The impeachment articles charge that Larry Krasner has been “derelict in his obligations” to prosecute crimes in a city struggling with a spike in gun violence.
Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives filed articles of impeachment on Wednesday against Larry Krasner, the unabashedly progressive district attorney of Philadelphia, charging that he had been “derelict in his obligations” to prosecute crimes in a city struggling with a spike in gun violence.
In a news conference, State Representative Martina White, a Republican who represents part of northeast Philadelphia and is the prime sponsor of the impeachment resolution, accused Mr. Krasner of being “responsible for the rise in crime across our city,” saying that he had “tipped the scales of justice in favor of criminals.”
The articles were filed two days after a legislative committee issued a report castigating Mr. Krasner’s nearly five-year tenure as district attorney, but not recommending impeachment. The committee, charged with investigating how laws are enforced in Philadelphia, has not completed its work. But at the news conference, State Representative Kerry Benninghoff, the House majority leader, said the duty of the legislature was “to not stick our head in the sand like a lot of other people and do nothing and hope this suddenly gets better.”
This first step in the impeachment process, coming on the last scheduled legislative day before the midterm elections, had been anticipated and condemned as “a political stunt” by Mr. Krasner last week.
“Part of the Republican playbook, as you well know, is to point a finger at large, diverse cities and say, ‘Large, diverse cities are lawless,’” Mr. Krasner told reporters on Friday, saying that lawmakers seeking to impeach him were trying “to erase Philadelphia’s votes” and attributing the move to a “superheated election cycle.”
His office declined to comment on Wednesday.
Crime has become a central focus of Republican campaigns around the country, particularly in the critical contest for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. The Republican candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz, has repeatedly accused his Democratic opponent, John Fetterman, of being “soft on crime,” and has at times tried to tie Mr. Fetterman to Mr. Krasner.
Impeachment is rare in Pennsylvania, but the threat of it less so. Republican lawmakers in recent years have raised the prospect of impeaching Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and Philadelphia election officials for how they handled the counting of ballots.
Republican state lawmakers have talked about impeaching Mr. Krasner since the beginning of the year, an effort that became official in June, when several announced that they were starting the process. Two weeks later, they created the House Select Committee on Restoring Law and Order, which issued the report on Monday.
If the House, where Republicans hold a significant majority, votes to impeach Mr. Krasner, the next step would be for the State Senate to hold a trial. The state Constitution requires a two-thirds vote to convict, which would entail at least five Democrats and an independent joining all of the Senate Republicans.
The drive to impeach Mr. Krasner is the latest salvo between conservative state governments and a growing cadre of liberal district attorneys, who have been elected and re-elected promising to make changes like ending cash bail or decriminalizing low-level offenses. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended an elected prosecutor who publicly vowed not to prosecute those seeking abortion and removed another from a high-profile case because of her opposition to the death penalty. Republican state officials and lawmakers have made efforts to curb the authority of progressive prosecutors in Georgia, Missouri and Virginia as well.
Over the past few years, gun violence has risen sharply in Philadelphia, as it has in cities and even small towns across the country. More than 400 people have been killed in Philadelphia this year so far, and there have been more than 1,000 carjackings. The city has tried a range of solutions, including curfews and funding for community groups.
But many local politicians and community activists say that an explosion in the number of guns in the city is a driving factor; Pennsylvania judges and Republican state lawmakers have repeatedly blocked attempts by Philadelphia to adopt stricter local gun laws.
Mr. Krasner has argued that focusing heavily on illegal gun possession, which the police in the city have been making arrests for in record numbers, does little to reduce violence. At the same time, he has said, it takes resources away from investigating more serious crimes, including murders, a majority of which go unsolved.
Mr. Krasner’s approach has led to some friction with other city leaders. Philadelphia’s police commissioner, Danielle Outlaw, said in a recent statement that the police were repeatedly arresting people with “extensive criminal histories,” and that “the question needs to be asked as to why they were yet again back out on the street.” The House included her statement in the articles of impeachment.
The report that the House committee issued on Monday included data showing that the number of illegal gun possession cases ending in convictions had fallen significantly in Philadelphia, with a much higher proportion being withdrawn or dismissed there than in most other places in the state. Mr. Krasner has attributed this decline in large part to the failure of witnesses to show up in court.
In the city itself, even some of those who have grown critical of Mr. Krasner found little satisfaction in Wednesday’s announcement.
“There are far less people being prosecuted for what they did, and the city is in terrible, terrible straits,” said Rita O’Brien, 67, a Democrat, who was on her way into a neighborhood supermarket in north Philadelphia. But just as they have on gun laws, she said, state lawmakers were trying to inject themselves into matters that should be left to the city.
“The Republicans have overstepped in a big way,” Ms. O’Brien said.
The articles of impeachment charge that Mr. Krasner’s office has dismissed dozens of experienced prosecutors, instituted polices of declining to charge people arrested for certain crimes and seeking low sentences in others, and abused its discretion in certain specific cases.
The first article of impeachment charges that Mr. Krasner’s approach to enforcing laws rose to the level of the “misbehavior in office,” which the state Constitution cites as a basis for impeachment. The second article charges him with having “obstructed the efforts” of the legislative committee, recounting the months of battles between the committee and Mr. Krasner’s office, including a lawsuit challenging the committee itself and a vote by the House finding Mr. Krasner in contempt for not complying with a subpoena.
Not all members of the House committee apparently knew that the announcement of impeachment was coming today, with State Representative Danilo Burgos, one of the two Democrats on the five-person committee, telling a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer on Wednesday that it was “starting to look like it’s been their plan all along to undermine the electoral process of the voters of Philadelphia.”
State Senator Nikil Saval, whose district includes part of Philadelphia, said that while views of Mr. Krasner varied widely among his fellow Democrats, it was unlikely that many of them would agree to remove him from office, especially since he won re-election last year with nearly 70 percent of the vote.
“If you simply are the majority party, and you disapprove of a particular county official’s way of doing their job and you gin up an impeachment process to remove them — they could do that to anyone,” he said. “It’s existential at that point.”
Jon Hurdle contributed reporting from Philadelphia.
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