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for BigTrial.net
In this apocalyptic year, the citizens of Philadelphia had to endure a pandemic, riots, and a record number of murders.
They also had to put up with incompetent and corrupt leadership from a trio of top city officials. We're talking about our "reform" district attorney whose radical policies have repeatedly proved to be deadly; a lying, cowardly but politically correct mayor; and, last but not least, the mayor's "diverse" new police commissioner, who turned out to be a real lightweight.
Cranking out an average of three stories a week, many of them scoops, Big Trial was the only local media outlet to hold local public officials accountable throughout the year by documenting their lies, incompetence, and corruption.
It's a full-time job, but here in Philadelphia, official incompetence and corruption have deadly consequences. We're up to 498 murders for 2020, the highest number in 30 years. But that's not the whole story.
As Big Trial has previously reported, the Philadelphia Police Department keeps a separate list of so-called "special assignments" that include "suspicious"deaths that may eventually turn out to be murders. As one veteran detective put it, "They're definitely cooking the books." That special assignment count -- known among the cops as "S" jobs -- is up to 170 cases. So who knows how high the murder rate really is.
This man, bought and paid for with $1.7 million of billionaire George Soros's money, is a walking, talking perversion of what a district attorney should be.
As D.A., Krasner sees the primary function of his office as doing favors for criminals. He doesn't give a damn about crime victims. And he hates cops, and has a lust for indicting them.
In the past 12 months, Big Trial documented in 22 scoops the perverted way the D.A. runs his office. Here's what his office did for criminals, always at the expense of crime victims, often the most vulnerable among us, namely women and children.
As chronicled by Big Trial, Krasner's office:
-- helped a career burglar beat 27 new burglary cases.
-- freed a stoned pharmacist caught with $30,000 worth of Xanax.
-- wouldn't prosecute a theft caught on video by a suspect who confessed.
-- helped a Haitian immigrant who severely beat and strangled his fiancee stay in the U.S.
-- twice declined to prosecute a man for alleged gun crimes who subsequently murdered a pregnant woman.
-- failed to protect a mother who was a victim of domestic abuse by her boyfriend; and subsequently failed to protect that mother's deaf six-year-old child from being brutally beaten to death by that same abusive boyfriend.
-- gave house arrest to a confessed baby killer.
-- let a supposedly nonviolent prisoner out of jail during the pandemic, a prisoner who promptly went out just 20 days later and participated in the brutal murder of a bodega owner.
-- ran a revolving door for armed and dangerous drug dealers.
-- failed on multiple occasions to put future civil rights martyr and alleged family man Walter Wallace Jr. in jail, when the law clearly required it, enabling Wallace to continue to menace his family, and finally, and fatally, the cops.
-- routinely allowed armed and dangerous drug dealers to get out of jail, so they could commit more crimes that included armed carjackings, gunpoint robberies, rape as well as a half-dozen murders.
Nice work, huh? And as far as Krasner's war on cops, here's what the D.A.'s office did to police officers:
-- conspired to maliciously prosecute a detective for telling the truth about an officer-involved shooting, because Krasner wanted to indict the cop, but the detective refused to change his story.
-- freed a suspect in a cop shooting.
-- let an armed and dangerous drug dealer out of jail who subsequently murdered Corporal James O'Connor.
-- let a second armed and dangerous drug dealer subsequently indicted for O'Connor's murder out of jail on two different occasions the month before Corporal O'Connor was murdered.
-- stonewalled Krasner's own role as a fact witness in the case of an AR-15-wielding suspect who shot six cops, when the D.A. repeatedly refused to be interviewed by police.
-- indicted a decorated SWAT team member for following the orders of his superiors, who told him to clear the Vine Street Expressway of protesters, because they were breaking the law by illegally blocking traffic during rush hour.
-- libeled and indicted Staff Inspector Joseph Bologna by falsely charging that he had struck a protester in the head with his baton, supposedly opening up a gaping wound. Video of the incident, however, shows no such blow to the head, no blood, and no such gaping wound. But the video does show the protester stealing Bologna's baton.
-- tried to free convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal in a notorious 40-year-old case, even though the D.A. admitted under oath that Mumia is guilty.
Quite an impressive record for the city's highest law enforcement officer, wouldn't you say?
And now here's who Krasner really is. According to reporting done in the past year by Big Trial, D.A. Krasner:
-- lied about the existence of public records that showed the many thousands of cases that his office declined to prosecute.
-- cooked up some deceptive crime stats to cover up the incompetence and corruption of his office.
-- and when he got caught near a gun battle, he ran "like a bitch."
Of those 22 stories, not one of them would have ever been told if it was up to the so-called journalists at The Philadelphia Inquirer and every other local media outlet you can think of.
And now, for another exercise in futility, guess how many times Larry Krasner and Jane Roh, his alleged spokesperson, decided to comment on those 22 stories?
The correct answer is zero. The D.A., who gets paid $179,299 a year, and Roh, the $82,000 a-year hack who gets paid for doing nothing, stonewalled Big Trial on every one of those 22 stories, as well as countless others.
And by joining the cover up, the Inquirer and the rest of the local media let Krasner get away with stonewalling.
Here's where we're at in Philadelphia: Krasner's progressive policies are literally responsible for killing people, and the local media, led by the Inquirer, is too timid to report about it.
Besides the misdeeds of the D.A. himself, Big Trial devoted eight more stories to chronicling the hijinks and illegal activities of Krasner's top aides and young prosecutors, such as:
-- the D.A.'s newest advisor, who turned out to be a disbarred lawyer.
-- the D.A.'s former corrupt aide, Movita Johnson-Harrell, who caught a break when Krasner decided to ignore an obvious conflict of interest and not prosecute Movita's son for brazenly beating up his baby mama.
-- the head of DA's conviction integrity unit, Patricia Cummings, who herself lacks integrity, and was the villain in a five-part Showtime documentary for her shocking breach of legal ethics.
-- a top aide to D.A. Krasner who was arrested for abandoning her child.
-- one of Krasner's assistant district attorneys who posted "Fuck the cops"on Instagram.
-- another diverse Krasner ADA who had a persistent habit of going on social media to say how much she doesn't like white people.
-- the D.A.'s gun violence counselor who after he arranged a rendezvous during regular work hours, shot and killed a male prostitute.
-- the D.A. himself who rolled out the red carpet for an accused serial rapist, so he could "train" Krasner's young impressionable prosecutors.
Predictably, Krasner and Roh declined to say whether any of their young impressionable prosecutors were raped or sexually abused by this accused predator. And when I filed a right-to-know request to find out how much taxpayers money Krasner had paid to the accused serial rapist, Krasner's minions filed a request for a 30-day appeal.
It's amazing how many corrupt people and downright criminals that D.A. Krasner has chosen to surround himself with. Most of these Big Trial scoops wound up being ignored by the rest of the media. But even the Inquirer had to write about the top aide to Krasner, after she was arrested for abandoning her child.
The Inky also had to run a follow-up story on the gun violence counselor who shot and killed a male prostitute, after U.S. Attorney William McSwain publicly called the newspaper out.
"Your Philly DA's office: where Krasner hires an employee who allegedly ends up shooting and killing a man," McSwain tweeted. "You can't even make this stuff up. The destruction that Krasner has wrought on that office is a tragedy."
"So where's the @PhillyInquirer article on this?" McSwain wrote in a subsequent tweet. "Everybody knows that the Inquirer bends over backwards to protect Krasner, but this is a little too obvious -- even for them."
And Big Trial was there three months later when Kenney again backed down to the anarchists, and called off a planned police raid on the homeless camp, which was overrun with drugs, filth, and lawlessness.
Other Kenney embarrassments reported exclusively by Big Trial:
-- how the Kenney administration and Kenney's new police commissioner fiddled while Philly burned during the George Floyd riots.
-- how the cowardly and deceitful mayor presided over the ritualistic public sacrifice of former Deputy Police Commissioner Dennis Wilson, who took the fall for Kenney and Police Commissioner Outlaw, by falsely stating he and he alone ordered the teargassing of protesters on the Vine Street Expressway.
-- how the Kenney administration secretly provided 24/7 security details for VIPs during the George Floyd riots, VIPs that included all but one City Council member, and Kenney's alleged girlfriend.
-- how the Kenney administration had an official database that recorded dead people voting. And after Big Trial wrote about that database, the city promptly shut it down and floated an alibi about a faulty algorithm.
-- how Kenney's original mentor, former state Senator Vince Fumo, called Kenney a "liar, hypocrite and pussy,"and publicly challenged him to a street fight.
Regarding our low-profile Police Commissioner Outlaw, Big Trial was there when the rookie commish:
-- issued her first official policy directive, about nail polish.
-- ordered the cops during the pandemic to stop making arrests.
-- violated official police department policy by taking a knee with protesters.
-- saw her alibi for allegedly not being in the loop about teargassing protesters go up in smoke.
-- recited meaningless crime statistics while dead bodies were piling up.
-- came up with a 37-page crime-fighting treatise that was panned by three former high-ranking police officials as a "B- freshman sociology paper" and "Crime-fighting Lite."
-- presided over a police department with a social media policy that has a ridiculous double standard.
-- wound up on the side of a milk carton after her own troops dubbed her MIA, as in Missing In Action.
Outlaw, who gets paid $285,000 a year, was also responsible for appointing Melvin Singleton, known as "Simpleton" among the troops, as her first deputy commissioner.
This was a real management coup.
In his brief reign, Simpleton, who was getting paid $149,000 two years ago before his big promotion, ignited an internal investigation when he ordered cops to kneel with BLM protesters. Next, he totally mismanaged the deployment of police personnel in response to threats of further riots. Finally, Simpleton unwisely packed cops on buses and vans, causing a severe outbreak of COVID-19 that resulted in 500 sick cops and several dead cops.
This is the woeful record compiled in the past 12 months by our D.A., mayor, and police commissioner, and their top aides who earn nearly $1 million annually.
Yes, Philly's in sad shape when it comes to leadership. It's also in sad shape when it comes to journalism.
So if you've made it this far, consider this. If it wasn't for the work of a part-time blogger, none of the stories mentioned above would have ever been told.