By Ralph Cipriano

On the surface, it appeared to be a puzzling judicial flip-flop.

On Aug. 29th, Common Pleas Court Judge Sierra Thomas Street granted George Bochetto’s emergency motion for a temporary injunction to halt SEPTA’s second planned phase of “Doomsday” cuts of 25% in service, plus a 21 1/2% rate hike that was supposed to kick in Sept. 1st.

“Everything must stop,” the judge, pictured above, said about the second phase of the Doomsday cuts. “That is the Court's order.”

But last Thursday, when she ruled again against SEPTA making cuts in service, the judge changed her mind about the fare hike, writing, “This order does not apply to the fare increase.”

On Sept. 1, SEPTA had planned to raise its base fare to $2.90, which would have tied New York’s MTA as the highest public transit fare in the country.

Last week, in the judge’s courtroom, Jody Holton, SEPTA’s chief planning and strategy officer, testified that the rate hike was supposed to generate an extra $571,000 a week in new revenues for SEPTA, facing a budget shortfall of $213 million.

Over a year, an extra $571,000 a week in revenues would amount to $26.7 million.

And if the judge had stuck to her position of eliminating the rate hike, Holton testified, SEPTA would have had to refund to riders $1.25 million for advance tickets containing the fare hike that were already sold to commuters.

But on the negative side, Holton testified, it would cost SEPTA $303,000 a week to restore just the Phase 1 Doomsday cuts, or $15.7 million a year.

To George Bochetto, the judge’s reversal on the fare hike made sense.

“She [the judge] was always saying how can you take away services and raise the fares,” Bochetto said.

So after she ordered SEPTA to restore services eliminated during two phases of “Doomsday” cuts, Bochetto said, the judge seemed to be “OK with the fare hikes.”

Here are the SEPTA service cuts that the judge ordered restored:

On Aug. 24th, the day before Philadelphia students were scheduled to return to class, SEPTA cut its service 20%, by eliminating 32 bus routes, shortening 16 other routes, and reducing service on 88 remaining bus and train lines.

The second round of cuts, which would have amounted to a further 25% cut in service, called for eliminating five Regional Rail lines and 18 bus routes, along with the Broad-Ridge Spur.

In January, SEPTA also planned to impose a 9 p.m. curfew on all remaining Metro and Regional Rail services, but the judge ordered SEPTA not to impose that curfew.

“I think she did a great job,” Bochetto said. “She controlled the courtroom and she gave SEPTA every possible opportunity to present their case.”

But since there was no there there, SEPTA lost three times.

In court, Bochetto showed that while SEPTA was pleading poverty, the transit authority was sitting on a “service stabilization fund” that varied between $300 million and $500 million.

In court, Bochetto also showed how SEPTA’s own research documented that their Doomsday service cuts were going to have a disproportionate impact on the poor, and minorities.

I reached out to Andrew Busch, SEPTA’s spokesperson, and Matthew Glazer, SEPTA’s lawyer, to ask if SEPTA planned to appeal the judge’s ruling, but neither responded to requests for comment.

Sounds like a couple of sore losers to me. But Busch told the Inquirer that SEPTA hadn’t decided whether to appeal.

“We’re evaluating our legal options,” Busch told the Inquirer, but he said that the agency planned to comply with the judge’s order.

Busch also said that SEPTA hasn’t set a date yet for when it would restore service cuts, or for that matter, raise fares.

That meant that SEPTA officials apparently were still struggling to understand the meaning of the word “immediately” that was stated twice in the judge’s order.

As in SEPTA shall “immediately cease and desist” all ongoing cuts in service, layoffs and furloughs.

And SEPTA “shall immediately reverse all Service Cuts.”

And so, as the great SEPTA crisis came to an end, the citizens of Philadelphia were treated to the spectacle of George Bochetto, a private lawyer, going into court to do something that the mayor and the city solicitor should have done.

On this blog, I have repeatedly explained how, when John Street was mayor, in 2004, and 2007, the city twice went to court to seek an injunction to stop SEPTA from cutting services and raising fares.

Both times, Mark Zecca, a former senior attorney in the Law Department, was the lawyer who prevailed in court, on behalf of the city, and SEPTA riders everywhere.

Both times, longtime consumer advocate Lance Haver was the lead plaintiff in each case against SEPTA.

This time around, Haver was the lead plaintiff once again, but it was Bochetto who went to court on behalf of the citizens.

While the mayor and the city solicitor sat on their hands, and were content to let the governor and the state legislature continue to play politics with peoples’ lives in Harrisburg.

“I think it’s very disappointing that they’re putting their politics with Harrisburg above the interests of the people,” Bochetto said about top city officials.

The mayor and the city solicitor, Bochetto said, should have filed this lawsuit. And the City Council should have gotten behind it.

“It’s a huge disservice to the citizens of Philadelphia that the mayor and the City Council didn’t lift a finger,” Bochetto said. “I am just absolutely aghast that they sat this one out.”

“They abdicated their authority to do something in favor of playing political games with Harrisburg,” Bochetto said. “And the people of Philadelphia suffered for it, and continue to suffer for it.”

During the SEPTA Doomsday cuts, Bochetto said, students and teachers couldn’t get to school on time. Workers couldn’t get to their jobs. Doctors, nurses and patients couldn’t get to doctor’s offices, or hospitals.

“Nobody was spared by SEPTA’s shenanigans,” Bochetto said.

When I asked Joe Grace, Mayor Parker’s mute spokesperson, why the mayor sat this one out, Grace, as usual, was hiding under his desk, and did not respond to a request for comment.

Neither did city Solicitor Renee Garcia.

City Council President Kenyatta Johnson declined comment on why he didn’t throw his support behind the SEPTA lawsuit.

Perhaps all of these high-paid officials should donate a portion of their big salaries to the law firm of Bochetto & Lentz, for doing their jobs.

Even though the City Council president chose to sit this one out, during two days of hearings, Kenyatta Johnson had members of his staff monitoring what was happening in Judge Thomas Street’s courtroom.

When I asked one of Johnson’s staff members why the City Council president wasn’t getting behind the lawsuit, he replied that there was a lot of politics going on.

Indeed, while the SEPTA crisis was unfolding, The Philadelphia Inquirer, which can always be counted on to carry water for Democrats, had a trio of reporters cranking out a story that explained how Democrats planned to exploit the SEPTA Doomsday cuts in the 2026 midterms.

The plan was to blame Republicans for the SEPTA cuts, so that Democrats could take back the state Senate.

And as always, rather than hold these Democratic officials accountable, the Inquirer played along.

While SEPTA was whacking services, and Democratic city and state officials were busy playing politics, Bochetto was thankful that Judge Thomas Street “had the courage” to see through SEPTA’s shenanigans, and “do something about it.”

And why did Bochetto wind up doing a job that the mayor and city solicitor should have done?

“Because George Bochetto cannot be bought,” he said. “Or paid for. Or corrupted. Or influenced. Or disregarded.”

Calling Out Larry Krasner

 

In case you missed it, I've just publicly called out Larry Krasner.

                                                   The story can be read HERE.

Big Trial's Moving To Substack

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

Effective today, Big Trial's moving to substack.com.

Why? Since Big Trial lost its sponsor seven years ago, I've been doing this blog pro bono.

And every year, not only has the workload steadily increased, but in my opinion, so has the need for this type of reporting.

Using the courts as a base of operations,  Big Trial provides an independent voice in the local media by doing some essential muckraking, asking the tough questions, and always insisting on holding public officials accountable.

It's become indispensable journalism, I would argue, in a city that for the past two years has been setting historic records for shootings, murders and carjackings.  City Council members who are still afraid to meet in public -- they only meet on Zoom -- openly admit that Philadelphia has descended into a state of lawlessness. And become a place where every day, armed and violent criminals brazenly go about their business, with no fear of consequences.

Against this desperate backdrop, our only daily newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, where I once worked, continues to function as the official house organ of the Democratic Party that's controlled City Hall for the past 70 years, while shilling for the "progressive" leaders who have run Philadelphia into the ground.

At Big Trial, we do things differently. We aren't PC, we don't suffer fools gladly, and we don't believe in sacred cows.

What does the move to Substack mean for readers? Instead of getting Big Trial for free, now you'll have to pay $5 a month, which at Subbstack, is their lowest subscription rate. I hate having to ask people for money, but in a city that's in crisis, it's the cost to preserve independent journalism.

So consider this my invitation to readers to follow me over to Substack, where we'll continue to shine a bright light on the dark place that Philadelphia has become. 

Clown Show: Judge Tosses D.A.'s Faulty Murder Case Against Cop

Photo credit: Tony Spading

By Ralph Cipriano

for BigTrial.net

The clown show that is the Philadelphia District Attorney's office was fully exposed this afternoon in the courtroom of Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara McDermott.

At the end of a more than two-hour hearing, McDermott ruled that the D.A.'s Aug. 23, 2018 grand jury indictment of former police officer Ryan Pownall for murder was riddled with so many legal errors that she was quashing the grand jury's report, known as a presentment because it was "no good" and it's "conclusions cannot be relied on."

What was so wrong with the grand jury presentment that indicted Pownall for murder in the racially-charged 2017 shooting death of dirt biker David Jones?

Well for starters, the grand jury was run by former Assistant District Attorney Tracy Tripp, who, depending upon your viewpoint, was either [a] totally incompetent or [b] corrupt, or [c], the correct answer, both totally incompetent and corrupt.  

In the Pownall case, Krasner, who had just taken office in January 2018, was looking for the first cop he could publicly hang for murder. And that happened to be Ryan Pownall, who fatally shot Jones, who was armed and on the run, while attempting to escape arrest.

For Krasner, the scheming arsonist, it was a perfect case to make headlines because Pownall was white and Jones was black. But the problem was that Krasner's office is so lame and inept that Krasner relied on Tripp to do the job. And operating behind the closed doors of the grand jury, the rookie prosecutor completely botched the hit.

P.C. Outlaw Relied On Fabricated Account To Fire Chief Inspector

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

According to an arbitrator's report, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw relied on a "fabricated account of a violent assault" in 2020 when she unjustly fired Chief Inspector Anthony Boyle.

In a 13-page analysis and decision, arbitrator Walt DeTreux ruled that Outlaw's big mistake was to buy into Captain LaVerne Vann's fabricated story that in an argument over whether a prisoner should be charged, that Boyle had "forcibly grabbed Capt. Vann with both hands and was bending her arm behind her back." On top of that, Outlaw had charged Boyle with being "derelict in his duty."

But according to the arbitrator's report, it was all a lie.

When Outlaw's firing of Boyle went to arbitration during four hearings in January, March and May of this year, the city "failed to prove any of those charges," DeTreux wrote. In relying on Vann's fabricated story of abuse, DeTreaux wrote, Outlaw chose to ignore "the fairly consistent and credible accounts of other participants and eyewitnesses that indicated Chief Boyle was trying to separate the prisoner from Capt. Vann's interlocking arm hold and rough treatment."

The arbitrator's decision to reinstate Boyle was announced in July, but the contents of the arbitrator's 13-page report have not been disclosed until now. 

In firing Boyle, the arbitrator wrote, Outlaw and other city officials also chose to disregard "Capt. Vann's repeated insubordination in refusing to release" the prisoner she and Boyle were arguing over. 

Outlaw and other city officials, the arbitrator found, also dismissed testimony that during the confrontation between Boyle and Vann, that Boyle was responding to Vann's "defiance of his direct orders." And that Vann responded by "yanking" the prisoner away and "bending her forward until she cried out in pain."

When the city fired Boyle, he was cited for going "hands on," the arbitrator wrote. This made no sense because of the city's "own directive that requires an officer to stop another officer engaged in the use of inappropriate or excessive force," the arbitrator wrote in clearing Boyle of all the charges. 

A Shower Of Lies: Spanier, Sandusky And The Mess At Penn State

Editor's Note: Frederick Crews, essayist, literary critic and English professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkley, reviews In the Lions' Den: The Penn State Scandal and a Rush to Judgment by Graham Spanier. More than a decade later, the Penn State cover up is still going strong. Because the media can't admit they blew the story, this article was rejected for publication by six different magazines.

By Frederick Crews

for BigTrial.net

You remember Jerry Sandusky, right? 

He’s the former Penn State assistant football coach and pedophilic monster who started a foundation, The Second Mile, in order to gain sexual access to prepubescent boys, hundreds of whom he molested, until eight heroic ones stepped forward to tell a jury about their ordeals in 2012, resulting in the sixty-eight-year-old Sandusky’s thirty-to-sixty-year prison term.

If you recall anything else about the case, it is probably the wrenching story of the ten-year-old “little boy in the shower,” who, on February 9, 2001, was seen being raped by Sandusky in a Penn State athletic facility. For some reason the witness, a hulking former quarterback named Mike McQueary, didn’t intervene, but on the next morning he did go straight to the legendary football coach Joe Paterno and tell him about the sodomy. 

Paterno conferred with the university’s athletic director, Tim Curley, who then involved a vice president, Gary Schultz, and the president, Graham Spanier. Instead of reporting the crime to the police, however, the three officials conspired to cover it up, thus sparing scandal to their all-important football program. As for the rape victim, he couldn’t appear in person at Sandusky’s trial, because nobody knew who he was.

But there’s a problem with what you remember. It’s sheer folklore. True, Sandusky took a shower with a boy. That’s what he often did, quite openly, after a workout together, and the showers typically included innocent horseplay. That behavior had been commonplace in the recreation center where Sandusky was raised. 

As for the incident in question, Mike McQueary initially misremembered its date by more than a year, and then probably misdated it again; he wasn’t at all sure he had glimpsed a sex act, and that’s why he had done nothing to stop it; he evidently didn’t mention it to Paterno until weeks later, and then only in passing; and his subsequent inaction and cordiality toward Sandusky indicated that he had reconsidered his initial concern.

D.A. Went Soft On Alleged Serial Carjacker & Alleged Serial Killer

Krasner prepares to bolt his own press conference

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

On Sept. 19th, a mother who was about to drive her daughter to school at 6:15 a.m. in Northeast Philadelphia was confronted by a carjacker who pointed a black handgun at both of their heads. 

Ten days later, U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero announced that her office had arrested Amir Harvey, 20, of the Olney section of the city, and charged him with the carjacking of the mother and daughter that took place in the 8900 block of Maxwell Place.

It turns out that Harvey has a rap sheet that included seven arrests in the past five years. He's a suspect in at least four carjackings, including one case where he previously pointed a gun in the faces of a mother and her children. He's also been arrested for allegedly firing four shots at police and then barricading himself, rather than surrender.

And remarkably, with all those arrests, thanks to the D.A.'s office, Harvey has had a smooth voyage through the criminal justice system here in Philadelphia. He's been released on his own recognizance three times. He's had his bail cut in half so it would only cost him $10,000 to get out of jail.

When he previously pulled a gun on the mother and her children, he was released without having to go to jail. On two occasions when he entered a negotiated guilty plea to stealing cars, he got no jail time and was sentenced only to probation. And when he went on trial for stealing a car, he got off.

Amateur Hour At The Krasner Impeachment Hearings

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

The curtain is about to go up on day two of the Larry Krasner impeachment hearings.

And already it's a total failure.

Sifting through the testimony of the half-dozen witnesses who appeared at yesterday's hearing, one thing is clear -- not one of them laid a glove on Krasner.

Of the five relatives of crime victims who testified, only one of whom was a live witness, not one gave any evidence of any malfeasance by Krasner. Or even any evidence of any direct interaction with him, where they could have at least complained that Larry was mean to them.

The relatives of crime victims who testified, four of whom appeared on video, complained more about the cops than they did about Krasner. The testimonies were unfocused and rambling. The fact that these were video presentations that could have been edited for clarity proves that whomever was responsible for putting those videos together had no idea what they were doing.

A similar criticism could be leveled at the members of the house select committee who have presided over this disaster. If they think they're going to impeach Krasner with the weak sauce they've served up to date, they're as delusional as he is. 

Memo to D.A. Krasner -- take a day off, bud. And don't spend any more of your political allies' money on paying demonstrators to show up down here in the Navy Yard to stage "spontaneous" protests while dressed up like circus animals. 

Because thanks to the ineptitude of your political opponents, you've got nothing to worry about.