Last week, Philadelphia's recently elected top prosecutor, Larry Krasner, officially moved into his new home at the Office of the District Attorney. And the reform-minded darling of the left has wasted no time rearranging the furniture.
On Friday, reports surfaced indicating that over 30 staff members were asked to resign. Included in the number were several deeply experienced assistant district attorneys. Hugh Burns, chief of the DA's Appeals Unit, was among the victims of the employee purge.
Sources told 6 ABC's Vernon Odom and Dann Cuellar that "Krasner never met face to face with with those fired. But instead they were hauled before a human resource bureaucrat who gave no explanation as to why they were being let go."
Krasner justified the staffing decisions at a press conference that was held in a room his team of ADAs could not access. "The coach," the district attorney proclaimed, "gets to pick the team."
Fair enough. However, if the new DA feels the need to impose such a stiff sentence on his unit, he should have the decency and the courage to swing the sword himself, to borrow a phrase from Game of Thrones.
But Krasner has big plans for Philadelphia, and has little time for the tedious business of dismissing career prosecutors who devoted their time and energy toward fighting crime on behalf of the city. They're all just cogs in the mass incarceration machine, anyway.
In truth, a number of Krasner's proposals are entirely sensible. The new DA pledged to avoid seeking capital punishment, for example. Since the state of Pennsylvania has historically allowed its death penalty cases to lapse into the mire of a never-ending appeals process, and considering the fact that Governor Tom Wolf has imposed a moratorium on the practice pending a study of the issue, it makes little financial sense for a cash-strapped city to pursue this expensive avenue. Moreover, we should all ponder the implications of empowering an imperfect system to impose the ultimate punishment. Most importantly, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the death penalty is arbitrarily pursued and disproportionately targets minorities and poor people.
Additionally, Krasner aims to devote the resources of his office toward a more aggressive prosecution of serious crimes. This posture dovetails nicely with one of the main arguments advanced by Jill Leovy in Ghettoside, a book that studied homicide in Los Angeles. Leovy found that one of the factors driving the murder rate in LA was the fact that the police were unable to solve a critical number of serious crimes, which she defined as murder, robbery, rape, and assault. Absent an effective law enforcement presence, the communities she studied resorted to extrajudicial methods to address their grievances. And so the cycle of violence endured.
Furthermore, Krasner hopes to eliminate the city's cash bail system, which has swelled the ranks of Philadelphia's inmate population with prisoners who cannot afford to make payment. Due to the deliberate pace of the criminal justice system, a number of these inmates wallow in jail for months as they await court dates. It's an impefect arrangement at best; at worst, it's an unconstitutional process that violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Fifth Amendment.
Do you support the recreational use of marijuana for adults? So does Krasner, who hopes the tax revenue generated from legalization will be directed to the school system. Do you like the idea of the government taking your property even though you haven't been convicted of a crime? Neither does Krasner.
Here's the problem with Krasner's platform- he's not the first person to decide the criminal justice system required change. Many of his competitors for the office included similar proposals in their campaign platforms.
In 2010, Seth Williams was swept into office on a pledge to get "smart on crime." Williams implemented a number of reforms, including prosecuting cases involving small amounts of marijuana as summary offenses. Williams inherited a D.A.'s office that struggled to win convictions and was drowning in disarray, and he righted the ship. Nevertheless, Williams was an aloof supervisor whose management style eventually created resentment in his office. The high-living, cash-poor D.A. was undone by his taste for the finer things and his need to dole out favors for people who didn't need them; Williams was arrested and pleaded guilty to a bribery charge, which netted him a five-year prison term.
During his two-term mayoral stint, Michael Nutter emphasized prisoner reintegration. Nutter offered tax credits to businesses that hired ex-cons; he even got a little Orwellian, proposing a ban on the term "ex-offender" in favor of the euphemistic "returning citizen."
What differentiates an isolated idealist from a productive pragmatist is an ability to negotiate institutional hurdles and develop crucial relationships. Idealists are too in love with the sound of their own voice to reflect on the wisdom of their ideas or reconsider their positions. Pragmatists seek ways to translate their message and work tirelessly to foster consensus.
Thus far, Krasner seems intent merely to burn bridges; this tendency will limit his ability to travel to the utopia for which he longs.
Firing long-tenured staff without warning or sufficient explanation will not endear a newly-minted DA to his charges; neither will a full-throated embrace of leftist rhetoric that is missing critical context. Krasner asserted in his introductory campaign video that "policing and prosecution are both systemically racist. That doesn't mean people on the inside want it to be that way, but it is that way."
Since I share an ideological tent with liberals, I have no problem telling them to clean up their mess. And one pet peeve of mine is this incessant need to deliver condescending lectures peppered with buzzwords that signal to your ideological fellow travelers that you "get it."
How is a person who may not be inclined to agree with Krasner going to feel when his profession is labeled as systemically racist? I'll tell you what that person will do: he will tell himself he is not a racist and will dismiss Krasner as a typical liberal. He will jump to this defensive position because that's the reflex these caustic terms induce when they aren't explained. It does not appear that Krasner fully appreciates that police officers and prosecutors will emerge as the foot soldiers on whom he must rely in order to execute his vision.
The district attorney will also need to forge relationships in Harrisburg and in City Council if he ever hopes to enact reforms that outlast his tenure. Whether Krasner and his supporters grasp it or not, the district attorney is an elected official who is confined to the executive branch. Even though the DA has discretionary power in terms of which prosecutions to pursue and which sentences to push, Krasner ultimately is charged with enforcing the law. It's the duty of the legislature to make the law.
The battle, then, over mass incarceration policies needs to be waged in the halls of the State House.
And it's a battle that can be won, no matter the conservative ideological bent of Pennsylvania's state legislature. Prison reform efforts are in full swing in red states like Georgia and Kentucky. An enterprising district attorney looking to make a lasting impact on the criminal justice system might find a receptive audience among state lawmakers who are historically frustrated by the large amounts of money flowing into Philadelphia's coffers.
Another, equally important front will be the fight to unite a racially divided city. We've seen the drama unfold over the Frank Rizzo statue. An effective leader would be able to make the case that Rizzo, a high school dropout who rose through the ranks of the Philadelphia Police Department to become commissioner before winning two mayoral terms, embodies the American Dream for ethnic whites. At the same time, he would be able to point out that Rizzo's tenure as police commissioner was checkered with racial incidents; that Rizzo came to be viewed as an oppressor whose overzealous policing tactics exacerbated the racial discrimination black Philadelphians experienced.
Is Krasner capable of walking that rhetorical tightrope?
Will Krasner be able to quell the resentment building between the police force and Black Lives Matter protesters? While I'm sure the DA would have no trouble condemning a statement like FOP President John McNesby's equation of BLM activists to a "pack of rabid animals," I sense he would be considerably less comfortable telling his supporters to refrain from "fuck the FOP" chants.
Will Krasner be viewed as a fair arbiter when he inevitably decides whether to charge Police Officer Ryan Pownall in the shooting death of David Jones? Will the FOP be satisfied that a process at least partially overseen by Krasner was impartial? What happens if the evidence demands the D.A. refrain from pressing charges? Will Krasner supporter and BLM leader Asa Khalif, whose conception of justice in this case seems to be a speedy trial and a speedier imprisonment of Pownall, be receptive to such a turn of events?
Given the charged environment into which he'll be thrust, Krasner will be tested early and often. The first few days of his administration suggest our new district attorney will struggle to enact his reform program. Instead, Krasner will find himself an increasingly marginalized figure, chafing at the limits of his own power. Sound familiar?
Krasner might be the coach, and he might be able to pick his own players, but his failure to understand the game might doom him.
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