Philadelphia U.S. Attorney Calls Out D.A.

William McSwain, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which includes Philadelphia, issued a remarkable statement yesterday:

“Last Friday, Philadelphia Police Corporal and SWAT team member, James O’Connor, a proud 23-year veteran of the Department from a family of police officers, was gunned down in the City’s Frankford section while trying to arrest Hassan Elliott, who was wanted for murder. Elliott was on the street for one reason: because of District Attorney Krasner’s pro-violent defendant policies. Those policies – which include permissive bail conditions for violent offenders, failing to pursue serious probation and parole violations by violent criminals, offering lenient plea deals for violent offenses, and outright withdrawing cases against violent felons – put dangerous criminals like Elliott on the street.”

The statement describes Elliot’s criminal history — his involvement in a violent street gang, his arrest and lenient plea bargain on firearms charges, his release on parole and immediate violation of its terms, his arrest on cocaine charges, and his identification by Philadelphia PD’s Operation Pinpoint program as among “the worst violent offenders in the City. Even with Elliott now identified as one of the City’s worst violent offenders, Krasner’s office still did nothing in response to Elliott’s violation of his parole through his cocaine arrest.”

On March 1, 2019, Elliott attended a pre-trial status listing for his cocaine case, where he received and signed a subpoena for the trial, which was scheduled for March 27, 2019. It turns out that March 1 was a busy day for Elliott: after leaving his pre-trial status listing, he allegedly murdered Tyree Tyrone on the 5300 block of Duffield Street. Elliott and another man, both armed with handguns, approached Tyrone, who was sitting in his car, and allegedly opened fire at close range. Video showed Elliott fleeing the scene and his fingerprints were found on one of the alleged murder weapons.

On March 26, 2019, the District Attorney’s Office procured a warrant for Elliott’s arrest for the Tyrone murder. The next day, March 27, Elliott was scheduled to go on trial in the cocaine case.

On that day, March 27, which was the first trial listing in the case, Elliott failed to appear. Despite his absence, and the outstanding murder warrant, the District Attorney’s Office withdrew the cocaine case against Elliott, citing prosecutorial discretion. Elliott then remained at-large until the murder of Corporal O’Connor.

These facts paint a damning picture of a prosecutor’s office that prioritizes “decarceration” of violent offenders over public safety.

The statement goes on to describe how the District Attorney’s Office could have and should have gotten this criminal off the street. Because it did not, Officer O’Connor is dead.

Soft-on-crime policies inevitably harm the innocent to benefit the guilty, regardless of what their advocates claim.

It is unusual, to say the least, for a U.S. Attorney to call out a local District Attorney for his policies. But Larry Krasner is an exceptionally unusual District Attorney. There are now a number of local prosecutors in major cities pursuing policies that severely dilute the effectiveness of law enforcement. Most of them were elected with a large infusion of outside money from wealthy, left-wing donors. But Mr. Krasner is unusual even within this dubious group for the ferocity with which he favors the interests of criminals over the interests of law-abiding citizens, not to mention law-enforcing citizens.

Mr. Krasner was elected in November 2017 and is up for reelection in November 2021. Let us hope that by then the people of Philadelphia have come to their senses.