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On this day in 1985, Philadelphia police bombed the home of black activist organization MOVE, igniting a major fire that burned at least 5 people alive (incl. children) & destroyed 65 homes. Those that escaped the blaze were shot & killed by police. 
The military-style attack on MOVE involved 500 police officers who fired over 10,000 rounds in less than 90 minutes. The official report by the city’s medical examiner found that six of the 11 dead did not die inside from the flames, but died outside from police gunfire.
The officers had flak jackets, SWAT gear, .50- and .60-caliber machine guns, an anti-tank machine gun and a helicopter, which dropped the bombs. The police helicopter dropped 2 bombs containing military grade C-4, which had been delivered to the Philly police by the FBI.
Before the bombing, police has used fire hoses to try to force the MOVE members from their homes, but when the bombs ignited a fire that engulfed the entire block, the police refused to use the fire hoses to stop the fire.
Everyone in the MOVE house was killed except for a 13-year-old boy and Ramona Africa. The bombing destroyed a large section of a Black neighborhood in West Philadelphia & made 250 people homeless. Many of the homes in the neighborhood remain abandoned to this day.
Despite investigations, neither the mayor, nor the police commissioner was ever criminally charged. The only one charged following the bombing was the lone surviving adult MOVE member, Ramona Africa, who was incarcerated for 7 years after being found guilty of “rioting".
In 1996, a federal jury ordered the city to pay a US$ 1.5 million civil suit judgement to survivor Ramona Africa and relatives of two people killed in the bombing, finding the city used excessive force and violated the members' basic constitutional rights.
Ramona Africa discussed the verdict in 2003: “The point that we made in that civil suit was that first of all this was not an accident that got out of control. This was a planned murder and wasn’t an isolated incident.”
Ramona Africa continued: “There was nothing the city could say to justify the assault. That jury did not want to find in my favor. Besides an Asian man and a black woman on the jury, the rest were white suburbanites. It took them about 5 days to come to a verdict."
"We know they didn’t want to find in my favor because they ordered police commissioner Sambor and fire commissioner Richmond to each pay me just one dollar a week for 11 years. But even that was later overruled by the judge (granting them both immunity)." dissidentvoice.org/Articles5/Benn…
