headquarters, then fatally shot the officer before killing himself, authorities said Friday. Authorities said Jeremy Powell, 23, seized the gun from Jackson Police detective Eric Smith in a third-floor interrogation room while he was being questioned about a stabbing death earlier this week. Smith, 40, had been with the agency nearly 20 years, was physically fit and was praised for his work leading numerous high-profile murder investigations, officials said.

Authorities today released a video of a heroin-addicted couple's brazen theft of a police cruiser last week in Camden, which left a city officer injured and ended after a high-speed chase through the streets of Philadelphia captured live on television. Blake Bills, 24, a 2006 Kingsway Regional graduate, stole the Camden cruiser around 9:50 a.m. March 6 as Officer Sekou Reid-Bey had stepped out to conduct a traffic stop at Federal Street, near the police headquarters. Bills then struck Bey with the cruiser, drove around the block once and picked up his fiance, Shayna Sykes, 23, of Macungie, Pa., at Mickle Boulevard and Haddon Avenue, authorities said.