Larry Krasner is one of the many prosecutors to be elected in recent years with funding from George Soros. What they all have in common is that they are soft on crime, soft on criminals, and extremely bad for the cities where they hold office.
Ever since 2017, when Krasner was first elected, crime has spiked dramatically in Philadelphia. Homicides rose from 262 in the year he was elected to 562 last year — a new record. This year, the city is only 3% behind the pace it needs to break that record — all it will take is one bad weekend to set a new one.
HOCHUL’S REMARK SHOWS HOW CLUELESS DEMOCRATS ARE ABOUT CRIME
Finally, Pennsylvania’s legislature is ready to do something about it. Legislative leaders are about to impeach Krasner. If they get enough bipartisan support, they can remove him from office.
Krasner is the typical progressive Soros prosecutor in that he approaches the criminal justice system as if the criminals are the real victims. As for the actual victims of crime, he could not care less. And that’s something to keep in mind when Krasner claims, as he recently did, that his impeachment is a racist conspiracy. You see, Krasner is white, whereas the overwhelming majority of crime victims are black.
Also, when Krasner says that crime is going up everywhere and Philadelphia is just following a national trend, he is wrong. It would be more accurate to say that Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and a few other major cities have been pulling the national crime rate upward for the last five years or so. Why? Because these cities all have their own version of Krasner refusing to do their job and lock up the bad guys.
Krasner has caused a significant amount of damage to his city with his leniency toward criminals. The latest example is Jahmir Harris, a 32-year-old who fired 17 shots at a man in a 2012 dispute over a drug deal. Krasner got Harris released due to spurious concerns about the integrity of his murder conviction. Sure enough, Harris had no sooner been released before he went and allegedly slayed someone else, and he has now been charged with murder again. Hopefully, after this conviction, Krasner will not be around to let him out so that he can kill a third time.
This sort of thing happens a lot, although it is not usually so dramatic. Every time Krasner withdraws charges or lets them be dismissed (something he does in 67% of cases, nearly twice as often as other Pennsylvania prosecutors), he is showing criminals there are no consequences for their actions. He is letting them off so that they can offend again and probably avoid even a slap on the wrist.
Every time Krasner releases a violent criminal without making the person post bail, he is loosing a predator upon his fellow citizens. Every time Krasner cuts a deal that lets someone who committed a felony plead down to a lesser charge, he is ensuring that a dangerous person not only remains on the street to commit more crimes, but can even continue to pass the background checks to purchase firearms. What good are universal background checks if actual felons can pass them because they get the Krasner discount on their crimes? No wonder assaults with firearms are up 62% in Philadelphia since Krasner took office.
America’s great cities do not have to be crime-riddled, filthy, or undesirable places to live in. In fact, some of them are true gems of Western civilization. Philadelphia itself is a marvelous city that just needs better leadership.
The country learned from the example of New York in the 1990s on how to solve a seemingly intractable crime problem. You hire a large police force, enforce the laws through aggressive policing, and absolutely throw the book at violent and career criminals so that they spend most of their time behind bars where they can’t bother good citizens.
There is no contradiction between this strategy and an authentic criminal justice reform that shows appropriate leniency toward nonviolent first-time offenders. Voters should avoid candidates, including the Krasner-backing Senate candidate John Fetterman, who equate criminal justice reform with releasing hundreds or thousands of violent offenders from jail.
Already, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has fired one of these “progressive prosecutors” who refused to do his job in Hillsborough County. Lee Zeldin, if he wins his election in New York, will have that same power and likely exercise it. In California, the voters have already removed one such prosecutor in San Francisco through a recall election, and they may remove another in Los Angeles.
After the midterm elections, Republicans should begin, wherever possible, to remove district attorneys who, like Krasner, are refusing to do their job and creating crime problems in their own backyards.
