Mayor Kenney Orders Cops To Stand Down As Thousands Of Protesters Take Over Parkway

As thousands of activists took over the Benjamin Franklin Parkway yesterday, Mayor Jim Kenney ordered the police to stand down and do nothing.

The entire length of the Parkway last night was shut down to traffic, from Spring Garden to Arch Street, as it became a tent city for homeless activists, squatters, and drug addicts.

Signs went up proclaiming that the most scenic part of the city, which runs for a mile along the tree and flag-line boulevard from City Hall to the Art Museum steps made famous by Rocky Balboa, was now occupied by Antifa and had become a "No Cop Zone.

Cops were furious about the mayor's order. 

"We are under a tyrannical dictatorship," one cop said about Kenney. "The people of the city want and frankly deserve and should demand better."

Under Kenney's disastrous leadership, he and his rookie police commissioner were totally unprepared for the riots that began May 30th, and left Center City boarded up with plywood and still smelling of arson fires.

Now Kenney has given up the entire parkway to the protesters. He's been groveling and trying to appease the protesters before they even invaded his town, and it's clearly not working. On Wednesday night, demonstrators were picketing the mayor's penthouse at Third and Race. 

They've got another demonstration planned outside Kenney's penthouse for Sunday night.

Meanwhile, the city which already has a budget deficit of $650 million has since the protests began on May 30, has been spending more than $1 million a day just for police overtime. That's an additional expenditure of at least $14 million in the two weeks since the protests began.

The city was under an emergency lockdown because of the coronavirus, with citizens prohibited from opening many businesses, or going to church, or to restaurants or assembling in groups larger than 10, a limit that's recently been raised to 25.

 But under the Progressive leadership of Kenney, all of the coronavirus rules under the emergency lockdown have been waived so that the protesters can take over the town and pretty much do whatever the hell they want. 

The takeover of the Parkway was reminiscent of the Occupy Philadelphia movement that took over Dilworth Plaza back in 2015. The cops finally had to clear a tent city, but not before the protesters who were squatting there did more than $1 million worth of damage. 

The local news media continued to treat both the mayor as well as the protesters who have taken over the city with kid gloves.

The headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Philadelphians experiencing homelessness build protest encampment on Ben Franklin Parkway: 'We all matter.'"

The newspaper reported that the protesters had reached out to the Workers Revolutionary Collective for support, and that local residents were donating food, clothing and medical supplies to ensure the squatters would stay a while.

And the Kenney administration continued its policy of lockdowns for law-abiding citizens and appeasement for protesters.