D.A. Krasner Uses BS, Deceptive Stats To Con Public About Crime

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

Attention Philadelphia, District Attorney Larry Krasner is using some bold-face BS and a batch of misleading crime statistics to try and cover up how his permissive policies have fueled gun violence in the streets.

Krasner, who was publicly trashed last month at a joint press conference held by the mayor and police commissioner for his revolving door style of justice, held his own virtual press conference last Friday, with just an underling present. There weren't any other city officials around, or any reporters, not even on Zoom, so that nobody could question Krasner's desperate lies, fraudulent claims or deliberately deceptive stats.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, of course, has given fellow progressive Krasner a complete pass while Philadelphians this year are shooting and killing each other at record rates. But here at Big Trial, we're going to hold Krasner accountable.

At his virtual press conference, Krasner tried to con his fellow citizens into believing his big lie that crime in the city is actually down. Just the opposite is true. And no amount of lying, or spin-doctoring with phony crime stats is going to wash the blood off Krasner's hands.

Krasner began his virtual press conference with a big dog and pony show that featured Anthony Voci, his hapless chief of homicide.

What a pathetic character this guy is. When he was last seen on Big Trial, Voci was unsuccessfully trying to schedule a cuddle-fest for himself and other whiny, wimpy-ass prosecutors in the D.A.'s office with a therapy dog, cat and Easter bunny.

At the virtual press conference, Voci gave a speech about how he and his top assistant have "literally worked every single day since March 13th combing through a variety of evidence" in the five weeks since the March 13th murder of Corporal James O'Connor.

After telling everybody how hard he was working, Voci ponderously detailed the usual gumshoe procedures in a criminal investigation while trying to make it sound like he had just invented a vaccine for the coronavirus.

According to Voci, he and his top assistant have spent the past five weeks "combing through a variety of evidence not the least of which includes correspondence, phone calls, emails and importantly forensic evidence."

Uh oh. Voci may have committed a faux pax here, or as far as conspiracy theorists are concerned, maybe he purposely shot himself in the foot so the D.A. could throw another case. In talking about emails, Voci may have given the defense lawyers who will represent O'Connor's killers a gift. Now they can ask for all of the city's emails in regards to this case, and if something's been deleted, the defense lawyers can start yelling about prosecutorial misconduct.

In a case where the death penalty is in play -- a punishment that Krasner has vowed he would never seek -- defense lawyers may now have an argument for dropping or reducing the charges, or maybe even getting the case thrown all together. For Voci, it was all in a day's work.

To cops who watched the virtual press conference, Voci had made a highly unusual and highly inappropriate admission. Said one angry veteran cop, "I am fucking sick right now because I can see from a mile away how they just gave [O'Connor] up."

A seasoned former prosecutor agreed with the veteran cop's assessment.

"He [Voci] has just opened up a Pandora's box that allows the defense to engage in a fishing expedition," the seasoned former prosecutor said. Voci should have kept his mouth shut about the evidence because it's inappropriate. The defense, the seasoned prosecutor said, could also make hay about the fact that it took the D.A.'s office five weeks to bring charges against the other suspects.

After he got through gift-wrapping a present for defense lawyers in a cop killing case, Voci finally got around to announcing that the district attorney's office had charged two more suspects with the murder of Sgt. O'Connor and the attempted murder of seven members of a SWAT team that OConnor was leading the day he was killed, plus the D.A.'s office also hit the two suspects with a conspiracy charge.

"Thank you, Mr. Voci, I appreciate that," Krasner said when Voci was finally done.
Some obvious points need to be made here. First and foremost, the district attorney's refusal to prosecute gun crimes and his turnstile style of justice for dangerous, armed drug dealers is directly responsible for the murder of Corporal O'Connor.

This is something that both Voci and Krasner would like you to forget.

But on Jan. 24, 2018, Hassan Elliott, the original suspect charged with O'Connor's murder, pleaded guilty to carrying firearms without a license. Three times later that same year, Elliott was brought before a judge on alleged parole violations. Three time he could have wound up in jail, but three times the D.A.'s office gave him a pass, and let him out.

On Jan. 29, 2019, Elliott was arrested again and charged with possession of a controlled substance. He could have been thrown in jail that day to serve another 16 months, but the D.A.'s office let him go again. On March 27, 2019, Elliott's drug case came up. Elliott didn't even bother to show up for court, but the D.A.'s office did Elliott another big favor by dropping the drug charge because of "prosecutorial discretion."

If the D.A. had simply done his job on some four different occasions, Elliott, 21,  Elliott would have been in jail and Corporal O'Connor would still be alive. According to police, it was Elliott who used an automatic rifle to fire the shots through a rowhouse door that killed O'Connor.

Now let's talk about Bilal Mitchell, whom the D.A.'s office arrested on Friday and charged with the murder of Corporal O'Connor, the attempted murder of seven other members of the SWAT team, plus a conspiracy rap.

Mitchell was holed up with Elliott when O'Connor was murdered. The very month before that murder, the police twice arrested Mitchell, 19, for drug dealing, and also charged him with carrying illegal guns.  At the time of the drug arrests, Mitchell had three open juvenile cases and one previous arrest as an adult, and was on a GPS monitor.

At any time during this one-man crime spree, the D.A.'s office could have put Mitchell in jail. But what did the D.A.'s office do? They set low bail both times on the drug charges this past February, and waved goodbye as Mitchell hit the streets, only to continue his career in crime.

At their virtual press conference, intrepid crimefighters Voci and Krasner were patting themselves on the back for waiting five weeks to charge Mitchell, and a third accomplice, Khalif Sears, 18, with the murder of O'Connor, the attempted murder of the seven other SWAT team members, plus the conspiracy rap.

But the plain truth is that any competent D.A.'s office could have charged all three suspects with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy the day O'Connor was killed, five weeks ago.

Now, onto Krasner's misleading presentation on "crime statistics around the period of the pandemic."

"I would say in terms of crime statistics, we have a very complicated and somewhat mixed report," Professor Krasner began with his deceptive lecture on crime, as seen only through the demented eyes of Larry Krasner.

"In general, overall, simply by looking at the police department's own statistics," the district attorney asserted, "I'm sure you are aware that crime overall is down. And I'm sure you're also aware that violent crime overall . . . that is also down," the D.A. claimed.

Reality check, Mr. D.A.: overall crime is up, according to police statistics, and so is violent crime. And here are the latest stats as of yesterday to prove it:

-- homicides, up 17%, from 100 murders this time last year, to 117 as of yesterday.

-- armed robbery, up 10%, from 559 this time last year, to 613 as of yesterday.

-- aggravated assault with a firearm, up 19%, from 676 this time last year, to 803 as of yesterday.

-- commercial burglary, up 22%, from 338 this time last year, to 412 as of yesterday.

-- theft of motor vehicle tags, up 14%, from 438 this time last year, to 498 as of yesterday.

-- retail theft, up 40%, from 2,262 this time last year, to 3,170 as of yesterday.

-- auto theft, up 22%, from 1,794 this time last year, to 2,186 as of yesterday.

-- shooting incidents, up 64%, from 451 this time last year, to 741 as of yesterday.

-- shooting victims, up 14%, from 374 this time last year, to 427 as of yesterday.

So there you have it folks, when it comes to the soaring crime rate, Larry Krasner is a complete liar. But even at his virtual press conference, Krasner had to admit that some categories of crime were way, way up.

"We are nonetheless having a pretty terrible experience with shootings, with homicides and a very significant spike in commercial burglaries," the D.A. admitted, thereby proving that you can't lie to all of the people all of the time.

Now, for his next trick, Larry tried to pull some rabbits out of the hat in terms of magical crime statistics.

What Krasner did at his press conference was to take a week from this month, April 8th to 14th, and compare it with an average week of crime between January 2017 and March 14, 2020.

What he was trying to do was compare the city's crime rate on pandemic lockdown versus the city's crime rate back when things were normal.

So according to Krasner's stats, homicides, which usually average between 4 to 8 during the week of April 8 -14, were up to just 9 homicides during the week of April 8th the April 14th. Just a slight increase.

But in incidents of rape, Krasner said, which normally average between 16 and 22 incidents a week, was down to only 9 incidents between April 8th and 14th. So crime is actually going down in that category.

With robbery with a gun, there is normally 35 1/2 to 50 incidents a week, but this year, between April 8th and 14th, it's only 36, Krasner said. So once again, according to the D.A., crime is going down.

You get the idea.

Big Trial asked a seasoned professor of criminology who has several decades of experience on the street as a cop, but prefers to remain anonymous, to critique Krasner's presentation.

"What he is not doing is comparing the overall citywide [crime] totals from this time last year, to this time this year," the seasoned criminology professor said. "The reason he is not doing that is because crime is way up. He doesn't want to admit that."

"If you believe Krasner's argument that crime is down, explain how retail theft is up 40%, citywide, with all the stores that are currently closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic?" the seasoned professor asked. "This is just one quantitative illustration of how Krasner's policies of not arresting retail theft offenders for any crime where the value of the stolen items are less than $500, are directly and negatively having an effect on the rising crime rates."