A 36-year-old man was mugged by 10-12 young males on the 4600 block of Chester Avenue on Monday night, police said.
Police say the youths punched the man, who was a house guest at a nearby residence, and stole his cell phone and laptop at about 11 p.m. He refused medical attention. The youths were not armed and no arrests have so far been made.
The West Philly resident with whom the man is staying wrote us that:
“It seems like there has been an uptick in muggings in the “triangle” between Baltimore and Woodland and 40th and the Kingsessing rec center which is usually pretty quiet compared to the main East-West streets (Walnut, Spruce).”
June 22nd, 2011 at 12:30 pm
This is insane. No joke an uprising, its been going on for over a month. Same group of kids too probably. Why are the cops doing nothing about this?
June 22nd, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Isn’t there a police sub station right there on Chester? What a joke.
June 22nd, 2011 at 12:47 pm
my g/f used to live in the building with the police substation. As i recall, it was usually unmanned, just for show.
i live in that area, this is bad news.
June 22nd, 2011 at 1:24 pm
University City District’s walking escort program : ALL west philly peeps call 215-898-9255 about 10 minutes before you’re ready to depart ( tell them you’re ready to go – it’s not a reservation ) and a uniformed & radio’d ambassador will walk you to your door, any time before 3am – after that, the call goes to directly to penn campus security.
June 22nd, 2011 at 8:13 pm
Our apologies for not catching the previous comment sooner. We removed it. We value comments that further dialogue, correct something that is wrong or that are simply witty, insightful or funny. We will delete comments that are hateful or promote violence.
If you missed the comment, I won’t repeat it, but lets just say you didn’t miss much.
Julija Kulneva and Mike Lyons, editors
June 22nd, 2011 at 10:05 pm
Amen!
June 23rd, 2011 at 10:44 am
Kind of concerned about this being a real issue this summer. With PYN restricting the ages of youth they are allowing to work for them to 16 and up, on top of out-of-school-time programs looking at massive budget cuts, there will be a lot of bored, hot kids on the streets of Philly this summer. If you have any resources at all to support programs and kids, please consider doing so! The more we can keep them engaged, the less likely they are to do things like this.
June 23rd, 2011 at 10:56 am
Meanwhile I’ve witnessed one particular UCD Bike Ambassador sit at one of his check points (corner of 47th and Warrington outside of Vietnam Cafe) fiddling on his cell phone with his ear buds in on a number of occasions. Never even looks up as I pass him. I’ve been tempted to take his picture or yell something to see if he’d even notice. All of this has happened somewhere around that 11pm time period that this mugging occurred.
That being said I think UCD Ambassadors in general are doing a good job,. It just frustrates the hell out of me to read about this when I’ve seen one of them not doing his job just a few blocks from where this happened. Had this guy been doing his rounds like he should have been maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
June 23rd, 2011 at 11:37 am
Given all the recent muggings in this area, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen an increase in police presence. Granted, the crimes aren’t especially violent, but if they go unchecked, the severity and frequency will likely increase. The police need to end this now before it gets out of hand.
June 23rd, 2011 at 12:12 pm
I imagine the Twitter Police is on it. They just caught some other muggers:
TheFuzz9143: These guys didn’t start robbing people tonight. I will let you know how many we end up charging them with within a day or so.
10:06 AM (2 hours ago)
TheFuzz9143: First guy was 59 years old and ended up punching the one kid and getting away. The 2nd victim not so lucky. Broken nose from a pistol whip
10:06 AM (2 hours ago)
TheFuzz9143: Tonight at 11pm we locked up 2 kids who committed 2 robberies at 47/Warrington and 48/Springfield. Got a BB gun from them. Both 17 years old
June 23rd, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Wait a minute…the police are tweeting?!! That’s great news. Thanks for the update.
June 23rd, 2011 at 9:23 pm
TheFuzz9143 is Detective Joseph Murray of the Southwest Division but I enjoy referring to him as the Twitter Police. In any case, if you follow him you come to see that most muggings in the area (especially south of Baltimore) are serial events and the perpetrators are usually apprehended.
June 23rd, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Whom among us does not esteem The Fuzz, going back to his posts on the old PhillyBlog? Based on what I saw early this evening at 48th and Beaumont, the police are jumping. A plain-clothes or off-duty officer was pursuing a young teenaged shoplifter and called for an assist. Ultimately four vehicles (and thus a total of nine officers?) were on the scene. This might reassure some readers; I found it a bit much.
June 25th, 2011 at 9:10 am
An update: University police (USP) noticed one of the kids with a laptop near USP campus. He got scared, dumped the laptop in the bushes and ran. Police ID’ed him and were able to find him and the victim got his laptop back (but not his phone). Thanks to Lt. Brian McBride of the 18th District who worked on recovering the laptop and getting it back to the rightful owner. Unfortunately, as noted above, these are kids bored for the summer, acting out in negative ways. With nothing else to do, this is what happens. It’s a story that’s been playing out all through history.
July 2nd, 2011 at 5:08 pm
This may be the same group of kids that has been terrorizing West Phil for years, starting when they were quite young. They could have been stopped back then, when they were impressionable, but nobody much wanted to intervene because they were such young kids (some as young as six and seven). What they learned was that they could intimidate parents at the playgrounds, surround and punch people (children or adults), throw rocks, get on bikes and run people off the walks, etc., and get away with it. Every year this particular group of kids gets more violent. Whether this is the same set of kids of course cannot be established here. But if it is, expect that it’s only a matter of time before they seriously injure or kill someone. The moral of the story being: intervene when these children are young. Do something then. Don’t wait until they’re fourteen or eighteen and expect that you’re going to make any difference.