Philadelphia criminal justice attorney on crime surge: It's 'out of control'
Bill Brennan, a criminal justice attorney in Philadelphia, joined 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss the crime wave after a Democrat congresswoman was carjacked in broad daylight.
Philadelphia, known as the City of Brotherly Love, has had 96 homicides so far this year, falling one murder short of the notoriously violent Chicago three months into 2022.
As of Monday, there had been 96 homicide victims in Philadelphia in 2022.
According to Philadelphia Police Department statistics, that represented a 9% spike from the 88 homicide victims the city recorded at the same time last year. At the end of 2021, Philadelphia recorded a total of 562 homicide victims, compared to 499 in 2020 and 356 in 2019.
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By comparison, Chicago has seen 97 homicide victims this year as of Monday, a spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department, told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
From Jan. 1 through March 7, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. local time, Chicago police recorded 372 shooting incidents that impacted 432 victims, the spokesperson said by email.
The gruesome statistic comes as Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw was expected to provide an update Tuesday afternoon following the deadly police shooting of 12-year-old Thomas Siderio, who investigators say first fired shots at approaching officers last week.
The scene of a shooting of a 12-year-old girl, who was hospitalized in stable condition in February 2022, police said. (FOX29 Philadelphia WTXF)
Amid the controversy, Philadelphia police officials sounded the alarm about what they described as an "execution style murder" early Tuesday in the city’s Strawberry Mansion section. A man in his 20s sitting in a parked and running car on North 32nd Street was struck 15 times in his face, head and chest. Ballistic evidence showed over 30 shots were fired from two semi-automatic guns. No arrests were made.
Over the weekend, three young men, ranging in age from 18 to 20, were all found shot to death either inside or lying beside a stolen vehicle Saturday evening in Philadelphia's West Oak Lane neighborhood.
"There’s no fear of being caught carrying a gun illegally in the city of Philadelphia," Joe Sullivan, a retired Philadelphia police deputy commissioner, told Fox News Digital by phone Tuesday. "It’s the job of the police and the district attorney to create that perception of fear among bad guys that if you get caught with a gun, there will be swift and certain consequences."
Sullivan argued that Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s policies of not prosecuting or not fully prosecuting gun-related crime in Philadelphia have contributed to a drastic increase of violence.
"You’re always going to have dysfunctionality when the police and the DA are not able to work independently of one another but cooperatively," Sullivan said. "When it comes to violent crime, they need to be on the same page."
District Attorney Larry Krasner addresses the media after a press conference announcing Danielle Outlaw as the new police commissioner on Dec. 30, 2019, in Philadelphia. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)
As a progressive, Krasner has been advocating for criminal justice reform. But Sullivan said the district attorney just needs to hold a small group of repeat violent offenders accountable, meaning if an individual is a previously convicted felon, has a criminal record, or is caught with a gun while selling narcotics, prosecutors should follow the mandatory sentencing guidelines laid out by law.
"You can follow a timeline of the rise in homicide and the rise in violent crime and compare that to when the present DA took office, and you can see the relationship very easily. Without a doubt, the communities that are most impacted are communities of color – somewhere between 85 and 95% of all homicide victims in the city of Philadelphia are citizens of color," Sullivan said.
"What concerns me, whether you’re a reformed DA or a conservative DA, if you have an increase of crime within your jurisdiction, you should be always be willing to take a second look at what you’re doing," he said of Krasner. "But he seems very unwilling to acknowledge that some of his policies have not had the intended consequences."
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In addition to the district attorney, Sullivan also attributed the issue of violent crime to a lack of manpower and morale at the police department from the fallout of George Floyd’s death.
"Like most police departments, Philadelphia is having a very hard time recruiting new applicants," Sullivan said. "We’ve seen a mass exodus of officers to early retirement and transferring laterally to other police departments, so the police department is severely understaffed right now, meaning there’s also very little proactive policing going on."
"The lack of proactive policing is also driven by a perception that there’s a lack of support for the police and a concern of if they get involved in any type of controversial incident how it’s going to be handled by the administration and the district attorney," he said. "You put all that together you have a recipe for disaster."
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