Philly Mayor Has Confrontation With Homeless Man
By Todd Quinones, July 14, 2015
CBS Local
CBS Local
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The Mayor speaks out about a tense encounter caught on camera.
The video shot by an eyewitness and first aired on CBS 3 shows a homeless man cursing at and getting into a tussle with a member of the Mayor’s security detail and Mayor Michael Nutter himself gets involved.
Tuesday night CBS 3 Eyewitness News showed the video to the 56-year-old man.
(Reporter:) “Did you have any intention on harming him?”
“No, no not at all,” he said.
“You know things turned pretty quickly,” said Mayor Nutter.
Nutter downplayed the confrontation Tuesday night outside his City Hall office where just across the street the man has been spending a lot of nights often sleeping under the stairwell in the concourse next to the Municipal Services Building.
In the video, Nutter can be seen pulling him off the police officer and helping subdue him.
“In my main role here, quite frankly, was really just try to calm him down,” said Nutter.
The man says the homeless in the city are running out of places to stay.
(Reporter:) “Do you fear you are going to be forced out of here for when the Pope comes?”
“Yeah, we’re going to be forced out of here when the Pope comes,” he said.
(Reporter:) “What about a shelter?”
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