Philly Daily posted my On Crime column today on what cops think of Philly’s DA.
You can read the column via the link below or the following text:
Paul Davis: Just ask cops what they think of Larry Krasner – Philly Daily
The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court ruled that Philly District Attorney Larry Kresner’s progressive campaign to overturn criminal convictions – as opposed to seeking convictions like a proper prosecutor – must now have oversight from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office.
The ruling comes after the court discovered that Krasner’s DA Office (DAO) failed to properly investigate these cases, misled judges and misrepresented facts. Ralph Ciprano’s Big Trial pieces at Substack go into great detail about Krasner’s outrageous conduct.
Ask any cop about Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and you are likely to get an earful about his progressive politics and law & order polices.
I reached out to one retired cop and asked retired Philadelphia Police Lieutenant Martin O’Donnell (seen in the above photo) if he, like most cops I know, dislikes Krasner and his policies?
O’Donnell: Dislike is a broad term and kind of benign. I don’t personally know our DA, but I dislike his cavalier attitude and his policies that, in my opinion, seemed more focused against law enforcement and police officers doing their job.
What do you think of Krasner’s progressive policies about prosecuting criminal suspects?
O’Donnell: The DAO is promoting Krasner’s personal agenda. The DA is supposed to represent ‘Blind Justice,’ but it is obvious that he shies away from actually prosecuting criminals. One feels that the victim of a crime is not who the DAO is championing. It takes very little time for the word to spread in criminal circles about the lack of or minimal prosecution. The champion of the victim has now become the champion of the criminal. I know the DAO floats numbers about the reduction in crime, but I wonder about that and how to interpret those statistics. The DA said he was going to reduce the prison population. Well, he did, but at what cost? History will be the judge of his progressive policies, and in the end, I don’t think history will look upon them favorably.
What do you think of Krasner exonerating convicted murders?
O’Donnell: Again, the word on the street spreads quicker than the Internet. When the DAO has ‘110 prosecutorial concessions’ most involving murder convictions that should be a red flag. No police officer would want to send an innocent person to jail, however it is almost ironic that his office can find a technicality on any of these cases and then refused to try the case again.
Some have said that with Krasner as DA, there are two attorneys in court looking out for the accused, and no one looking out for the victim.
O’Donnell: Krasner worked for years suing the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times - let that sink in. You can’t go from spending most of your professional career suing the police and then the next day supporting them. In one case, in which a person was a victim of harassment and eventually a homicide, Krasner is quoted as saying, "I will acknowledge again that we could have done better with respect to ... the decisions that were made," he said.
I’m amazed that the DA gets off the hook with this, where an innocent young lady was murdered, simply by saying, “we could have done better…’ but police officers are held to some other higher standard. The obvious difference here is that he has the luxury of sitting in his office conferring with a room full of attorneys for days and then reviewing again what actions he is going to take. In the meantime, he has an opportunity to go home, eat dinner, relax, and go back to work again before he makes his final decision. He has chance for a ‘do over’ to dot his ‘I’s’ and cross his ‘T’s.’ A police officer in a violent, fluid situation has one chance, and no opportunity to talk it over, and no opportunity to go home. There are no ‘do overs’ on the street.
What do you think of Krasner’s campaign of prosecuting cops?
O’Donnell: Officers make a split-second decision based on what their minds are able to process in nano seconds. They are reviewing their training, the law, policy and emotions fast than most people sneeze. They process the totality of the event is in real time. I taught more than 5,000 officers at the Police Academy and never did I ever hear one of them say that they wanted to shoot someone today. Police officers are the last line of defense and that line is broadened with the help of the District Attorney’s Office. When that DAO gives up its support and intentionally prosecutes officers who are doing their job in the middle of a riot, car stop, meet the complaint or any one of a thousand interactions with the public, to promote their own agenda, that in itself emboldens the criminal and eviscerate the authority of the police.
Paul Davis’s On Crime column appears here each week. He is also a contributor to Broad + Liberty and Counterterrorism magazine. He can be reached via pauldavisoncrime.com.
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