A township’s decision to deny the development of luxury homes on the rolling 246-acre Rock Hill Farm was reversed by a Chester County judge last week, which could pave the way for construction of more than a dozen houses.
In his order on July 15, Court of Common Pleas Judge Anthony Verwey ruled that Willistown Township’s board of supervisors had erred by denying in 2024 developer Rock Hill Farm Acquisition LLC’s preliminary plan, due to the “clear and unambiguous language of the zoning ordinance.”
But until then, the developer has the green light to submit final plans.
Willistown and nearby residents, who came together to form the campaign “Save Rock Hill Farm,“ had hoped that the property could remain as open meadows, woods, and waterways and eventually become publicly accessible open space. It’s something a number of communities have championed in Chester County — and have won, in a number of cases — seeking to preserve open space and fend off dense development.
In their appeal challenging the supervisors’ vote, the developer argued that the township had “erred and abused its discretion by denying its application” because it did not meet the township’s requirements for an open space conservation (OSC) district overlay, which requires that, in areas zoned for residential use, a portion of the tract is held as common open space, according to the Chester County planning commission.
But the proposed development was located in the township’s rural district, according to the opinion.
The township had countered that the overlay was applicable to the rural district because it is also a residential district.
Verwey ultimately agreed with the developer’s argument, finding that “residential district is not a designated zoning within the township.”
“Taking an appeal would just compound the damages that they’ve cost the owner of the property by insisting on applying the OSC district to lands in the RU district,” said Marc Kaplin, an attorney for the developer, when reached for comment Monday.
Verwey wrote in his opinion that the zoning ordinance makes the open space conservation overlay “applicable to a zoning district that does not exist, does not appear on the Map, and it was an error” for the township to deny the application for failure to comply with the overlay’s requirements.
Residents behind the Save Rock Hill Farm campaign sounded the alarm Monday after the township’s statement came out, rallying the Facebook page’s more than 770 followers to “reach out to our supervisors and ask them to FILE AN APPEAL!”
In a statement late Monday, the group said it remained “steadfast in our commitment to pursuing every available opportunity to preserve open space and protect Rock Hill Farm, an invaluable community resource and home to the pristine headwaters of Crum Creek.”
“We are deeply grateful for the continued support and engagement of our community throughout this process,” the statement continued. “We also thank Willistown Township for exploring all available legal options, including an appeal, in support of these important preservation efforts.”
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Delaware reported on Monday the state’s first case of measles in more than 10 years.
The case was identified in an unvaccinated man in Kent County in central Delaware, health officials said in a news release.
Officials said they were conducting contact tracing to determine whether anyone else had been exposed to the highly contagious disease, which can linger in the air for up to two hours and infect up to 90% of unvaccinated people who come into contact with it.
They encouraged Delawareans to ensure they are vaccinated against measles. People who have received two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR)vaccine are considered protected from the virus, as well as those born before 1957, or who have a lab test confirming they are immune to measles.
People who do not know their vaccination status can check with their primary care doctor or visit the DelVAX Public Portal to check their vaccination records. Vaccines are typically available at primary care providers, pharmacies, and public health clinics, though health officials encouraged residents to call ahead to ensure a provider has the vaccine.
People with measles symptoms — a fever, cough, runny nose, or pink eye, followed by a rash — should call their primary care doctor. Those with severe symptoms should visit an emergency room; in serious cases, the virus can cause pneumonia, brain inflammation, and death. Patients should call providers before visiting to let them know they were exposed to measles.
Cases spread in Pennsylvania
The positive test comes as Pennsylvania grapples with its biggest measles outbreak in 30years, with 102 people sickened and 20 hospitalized since April.
On Monday, health officials reported that cases had spread to two new counties, with one case each confirmed in Indiana and Snyder Counties.
Indiana County is in Western Pennsylvania. Snyder County, in central Pennsylvania, borders Northumberland County, where six cases had already been reported.
It was unclear whether those cases were connected. The bulk of cases have been detected in Lancaster County, where 61 people have contracted measles since April.
In the Philadelphia region, six cases have been reported in Chester County.
There was a 12-second moment in Game 4 of the Flyers’ first-round series against the Pittsburgh Penguins that perfectly encapsulated who Jamie Drysdale, the hockey player, has become.
In the offensive zone, he got the puck from his good buddy Trevor Zegras at the top of the right circle and snapped a shot on goal. Penguins goalie Artūrs Šilovs made the save, and the puck popped out to Erik Karlsson, who put it down on the ice before springing Rickard Rakell.
Drysdale, using his footwork and quick steps, was able to get back and keep the Penguins veteran forward to the outside before taking him out behind the net. He killed the play and allowed his partner, Cam York, to get the puck.
This is who Drysdale is now.
Although he entered the NHL as an offensive defenseman, he is now strong on both sides of the puck — creating offense, as seen by his career high in goals (eight) and tying his previous best in points (32), and building his defensive game. According to Natural Stat Trick, the Flyers had a 50.5% goal share with Drysdale on the ice.
That is why the Flyers locked up the 24-year-old blueliner with a four-year, $26 million extension on Friday. His $6.5 million average annual value is the highest among the defensemen.
“Philly’s a place that I love to play, and there’s no secret there,” he said on a Zoom call Monday. “I’ll continuously say it. I’m happy with four years [and] would want to continue that after the fact, obviously, and just really excited to show what I can do and keep it going.”
Part of the surge is from his growing confidence. The other part is the work he puts in during the dog days of summer.
Jamie Drysdale’s work with Dawn Braid has helped him improve his skating. Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
Still learning to skate
Skating has always been Drysdale’s best tool. He has relied on it since he was a tyke in Toronto, and continues to do so thanks to the work he puts in. At 7 or 8 years old, he started taking figure skating classes to help his edge work, and then once hockey got serious, around 12 or 13, he started working with a skating coach.
For the last few years, including this summer, he’s headed home and gotten in touch with Dawn Braid, a renowned coach who has consulted with several NHL teams. She was the first woman in NHL history to coach full-time when she joined the Arizona Coyotes in 2016, and currently works for the New York Rangers.
“I always thought, at least in my head, I thought I was a pretty good skater. And then, the first time I worked with Dawn, it was a lot of corrections,” Drysdale told The Inquirer in May. “It makes you feel not so good as a skater and realize that there’s a lot to work on.”
Despite it all, he loves working on his skating, calling it his favorite thing to do in the summer.
“Because when I feel good on my feet, I think that’s when I feel just best on the ice as a whole,” he said. “So, especially to start the summer and to end the summer, I try to get as many sessions as I can to, obviously, set myself up in a good spot for the summer and then set myself up in a good spot for the season.”
It starts standardly, getting his feet wet again and his technique back after being off the ice for a short time; this season was the first time Drysdale made the postseason in his NHL career. As the summer days roll on, the drills progress — he said it’s frustrating because Braid will demo her drills with ease, when the drills are anything but easy — and they become more tailored to what he specifically wants to work on.
Cam York (left) has noted the improvement in Jamie Drysdale’s skating, and his confidence. Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
For Drysdale, the focus is on being able to cut back or explode out, or cut back with speed. He works on being evasive at the blue line, skating with forwards coming at him, retrievals — “a lot of retrieval stuff we do in terms of footwork, on how to use deception with your feet, things like that” — and transitions.
It has paid off, as seen by that play on Rakell.
“He’s not the biggest guy, maybe, like physically, but he uses his feet to defend,” York said of Drysdale in April. “I think you look across the league, there’s a lot of smaller defensemen who use their feet, and obviously he’s a great skater and can keep up with anybody. So he uses that to his advantage, for sure.
“But I think just confidence for him. He’s starting to figure out what works best for him. And he knows that when his feet are moving like that [in general], he’s effective.”
There’s a good chance that Drysdale will be working on his play with the puck, too. He said at his end-of-season availability that he wanted to work on his puck play, hanging on to pucks, making more plays in the offensive zone, and his shot. He mentioned on Monday that some of his focus is on getting the power play out of the NHL’s basement, specifically with his shot.
“Been pretty continuously working on my shot over the last year and throughout this summer,” he said Monday. “Something that I’m going to come in confident with and use as a weapon, and kind of take it from there.”
Those are offensive elements. But there is no denying that his defensive game has, no pun intended, taken the biggest stride. Across his 24 games in his first season with the Anaheim Ducks, Drysdale had a plus-minus of minus-12. The following year, he played 81 games and was minus-26, and in his first 24 games with the Flyers after being acquired in the Cutter Gauthier trade, he was minus-18.
But that is all behind him. What’s more promising was what he did this past year, going from minus-32 in 2024-25 to minus-3 this past season. It’s not in the positives yet, but it feels like that’s the next step.
“I wouldn’t say it’s too much technical-wise,” he said when asked if he did anything differently with his skating to become stronger defensively in April.
“I think it’s more so just being super comfortable with it, knowing that it’s a strong suit and using it. Like fully believing that it’s my best way to defend because I think I trust my gaps. I can trust my feet to get back. … Yeah, so I think that’s kind of the main thing, is just being more confident in what I can do with my feet.”
From strength to strength
The work Drysdale is doing isn’t just on the ice. He’s also doing it in the gym. Drysdale has worked with Bryan Marshall, program director and founder of Milo Athletics based in Ontario, and a high-performance coach who has worked with several NHL teams, since he was 14 or 15 years old.
He thinks Marshall knows him better than himself when it comes to his work in the gym. And Marshall has seen the blueliner’s growth and development in his on-ice game come from the work he has done off the ice, calling it “inevitable.”
“I think Jamie always had the talent. He always had those natural abilities in his skating. But, at the next level, the real separator is, how efficiently can you repeat that,” Marshall told The Inquirer in April.
“What I’ve noticed over the years is, he has one successful month after another in the summer, and then one successful summer after another,” he added, “and the next thing you know, he’s developed so much more strength and so much more power, and he’s now got the capacity, I think, to sort of really showcase his talents, right, because the rigors of an NHL season are pretty grueling.”
Jamie Drysdale is attempting to build strength that can help the Flyers in various ways, including on their beleaguered power play. Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
According to Drysdale, the schedule is rigorous, with Mondays and Wednesdays being power days, Tuesdays and Thursdays for strength, and Friday for conditioning. He focuses on power, aerobic capacity on the bike or VersaClimber, ladder work, hip mobility with bands, and explosiveness, like with box jumps. Working with bands and box jumps are his two favorites.
And all the work is done focusing on single-leg work with a priority in preparing Drysdale’s body to receive force.
This summer, he’s also working on his first few steps. Marshall puts his athletes — he also trains former Flyers forward Scott Laughton, now with the Los Angeles Kings — through a comprehensive power assessment via force plates and other pieces of technology. It helps him understand how a player produces power, including force and velocity, and for Drysdale, he saw that as he got stronger, he got faster.
“He’s obviously playing with confidence, and he’s got those reserves — that’s what I like to call it — he’s got a strength reserve, he’s got a power reserve, he’s got a conditioning reserve, an aerobic reserve right now, where he can push it on a play, and maybe there is a turnover, but he’s fine,” Marshall said when the play against Rakell was mentioned.
“He’s not spent; he’s not running on empty, and he can come back and do his thing. And I think his body is allowing him to play with that confidence that he’s obviously shown this year.”
Confidence has become a big word for Drysdale this past year.
In the Elite Prospects 2020 NHL draft guide, Drysdale’s scouting report called him a “brilliant skater” but someone who “doesn’t seem to know he is by far the best skater on the ice.”
It feels like he knows that now.
“The biggest step, I think, was just confidence level,” he said in May. “That might not be like an actual hockey thing, but I think just coming to the rink and believing that I was a good player and could make an impact, that was probably the biggest kind of shift for me. And I guess that kind of carries all over the ice. …
“I think there’s a lot of things that I want to work on, and I think I can bring a lot more to the table as well in certain areas. So I think overall, pretty happy with it, but I think, yeah, a lot of work will be done.”
A handyman who worked in homes across southeastern Pennsylvania raped and sexually assaulted children and unconscious women, and produced a vast collection of photographs and videos documenting his crimes, Chester County prosecutors said Monday.
David Vincent Rosa, 54, faces more than 300 charges, including rape of a child, aggravated indecent assault of a child, and hundreds of counts tied to creating and disseminating child pornography, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
Rosa, a transient handyman and housepainter whose last known address was in Chester County, used his work to gain entry into homes and prey on the people inside them, investigators said.
He recorded the attacks, they said, amassing a digital trail of evidence that spans a period of several years.
“It is one of the most terrifying sexual assault cases that we have come across in some time,” Chester County District Attorney Christopher de Barrena-Sarobe said in a news conference Monday.
Chester County District Attorney Christopher de Barrena-Sarobe holds a news conference on Monday to announce charges against David Vincent Rosa.Steven M. Falk / For The Inquirer
The charges stem largely from two videos investigators discovered on a phone they said belongs to Rosa. In one, a man investigators identified as Rosa filmed himself touching a young girl. A second clip, also of Rosa, they said, depicts the rape of a child.
But the case has widened beyond those recordings: Stored on Rosa’s devices and in his accounts, de Barrena-Sarobe said, investigators also found videos of him sexually assaulting additional children and women.
The women “appear to be unconscious” in the videos, de Barrena-Sarobe said, and “they may not know that they have been victimized.”
The children in the videos appear to be younger than 10 years old, he said. De Barrena-Sarobe declined to say exactly how many victims appear in the recordings, saying only that they showed “multiple” women and children. The videos and images are dated from 2017 to 2024, he said.
Investigators traced recent logins to a Comcast account in West Whiteland Township, where records indicated Rosa lived, according to the affidavit. They also identified Rosa as the man seen in multiple images, the document said.
Chester County and West Whitefield Township authorities began investigating Rosa in March, after receiving three dozen cybertips that child sexual abuse materials had been uploaded to Google accounts. The tips — reported by Google and routed through a regional Internet Crimes Against Children task force — involved six email accounts containing hundreds of images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of girls as young as 2, investigators said.
In April, authorities searched Rosa’s home, where they found a cell phone with a video matching the materials reported in the cybertips, according to the affidavit.
Rosa was arrested April 2 and charged with 100 counts of child pornography, court records show.
He has been held in Chester County Prison since then, unable to post bail, de Barrena-Sarobe said.
Prosecutors filed hundreds of additional charges last week, after investigators extracted files from Rosa’s phone and interviewed witnesses who identified one of the children.
More than 1,000 still images captured from the videos were recovered from Rosa’s phone, investigators said, and records provided by Google showed the videos were shared more than 50 times on the company’s chat app.
Investigators also said in the affidavit that they recognized Rosa’s voice in both videos after speaking with him during his arrest and in a recorded interview.
Detectives identified the first child victim in early June, after interviewing a woman who identified Rosa and the child from still images, according to the affidavit. The woman told investigators that Rosa had stayed for about a week at a Wind Gap home where she and the child lived in 2022. He was doing painting work at the house, she said.
She described two incidents that had alarmed the household: Rosa was once discovered in a basement crawl space with the child, she told investigators, and another time, the girl was found in bed with him under a blanket. It was unclear whether anyone had reported either incident to authorities at the time.
That account matches the pattern investigators now fear extends further. Rosa lived throughout the region and has previous arrests in Philadelphia, Allentown, Malvern, and Saylorsburg, de Barrena-Sarobe said.
Investigators are asking anyone who hired him — or knows someone who did — over the last 10 years to come forward.
David Vincent Rosa is pictured in photos shared by Chester County prosecutors on Monday.Steven M. Falk / For The Inquirer
Prosecutors released a series of photographs showing Rosa’s changing appearance over the years, along with an image of a room they are trying to locate: what appears to be an unfinished basement with a bed covered in rust-colored bed linens, where investigators say some of Rosa’s crimes were committed.
Authorities described Rosa as 5-foot-4 and weighing about 150 pounds.
Although de Barrena-Sarobe said Rosa is presumed innocent until proven otherwise, he added that “we strongly feel like this was a predator that was out in our region creating and destroying lives.”
Rosa’s attorney did not return a phone call Monday afternoon.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Chester County Detectives at 610-344-6866.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey are among the 27 states seeing recalls of shredded lettuce products sourced to Taylor Farms, the produce company at the center of a food safety investigation into an outbreak of “explosive” diarrhea caused by the parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis.
Federal officials announced over the weekend that a sample of lettuce taken from a Taylor Farms shipment at the U.S.’s southern border with Mexico tested positive for Cyclospora.
The test involved lettuce that wasn’t affected by the California-based produce company’s recall.
The results turned out to be a false positive. As of Sunday, federal officials said, they had not found a positive test for Cyclospora in a produce sample.
Officials notified the public because it was “actionable public health information,” acting Deputy Commissioner for Food Donald Prater said in a press call Monday.
Thousands of people have been sickened in a cyclosporiasis outbreak, with cases reported across Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia.
Investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found more than 1,600 people in those states became ill after they ate iceberg lettuce from Taco Bell, which sourced lettuce from Taylor Farms.
Taylor Farms did not immediately return a request for comment.
Cases in Pa. and N.J.
Cases of cyclosporiasis have been reported in 34 states, including Pennsylvania, though case counts here were low as of last week, affecting 28 people since the beginning of the year, including 14 in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
New Jersey health officials said the state had recorded 46 cases between May 1 and July 16. Cases typically rise in the late spring and summer months, and this year’s are in line with a typical year’s case count.
It’s unclear whether anyone in Pennsylvania or New Jersey was sickened after eating Taylor Farms products. The CDC said it was also investigating outbreaks and other cases that are not connected to the Michigan outbreak.
They should wash items and surfaces that might have touched the lettuce with hot, soapy water, and avoid recalled lettuce at Taco Bell or other restaurants. Customers should ask restaurants about the source of their lettuce before ordering it.
Cyclosporiasis is caused by a single-celled parasite that spreads through fecal material. It can infect a person’s gut after they consume food or water contaminated by feces. Common symptoms include watery diarrhea, a loss of appetite, cramping, nausea, and fatigue.
Delaware County detectives are investigating a racist, threatening voicemail left for county Sheriff Siddiq Kamara, officials said Monday.
The caller, whom police are working to identify, used a racial slur to refer to Kamara, who is Black, and called for “death to Islam.” Kamara is a Muslim whose family came to Delaware County from their native Liberia.
The caller also told Kamara he was going to hunt, attack, and torture him when Kamara least expects it, according to a recording of the voicemail that was reviewed by The Inquirer.
“I will find you. I know where you are,” the male caller said. “You are an amateur.”
Kamara, in a statement, said despite the caller’s attempts to intimidate him, the incident has strengthened his resolve.
“Let me be clear: There is a fundamental difference between criticism and criminal conduct. Public officials should expect scrutiny, disagreement, and accountability — that is part of our democracy,” he said. “But threats of violence, intimidation, and hate cross the line and will be treated accordingly.”
Kamara, 31, was elected sheriff in November. He is the youngest person in county history to hold the position.
A career police officer, Kamara said he was motivated to run for office after a personal tragedy: His cousin, Fanta Bility, was struck and killed by a stray bullet fired by Sharon Hill police officers in 2021.
In a statement Monday, the Delaware County Council said it “unequivocally condemns these threats in the strongest possible terms” and stands with Kamara.
Members of the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called the incident “the latest example of the growing climate of intolerance that seeks to intimidate public servants based on their race, religion, or national origin.
“No public official should be subjected to racist intimidation for simply serving their community,” Ahmet Tekelioglu, executive director of CAIR-Philadelphia, said. “Attacks like these are not only directed at one individual They are intended to send a message of fear to entire minority groups — particularly the Black, immigrant, and American Muslim communities.”
The festival, at the Atlantic City resort’s TopGolf Swing Suite, featured 14 vendors from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.
Siddiq’s Water Ice and the Yummy Palace took first place in separate categories at the Water Ice Festival at Ocean’s Casino Resort.Ocean Casino Resort
The coconut water ice from Chinatown’s the Yummy Palace won best traditional flavor. The lime mojito from West Philly’s Siddiq’s Water Ice was crowned the best nontraditional flavor.
The winners took home a trophy and a championship belt, along with an overnight stay in a VIP suite, $500 dining credit, two spa treatments, and two tickets to a show of the winner’s choice. The winning flavors will be featured for three months at Scoops in The District.
From 2 to 5 p.m., guests of the family-friendly, ticketed event enjoyed unlimited tastings, engaged in photo opportunities and face painting, and sampled offerings to vote in the Water Ice Flavor contest. The event was hosted bysocial media influencer Aunt Mary Pat.
Other Philly water ice vendors included Philadelphia Tropical Treats, South Philly Ice, John’s Water Ice, and Philadelphia Water Ice Factory. But only covers the surface of just how many shops the city has to offer — consider the Inquirer water ice map for more options.
Inside Water Ice Festival at Ocean’s Casino Resort.Ocean Casino Resort
Cherry Hill’s Primo Water Ice, Mahwah’s The Ice Factory, Patterson’s Gelotti, Wilmington’s Fusco’s Water Ice & Ice Cream, Sicklerville’s Rosati Ice, Williamstown’s Stio’s Water Ice & Ice Cream, and Bensalem’s Volpe’s Italian Ice also participated.
“We’re thrilled to have seen the excitement from the hundreds of guests that joined us on Saturday for Ocean’s first-ever Water Ice Festival,” said Bill Callahan, general manager of Ocean Casino Resort. “Fans voted for their favorites, and we’re excited that two local businesses were recognized as the best of the best! We look forward to making this an annual summer tradition for years to come.”
New Jersey’s overhauled e-bike rules are now in effect, meaning thousands of riders across the state must be licensed, registered, and in some cases insured for the first time.
Under a law signed by then-Gov. Phil Murphy before he left office in January, e-bikes fall into two groups: low-speed electric or pedal-assist bikes that top out at 20 miles per hour, and faster, throttle-powered bikes that can reach up to 28 miles per hour.
The lower-speed bikes must now be registered with the state Motor Vehicle Commission. Riders of the higher-speed bikes must register them and obtain liability insurance to ride them.
Riders of both types must be at least 15 years old, hold a valid driver’s license or a special e-bike license issued by the Motor Vehicle Commission, and wear a helmet regardless of age. Riders can face fines of up to $50 per violation.
As of July 15, the commission had issued more than 4,100 e-bike registrations and 250 e-bike permits, agency spokesman William Connolly said.
“MVC is working hard to service as many riders as quickly and efficiently as possible,” Connolly said.
Out-of-staters who bring their e-bikes across state lines will have to register their bikes in New Jersey and get licenses if they don’t have a regular driver’s license.
The push for tighter regulations followed a string of fatal e-bike crashes around the state. Murphy’s office cited “numerous dangerous crashes” when he signed the bill, while bill sponsor state Senate President Nick Scutari (D-Union) has argued that e-bikes have gotten faster and more powerful and that younger, inexperienced riders are using them.
The federal government has purchased some facilities it had been using from private prison operator CoreCivic and plans to buy some from the GEO Group, so those companies no longer need as much capital, according to the bank. Citizens now finds it “appropriate to exit” those lending relationships, the bank said.
Citizens, based in Rhode Island, has the largest bank branch network in the Philadelphia area, according to FDIC data, and ranks among the dozen largest U.S. commercial banks.
Opponents of the facilities have asked for “assurances in writing” from Citizens Bank that the GEO Group and CoreCivic relationships are over, said Peyton Fleming, a spokesperson for De-ICE Coalition, which organized protests against the bank.
Protests against Avelo Airlines’ role in transporting deportees for immigration agencies ended last winter after ICE purchased its own airplanes.
A billboard near the Route 420 exit of I-95 North in Delaware County pressuring Citizens Bank to stop funding private prison operators who housed deportees for federal agencies.Indivisible Highlands
De-ICE in a statement Friday called Citizens’ decision “an important victory for the people who refused to let a major bank finance human suffering brought on by ICE detention activities of the current federal administration.”
De-ICE backerssponsored signs, trucks, a billboard on northbound I-95 near the Route 420 exit, a flyover banner before the Major League All-Star Game, and pickets in the region urging Citizens to drop the prisons. The group took credit for the decision, said Debbie Travers, a healthcare consultant and a leader of Indivisible Highlands and Beyond, a Wilmington-based group opposed to aggressive worker and family deportations.
Citizens, one of the few big banks to finance private prison companies, also was targeted in New Jersey and other states by local ordinance proposals urging towns to withdraw public accounts from Citizens.Jersey City and Montclair voted earlier this summer to withdraw more than $300 million in total from Citizens, according to NJ.com.
This truck, adorned with illuminated signs urging “Citizens Bank Stop Financing ICE Detention Centers,” was parked near a Citizens branch in Delaware as part of a national protest March 5. Organizers said they visited 68 branches, including several in the Philadelphia area.Joseph DiStefano
In its statement, Citizens said that due to privacy concerns, it hadn’t previously commented on its relationships with private prison owners and U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement detention center operators CoreCivic, which Citizens had served since 2011, and the GEO Group, which Citizens has financed since 2018.
Protest organizers, including local branches of Indivisible, said they had marched outside at least 70 of Citizens’ 988 full-service branches, including locations in Center City and Northwest Philadelphia last winter and spring.
The bank said it has been “disappointed that the activists have dragged it into what is largely a political matter” and complained they mischaracterized the bank as anti-immigrant, pointing to its record of funding agencies that serve immigrants and other nonprofit support.
Citizens also said bank regulators don’t allow them “to deny banking services to individuals and to lawful businesses based on political or religious considerations, a practice referred to as ‘debanking.’”
The federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a bank regulatory agency in the Treasury Department, is reviewing banks and has threatened to punish them for politically motivated debanking, citing private prison operators, gun makers, and oil companies among the industries the administration wants to protect.
Banks “must consider these regulatory and contractual frameworks in making decisions on who to bank or not bank,” Citizens said. “Fair access to bank funding should be something all should agree with. Political concerns should be addressed through political channels.”
De-ICE spokesperson Fleming said group members believe “public conscience and community resistance” helped change the policy, adding that “doing some good does not cancel out the harm caused by these business relationships.”
Last year, Citizens led a group of lenders, mostly smaller Southern banks, in raising $500 million for CoreCivic, to pay down debt and “for general corporate purposes.”
A Bucks County sheriff’s deputy used his personal cell phone to take naked pictures of two people he encountered as part of his job, including a mentally ill man at whose home he was serving an arrest warrant, prosecutors said Monday.
Ryan Gaffney, 46, has been charged with official oppression for taking the photos, as well as unsworn falsification to authorities for lying about the photos and attempting to dissuade investigators by sending them doctored screenshots of his phone’s photo library.
Gaffney, of Feasterville, shared the photos to get “his kicks” with civilian employees at the Bucks County Justice Center, Bucks County District Attorney Joe Khan said at a news conference Monday.
“Mr. Gaffney’s conduct is a disgrace. It’s an abuse of the trust given to him by the sheriff’s office and by taxpayers,” Khan said. “When a deputy sheriff breaks the law, and lies about it, he erodes the public trust that our law enforcement officers work every day to build.”
Gaffney was charged via summons, and has not yet been arraigned on the charges, court records show. He was fired from his position with the county sheriff’s office in June, officials said Monday.
Ryan Gaffney was sworn in as a Bucks County sheriff’s deputy in 2023.Courtesy Bucks County Commissioners
Gaffney’s attorney, Paul Lang, said Monday that he will “address this case in court, not through one-sided social media posts or press conferences.”
“Ryan Gaffney deserves due process, not trial by publicity,” Lang said. “These are allegations, not facts, and we look forward to answering them where they belong, in a courtroom.”
The photo of the first victim was taken Jan. 30, when Gaffney and four other sheriff’s deputies served a warrant at the man’s home in Middletown Township, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
When the deputies arrived, the document said, the man was naked from the waist down, and asked deputies to allow him to put pants on. Before he could do so, Gaffney used his personal cell phone to take a photo of the man’s genitals, according to the affidavit.
A review of Gaffney’s body-worn camera footage showed that he placed his hand over the camera while taking the surreptitious photo. Other deputies at the scene said they were unaware that Gaffney had taken the photo until later.
One of those deputies saw Gaffney sharing the photo with female civilian employees at the courthouse, and reported his conduct, the affidavit said. Investigators later learned he had also texted the photo to other contacts in his cell phone.
Bucks County Sheriff Danny Ceisler said Monday that he reported Gaffney’s conduct to Khan’s office immediately after learning about it.
The former deputy’s behavior, Ceisler said, “was beyond unacceptable and not in any way representative of the highly professional deputies who serve this county with integrity every day.”
While investigating the case, county detectives found that Gaffney had taken a photo of another person during a separate arrest in December 2024.
A photo of that person’s buttocks, taken while he was handcuffed, was shared with 12 people, including other members of the sheriff’s office’s warrant division, the document said.
While being questioned by investigators, Gaffney denied taking the photographs and signed a sworn affidavit affirming that. Through his attorney, he also provided screenshots of his phone’s photo library that showed the photos were not on the device.
However, investigators downloaded the contents of Gaffney’s phone, and were able to recover both images, which had been deleted.
Gaffney was sworn in as a sheriff’s deputy in June 2023.
Before joining the office, Gaffney served in Iraq with the Air Force in 2005, and as a part-time officer with Penndel Police, according to Bucks County Commissioners.
Gaffney also works as a part-time officer with Hulmeville Borough Police, one of three members of the police force in the small municipality, and was sworn in there in late 2022, according to a borough newsletter published in January 2023.
Hulmeville Police Chief John Baran did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
