Philadelphia police bombed a Black neighborhood in 1985 to end the MOVE standoff

Evidence

Philadelphia police end a standoff with MOVE, a Black liberation group, by dropping a bomb on the rowhouse where members live. MOVE was founded the previous decade by John Africa, born Vincent Leaphart, a Korean War veteran and animal rights activist. The group’s members took the surname Africa and agreed to live communally, practice strict vegetarianism, and resist various forms of modern life. The 1985 bombing kills eleven of them, including five children, and, because the fire department lets the resulting fire burn, destroys sixty-one houses and leaves 250 people homeless in the Black neighborhood of Cobbs Creek. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1220

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the State-sanctioned violence against Black communities theme running through the book; also resonates with the reader’s knowledge of police violence against political groups from other sources.
• QUESTION: Why did the fire department deliberately let the fire burn rather than fight it? Who made that decision and what was the justification?