A former Philadelphia judge is challenging District Attorney Larry Krasner in next month’s Democratic primary, saying the Soros-backed prosecutor has fostered lawlessness with his lenient policies on retail crime and violent suspects.
Pat Dugan says residents are fed up with Mr. Krasner not charging serial shoplifters who drive away business and are horrified by his record of dropping cases or offering plea deals to dangerous defendants.
“I definitely feel that same sentiment in every neighborhood that I’m going to: This experiment is over,” Mr. Dugan told The Washington Times.
He was referring to progressive policies implemented by prosecutors whose campaigns were backed financially by liberal billionaire George Soros. Mr. Krasner, first elected in 2017, survived an impeachment attempt in 2022 over what state lawmakers said was a “dereliction of duty.”
“These non-prosecutor district attorneys are destroying the fabric of our cities,” said Mr. Dugan, an Army veteran and former president judge of Philadelphia’s municipal courts who resigned last year to run against Mr. Krasner.
The district attorney race is Mr. Dugan’s first run at political office after a 17-year career on the bench, which was mainly spent in the city’s Veterans Court he helped create.
He has promoted a succinct plan that he says will correct the issues plaguing Philadelphia. That would begin with erasing Mr. Krasner’s longstanding policy of dealing with thefts under $500 in value as “summary offenses,” a crime category that is lower than a misdemeanor.
Mr. Krasner announced changes to the policy to more aggressively target repeat thieves last month — less than 60 days before the Democratic primary.
The former judge also said he wants to restructure the district attorney’s office into six divisions throughout the city, giving residents a chance to talk with prosecutors about criminal concerns in their neighborhoods.
Mr. Dugan, 64, said the localized divisions are a response to complaints about sparse communication with the district attorney’s office. He said he has daily run-ins with family members of murder victims who tell him they feel victimized again because they hear nothing from prosecutors about court proceedings.
Getting the right outcome on those cases is another area of focus for the former judge.
Mr. Dugan said a high turnover rate at the DA’s office has resulted in novice prosecutors taking on more cases and then having to drop them because they don’t know how to proceed. He said he is in contact with veteran attorneys who could put prosecutors through a “boot camp” to improve their success rate.
Data from the district attorney’s office shows case dismissals for violent offenses began trending up in 2019 and soared during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the city’s most deadly year on record, 70% of all violent crime charges brought to prosecutors were later dismissed.
The Washington Times has reached out to Mr. Krasner’s office for comment.
Some of Mr. Krasner’s plea deals have angered at least one federal prosecutor in Pennsylvania.
In 2020, former U.S. Attorney William McSwain laid into the district attorney for giving a known violent offender named Hassan Elliott a sweetheart plea deal on a gun offense.
Mr. McSwain also bashed Mr. Krasner for not pushing to keep Elliott behind bars in 2019 while he faced cocaine charges. Elliott was linked to a deadly shooting later that year. When SWAT teams showed up at his door to arrest him in 2020, he gunned down a police officer. Elliott pleaded guilty to federal murder charges in January.
Mr. Dugan said Mr. Krasner’s time in office has been shaped by his application of a non-incarceration policy for “hardened criminals” instead of for only low-risk offenders.
“People having a bad day, we could try to help them,” he said. “But these criminals that are doing this with ill intent, they have to be held accountable. People are tired of it.”
The former judge has won over some influential friends among the city’s unions, including heavyweights such as the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council.
Those relationships are paying off. Campaign finance reports published last week show Mr. Dugan outpacing Mr. Krasner by more than 2-to-1, with union contributions making up about half of his $427,000 campaign war chest.
However, Mr. Dugan’s tough-on-crime campaign comes amid the city’s rapidly improving public safety situation: Philadelphia police recorded 269 homicides last year, the lowest figure in more than a decade. The city saw 562 homicides in 2021, when Mr. Krasner was reelected to a second term.
The incumbent prosecutor has claimed credit for the homicide decrease during candidate debates, but Mr. Dugan has argued that efforts by Mayor Cherelle Parker and Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel have produced fewer slayings.
The Democratic primary for Philadelphia’s district attorney race is scheduled for May 20.
