Subject Of Search Warrant In Cop Murder Should Have Been In Jail

Photo Credit: Alejandro Alvarez

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

A SWAT team led by Corporal James O'Connor was in Frankford this morning, trying to serve a warrant for murder and robbery on 21-year-old Hassan Elliott. An ensuing gun battle resulted in the murder of O'Connor.

Before the SWAT team went looking for Elliott, he had been the recipient of multiple breaks from the district attorney's office that should have landed him in jail.

On Jan. 24, 2018 in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, before Judge Robert Coleman, Elliott pleaded guilty in a negotiated plea to carrying firearms without a license. He got 9 to 23 months in prison and three years probation. But he walked out of court a free man that day because the court accepted as his prison term the amount of jail time previously served.

As part of the deal the D.A. agreed to drop two other charges, intentional possession of a controlled substance, and a charge of carrying firearms in public.

While on probation, three different times, Elliott was brought before the judge on alleged violations of parole. And three times, rather than put him in jail, the district attorney's office allowed Elliott to continue being on probation.

But the D.A.'s office was about to do Elliott an even bigger favor. It's another story you won't read in the Inquirer.

On Jan 29, 2019, Elliott was arrested again, and this time it was for a direct violation of his probation, namely an arrest on a charge of a controlled substance.

On March 27, 2019, Elliott's case was in court again. But Assistant District Attorney Donald Burns Jr., who had only been hired a month before, on Feb. 25, 2019, told the judge that the district attorney's office was withdrawing the drug charge against Elliott.

Besides dropping the narcotics charge against Elliott, the D.A.'s office under Larry Krasner also did one other favor for Elliott. His narcotics case is designated as a "Limited Access Case" meaning the press and the public won't be able to see it. Neither will the feds. Under limited access cases, only local cops and prosecutors are allowed to view Elliott's drug arrest.

Ironically, in March of 2019, the same month the D.A.'s office gave Elliott a pass on the drug charge that would have surely put him back in jail, it was the same month that Elliott allegedly committed a robbery and a murder, the charges the SWAT team showed up this morning in Frankford to arrest him on.

And that wasn't the only break Elliott got from the D.A.'s office.

On Jan. 10, 2017, five charges against Elliott stemming from a 2015 arrest were withdrawn, including robbery with a threat to inflict bodily harm, conspiracy, theft, receiving stolen property and simple assault.