Soros 'changed game' in Philly: DA tied to 'disrespect' for police

FPI / August 16, 2019

Following an Aug. 14 incident in which six Philadelphia police officers were shot by a suspect with an extensive criminal history, U.S. Attorney William McSwain said the policies of District Attorney Larry Krasner are endangering the city’s police.

“There is a new culture of disrespect for law enforcement in this City that is promoted and championed by District Attorney Larry Krasner – and I am fed up with it,” McSwain said in a statement.

Krasner, a leftist former civil rights attorney, was elected in 2017 after receiving $1.45 million in donations from George Soros.

Krasner, who was not favored to win before the arrival of Soros’s cash, went on to an 18-point victory in the May 2017 Democratic primary, which in Democratic-dominated Philly essentially guaranteed him a win in the general election.

“Soros changed the game,” the Philadelphia Inquirer said at the time.

In an Aug. 15 report for American Greatness, Debra Heine noted that Krasner “ has sued police more than 75 times, and has defended far-left Occupy Philly activists and Black Lives Matter agitators.”

McSwain noted that the alleged shooter in the Aug. 14 incident in Philly, Maurice Hill, “is a previously convicted felon with a long rap sheet.”

CBS Philly reported that, while police were still dodging bullets, hundreds of residents were laughing and yelling at them from the sidelines. At least once, police had to pepper-spray the onlookers, the report said.

“We have plenty of criminal laws in this City – but what we don’t have is robust enforcement by the District Attorney,” McSwain said. “Instead, among other things, we have diversionary programs for gun offenses, the routine downgrading of charges for violent crime, and entire sections of the criminal code that are ignored.”

McSwain said the “culture of disrespect” started “with chants at the DA’s victory party – chants of ‘F*** the police’ and ‘No good cops in a racist system.’ ”

Krasner “routinely calls police and prosecutors corrupt and racist, even ‘war criminals’ that he compares to Nazis,” McSwain said.

“This vile rhetoric puts our police in danger. It disgraces the Office of the District Attorney. And it harms the good people in the City of Philadelphia and rewards the wicked.”

McSwain noted that, “in response to the District Attorney’s lawlessness,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office has prosecuted 70 percent more violent crime cases this year compared to 2018.

“It is now time for the District Attorney and his enablers to stop making excuses for criminals. It is time for accountability. It is time to support law enforcement and to put the good people of this City first,” McSwain said.

During a recent appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, McSwain said that in the year and a half that Krasner has been in office, “homicides and shootings have skyrocketed.”

In past interviews, Krasner has called McSwain a “liar,” and former prosecutors in his office “war criminals,” the LA Times reported.

Krasner accused Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general of being “fork tongued” and Republicans in the state legislature of being members of a “right-wing hootenanny.”

Krasner has also openly clashed with the police union, saying its leadership is seeking to stymie his reform efforts.

“The culture that came out of Frank Rizzo was racist, brutal, toxic, tribal, and that long shadow still hangs over the department especially at the senior and supervisory levels,” he said, referring to a former police commissioner turned mayor in the 1970s.

Free Press International