Talk:Frank Rizzo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
This article is supported by the Politics and government work group.


WikiProject Philadelphia
Philadelphia Portal
This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Philadelphia, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopedic coverage and content of articles relating to Philadelphia, its people, history, accomplishments and other topics. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project's talk page.
This article is also supported by WikiProject Pennsylvania.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
High This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

Contents

[edit] post mayor?

the post mayor section makes no sense. what was he running for in 91? mayor? how can that be? he was already mayor twice....Dirk Pitt 19:22, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] POV

POV all over, and terrible grammar. Cleanup plz? Kthx. -- RegBarc 21:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Agreed, a user that has added some dubious pov to similar articles has done the same to this one as well. I'll be the first to admit, i am no rizzo fan, but this aticle looks like nothing but a bashing, making lot of claims, yet not making any kind of good sourcing of it. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 05:04, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
    • I've done some reorganization, wikification, and copyediting. Some of the copyediting was intended to improve NPOV, but most was just for clarity. I hope this helps. John Broughton 19:13, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
      • Hi, I grew up in Philly during the 1970s, so I thought I would take a stab at rewriting the Frank Rizzo article. It turned out to be a little longer than I thought, so I wanted to have other editors look at it. Because there a lot of changes and a POV check template on the article now, I put it on a subpage (Frank Rizzo/rewrite) rather than on the main article page. There aren't many quotes in the article, I was thinking of creating a Frank Rizzo Wikiquote page and linking to it from the article. RockinRobTalk 21:13, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I've moved the rewrite to a subpage of this talk page (/rewrite), to avoid it showing up as an "uncategorised page", and such like. But is it actually "active", anyway? Alai 20:25, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I think he was more controversial/corrupt than either article implies

My recollection of Rizzo, from living in the Camden area 1972-1974, is that he was fully "in bed" with the then highly corrupt Philly PD (has it improved since?) and continued in that vein through his terms as mayor. Cronyism was second nature to him, and he saw nothing wrong with rewarding (via jobs/government contracts) supporters and harrassing (via police and other government agencies) those who disagreed with him.

[edit] I would support replacing current article with rewrite

I've lived in the Philadelphia area for 40 years, so I have some first-hand idea of Rizzo's record and impact. The rewrite piece is nicely balanced and isn't just a recitation of the negative. He did have a good record on public works, with the Gallery and the rail tunnel built during his tenure.

I think the issues of his at least appearance of racism, corruption and cronyism, including the "Rizzo Lied" incident are well and fairly covered in the rewrite.

This statement in the existing article makes little sense: "During Rizzo's terms as mayor, construction started on The Gallery shopping mall and the Center City Commuter Tunnel, although Rizzo was not an economic development-oriented mayor." First is a partial list of his achievements, then a declaration that somehow they were an abberation. This is only true if one is intent on writing a piece that is uniformly negative. These projects didn't happen without his support.

There are two points about Rizzo that are often overlooked in general, and might want to be pointed out in the rewrite:

1. He handled basically the exact same MOVE situation as Wilson Goode, with far better results in terms of preventing loss of life and property damage.

2. In the period he was police commissioner and mayor, cities like Chicago, Detroit, and even nearby Wilmington, DE suffered major, widespread riots. Philadelphia's racial and socioeconomic environment was no different than these cities, but did not have significant riots in the same period. One could argue that the presence of a feared authoritarian as a leader prevented civil unrest.

These two things taken together have to draw to a conclusion that Rizzo, whatever his faults in corruption or respect for civil rights, was an effective law enforcer and kept the peace. His real contribution to Philadelphia may be simply that it never burned.Meersman 05:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] There was a reason he became mayor

My father was involved in Philadelphia politics during the Rizzo years. I agree with the last post that Rizzo had many desirable qualities to go along with the corruption that was so endemic to his administration. The article is not complete without a discussion of MOVE. Why are the Panthers included but not MOVE? It seems that is unbalanced as Rizzo was much maligned for his treatment of the former and maybe not enough praised for his handling of the latter -- only one person, a police officer, died in MOVE I. The article also does not go far enough in showing the enigma that Rizzo was. For example, as Police Chief he innovated partnering a black and white cop together on patrols, yet he is regarded generally as being racially polarizing. He was obviously corrupt, yet his administration achieved a great deal. He even brought horses back to the Philadelphia Police, an innovation emulated elsewhere. Paz9 13:33, 10 May 2007 (UTC)