William McSwain (seen in the below photo), the U.S. Attorney for the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania, released the blow statement:
PHILADELPHIA – Last Friday, Philadelphia
Police Corporal and SWAT team member, James O’Connor (seen in the bottom photo), a proud 23-year veteran
of the Department from a family of police officers, was gunned down in the
City’s Frankford section while trying to arrest Hassan Elliott, who was wanted
for murder. Elliott was on the street for one reason: because of
District Attorney Krasner’s pro-violent defendant policies. Those
policies – which include permissive bail conditions for violent offenders,
failing to pursue serious probation and parole violations by violent criminals,
offering lenient plea deals for violent offenses, and outright withdrawing
cases against violent felons – put dangerous criminals like Elliott on the
street.
All
Philadelphians have been living with the negative, and often tragic,
consequences of these policies for the 2+ years that the City has had to endure
the Krasner regime. But now those consequences could not be
clearer. Corporal O’Connor’s widow, his children, his brothers and
sisters in law enforcement, and the entire City deserve to know why he died.
Here
are the facts:
Hassan
Elliott is a 21 year-old man from the Frankford section of Northeast
Philadelphia. He is known by law enforcement because of his longtime
involvement with a violent gang called “1700” that blights the area of 1700
Brill Street and 1700 Scattergood Street. This gang is alleged to be
responsible for many shootings in the area and is brazen about their access to
firearms. For a taste of what this gang is all about, visit YouTube and
look at the video entitled “Frankford Purge,” which depicts Elliott at the 1:29
mark, partially masked, brandishing a firearm.[1]
On
June 8, 2017, Elliott was arrested on firearms charges, stemming from an
incident in which he threatened a neighborhood resident with a gun. On
January 24, 2018, he entered into a negotiated plea: Krasner’s office
offered, and Elliott accepted, a below-guidelines sentence of 9 to 23 months’
incarceration, followed by 3 years of reporting probation. Elliott was
paroled on January 25, 2018, the day after his plea; he spent a total of 7
months and 16 days incarcerated for this offense.
Following
his release, the Philadelphia Probation and Parole Department categorized
Elliott as a “high risk” offender, and placed him under the supervision of the
Anti-Violence High Risk Unit. Protocol in this unit requires weekly
visits and regular urinalyses. Elliott violated his parole almost immediately
by failing numerous drug tests, and also by repeatedly failing to report to his
parole officer. Eventually, the court scheduled a violation hearing for
February 6, 2019.
Prior
to that hearing, however, on January 29, 2019, Elliott was arrested and charged
with possession of cocaine. After a foot pursuit by police, 15 packets of
cocaine were found in Elliott’s pockets. This arrest was in direct
violation of Elliott’s parole, but the District Attorney’s Office did not
pursue a detainer against him or make any attempt to have Elliott taken into
custody for this serious violation. The office allowed Elliott to be
released on his own recognizance – no bail was set. This is stunning,
considering that Elliott was on parole for his 2018 firearms conviction.
Here, there was an arrest and multiple parole violations and the Krasner regime
did nothing.
In
February 2019, soon after his cocaine arrest, the Philadelphia Police
Department identified Elliott as an “Operation Pinpoint” target offender.
Operation Pinpoint is a data-driven crime fighting strategy that targets the
worst violent offenders in the City. Even with Elliott now identified as
one of the City’s worst violent offenders, Krasner’s office still did nothing in response to Elliott’s
violation of his parole through his cocaine arrest.
On
March 1, 2019, Elliott attended a pre-trial status listing for his cocaine
case, where he received and signed a subpoena for the trial, which was
scheduled for March 27, 2019. It turns out that March 1 was a busy day for
Elliott: after leaving his pre-trial status listing, he allegedly
murdered Tyree Tyrone on the 5300 block of Duffield Street. Elliott and
another man, both armed with handguns, approached Tyrone, who was sitting in
his car, and allegedly opened fire at close range. Video showed Elliott
fleeing the scene and his fingerprints were found on one of the alleged murder
weapons.
On
March 26, 2019, the District Attorney’s Office procured a warrant for Elliott’s
arrest for the Tyrone murder. The next day, March 27, Elliott was
scheduled to go on trial in the cocaine case.
On
that day, March 27, which was the first trial listing in the case, Elliott
failed to appear. Despite his absence, and the outstanding murder
warrant, the District Attorney’s Office withdrew the cocaine case against
Elliott, citing prosecutorial discretion. Elliott then remained at-large
until the murder of Corporal O’Connor.
These
facts paint a damning picture of a prosecutor’s office that prioritizes
“decarceration” of violent offenders over public safety.
First,
it is inexcusable that the District Attorney’s Office made no attempt to take
Elliott into custody after his cocaine arrest. Had he been detained after
his January 29, 2019 arrest – which was a direct violation of his parole on the
earlier gun conviction – he certainly would have been in prison on March 1,
2019, when he allegedly murdered Tyree Tyrone. And if that were the case,
Corporal O’Connor would not have been trying to arrest Elliott for that murder
last Friday. Instead, Corporal O’Connor would be alive today, as would
Mr. Tyrone.
Krasner’s
office had many opportunities and avenues to detain Elliott after his drug
arrest, but failed to utilize any of them. The District Attorney’s Office
can always contact probation and ask that a detainer be lodged based on a new
arrest, or the District Attorney’s Office could have petitioned Elliott’s
supervising judge and requested that a detainer be issued. The office did
neither. And even if all that had failed, the office could have requested
high bail to ensure that Elliott was held pending trial on his new drug
case. Again, the office did nothing.
The
District Attorney’s Office had an additional opportunity to ask that Elliott be
held on February 6, 2019. On that date, Elliott was listed for a
violation of parole hearing based on the new cocaine arrest, as well as
Elliott’s issues with repeated drug use and his repeated failure to report to
his parole officer. But the docket states that the “detainer [was] to
remain lifted” – meaning that no detainer had been or would be lodged – and
therefore the violation hearing was continued pending the resolution of the
cocaine case. Yet another opportunity wasted.
Second,
it is inexcusable that Krasner’s office dropped the cocaine case against
Elliott. No responsible prosecutor’s office would ever
voluntarily withdraw a case against a violent defendant who doesn’t show up
for his first trial date. And here, the defendant had been identified by
the Philadelphia Police Department as one of the worst
violent offenders in the City. He was a gang-banger wanted for
murder.
Moreover,
the drug case against Elliott was strong: he had been caught red-handed
with multiple packets of cocaine in his pockets. A conviction in the drug
case would have surely resulted in prison time, as it would have been a direct
violation of his parole for the earlier firearms conviction.
Just
as importantly, the drug case should not have been dropped because it could
have – and should have – been used as a means to get Elliott into custody and
off the street on the murder warrant.
If Elliott had shown up for court, he would have been arrested for
murder. He didn’t know that there was an existing murder warrant, so
there was certainly a chance that he would eventually show up for the drug
trial if the case had not been withdrawn (he had, in fact, already shown up for
it once, on March 1). But that possibility was eliminated when Krasner’s
office eagerly withdrew the case. Instead, Corporal O’Connor and his
fellow SWAT officers were left to try to hunt Elliott down, with tragic
consequences.
How
could any rational human being possibly decide to withdraw the cocaine case
against Elliott in these circumstances? Krasner might try to say that his
office had to drop the case because one of the police officers involved in it
could not testify (due to a potential problem with this officer’s credibility
in a separate, unrelated case that the U.S. Attorney’s Office investigated and
declined to prosecute). If Krasner tries to deflect blame and says this,
it is a lie.
That
issue had nothing to do with Krasner’s office dropping Elliott’s drug case,
which is why the assigned Assistant District Attorney said nothing about it in
court on March 27 when withdrawing the case. Moreover, even if Krasner
had been aware of the possible credibility problem when his office dropped the
drug case, that issue was irrelevant because the primary officer who had
recovered the drugs in Elliott’s pockets had no credibility problems and easily
could have testified to all aspects of the case. The other officer was
not needed at trial.
The
bottom line is that there is no excuse for dropping the cocaine case against
Elliott. The case was dropped for the same reason that Krasner’s office
ignored the many opportunities to purse the serious parole violation in the
first place – because this District Attorney’s priorities always lie with
violent offenders, consequences be damned.
This
destructive ideology has earned Krasner the enmity of the Philadelphia Police
Department. The Department’s disdain was on full display at Temple
Hospital on Friday morning, where officers formed a line to block Krasner’s
entrance into the hospital when he tried to visit Corporal O’Connor and his
family, who wanted nothing to do with him.
Krasner
has much to answer for at this moment in our City’s history. He should be
asked tough questions and not allowed to fall back on his lazy, irrelevant and
all-purpose reply to any legitimate criticism that I level against his policies
– that the U.S. Attorney is a Trump appointee. This is not about the
President. And it is not about me. It is about two entirely
preventable tragedies that have claimed the life of a Philadelphia Police
Officer and another young life.
Krasner
has infected the District Attorney’s Office with a sickness that has deadly
consequences for the entire City. Enough is enough. This madness
must stop.
