Citizens frustrated with inaction on guns

• Emily Previti/PA Post
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  Emily is a reporter for WITF who’s been covering voting and elections since July 2019 as part of her former role with statehouse accountability news organization PA Post. She was the senior reporter for statewide public media collaboration Keystone Crossroads. Previously, she covered city hall for PennLive/The Patriot-News (Harrisburg, Pa.), was a watchdog and city hall reporter at The Press of Atlantic City and reported for the Northwest Herald. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
  
  See other articles by Emily Previti for WITF.

 Kriston Jae Bethel / WHYY

City Council President Darrell Clarke speaks with members of the Nicetown-Tioga neighborhood on Saturday, August 17, 2019.

‘You can’t go back to normal’

Kriston Jae Bethel / WHYY

City Council President Darrell Clarke speaks with members of the Nicetown-Tioga neighborhood on Saturday, August 17, 2019.

• Philadelphia officials held a meeting over the weekend at the Nicetown-Tioga Free Library around the corner from the block where a gunman wounded six police officers over the course of a seven-hour standoff last week. Still shaken, residents said they’re “tired of hearing about gun control measures and being told to head to the polls and vote. Instead, they want to see elected officials deal with the issues that exacerbate gun violence,” WHYY’s Emily Scott writes.

• Alleged shooter Maurice Hill was charged over the weekend with attempted murder, aggravated assault, assault of law enforcement officer, simple assault, and recklessly endangering another person. More charges are expected, the Associated Press reports. The 36-year-old — backgrounded here by the Philadelphia Inquirer — was denied bail and is expected to be in court for his arraignment hearing on Sept. 5, according to this update from WHYY.

• The standoff started out as a “routine search warrant,” BillyPenn’s Max Marin writes, in his rundown of similar situations that have escalated, sometimes with fatal results, in Philly. The investigation into this most recent incident is expected to take months.

Best of the rest

Seth Wenig / The Associated Press

FILE PHOTO: Guns that were purchased by undercover police officers are displayed during a news conference in New York.

• Republican pollsters surveyed women in toss-up congressional districts in five states — including Pennsylvania’s First District (now represented by Republican Brian Fitzpatrick) — and found gun control is a critical issue for them, Katie Meyer reports in this story. This political reality could explain why some Republicans, including President Trump, are showing some willingness to move forward with targeted gun measures.

• There are major due process issues with Pennsylvania’s ChildLine and Abuse Registry. In some cases, parents end up on the registry indefinitely without ever even being charged with a crime, YDR’s Dylan Segelbaum reports. His piece reveals the systemic failures that have judges and advocates up in arms, as well as how they’ve affected one family.

• Planned Parenthood will go without federal Title X funding rather than refrain from referring clients for abortions. Under new rules imposed by the Trump administration, such referrals now disqualify providers from the program that allocates about $260 million per year to family planning clinics nationwide. Yesterday’s announcement by Planned Parenthood follows one earlier this summer from Maine Family Planning, and more are expected, according to the Associated Press. Even the American Medical Association opposes the administration’s rules, arguing that it gags health providers from giving medical advice and information to their patients.