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The mayor and his pals
should pay their bills
I’m going to make this letter short and sweet for everyone complaining about John Street and PGW. Why, you all ask, does he support these increases from PGW? Well, who would pay his gas bill as well as the gas bills for his "Brothas and Sistas"? Certainly not him nor them.
The working middle class that he has kicked to the curb is expected to do this. If PGW really wanted to gain support they would shut off John Street’s gas until he was caught up with his bills, as well as his "Brothas and Sistas."
Joe Harkins
Bustleton
Dog duty is the
last straw
At 4:45 Thursday afternoon, Oct. 11, I left my house with my dog and my plastic bag (to clean up after him) to walk around Solis Cohen school. I got home at 5:15.
When I arrived, I found that some scumbag, lowlife dirtball let their dog crap in the middle of the sidewalk right in front of my house.
How low can you get, you lazy sleazeball? Well, it is now official. Castor Gardens is now Castor Ghetto.
I’m outta here. I can’t stand it any longer. These people around here have no pride in themselves or where they live. I guess it’s too hard for lazy asses like yourselves to build yourself up. It must be easier to try and drag people around you down to your level.
Ed O’Neill
Castor Gardens
Remembering the
immortal ‘Aunt Dolly’
Friends of Dolly Ryan, who died Sept. 27, will hold a memorial service for her next Wednesday, Oct. 24, from 7 to 8 p.m., at the Tacony Baptist Church, located at Disston and Hegerman streets in Tacony.
Aunt Dolly, as she was affectionately known, was the previous president of Oxford Circle Town Watch (2nd Police District), a member of the 15th Police District Advisory Council, active patrolling member of the Rhawnhurst Town Watch, active volunteer for the 15th Police District Curfew Center and served on many boards as a fund-raiser and assistant with the 2nd and 15th districts’ annual police officers holiday dinner, as well as member of the 15th district’s National Night Out Committee and Friends of Pennypack Park.
Friends of Aunt Dolly are invited to her memorial to have an opportunity to remember a wonderful woman who was devoted to not only her neighborhood but all of the Northeast. She will forever be considered the volunteer of volunteers. Help us celebrate her life. We welcome donations in the way of either mums for the service to later be planted on the grounds of Tacony Baptist in her memory, monetary donations to Tacony Baptist Church in her memory or the SPCA, as Aunt Dolly loved dogs.
Angelique Cianci-Hartman
President, Tacony Town Watch
Comcast is still making
big waves in TV land
Thank you Anthony Dorwart (It’s protection at a low price, Sept. 27 letters). On behalf of my fellow Comcasters, I would like to thank you very much.
As an employee of the much maligned cable company, I must admit it is very rare indeed to read anything that can even remotely be construed as a compliment. And it is virtually unheard of for a consumer to actually defend one of our rate increases, whether it be an optional one, such as the service protection plan, or a mandatory one, such as our once-a-year price adjustments.
I also must applaud the Times for having the courage to run Mr. Dorwart’s letter. It seems to me that other media outlets only ever mention Comcast when they can paint us as the bad guys who are being sued by some consumer watchdog group for unscrupulous business practices or fined by the Federal Communications Commission for some flagrant violation of the law.
One might even get the impression that we are deliberately being portrayed as the evil Galactic Cable Empire, seeking to eradicate all competitors and financially enslave all beings throughout the galaxy.
Competition. I guess that brings me to the heart of this letter. Is Comcast a monopoly? Does competition truly exist? I certainly can’t deny that Comcast is a giant, extending its claws not only across Pennsylvania but throughout the country. And I do remember a few years back when RCN failed to get a foothold in what many may derisively call the home base of Comcast Country. I do not know what role, if any, Comcast had in this. But, as Mr. Dorwart, and Mr. Jack Miller before him, has made clear, Comcast is not now and probably never will be a pure monopoly.
I know that, in Bucks and Montgomery counties at least, we are taking a serious hit from upstart Verizon, which I believe poses a more serious threat to us than satellite, which has long been a nagging presence. And, as corny or weird or off the wall as this may sound, I would like to remind everyone reading this we inhabit this beautiful land called America and, as Americans, each one of us is endowed with some glorious thing called free will.
As Mr. Dorwart so elegantly stated, Comcast does not force anyone to take its service. Still, I wish I had a dollar for every time someone comes into the office, brands us with the dreaded "m" word and then proceeds to willingly fork over hundreds, if not thousands, of their hard-earned dollars to me, a small cog in what is alleged to be a criminal, communistic, unconstitutional, extortionist machine.
I would just like to add one more thing. Effective Feb. 17, 2009, all broadcasters will stop transmitting current analog signals and broadcast entirely in digital. This is not a Comcast decision. All cable and satellite companies will be affected by this federal mandate. We will all hear and see a lot more beginning New Year’s Day 2008.
For more information, visit www.fcc.gov or www.dtv.gov
Bill McDevitt Jr.
Morrell Park
• • •
Dear Mr. Jack Miller,
OK, this is my last response.. After this I’m done . I wasn’t going to reply to your last letter (Comcast is still calling all the shots, Oct. 4 edition), but I felt I HAD to.
Economics 101: When a person, group, or business pays millions of dollars for the "rights" to anything, be it music, a screenplay, or even airing rights to a major sports team, it’s usually not in the company’s best interest to just allow its competition to have access to those rights.
As to my "ulterior" reason for my reply: I just wanted to point out the flaw in your reasoning. You do have a choice. Either pay for the service or don’t.
And thanks to this great country you also have every right to write again next week and voice you opinion. But like I said, I’m done, so enjoy life and don’t sweat the small stuff.
Anthony Dorwart
Somerton
Plenty of anger over
photo of slain guard
I cannot express my disgust with the choice of photo you have used in the article about the slain armored guards.
I was anxious to receive last week’s Northeast Times to see the local coverage of this tragedy. When I opened to the article and saw the photo of Joe Alullo laying on the ground, my knees went weak.
Why did you feel that photo was the right choice? Do you not realize that his family may be reading this paper? I can assure you they are, because he is a member of my family. He is my niece’s grandfather. He is a beloved member of my family and to see his body on the ground was horrifying.
The caption below the picture said that they were rendering "aid." That is absolutely wrong. If they were rendering aid, as you say, he would have been on his back in a position to which they could do CPR.
The pain you caused my family by using this photo cannot be described. I am thankful that his wife and daughters live outside the area that the Times is distributed to. I am terrified that they will somehow come across it, though.
Would you want to see your father, your husband, your grandfather, your best friend, face down on the street in his final moment? Right now, this is not the image that I have when I think of Joe, not the fun times we all had together doing things as a family. I pray that it will eventually fade from my mind.
I have been a faithful reader of this paper for many years. I will never again open the pages of the Times. If it’s delivered to my house, it will hit my trash can without ever passing through my front door. The disrespect that you showed a grieving family will long be remembered.
Cathie Walker
Winchester Park
• • •
I am writing this letter in reference to the unnecessary and disgusting display of "photo journalism" displayed in the Northeast Times.
Upon opening the paper I was faced with the graphic photographs of paramedics working on the body of slain armored guard Joe Alullo, as well as the sheet draped body of William Widmaier.
These pictures were disturbing on many levels. I do not see why the paper took it upon themselves to further the pain of the families and friends of these two men by subjecting them to the sight of their loved one moments after they had been murdered. I understand that the story needed to be told and that the facts need to be presented in such a tragic incident. However, the printing of these photos was unnecessary and inconsiderate.
I hope that in the future your paper will take into consideration the subject matter of photos before printing. May the families of these two men now be able to grieve in peace without publications such as yours adding salt to their open wounds with such tactless unprofessionalism.
Maureen T. McGerry
Rhawnhurst
• • •
I just received my Times at my door and was looking to see if you had coverage of the armored car robbery. To my great dismay I saw the picture you chose to use; in my mind I can not imagine why. To me, the only reason is sensationalism.
Is this what you need to do to cover a story? Do you have any idea of the intense pain the family is dealing with because of this senseless tragedy? Well I can, because my husband and I have the great honor of sharing a granddaughter with Joe.
He loved his family and would do anything for them, and his granddaughter was the apple of his eye. To think she could maybe see this picture of her "Poppy" truly breaks my heart. We have all been saving any coverage of him for her, but this is not one that will ever find its way to her eyes. She deserves better!
He was a kind, loving, gentle, giving man who was loved by all who met him. He had respect for everyone he met, and if you had the luck to know him, you truly knew this.
To see him laying there without the dignity he and his family deserved truly turned my stomach. You have added greatly to a horrific time to all who loved him by having such a lack of respect for Joe, Donna, Lisa, Katie, Gina and his beautiful precious Emma.
Helen Krushauskas
Pennypack
• • •
How could you print the pictures of two of Philadelphia’s Finest laying face down, dead? It was cruel and irresponsible of the Northeast Times. How would you like if someone from your family lost their life in a tragic circumstance and their final moments are plastered all over the newspaper?
Your paper is vile and disgusting and it will go in the trash with the rest of my junk mail from now on.
Brad Cantoral
Pennypack
• • •
I was appalled by the photo your paper published of slain guard Joe Alullo. Unlike the photos of the crime scene by our other local papers, even the classless Daily News, your photo showed an uncovered victim. How awful for his family and friends to actually see their loved one on the ground and exposed this way. As if the senseless murder wasn’t enough to absorb, now we have a visual. Just plain disgusting and poor judgment on the editor’s part. Shame on you.
Kelly Hebding
Burholme
• • •
Joe Alullo was my best friend. We were partners in the police department and in life. I currently am home now in South Carolina after what may have been the most tragic week of my life. For six days my family was witness to the horror and tragedy brought on Donna, Katie, Gina, Lisa and Emma, his wife, daughters and granddaughter, by a cold-blooded killer with no regard for human life.
As policemen, Joe and I witnessed more human suffering than I care to remember, but we retired looking forward to a better time in our non police lives. Unfortunately for him, his life was cut way too short by a senseless, unnecessary act of violence.
From everything I’ve read recently, both here in South Carolina and while I was in Philadelphia, violence in that city has reached ridiculous proportion. The city that I was once proud to call my hometown has taken my friend’s life.
Today, I received a phone call that the Northeast Times printed a graphic photo of my friend laying face down on the ground where he fell as a result of his wounds. Have you no conscience? Have you no respect for the family of this man?
There were enough photographs of his family at the funeral that would tear your heart out; there was no need for this type of sensationalism. The editorial was well meaning and certainly drove home the point, but the person responsible for authorizing the print of that photo should be forced to walk the streets of the city as Joe and I did, knowing that the end of your time on earth could be just around the next corner. And then have an inconsiderate newspaper editor print the grizzly photos of your death so that a grieving widow, three inconsolable daughters and a granddaughter can see them.
Edward Tufo
Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Photo of slain guard
needed to be seen
As I See It
By John Scanlon
I knew the calls would come. I didn’t decide to run the photo for that reason, to stir up all the vitriol and anger that have come my way, but I knew the calls would come.
I’m the one who decided to publish the photograph in last week’s Times of Joseph Alullo, the Loomis armored-car guard ambushed and shot by a robber, lying uncovered in the Wachovia Bank parking lot, a paramedic by his side checking for signs of life.
I have talked to at least 20 readers — a good deal of them friends or former police colleagues of the man — who have called to ask how I could run such a photo. Plenty more people have called and e-mailed.
I decided to run that photo of Joseph Alullo because it made me sad. And pissed. For hours leading to the deadline of that edition, my thoughts turned to the picture, to run it, to not run it, but I still felt as sad and pissed. With the intensity of crime and violence these days, it’s a visceral image of how disposable life is becoming, of how that reality is chipping increasingly at the comfort zone of Northeast Philadelphia. From a news perspective, it’s an image that readers should see, to dwell on the unfathomable evil that confronted Joseph Alullo and partner William Widmaier around 8 that Thursday morning.
That’s it. That’s the reason. Nothing more profound, no scholarly rationale to change the mind of anyone who has a problem with it.
I felt compelled to write this column because readers are entitled to question the process. The decision wasn’t spurred by sensationalism. Wasn’t spurred either by — and I always love this one — that blustery charge of "you just want to sell papers." To accuse me of either implies that I derive tremendous satisfaction from phone conversation after phone conversation with people just primed to lay into me.
I’d prefer that all these people had first called the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility and told the desk officer they wanted to convey word of what they think about Mustafa Ali, the gun-toting suspect accused of ambushing Mr. Alullo and Mr. Widmaier at the bank ATM — the guy who’s alleged to have brought such misery to their families — but I’ve been in this business long enough to know that the messenger is an easier mark.
I don’t believe there is anything macabre about the photo of Joseph Alullo. There is no gore. It is a photo of the Loomis guard facedown on his stomach, his lower body partly obscured by a paramedic kneeling at his side, a tragic scene photographed from perhaps 15 feet away. It does not portray a man who’d been shot three times in the chest, though several other images did, and they would have been unsuitable for publication with the accompanying story.
Sensational? I tried not to be. The black-and-white photo consumed less than a quarter page inside the paper, rather than played across the front in color, and the tone of the story was restrained. The headline — A Sorrowful Day — was a succinct assessment written without tabloid insensitivity.
I’d say the question most commonly posed was whether I’d thought about Mr. Alullo’s family. That goes without saying, for I’d be devastated if a family member of mine were taken in such a brutal way, leading to media coverage that can only exacerbate that grief, and I understand the despair of Joseph Alullo’s widow, Donna.
She called me. I apologize for the distress she feels, because I also don’t expect her to understand — or for me to be able to ever explain — the difficult issues that arise when a harrowing and public spectacle, such as the brazen murders of Mr. Alullo and Mr. Widmaier in a bank parking lot, complicates deliberations to be mindful of the human toll and yet deliver context to an atrocity that readers should feel deeply.
Newspapers have long debated the prudent use of photos taken at times of human suffering, in particular the need to thoughtfully choose a photo because it stokes a reader’s sensibility to the gravity of an event, rather than merely exist as a repugnant, stomach-turning visual of someone whose life was claimed by it.
Most papers have general guidelines to help those deliberations. But few of them formulate policies that outright ban sensitive photos, simply because that would mean surrendering those occasions when there are compelling or justifiable reasons to publish a powerful though troubling image.
I don’t know an easy answer. On a much broader and high-profile scale, from the wrenching photo of a screaming girl next to the body of slain Kent State University student Jeffrey Miller on May 4, 1970, or the distorted face of a Vietcong guerrilla photographed while shot during his point-blank execution on a Saigon street, or the widely published March 2004 photo of the charred and mutilated bodies of two coalition contractors hanging from a Fallujah bridge, it’s apparent these issues will always ignite reader indignation and debate.
And yes, I understand that a bridge in Fallujah isn’t an ATM in Rhawnhurst, but you’d be missing the point. A life is a life. Being shot to death in a bank parking lot is as egregious as being maimed and strung from a bridge trestle, and I found that photo downright startling and disturbing, but I also understood there were editors who, in the end, decided they had legitimate reason to expose readers to the barbarity of the situation.
But readers also are entitled to question that call. I appreciate those who spoke with me about the Alullo photo in a civil fashion, emphasizing good points rather than relying on insults with little else to contribute, and I will heed those concerns.
Yet I also believe that people should be concerned — about a changing Northeast, and not necessarily for the better. A lot of readers who objected to the Alullo photo insisted it didn’t have a place in, as they often put it, "our community newspaper."
I can’t go along with that. Community papers that continue to fill their pages with soft news and pictures — lest they rankle the readership — are doing a disservice to that readership, especially as these papers become sources of important news that the dailies can’t or won’t always cover.
To suggest that the Alullo photo has no place in a "community newspaper," or that I gave absolutely no thought to its publication, implies that I’ve rudely punctured some protective bubble that enshrouds Northeast Philadelphia, an idyllic enclave where a kid would never shoot another in the back to steal his motorbike, where a creep would never slug an 80-year-old woman in the mouth as she unloaded groceries and take her car, where our young people aren’t exposed to violence and disturbing images because they’re good kids who always download Internet stuff from Disney.com
Those days of a lovely and carefree Northeast started going south well over a decade ago. The deaths of Joseph Alullo and William Widmaier are just the latest sad episode to remind us that all the Town Watches and political rhetoric and lovely flowerboxes along streets won’t change a thing until we address the inexplicable conduct of people with cold hearts and no conscience.
I chose a photo to drive that point home. ••
John Scanlon is editor of the Northeast Times. He can be reached at jscanlon@phillynews.com
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