Catlin Williams has had enough of the vilification of his son, Mark. He’s well aware Mark should pay for what he allegedly did if he did it — using a badge to profit from heroin. Yet Williams thinks Mayor Michael Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey shouldn’t have publicly found him guilty until a jury did.
“What [he] did was wrong. By all means, punish him, but they automatically started talking about melting their badges down, giving them the max up to 112 years. Leave the personal opinions out of it,” said Williams, a minister whose wife has a Ph.D. in theology.
Saying that Mark, one of 11 children, “isn’t taking it too well,” Williams maintained his once mild-mannered son, a Northeast Philadelphia High School grad, changed once he got sworn into a position of power.
“They didn’t blackball the [police] officer who’d [allegedly] been raping a girl since she was 12, or the one who [allegedly] shot himself and blamed it on somebody else,” he said, questioning why the FOP has left Mark Williams out to dry after the July 13 indictment. “There’s been corruption since the inception of police departments, and there will still be corruption after these three are gone.”
Nutter’s office declined comment, but FOP President John McNesby didn’t mince words. “You can’t be a cop and a drug dealer,” he said. “I stand by that and 6,000 [officers] stand behind me on that, too.”
