HomeNewsCongestion expected due to evacuation drill

Congestion expected due to evacuation drill

Usually, traffic jams happen without warning, but here’s the rare alert:

The streets near the Naval Inventory Control depot at Levick Street and Oxford Avenue are probably going to be jammed beyond imagination sometime during the week of March 19.

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The depot will conduct an emergency evacuation drill that week, police said, and because more than 6,000 people work at the facility, the odds that the exercise will crowd local streets are pretty good. If you don’t want to get caught in the congestion, stay away from the neighborhood that week.

Mark Mroz, the 2nd Police District’s community relations officer, announced the drill at the Feb. 14 meeting of the district’s Police District Advisory Council.

The purpose of the drill is to see how long it would take to evacuate the military facility, Mroz said during the PDAC session at the Philadelphia Protestant Home. To keep the drill as real as possible, he said, no specific dates or times have been announced beyond that it will occur sometime between Monday and Friday and last for more than 24 hours.

After the evacuation, all employees will be sent home, Mroz said. Anyone returning to work the following morning will be subjected to a security check, he added.

Also at the Feb. 14, meeting, members heard about local crimes and honored four Officers of the Month.

Lt. Tom Macartney said burglaries remain a big concern in the district.

“We have been making a lot of arrests, but there still is a lot of burglaries,” he said.

Police have been making use of images captured by home cameras. Many people have cameras tied to their home computers, and sometimes burglars and burglaries are recorded. He estimated more than 10 percent of the district’s residents have cameras outside their homes.

Police are getting into the habit of looking for cameras when investigating crimes, he said.

On the street, new cell phones and iPhones are attractive targets for robbers, the lieutenant said. Some phones have software in their phones that help police track them down, he added.

Four 2nd Police District lawmen were honored as Officers of the Month for their quick work in arresting a man they said took a shot at them.

Officers Sean King, Daniel Loesch, Padraic Feeney and Kevin McGrorty were in an unmarked car at 12:44 a.m. on Jan. 21 on the 5600 block of Summerdale Ave. when they passed a man who was walking away from his parked vehicle, Macartney said.

As the officers drove past Lester Mattox, 39, the man pulled out a black pistol, Macartney said. One of the officers saw the gun and yelled to the others that Mattox had a pistol. The unmarked car accelerated away, Macartney said, and the officers saw Mattox point his gun and fire one shot.

The officers soon stopped their car, radioed for backup and went back after Mattox on foot, Macartney said.

SWAT team members found Mattox in his residence on the 800 block of Brill St. about 20 minutes later and placed him under arrest after King, Feeney, Loesch and McGrorty identified him.

Macartney said Mattox told Northeast detectives he had fired at the car because he believed it had been driven too close to him while he was walking in the street. Macartney said the man told police where he had hidden his gun, a 9mm Beretta, in a ceiling in his home and that he had flushed ammunition down a toilet.

Armed with a search warrant, police found the gun and the ammo, Macartney said.

Mattox is a convicted felon, and, therefore, may not legally own a firearm, Macartney said. Mattox was charged with assault and weapons offenses. He is free on bail as he awaits a formal arraignment. ••

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