AP PA Headlines 6/4/20
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Explosions have struck 50 cash machines around Philadelphia in recent days in a coordinated effort to steal them or to blow them up and take the money inside. The state attorney general Josh Shapiro Wednesday announced the arrest of a man selling dynamite on the streets of the city and providing instructions on its use on ATMs, but he said it wasn’t clear whether he was connected to the coordinated effort. Authorities say one man died while trying to break into an ATM. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is leading the investigation.
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Authorities say a brief but severe storm killed three people in southeastern Pennsylvania and ripped the roof off a seven-story apartment building. Montgomery County officials say the three fatalities occurred in separate incidents during Wednesday’s noontime storm, two in Lower Merion Township and one in Lower Moreland.
The chair of Montgomery County’s board of commissioners, Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, said were also a number of serious fires and the loss of the seven-story apartment building’s roof left 150 units uninhabitable. Arkoosh said some areas may be without power for several days, and many nursing homes are on generator backup.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Election officials are working through a mountain of uncounted ballots in Pennsylvania after a primary held amid civil unrest and a pandemic. The flood of mail-in votes is still being counted Wednesday, but The Associated Press has called four races in which Democratic legislative incumbents lost.
Beaten were Sen. Larry Farnese and Reps. Maria Donatucci and Roni Green of Philadelphia, and Rep. Adam Ravenstahl of Pittsburgh, brother of the city’s former mayor. Twenty-two counties also road-tested new voting machines and the state debuted mail-in balloting. A lack of drama in the outcome of the presidential contests and a massive mail-in vote produced light in-person turnout.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Elementary and secondary schools inside Pennsylvania’s less restrictive reopening zones are getting the OK to resume teaching in person and other activities at the end of month. The Education Department said school boards in the green and yellow zones under the stoplight-colored reopening system must first adopt health and safety procedures that meet federal and state guidelines. The state’s more than 300 colleges and other post-secondary institutions can restart on Friday if they have a plan to keep students and teachers safe, the agency announced.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Workers have removed the statue of divisive former Philadelphia Mayor and Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo. A crane lifted the 10-foot bronze statue in the wee hours of Wednesday and workers shook it from its base outside a public building across from City Hall. Mayor Jim Kenney had already said he planned to move the statue this month after it was defaced during a protest over the death of George Floyd. The statue was frequently targeted by vandals, and call to remove it have grown louder in recent years. Rizzo had a reputation for being tough both on crime and on racial minorities.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The coronavirus has infected another 511 people to surpass 73,000 total cases in Pennsylvania, and another 75 people have died from it. That’s according to the state Health Department on Wednesday. The agency has now attributed a total of 5,742 deaths to the virus in Pennsylvania. About 68% of the people infected have recovered, the department says, while the rate of positive tests is steadily falling to 18% of those tested. Pennsylvania is currently in the process of a three-step reopening. Nearly 6 million people in hard-hit southeastern Pennsylvania are scheduled to shed Gov. Tom Wolf’s tightest restrictions on Friday, including the stay-at-home order.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Philadelphia will be under curfew again for a fifth straight night, as Gov. Tom Wolf marched in Harrisburg with demonstrators protesting police violence against black people and racial injustice following the killing of George Floyd. Wolf, with officials from Harrisburg, marched from the Capitol steps to a community center and museum parking lot about a mile away as demonstrators chanted.
Demonstrations on Tuesday night and elsewhere around Pennsylvania were largely peaceful, unlike the previous few nights. In Philadelphia, where Wolf dispatched the National Guard and Pennsylvania State Police to support police officers, city officials ordered a curfew for a fifth straight night, from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m. Thursday.
COLWYN, Pa. (AP) — Police in a Philadelphia suburb have recovered a large cache of merchandise that they say was stolen during recent protests over the death of George Floyd. Colwyn police raided an apartment on Tuesday after an informant tipped them off. Officers found it chock full of clothing, sneakers, alcohol, beauty supplies, automotive parts and other items that interim Police Chief Michael Hale believes is valued at between $5,000 and $10,000. Police believe the items were stashed there before they could be sold on the streets. Two people were arrested and face charges of theft and receiving stolen property. Most of the items still had sales tags and police are hoping to return the items to merchants.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Officials in Philadelphia defended their use of tear gas in dispersing protesters who blocked a major highway at rush hour, calling it necessary to defuse “a dangerous and volatile situation.” But civil rights lawyers called it a reversal of recent city policy. The Philadelphia Police Department had earned generally good marks over the past decade for the restrained way its Civil Affairs Unit engaged with protesters. Lawyers and activists say that dissolved this past week. Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw promised to investigate the use of force during three days of unrest that followed George Floyd’s death in Minnesota.,
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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is expected to announce plans for the removal of an iconic statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from Richmond’s prominent Monument Avenue, a senior administration official has told The Associated Press. The Democratic governor today will direct the statue to be moved off its massive pedestal and put into storage while his administration seeks input on a new location.
Many black activists and lawmakers have long called for the statue’s removal and cheered the news. The move comes amid turmoil across the nation and around the world over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes, even after he stopped moving.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is turning to religion as he draws a hard line against violent protests over the killing of another black man in police custody. For the second day in a row, Trump paid a visit to a local church on Tuesday. Monday, he was roundly criticized for clearing peaceful protesters from a park so he could pose for photos with a Bible.
Pres. Trump’s religious outreach marks his latest in a series of overtures to mobilize conservative voters of faith, particularly white evangelical Christians. Trump Wednesday morning brushed off the critics, insisting his visit had been well-received.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s Pentagon chief has shot down his idea of using active-duty troops to quell protests. But then Defense Secretary Mark Esper reversed course and kept the 82nd Airborne Division on standby after he visited the White House. It was an extraordinary clash Wednesday between the U.S. military and its commander in chief. Esper says active-duty troops should be deployed “only in the most urgent and dire of situations” and the U.S. is not there now. Trump has raised the possibility, though the White House has cooled on the idea as protests have calmed in the past two days.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Barack Obama is taking on an increasingly public role as the nation confronts a confluence of historic crises that has exposed deep racial and socioeconomic inequalities in America and reshaped the November election. On Wednesday, he held a virtual town hall event with young people to discuss policing and the civil unrest that has followed the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. Obama called for turning the protests over Floyd’s death into policy change and urged specific reforms to ensure safer policing and increased trust between communities and law enforcement.
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Snapchat has tweaked how it handles messages from President Donald Trump. The video messaging site is no longer “promoting” him. That means his posts will no longer be in the “Discover” section, which features news by and about celebrities and public figures. Last week, Twitter slapped fact-check warnings on two of Trump’s tweets and demoted a third, saying it broke rules on promoting violence.
DENVER (AP) — A Denver police officer has been fired after posting a photo of himself and two other officers in tactical gear with the caption “Let’s start a riot.” Thomas McClay was fired the day after the department launched an internal investigation into the Instagram post. Department social media policy says officers can’t post stuff that could hurt “working relationships” or how they perform their duties. McClay had been on the force for less than a year.
GRANDVIEW, W. Va. (AP) — Authorities say West Virginia woman and her husband faked her disappearance by pretending she plummeted from an overlook as part of a scheme to keep her out of having to go to prison. Julie and Rodney Wheeler were arrested Tuesday and charged with multiple fraud and conspiracy offenses. Julie Wheeler’s husband and son claimed she fell from an overlook at Grandview State Park Sunday and was missing. Police searched for Wheeler and found her hiding in a closet in her home Tuesday. Police said Rodney Wheeler and his son planted evidence at the overlook. Julie Wheeler pleaded guilty to federal health care fraud in February.
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