Philly Gets the Anti-Joe Bologna T-Shirt That It Needs
Plus: The Inquirer’s scathing report on the Philly police. And primary results are finally in.
The Philly police union came out with a t-shirt in support of Joe Bologna, the cop charged with assaulting a protester. And now, an artist has created an anti-Joe Bologna t-shirt. (Image via GumRoad)
A roundup of Philly news. This post may be updated at any time as new information becomes available.
It Didn’t Take Long for Somebody to Create an Anti-Joe Bologna T-Shirt
On Monday, I told you that Philly police union boss John McNesby was selling “Bologna Strong” t-shirts in support of Joe Bologna. He’s the Philly cop now charged with aggravated assault after an incident involving a protester and Bologna’s metal ASP baton.
Here’s that shirt, pictured next to Bologna himself:
Left: Joseph Bologna, the Philly cop charged with assaulting a Temple student who was protesting in Philadelphia (Image via Getty) | Right: A mockup of a t-shirt that the Philly police union is selling in support of Joseph Bologna (via FOP Lodge 5)
Well thanks to one area artist, Philly now has an anti-Joe Bologna t-shirt. The front reads: “PHILLY IS DONE WITH BOLOGNA!” And there’s a illustration of a bologna sandwich sitting in a jail cell. The back reads: “BLACK LIVES MATTER.”
Tattoo artist Brian Dicola, who is based in Philly and Toms River, New Jersey, is the one who came up with the design. And you can buy the t-shirts for $25 each. According to Dicola, the proceeds will be donated to the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative.
“This walking Arby’s sandwich violently instigated peaceful citizens practicing their rights to peaceful protest,” wrote Dicola in an Instagram post earlier this week. “I know it’s kinda goofy but so is this racist garbage pile sooo here ya go. This ones for little Joey Bologna… the people of Philadelphia aren’t afraid of bullies like you.”
Speaking of the Philadelphia Police Department…
If you’re not a regular reader of the Inquirer, today is a good day to check it out.
Four of the newspaper’s top reporters —David Gambacorta, Mike Newall, Jeremy Roebuck and Chris Palmer — just published an absolutely scathing investigation into police response (Bologna’s included) during the George Floyd protests that boiled over last week.
There’s a lot of information to digest, and you should definitely read it in its entirety, as so few people do today.
But basically, the report begins with this finding: the police department, for whatever unearthly reason, decided on minimal staffing. In the past, the department has, you know, added a lot of cops to the streets when huge numbers of people are expected to turn out for protests. And, as the Inquirer article points out, that former M.O. was “an approach that the city had successfully relied on for a decade.”
This time, however, as mass protests erupted across the country, police administration decided, hey, we’re cool. And from that point on, it all fell apart.
Tellingly, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw “declined multiple interview requests” from the Inquirer.
Philly Primary Results Are Finally, Er, Finalized
Typically, we get the results of a presidential primary in Philly very quickly. But thanks to the mail-in ballot situation brought about by the coronavirus mess, results from the June 2nd presidential primary were delayed. On Thursday night, we finally got the full results.
No huge surprises here.
Just over quarter of all registered voters in Philadelphia cast a ballot. The highest turnout by percentage was in Ward 9 and Ward 22, which are in Northwest Philly.
Trump won in the Republican primary in Philadelphia with about 83 percent of the vote. Apparently, he actually had some opponents. Their names are Roque Rocky De La Fuenta, an entrepreneur, and Bill Weld, former governor of Massachusetts and former a lot of other things. Needless to say, those two didn’t get many votes. The president had the most voters turn out for him at polling places in neighborhoods like the Far Northeast and Bridesburg.
Joe Biden received about 79 percent of the Democratic vote, compared with 19 percent for Bernie Sanders, who notably dropped out of the race well before the primary but remained on the ballot.
Sanders did win 28 of Philly’s 1,692 voting divisions (wards are divided into smaller slices called divisions) and fared the best in places like Cedar Park in West Philadelphia.
And Briefly Noted…
- Things sound really, really, really bad at the Kimmel Center.
- How Philly has failed the Black community during COVID-19.
- Trump invokes Frank Rizzo on Fox News.
