You can that because the prosecutors 'misplaced evidence'....

for crying out loud, I had an Asian massage parlor two doors away for 35 years on the second floor above a tony restaurant before it was closed. Not a single individual who worked on the west side of Broad Street in Center City didn't know about it. How? Open door to staircase 24/7, cars parked outside, some with child seats, at all hours, coming and going (so to speak....'happy ending' anyone?), men hanging around until their appointed times, lots of 'interesting' looking women in the old luncheonette in the now-departed drugstore. Every cop, every city councilman, every mayor knew about this place. It finally closed when the woman who owned it, retired.

...past criminal activities and the owner's reputed ''porn king'' status bear upon the building collapsing?

Is that what caused this tragedy?

But my understanding is this was a non-union demo company that didn't train its employees very well. There had been alleged complaints from local citizens several days before the collapse that the building seemed to be leaning precariously and that the crane operator didn't appear to have a planned approach to demolition but seemed to be haphazardly smashing into things.

I don't know if these complaints came from random citizens or if it they were lodged by union demolition people trying to start trouble.
I only heard a few minutes of the show and it didn't seem to be clear how this fit into the big picture or how much was verifiable.

Here is a link to at least one citizen's concerns about how another demo by that contractor was being handled: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/City-Warned-About-Potential-Dangerous-Conditions-at-Building-Site-210411591.html

a disrespect for the law (regulations?) and you can be sure that the contractor will not pay a cent for the damages.
If the owner is referred to as a porn king then you can assume he is wealthy. Did he have connections that allowed a dangerous operation to proceed? Did the city look the other way?

This info is indicators of where to look to find out why this happened.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014502403

Short version is that using non-union labor, doing things on the cheap, and general sleazy practices all go together -- and can eventually lead to disaster.

Someone that doesn't pay taxes and defrauds people is probably mighty greedy. Very likely greedy enough to not be bothered checking the crane operator for an NCCCO, or even experience. Companies owned by people like this guy apparently was will put anyone down to a green hand in the crane if it means being able to pay eight bucks an hour for an operator.

They're also terrible about providing the right equipment and terrible about maintaining that equipment once it's bought. The wrong or a frayed web sling or cable in the wrong place (Or a cable without a softener) can do an unbelievable amount of damage.

Could've just been a shitty foundation and the first disturbance sent the whole thing crashing down. Which is still the company's fault, just a different guy from the operator or the rigger. That would make it the engineer's fault.

No way you slice it is this not the owner's fault. Someone fucked up and they did it big, and for whatever reason it was someone he hired. There's no such thing as bad luck in that industry, just screwups that weren't caught in advance.

So the answer is "Yeah, it gives some insight into what kind of person he is. Which is to say not the kind that's going to splurge on things like competent employees or safe equipment.".

...''walks like a duck and quacks like a duck'' analogies. However, I had hoped that professional journalists would hold a higher standard for publication of relevant information to the public as relates to the building's actual collapse. Not innuendo as to why it probably collapsed.

All this background info is just that. In my totally subjective view, all it does is poison the potential jury pool and gives defense lawyers justifications for requesting changes of venue due to prior slanted press articles trying the plaintiffs in the papers based upon their past associations and convictions.

- Let's keep it simple: How about some FACTS first. The filler material can come later. After the convictions.

Like I said in Omaha Steve's thread: If I had been in charge of this job, I'd have been so pissed off I'd have been firing random passerby. They're snatching pieces off with a trackhoe with a helper standing about three or four feet from where it's dropping it. Watching that video would've been scary even without knowing something went wrong in advance.

...and makes me wonder how such a demolition project could escape the notice of the local public officials, or gain their approval. If that is where the deficiency lies that allowed this to happen, then hopefully the papers will turn their focus onto those past associations and reputations as well the contractor and the owner.

W.C. Fields had plenty to joke about. I spent 5 years of my life there (4 in the ivied environs of supposedly higher education). Rizzo was Commissioner of Police and then Mayor. Talk about corruption. He suddenly retired when it was shown he was building a house that cost over ten times his salary. The city was a miserable dump in those days. It has improved a little since then (I was there last year), though many parts of it are still pretty raunchy, and I never made it out to West Philly, where I lived. In 2000, the last time I went back to my old college days haunts, it was still a crummy part of town.

At least Rizzo had the good graces to publicly switch to the Republican Party before the end of his career. He ended up in good company.

Except for the 30th street train station, there are no monuments in West Philadelphia.

Two things the place always DID have--great food and a thriving music scene. I did, after all, live to tell the tale. Only got robbed a couple of times and assaulted on the street only once. But hell, my dorm (and my room) got broken into even in "peaceful" Andover, Massachusetts when I was at a boarding school there for one year, and "AAAAAndovah" was way colder and far more boring. At least Philly had a few real people.

Jeeze. They make that sound like a bad thing!