9th District Captain Dennis Wilson told the four detained — and later insisted to City Paper — that he and his officers came to respond to a simple complaint that people were staying in a vacant house. It was only after his officers entered, he says, that he found further cause to detain the residents and, indeed, call in Homeland Security and a small army of detectives.

"Everything's wrong in here," he told CP gravely from the building's doorway. "We're still investigating this property and we're still investigating these people."

Indeed. At least three police officers at the scene, including Wilson himself, confirmed in one way or another that — whatever the initial motivation for their visit — they were now busy investigating the residents, whom they accused vaguely of being "terrorists."

"Lemme ask you this," said one Crime Scene officer. "Why's there literature about killing cops in there?" He declined to be more specific.

"Propaganda against the government," chimed in officer John Taggert, also with Crime Scene. Taggert, who was nice enough to grant CP "three questions, and only three questions," didn't elaborate on the nature of the "propaganda."

Captain Wilson took the accusations a step further. "They're a hate group," he asserted. "We're trying to drum up charges against them, but, unfortunately, we'll probably have to let them go."

Right: Who knows what the hell is going on. It's times like these we must turn to Domelights for its expert commentary:

It's pretty desperate when one paper uses another for quoting, esp. such a liberal, perverted one, like City [toilet] Paper.

Ha ha, City [Toilet] Paper! I never thought of that before. I'm totally using that next time the paper's cover story has seven footnotes and contains these sentences: "I decide to call him Andrew. Not because he looks like one, but because he looks like the opposite of one. 2 When I picture someone named Andrew, I think: white, tall, blue-eyed, saying Christian prayers before 10 o'clock bedtime in a suburban townhouse. Not this guy."

Elsewhere on Domelights, people want to arrest the man who made a video celebrating Philadelphia cop deaths (ho, ho). This is good, though: I am firmly in favor of arresting people who make horrible YouTube videos.

And there's also this quote:

Betsy Piette? That name sounds awefully French to me, much like the French who named a street bearing the name of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. With just that fact alone, her articles will hold no credibilty with me.

And let's finish it off with a nice quote from last week's Northeast Times letters page:

The bottom line is that the majority of white citizens are fed up with African-Americans claiming they want to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, when reality proves the opposite.

Update: Here's more from Philly.com commenters.