Just one week after the nation was shaken by two consecutive mass shootings that took dozens of lives, there was a heart-wrenching stand-off in Philadelphia. Six police officers were shot in a thankfully non-fatal hostage situation, that gave viewers all over the country a terrifying flashback of the week before. In response to this terrifying moment U.S. Attorney William McSwain, instead of offering gratitude and comfort to the injured police, proposing solutions to violent crime or doing his job, has used the shooting as an opportunity to lodge political attacks at Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner.
Krasner is one of the country’s most progressive DA’s, swept into office on a surge of voters looking for criminal justice reform and an end to mass incarceration. His moves to decrease prison sentences, not pursue charges on low-level crimes and introduce rehabilitation and intervention strategies, has made him target among tough on crime attorneys and police. In a truly opportunistic move that makes the accusation of “politicizing” mass shootings by calling for gun control laws look even more non-nonsensical, federal prosecutors and police have used every example of violent crime as grievance to lay at Krasner’s feet. McSwain, along with Pennsylvania Police Chiefs and even Trump Administration officials, claim that reformist prosecutor policies are creating an environment of “lawlessness” that endangers everybody, especially police.
The only problem with these attacks is that they are clearly untrue. Since Krasner has taken office crime in Philadelphia has followed a nation-wide decrease in crime. Crime has fallen at least 5% in the city, though there has been an increase in violent crime and homicide over the past year. Police unions and tough on crime prosecutors may try to blame criminal just reform for this increase, but most police and investigators on the ground attribute it to the opioid crisis, as it follows a rise in addiction and over-doses and a stricter supply of opioids. Violence against police is also at a record low following a thirty year trend, and the majority of police fatalities occur in accidents.
Even if we consider that over just the past year, there has been a slight increase in police deaths, that would seem unrelated to prosecutorial enforcement. The kind of reforms that Krasner has implemented has targeted non-violent crimes, and focused on easing the burden on public defenders by bringing fewer charges and seeking more lenient plea deals. None of these changes would change the fact that a shooter who attacks police and holds them hostage would go to jail for a long time.
If anything the DA’s track record of reform and leniency with sentencing helped end the stand-off. During the six-hour hostage situation the suspect spoke directly to Krasner over the phone. By floating the idea of a more lenient deal and lesser charges, a deal he later admitted was “phoney-baloney” Krasner was able to help end the stand-off without any fatalities. Negotiation experts have approved of Krasner’s strategy, and it makes sense. A man who has the opportunity to take a plea deal and see the light of day again in his life-time is far more likely to end a hostage situation peacefully, as opposed to one who knows he has no chance of ever being released who might be made reckless and violent.
This peaceful result outcome of this situation resulting from criminal justice reform follows the evidence we have that interventionist policies are far more effective in bringing down violent crime than harsh sentences and strict policing. Studies that have looked at restorative justice solutions, which focus on repairing the damage of criminal activity through mediation rather than punishment of the offender, have shown to have better outcomes for decreasing the chance of re-offending. A mass study of intervention tactics in areas of high rates of violence and “gang-activity” have shown to bring down violence faster and more effectively than traditional policing.
The evidence on these reform tactics are admittedly limited, because very few districts that suffer large amounts of violent crime are willing to take a chance on reform solutions, despite the fact that higher rates of incarceration, longer sentences and more violent policing has no correlation to less violent crime. Study after study has found that increased sentencing for any range of violent to non-violent crime does not have a significant deterrent effect, and if anything populations with a higher percentage of incarcerated people face more crime, lower employment rates and worse economic outcomes. If by “lawlessness” McSwain is referring to putting fewer people in jail and relying more on restorative and intervention tactics for non-violent of juvenile crimes, than offs are it will have a better outcome for all of Philadelphia.
It is safe to say that this shooting and attack on police has nothing to do with Larry Krasner’s reforms. We can look at the crime rate in Philadelphia, the studied results of reform, or just the simple facts of this case. The offender had a history of violent crime from long before Krasner even ran for DA. He had stockpiled guns with large amounts of ammunition and magazines. The lack of successful gun control efforts in Philadelphia are far more responsible for the shooting of these officers than unrelated prosecutorial methods. And despite President Trump’s claims that he “never should have been allowed to walk the streets” and calling for “longer sentences” if some of these reform tactics were in place far earlier, the shooter may not have had a rap sheet so long, may not have returned to narcotics crime after becoming a police informant, and may not have risked having so many guns.
There was no rhetoric or actions from the DA that lead this man to commit this crime, judging by his past crimes, and the warrant that lead to this stand-off. The tragic shooting in El Paso, on the other hand, which did result in twenty-two deaths, was carried out by a shooter directly inspired by the same kind of racist rhetoric and lies coming directly from the administration. The differences her should be clear. One shooting was carried out by an avowed racist terrorist who had no record other than virulent online rants, the other by common criminal. One shooter wrote a manifesto that directly quoted racist ideology tweeted by the President, and sourced in the same lies and conspiracy theories of the president, the other had no clear connection or even knowledge of the District Attorney. One shooting was massively fatal, fueled by hate and racism, carried out by a legal gun-owner. The other was the result of police trying to arrest a criminal. If we are truly to draw a link between people who hold power, and those that commit violence and take lives, then we should actually pay attention to these details, to the stated reasons behind the violence and the end result. We should not use that violence as an excuse to wage a political war of convenience.
There has always been a campaign against the more progressive forces in criminal justice. The forces that fight to end the epidemic of mass incarceration, to address the racially biased enforcement of laws that terrorizes minority communities and ignores white and white collar criminals, to end violent policing tactics that target people of color, natives and those with disabilities. The established institutions of police and criminal courts have an invested interest in fighting those changes, because their institutions benefit financially and politically from these biased systems. And to change them would be expensive and difficult, and call for many of these bad actors to lose their jobs. To those police and justice officials, those jobs, that power and that convenience, is more important than the lives and livelihoods of the communities they are meant to protect.
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