Officer finally being
recognized 80 years later

By Jon Campisi
Times Staff Writer

They are sporadically placed throughout the city, situated atop the very spots where the local heroes lost their lives while protecting fellow citizens.
The memorial markers say it all, but they’re not wordy. Generally a name, badge number and death date will suffice, along with a sentence acknowledging his or her sacrifice.
For the Philadelphia Police Department, the oldest municipal law enforcement agency in the country, the dedication plaques are a way to remember those killed in the line of duty in the most fitting of ways.
But sometimes, a plaque could be put on hold for a reason as simple as a lack of information. Case in point — Gottlob Klemmer.
Klemmer had around 15 years of experience with the department under his belt when he was shot and wounded during a shootout with a member of a robbery gang that was terrorizing the area known as “Five Points,” the intersections of Cottman, Oxford and Rising Sun avenues, in what is today the Burholme section. The date was Jan. 14, 1919.
Klemmer initially lived with the two bullets lodged in his body, since it was too risky for doctors to remove them, but he eventually succumbed to his injuries. He passed away on Sept. 11, 1927. He was 53 years old.
That’s pretty much where the official story ends. But as Kathy Wersinger sees things, there has to be more, and she’s determined to find out.
“You get the name out, somebody’s bound to come up and say, ‘hey,’” Wersinger said of her goal to learn more about Klemmer, who is one of many officers killed throughout the years not yet memorialized with a plaque.
Wersinger, who works as an administrative assistant to City Councilwoman Marian Tasco, said the more time she allows to slip by, the harder it will be to find out about this man, since family members die, names may change and memories fade.
Bill Dolbow, the Democratic leader of the 35th Ward who, like Wersinger, was born, raised and still lives in the Lawndale area, shares Wersinger’s passion for information.
“He lived for nine years with two bullets in him,” Dolbow said to Wersinger during a recent interview with the Times at the area where Klemmer was killed. “Somebody must have been taking care of him.”
No one seems to know for sure precisely where Klemmer dropped after being shot at Five Points — information that would be helpful in deciding where to put a future plaque in his honor, since organizers strive to place the memorial markers at the exact location of death or injury. Wersinger is hoping historians and others can help her locate that information.
The little that is known about Klemmer is given in an account in the now-defunct Public Ledger, a newspaper published in Philadelphia from March 1836 to January 1942. A Sept. 12, 1927 story that ran the day after Klemmer’s death paints a picture of a German immigrant who came to this country at age 10 and joined the police force two decades later.
At the time of the 1919 shooting, Klemmer was working a plainclothes detail in the area of Old Soldiers Road and Rising Sun Avenue when he approached a stranger and demanded an explanation for his presence. As the story goes, “The stranger, without a word, fired three shots at him (Klemmer) and fled.”
The article states that despite being hit, Klemmer gave chase, firing at the suspect, before collapsing from blood loss. The shooter, who jumped into a waiting vehicle, was believed to have been hit by one of the officer’s bullets but escaped and supposedly was never seen again.
Klemmer spent two weeks at Frankford Hospital, where doctors were able to save his life. They removed one bullet from his arm but left two others — one at the base of his lungs, and the other an eighth of an inch from his heart — intact, since removing them would have been risky. After two months of recuperation, Klemmer returned to the job. Still, he remained in constant pain.
Klemmer continued working for the next four years. But soon, his pain relegated him to home confinement. He grew steadily worse until his death.
Wersinger, who’s determined to find out if Klemmer has living relatives, appealed to the Fraternal Order of Police, but progress has been slow; the recent murder of Philadelphia Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski put everything else on hold, she said.
“I’ve just been (getting) his name out,” Wersinger said.
Philadelphia Police Officer Roderick “Scratch” Scratchard, who serves as the department’s graphic artist and heads up the police museum, said one of the reasons it’s difficult to find out information about officers who died many years ago is that scores of records have been lost due to rash decisions made by former commanders.
“The trash company doesn’t keep their trash, so why should we keep ours?” is how Scratchard characterized the view of a past official who ordered the destruction of boxes of records in the early 1980s.
Scratchard, who has been on the force for 28 years, has spent the past two decades trying to piece departmental history back together again. He said around 90 officers “have been lost in the shuffle” due to the destruction and/or loss of records.
“It’s an experience,” he said of his quest to make sure every officer is accounted for, especially those for whom death came too early — namely, those killed in the line of duty.
Scratchard uses what are known as police “explorers,” or cadets, in his goal of updating the department’s archives. They help him maintain the police museum, and he teaches them how to investigate things, “be detectives, look at things and see how to put things together.”
Today’s technology makes easier goals such as Scratchard’s, and the explorers will soon create a Myspace page dedicated to the police museum.
“I have sixty volumes of history that they’ll be going through and researching and creating sections for it,” he said.
Scratchard said however unfortunate, the lack of information about Klemmer isn’t unique.
“Klemmer is one of the guys that got lost in the cracks, one of the many who got lost in the cracks,” he said.
Records show that Klemmer was survived by a wife, Katherine Bay, to whom he had been married since August 1913, and two children, Carl, 10, and Ruth, 7. At the time of Klemmer’s death, the family resided at 601 Gilham St.
It is not known if the man responsible for Klemmer’s death was ever apprehended, although Dolbow, the Democratic ward leader, believes there is only one officially unsolved murder of a Philadelphia police officer in the department’s history. The question remains, does this death technically constitute an on-duty killing, since Klemmer died nearly a decade after being shot? The answer to this could be helpful in determining the status of the investigation.
According to a source in the police department’s division of research and planning, Klemmer is considered the 93rd murdered officer out of the 261 police casualties in the department’s history.
It could not be determined if Klemmer’s two children, who today would be ages 88 and 91, are still living.
As for the plaque itself, while those dedications slated for 2008 have already been scheduled, Dolbow, the ward leader, said as long as the necessary private donations are raised to fund the project, he sees no reason why Klemmer could not be included in 2009’s lineup.
And while the plaques are generally unveiled on the anniversary of an officer’s death, Dolbow would maybe like to see a dedication ceremony take place on a fallen officer’s birthday.
“I believe in honoring people (because) they lived, not (because) they died,” he said. ••
Anyone with additional information on Officer Gottlob Klemmer is asked to contact Kathy Wersinger at Kathy.Wersinger@phila.gov
Reporter Jon Campisi can be reached at 215-354-3038 or jcampisi@phillynews.com