By David Gambacorta
Philadelphia Daily News
PHILADELPHIA — Here’s a multiple-choice head-scratcher: How long would Philadelphia police provide around-the-clock protection for a fired officer’s empty house?
A.) 10 minutes
B.) Five days
C.) Four weeks
If you picked “C,” you would be correct, because that’s how long 24th District cops have been keeping watch over the vacated Port Richmond home of ex-cop Frank Tepper, the Daily News has learned.
Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey gave Tepper his walking papers on Jan. 4 for departmental violations that occurred two months earlier, when the off-duty cop shot and killed unarmed William “Billy” Panas Jr. during a neighborhood melee.
The neighborhood outcry over the Nov. 21 shooting, which occurred outside Tepper’s house on broom-closet-narrow Elkhart Street near Edgemont, was deafening.
Police almost immediately began maintaining a constant presence on the block, but the controversy didn’t fade away.
Panas’ family, surrounded by more than 100 friends and relatives, had their Thanksgiving dinner on the spot where the 21-year-old died, mere feet from Tepper’s front door.
Neighbors said Tepper fled his house the next day and hasn’t returned since.
Top-ranking police officials were unaware that officers were still assigned to watch the empty property until the Daily News asked about the 24/7 detail yesterday, triggering a flurry of phone calls between the brass.
Deputy Commissioner Thomas Wright said the watch should’ve ended when Tepper was fired earlier this month.
“I believe it was an oversight,” he said, adding that he terminated the detail about 4 p.m. yesterday.
Wright noted that cops were initially assigned to guard Tepper’s house “because of the high profile of the case, we wanted to make sure there were no acts of violence.”
He said a “communication error” might have occurred when the 24th District changed commanders on Jan. 11, thus enabling the around-the-clock watches to continue unabated.
Earlier this week, an officer sat in an idling patrol car outside Tepper’s house and said the assignment felt “like a punishment. I think you get sent here if the sergeant is mad at you.”
“He [Tepper] doesn’t live here. No one’s even been in the house to get anything,” the cop sighed, gesturing toward the darkened property. “I mean, they fired him.”
William Panas Sr. was also among those who wondered why police were parked on Edgemont Street morning, noon and night.
Panas Sr., who visits a large, partially enclosed memorial to his son across from Tepper’s house several times a day, said: “The city’s wasting its money. If something was going to happen to that house, it would have happened by now.”
Panas said his family couldn’t care less about Tepper’s house; they’re more interested in seeing if District Attorney Seth Williams will decide to press criminal charges against Tepper.
“No one has any intention to cause harm to the property or to the people who lived there,” Panas said. “We just want justice for my son by the law.”
Copyright 2010 Philadelphia Daily News