Krasner has engaged in misbehavior in office by his dereliction of responsibility to the people of Philadelphia and the people of Pennsylvania.
Krasner has engaged in misbehavior in office by his dereliction of responsibility to the people of Philadelphia and the people of Pennsylvania.
J ust over three months ago, in the wake of the South Street shooting and after years of increased crime and violence in Philadelphia, we announced the start of an effort to impeach Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner.
In the time since that announcement, we have not only heard from crime victims, families of those who have lost their lives, and businesses that have left Philadelphia in fear for the safety of their property and employees, but we also have witnessed a stunning increase in unchecked crime and violence in the city.
The carjacking of a priest unloading a wheelchair from his car. The Roxborough High School shooting. Three SWAT officers shot while serving a warrant. These are just the most headline-grabbing incidents of crime and violence plaguing the largest city in Pennsylvania and the sixth-largest city in America.
The Wawa convenience-store chain and Starbucks have both closed locations in Center City — normally the safest part of the city, filled with tourists and government buildings — because they feel unable to keep their customers, their employees, and their property safe.
Outside of the human face to the crisis of crime and violence in Philadelphia, the numbers themselves paint a stark picture: Nearly 1,000 people have been murdered in the city since the start of 2021, and there have been over 1,000 carjackings since the start of 2022.
As of October 30, 2022, according to the Philadelphia Police Department, violent crime in Philadelphia is up over 4 percent compared with last year. Robbery with a gun has increased 43 percent. Other robberies have increased over 17 percent. There have been 3,510 shooting incidents in the city, a year-to-date increase over 2021. There have been 1,941 shooting victims in Philadelphia year-to-date, an increase of nearly 2 percent. Property crime has increased nearly 30 percent from last year. Total crime is up nearly 24 percent from last year.
Just last week, a committee formed by a bipartisan majority of the Pennsylvania house of representatives released a report formulated through three months of work gathering testimony and documents in a still-ongoing, in-depth investigation of the crime-and-violence crisis in Philadelphia.
That report, which made no recommendations about how to proceed, was characterized as “a scathing picture of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s utter failure to uphold law and order in the city of Philadelphia” and indicated to many of us in the general assembly that enough is enough.
That is why less than two days after the report was approved by a significant bipartisan majority of the house of representatives, we filed articles of impeachment against Larry Krasner.
The articles of impeachment note three things — taken together or separately — that equate to misbehavior in office, which is the state constitutional standard for impeachment: Krasner’s mismanagement of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office (DAO), his improper use of prosecutorial discretion that has led to increased crime and violence, and the defiance of the general assembly represented by his obstruction of the work of the committee designated to investigate the historic crime and violence in Philadelphia.
Krasner’s mismanagement of his office has left the DAO utterly incapable of dealing with the crime-and-violence crisis.
He pulled the DAO out of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, depriving DAO attorneys of access to the training, best practices, and prosecutorial resources needed to create an effective prosecutorial office. Krasner fired dozens of senior ADAs as he cleared house of people who disagreed with his failed criminal-justice philosophy. Even the Philadelphia Inquirer declared the DA’s office “in disarray” after 70 prosecutors hired by Krasner resigned, with some citing “the lack of institutional support” and others claiming he ran the DAO not to prosecute, but “to indoctrinate.”
Krasner’s improper use of prosecutorial discretion has directly led to an increase in crime and violence in the city.
Take this from a recent study done by former assistant U.S. attorney and Chester County district attorney Tom Hogan on Krasner’s policy of de-prosecution:
The broadscale de-prosecution policy of Philadelphia — particularly for firearm and drug trafficking offenses — appears to have a causal association with a large increase in homicides. . . . The homicide victims are overwhelmingly people of color living in the poorest sections of Philadelphia. Calls for less prosecution under the guise of social justice may inadvertently lead to more homicides of minorities, which then degrades social justice.
In addition, Philadelphia police commissioner Danielle Outlaw noted the following:
We are tired of having to send our officers into harm’s way to serve warrants on suspects who have no business being on the street in the first place. . . . When we repeatedly see the extensive criminal histories of those we arrest for violent crime, the question needs to be asked as to why they were yet again back out on the street.
Even a recent study by the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing shows that both decisions by Krasner to not prosecute or withdraw cases, and the rate at which prosecutions are dismissed in Philadelphia for violations of the Uniform Firearms Act, far outpace the rest of the commonwealth. This leads to those who have illegally possessed a gun getting back on the streets more times in Philadelphia than anywhere else in Pennsylvania.
Importantly, throughout this general assembly’s attempts to help resolve the crime-and-violence crisis in Philadelphia, Krasner has repeatedly obstructed the investigation of and possible solutions to this historic scourge plaguing the city.
He refused compliance with subpoenas duly issued by the House Select Committee on Restoring Law and Order, for which he was held in contempt of the Pennsylvania house of representatives. He refused to testify after a good-faith offer was made to receive his input into the investigation, and instead of complying with the process, he sued the committee in court. This is just a further reflection of the disregard for legitimate authority displayed over the last five years by Larry Krasner.
All of this leads us, and many others in the Pennsylvania house of representatives, to believe that Krasner has engaged in misbehavior in office by his dereliction of responsibility to the people of Philadelphia and the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
His willful refusal to enforce the law in Philadelphia through a methodical implementation of a doomed-to-fail criminal-justice philosophy has directly led to the destruction of law and order in Philadelphia.
Therefore, he must be impeached and, we hope, removed from office by the Senate, so he can no longer implement his failed criminal-justice philosophy to the detriment of public safety.
In the Pennsylvania house of representatives, Martina White, first elected in 2015, represents portions of Philadelphia. Torren Ecker, first elected in 2018, represents portions of Adams and Cumberland Counties. Tim O’Neal, first elected in 2018, represents portions of Washington County. Josh Kail, first elected in 2018, represents portions of Beaver and Washington Counties.