As Philly Sets All-Time Record With 562 Murders, P.C. Outlaw Spouts Pablum, D.A. Krasner Throws Hissy Fit At Inquirer

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

On Thursday night, a couple of criminals armed with semi-automatic weapons shot up Germantown Avenue, firing at least 65 shots, and sending six wounded people to the hospital.  

The most seriously wounded victim was a 21 year-old woman who had been shot multiple times, and was reported in critical condition following emergency surgery.

With so many bullets and so many bodies, the cops were having a hard time separating the perps from the victims. 

"The fact that we found over 65 spent shell casings -- that's a whole lot of shots fired," a beleaguered Chief Inspector Scott Small told 6ABC. "So it's hard to even say who is the intended target and who is struck by stray gunfire."

Meanwhile, the city today made history. The old record for murders, set back in 1990 at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, was 500 murders. 

On the last day of 2021, the city set a new record of 562 murders at the height of the Larry Krasner epidemic. That's a four-year killing spree where Philadelphia's annual homicide rate has soared from 315 murders in 2017, the year before Krasner took office, all the way up to 562 murders this year, a 78% increase. But if you listen to the D.A., none of it is his fault. 

While the city remained in crisis, a masked Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw was engaged in a lame attempt at damage control, by spouting pablum to a sympathetic TV reporter. But in a far more surprising development, D.A. Krasner was throwing a hissy fit. The target of Krasner's ire --- the D.A's faithful apologists at The Philadelphia Inquirer, who are usually engaged in covering for him.  

Today, a couple of Krasner's usual apologists at the Inquirer dutifully wrote a long, boring thumb-sucker about the city's homicide crisis. But in the entirely predictable opus, the only eyebrow-raiser came when the newspaper revealed that Jane Roh, Krasner's official spokesperson, was actively engaged in stonewalling the Inquirer.

"The [D.A.'s] office declined to make Krasner available for an interview," the Inquirer wrote. 

What set off Larry and Jane? Apparently, the Inquirer was trying to publish some comparative stats on how effective the D.A.'s office was at prosecuting crime, and the D.A. refused to play along.

"In an email, [Krasner's] spokesperson, Jane Roh, said it was 'misleading, unfair, and lazy' to compare case outcomes before and after March 2020 because of the challenges the pandemic has caused in the courts."

Once again, it's not Larry's fault, and anybody who dares to criticize the great white savior is speaking heresy because Larry's always the smartest guy in the room. 

The Inquirer of late has actually been attempting to hold Krasner responsible, after the D.A. made it almost impossible to continue to defend him. On Dec. 7th, while the city was setting a new all-time record for homicides, Krasner committed a gaffe that earned him nationwide ridicule when he claimed that there was no gun violence crisis in Philadelphia, and that the city was safe for tourists to visit. 

“We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence,” the district attorney famously declared. “It’s important that we don’t let this become mushy and bleed into the notion that there is some kind of big spike in crime.”

During the week that followed Krasner's pronouncements, Center City promptly sustained a rash of some 15 armed robberies; the victims included one groom who was robbed of his Rolex at his own wedding. Then, a liberal Democratic congresswoman who was visiting the city was carjacked at gunpoint. She promptly became the latest victim of the latest trend in gun crimes that's up some 80% over last year.

After Krasner issued his absurd pronouncements, the Inquirer printed an op-ed written by former Mayor Michael Nutter, who ripped Krasner for making “some of the worst, most ignorant, and most insulting comments I have ever heard spoken by an elected official.”

"I have to wonder what kind of messed-up world of white wokeness Krasner is living in," Nutter wrote, "to have so little regard for human lives lost, many of them black and brown, while he [Krasner] advances his own national profile as a progressive district attorney.”

Yikes, a prominent black politician basically calling out Krasner, the great white savior, for being an out-of-touch white liberal racist!

No wonder Larry and Jane are so upset. 

But rest assured, the Inquirer is still going easy on Krasner. In today's 56-paragraph Inky story on the homicide crisis, it wasn't until paragraph 28 when the newspaper finally got around to discussing Krasner's pathetic record of prosecuting crimes as D.A. 

But it was paragraph 35 that must have really ticked off Larry and Jane.

That's when the newspaper quoted records from the D.A.'s own data dashboard that say that "about 71% of the 10,000 violent crime cases resolved in the last two years were [either] withdrawn by prosecutors or dismissed by a judge. In the five years before the pandemic, that rate was 52%."

Big Trial has been poaching off of that same D.A.'s data dashboard to show how bad the D.A.'s office is under Krasner at prosecuting violent crime. 

For example, as of Dec. 7th, according to the D.A.'s owns stats, the D.A.'s office had disposed of 5,543 cases identified as "violent crimes," which includes homicides, assaults, robberies, rapes and sexual assaults.

Out of those 5,543 violent crimes, a total of 4,043 cases, or a whopping 72.9%, were either dismissed or withdrawn by the D.A.'s office.

Out of the total of 5,543 cases, only 208 defendants, or a paltry 3.7%, were found guilty at trial, while a total of 1,040, or 18.7% of those defendants pleaded guilty.

Regarding gun possession cases, so far this year, out of a total of 1,258 gun cases, some 757 cases, or a whopping 60%, were either dismissed or withdrawn by the D.A.'s office.

Out of 1,258 gun cases, only 25 defendants, or a paltry 1.9%, were found guilty at trial, while a total of 428, or 34%, pleaded guilty.

While Krasner was throwing a hissy fit on New Year's Eve, Police Commissioner Outlaw was seeking out another woman of color in the media for a sympathetic heart-to-heart chat as the city was going down the toilet.

As the city was racking up a new record all-time murder rate, Outlaw whined to reporter Sharrie Williams of 6ABC that "All I can continue to do is just be who I am and make sure that we lead here in the department with compassion and empathy, and recognize that numbers aren't just numbers, they're also people."

Now there's a leader cops and residents can rally around.

When asked if the city was safe, Outlaw lamely responded, "It is, it is, but it has its pockets," presumably meaning pockets of violence. 

When Williams told Outlaw that the residents she talked to "feel the bad guys are in control" of the city, Outlaw meekly responded, "No one wants this to happen under our watch. It's very frustrating."

But she added that the public perception that criminals are in control of the city will only "continue to inspire and motivate us" to keep fighting crime.

In terms of oratory, it wasn't exactly Winston Churchill.

"We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender," Churchill famously declared.

But Philadelphia today, facing a crisis of gun violence, has only Danielle Outlaw to rally around, and her pledge to "lead the department with compassion and empathy."

Just like her boss, Jim Kenney, who's also big on empathy and short on results, as well as competence. 

At least Kenney and Outlaw, however lamely, are always trying to fake it.

Then, there's D.A. Krasner, who doesn't even bother. He's sticking to leading the revolution, no matter how many dead bodies result from his mad drive to empty the city's jails.

With leaders like Kenney, Krasner & Outlaw, it's no wonder that the city is going straight to hell.