For 90 minutes, the Philadelphia Police Department allowed the resulting fire to burn out of control, destroying 61 previously evacuated neighboring homes over two city blocks and leaving 250 people homeless.

A lawsuit in federal court found that the city used excessive force and violated constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

[7] The police obtained arrest warrants in 1985 charging four MOVE occupants with crimes including parole violations, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms, and making terroristic threats.

[10] On Monday, May 13, 1985, nearly 500 police officers, along with city manager Leo Brooks, arrived in force and attempted to clear the building and execute the arrest warrants.

[6] The bombs exploded after 45 seconds, igniting the fuel of a gasoline-powered generator and setting the house on fire, which was left to burn.

Officials later stated that this was to let the fire burn through the roof and destroy the "bunker", so police could then drop tear gas into the house and flush out the occupants.

[17] In 1986, Philadelphia artists Ellen Powell Tiberino and her artist-husband Joseph created a seven-foot relief sculpture depicting their interpretation of the bombing.

Titled “The MOVE Confrontation,” it depicted people engulfed in flames, Mayor W. Wilson Goode, a Death mask and horrified spectators.

The report denounced the actions of the city government, stating that dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was unconscionable.

[24] In 1996, a federal jury ordered the city to pay a $1.5 million civil suit judgment to survivor Ramona Africa and relatives of two people killed in the bombing.

The jury had found that the city used excessive force and violated the members' constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

[5] In 2005, federal judge Clarence Charles Newcomer presided over a civil trial brought by residents seeking damages for having been displaced by the widespread destruction following the 1985 police bombing of MOVE.

[26][27] By late fall 1985, the city government and a private developer had begun to rebuild the residential block that the police department damaged with the MOVE bombing.

[30][31] Since the bombing, the bones of two children, 14-year-old Tree (Katricia Dotson) and 12-year-old Delisha Orr Africa, were kept at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

[32] Present-day MOVE members were shocked to learn this, with Mike Africa Jr. stating "They were bombed, and burned alive ... and now you wanna keep their bones.