Philadelphia Police Barricade Group's House

AP 13may85

[More on MOVE]

PHILADELPHIA, May. 13 The police on Sunday blocked off the rowhouse headquarters of a group that was the focus of a violent confrontation in 1978 and ordered nearby residents to evacuate the neighborhood.

Early today, police were going door to door in the largely empty neighborhood of about 200 houses, asking stragglers to leave.

Over the years residents have pressured city officials to enforce sanitation, health and building codes at the house, where members of the group called MOVE have set up a rooftop lookout tower and have boarded up their windows.

The 1978 confrontation occurred at a house about two miles away. It ended in a shootout with the police in which one officer died.

Nine MOVE members are serving prison terms for murder and related charges.

On Sunday evening two members of the Crisis Intervention Network, a private non-profit group, served as mediators in negotiations between the police. and MOVE members. Bennie Swans, the network's director, said MOVE members were refusing to leave the house until the authorities freed the nine members imprisoned.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, quoting "sources,„ said in Monday editions that the police planned to deliver an eviction ultimatum at dawn today if negotiations failed. Detective William Wood of the Police Department said he could neither confirm nor deny the report.

Neighbors say the group keeps stray cats, dogs and rats in the house, and that members have carried guns, attacked and robbed residents, run across rowhouse roofs and used bullhorns to shout obscenities at night. The group espouses the anti-establishment, anti-technology philosophy of its founder, Vincent Leaphart, who later took the name John Africa, the surname used by all the group members.

In 1981, an estimated 10 children and five adults moved into MOVE's current headquarters.

At least six mounted policeman and about 150 uniformed officers, many wearing helmets and carrying clubs, patrolled the area Sunday, while barricades surrounded an area of four square blocks.

Many residents near the home in the 6200 block of Osage Avenue, in the West Philadelphia section, remained there until dusk, when a stream of people carrying overnight bags began leaving.

The police said little about the situation.