As Voters Choose A D.A. Today, City's On A Pace For 700 Murders

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

Today, when you cast your vote for D.A., if you're OK with Philadelphia racking up 700 murders this year, then by all means push the button to re-elect Larry Krasner.

But if you think that the price tag for Krasner's alleged reforms has been too much bloodshed, then vote for Carlos Vega, the career homicide prosecutor who is Krasner's only opponent in today's Democratic primary.

The choice is as simple as that. And it's as clear as the math of the brutal crime statistics that the cops post every day online.

The math goes like this: When Krasner got elected in 2017, we had 315 murders. Last year, we had 499, the highest total in 30 years. This year, as of Monday, over the first 137 days of this year, we've had 197 murders. That's a 41% increase over last year's rate, and puts the city on a pace for 703 murders. 

Is that acceptable? In a story I wrote Sunday for substack. com, I recounted Krasner's alleged achievements, such as indicting 51 cops for felonies and freeing 20 convicts that Krasner says were wrongly convicted, and concluded they come up way short.

Especially when you consider Krasner's futility. Yesterday, another one of those indicted cops, former SWAT team member Richard Nicoletti, watched as a judge threw out Krasner's entire case against him for a lack of evidence. It's part of a distinctly one-sided trend that shows how biased and incompetent Krasner's office is.

Of the 51 cops that Krasner has indicted for felonies during his four years in office, Krasner has a perfect score: he's 0 for 51. To date the D.A. hasn't convicted one cop of a felony. 

All Krasner's office has been able to do in his war on cops has been to convict three cops of misdemeanors. All three cops got probation; a fourth cop was admitted into an Accelerated Rehabilitation Development [ARD] program. Under ARD, once the program is completed, the defendant can move for dismissal and expungement.

With incompetence like that, even Krasner's most rabid anti-cop supporters, the type who chanted "Fuck the FOP" at his 2017 victory party, should want to throw Krasner out of office.

In a preliminary hearing in Philadelphia Municipal Court yesterday, Judge William Austin Meehan found that on June 1, 2020, that Nicoletti had been authorized by his commanders to clear the Vine Street Expressway of protesters, who were illegally blocking the highway during rush hour.

Krasner charged Nicoletti with simple assault, reckless endangerment, official oppression, and possession of an instrument of crime, namely department-issued pepper spray. 

The judge found that Nicoletti had been given the pepper spray by his superiors as a tool to use on the protesters, something that made for great youtube videos, but amounted to a lousy prosecution case in court.

"You may not like their methods, that doesn't criminalize their methods," the judge was quoted in The Philadelphia Inquirer as saying. "You can't put [cops] in charge of maintaining order, and then tie their hands on how they're going to do it."

Unless you're Mayor Jim Kenney or Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, who also stabbed Nicolletti and other cops in the back for carrying out their orders.

In court yesterday, Forunato Perri, Nicoletti's lawyer, was ready to call three of Nicoletti's supervisors to testify about the orders that they gave the SWAT team on the expressway. But the judge dismissed the case before Perri got a chance to call those witnesses.

As he left the courtroom, Perri told the Inquirer that the judge's decision to toss the charges against his client was "another example of the District Attorney's Office charging a police officer with a crime that is not supported by the facts or the law."

The prosecution's case was so weak that when the D.A.'s office called three protesters to the witness stand, two of the three admitted under questioning from Perri that in retrospect, blocking an expressway during rush hour wasn't a safe thing to do. 

Naturally, after another loss in court, Krasner's office sprang into action, to once again fufill Einstein's definition of insanity -- by doing the exact same thing over again but expecting a different result. 

Krasner immediately announced that he planed to refile the charges against Nicoletti. 

Another Krasner achievement that he likes to boast about is freeing 20 inmates that he says were wrongly convicted. But unlike most proceedings when inmates are freed after newly discovered evidence is presented in court, Krasner's emancipations were achieved in a progressive vacuum. 

Krasner did it by striking deals with defense lawyers for those 20 convicts, initially agreeing to a new trial, and then, in all 20 cases, deciding not to prosecute. So the convicts went free without having to present any new evidence to a judge, or call any new witnesses. In other words, the 20 convicts joined the ever-growing parade of grateful recipients of a get-out-of-jail free card from their Uncle Larry.

Some victory for progressivism.  

A day after substack.com ran my story about Krasner, editor Glenn Greenwald decided to publish a rebuttal from Ben Spielberg, a Krasner fan who predictably is a progressive criminal justice reform activist from California. 

It's a disturbing trend that three-quarters of the contributors to Krasner's campaign come from out-of-state contributors, mostly from California, while his opponent's campaign was financed almost entirely by locals. 

Spielberg fit right in. In his lame rebuttal, Spielberg offered no on-the-ground reporting but relied on glowing progressive media accounts about Krasner, and Krasner's good intentions, as stated in a Krasner policy memo. 

As somebody who actually lives in Philadelphia, digs up court documents and talks to sources, I can testify that the reality of Krasner's so-called reforms did not match up to his good intentions.

That's why Krasner has refused to talk to me for the past 20 months. He knows he has no answers to honest questions. That's why he only talks to progressive reporters down with reform. 

Let's face it folks, for the past four years, Krasner has had no answers to how to stop the escalating gun violence and murder rate in this town. 

He accepts no blame for the blood on his hands. All he can do is pass the buck, blame the pandemic, blame the courts, blame the judges, blame the cops, even blame witnesses for not showing up in court.

Why should they testify against dangerous criminals when they know the D.A. is on side of the criminals, rather than the public's?

What Krasner has never done in four years is blame himself. It's always everybody else's fault. And then he cooks up his own statistics to show that by some new yardstick he just invented, say what's happened in the past five or six weeks, things are improving because judges are throwing out fewer of his cases.

If only he had some prosecutors who actually knew how to try a case. 

As former Krasner ADA Thomas Mandracchia wrote in a letter to Philadelphia Weekly, Krasner's prosecutors were poorly trained during a nine-week session led by Adam Foss. He's a former progressive prosecutor currently under investigation for allegedly being a serial predator and rapist.

In his letter to Philadelphia Weekly, the former ADA described his goofy nine-week training session under Foss as "a cross between a graduate seminar and a religious retreat, filled with lectures and followed by group reflection."

Mandracchia said he initially regarded Krasner as a savior, but after working with him, he realized that Krasner was an aloof elitist, and an incompetent manager. According to his former ADA, Krasner  "wasted" the potential of his prosecutors, both traditional-types and progressives alike, and then he "snuffed out our passion."

The ADA who was recruited by Krasner said he quit in frustration when he realized that Krasner's alleged reforms were "a charade" going on to distract the public while "crime skyrockets."

So we have an arrogant, incompetent D.A. who thinks he is blameless for the ongoing carnage in this city. And a mayor and a police commissioner who have repeatedly proved that they are totally clueless about how to stop the bloodshed. All they can do is wring their hands and give empty, pandering speeches.

The temperature is about to hit 90, and the shooting and killing will only increase. 

So when you go to the polls today, cast a vote for Carlos Vega, a career prosecutor who's successfully prosecuted 450 murder cases, and knows how to treat violent offenders. By putting them away where they belong, in prison. 

Do yourself a favor and save a life, possibly your own, or the life of some innocent child who may be caught in a future crossfire.

As former Philly D.A., mayor and Pennsylvania govenor Ed Rendell recently pointed out, Krasner has failed at his primary duty, to protect the public to protect the public from violent criminals.

So cast a vote today to fire Larry Krasner.