[ This legislative assault on Philadelphia DA Krasner is part of a
pattern by conservatives nationwide to stymie and/or remove the new
generation of prosecutors dedicated to reforming the criminal justice
system, a system historically steeped in race and class biases.]
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PHILLY DA TARGET OF VILE GOP OUSTER EFFORT  
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Linn Washington Jr.
October 5, 2022
Counterpunch
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_ This legislative assault on Philadelphia DA Krasner is part of a
pattern by conservatives nationwide to stymie and/or remove the new
generation of prosecutors dedicated to reforming the criminal justice
system, a system historically steeped in race and class biases. _

, Photo by Charl Folscher

 

The dozens of protestors in Philadelphia who gathered recently outside
the hearing held by a Republican dominated investigative committee of
the Pennsylvania State House loudly chanted “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, This
Political Circus Got To Go!”

That protest included circus performers to dramatize
protestors’ contention that the committee’s hearing was
a ‘clown show’ intended to stop overdue changes in criminal
justice system policies and practices that are supported
overwhelmingly by residents of Philadelphia.

“We want to highlight the fact that this hearing is a farce, a
circus,” Kris Henderson said during the protest. Henderson is the
executive director of the Amistad Law Project which does criminal
justice reform work in Philadelphia.

The hearing by that legislative investigative committee is part of the
latest effort by conservatives to remove Larry Krasner,
Philadelphia’s reform minded district attorney. Krasner was the
focus of the award-winning documentary series “Philly DA” that
premiered on PBS in April 2021.

GOP legislators seek to remove Krasner through impeachment despite
their failure to produce any evidence that Krasner engaged in criminal
or unethical conduct – the standards for impeachment of elected
officials in Pennsylvania.

Krasner, since his election in 2017, has instituted many substantive
reforms. For example, Krasner’s office has ended 28 wrongful
convictions produced by misconduct of police and prosecutors. Many of
those exonerated spent over 20-years in prison. Krasner’s DA
predecessors routinely rejected evidence of innocence and evidence of
official misconduct from persons fighting their wrongful convictions.

This legislative assault on Philadelphia DA Krasner is part of a
pattern by conservatives nationwide to stymie and/or remove the new
generation of prosecutors dedicated to reforming the criminal justice
system, a system historically steeped in race and class biases.

Reggie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, in an
op-ed published in July 2022, blasted the Republican effort to impeach
Democrat Krasner as part of that “cynical political” campaign
nationwide to undercut real reforms in the criminal justice system.

Shuford, in that op-ed, stated “there is little-to-no evidence”
that criminal justice reforms lead to increases in crime.

At the forefront of efforts to remove progressive DA Krasner since his
landslide election in 2017 is Philadelphia’s reactionary and racist
police union. Krasner’s background is a civil rights attorney who
successfully sued the City of Philadelphia repeatedly over police
brutality. Krasner’s DA predecessors rarely prosecuted police for
abusive misconduct that include false arrests, brutal beatings and
fatal shootings of unarmed persons.

Last year Philadelphia’s police union failed in its effort to sink
Krasner’s reelection when candidates endorsed and funded by that
union were trounced in both the primary and general elections by vote
total margins exceeding 2-to-1.

Months after Krasner’s opponents failed miserably in 2021 at ballot
box removal, Pennsylvania’s GOP dominated legislature announced
plans to seek removal of Krasner, a Democratic, through impeachment.

Kris Henderson and many in Philadelphia see this impeachment effort by
the GOP dominated State House as crass robbery of the rights of
Philadelphia voters to keep the DA of their choice.

GOP legislators and their few Democratic legislative allies contend
their campaign to impeach Krasner is rooted in concerns for public
safety not partisan politics. Those legislators blame Krasner for
Philadelphia’s soaring rates of gun violence.

Blaming Krasner for gun violence ignores two important facts: (1)
Police are responsible for corralling crime not prosecutors whose jobs
is prosecute persons arrested by police, and (2) the GOP controlled
legislature, for years, has blocked  Philadelphia’s City Council
from enacting measures to address gun violence in that city.

“If the legislature was truly sincere about reducing violence it
would address the social determinants that lead to violence that
include poor education and high unemployment. The Legislature
persistently fails to provide resources to zip codes in Philadelphia
with the highest rates of poverty where violence is the highest,”
anti-violence activist Movita Johnson-Harrell said.

Data compiled by Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections confirms
the observations of Movita Johnson-Harrell, a former Pa state
legislator and former head of Krasner’s Victims Services Office.

According to Pa prison data, over 80 percent of the nearly 37,000
inmates currently in Pa’s 24 prisons were unskilled when arrested
and most of those inmates read at an 8th Grade or lower level.
Inmates in Pa prisons range from 11 under the age of 18 to nearly
4,000 aged 60 years and older.

The GOP legislators who routinely oppose increased funding for
education from elementary to college levels willingly spend upwards of
$80,000 per year to incarcerate an elderly inmate. Elderly inmates,
the least likely to reoffend according to repeated studies, cost more
to incarcerate than younger inmates due largely to high costs for
their medical needs arising largely from conditions inside prisons.

While those protestors chanted and leveled criticisms in a park across
from the building where that investigative committee held its
hearings, persons impacted by crime invited to testify at the hearing
blamed failing of police more than alleged shortcomings of DA Krasner.
That committee barred Krasner from testifying at their hearing in
Philadelphia.

“The testimony of the victims got away from the committee because
the victims blamed police, particularly detectives, for not solving
crimes,” Robert Saleem Holbrook said. Holbrook, who attended
portions of the hearing, is executive director of the Abolitionist Law
Center, a law project dedicated to ending race and class-based
discrimination in the criminal justice system.

The GOP legislators who loudly assail Krasner are curiously silent
about a Republican DA in a Western Pa county who is charged with
numerous crimes including sexual assault, false imprisonment,
harassment, and simple assault.

That DA, Jeffery Thomas, sued Somerset County officials for suspending
his pay as he awaits trial. Lawyers for Thomas claim he is entitled to
a paycheck because he hasn’t resigned or been impeached.

Movita Johnson-Harrell, who is also a mother of two sons slain by gun
violence, said Thomas should face impeachment not Krasner. But,
Johnson-Harrell said, Thomas is a Republican “so it’s hands
off.”

_LINN WASHINGTON, JR. is a founder of This Can’t Be Happening and a
contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion
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(AK Press). He lives in Philadelphia._

* Larry Krasner
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* Philadelphia
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* district attorneys
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* criminal justice reform
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* impeachment
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