Philly DA Larry Krasner warns of charges if federal agents commit crimes
PHILADELPHIA - Philadelphia’s top prosecutor has warned that federal law enforcement officers will be charged criminally if they unlawfully assault or kidnap anyone in the city.
District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, issued a statement Monday after President Donald Trump suggested he might deploy federal agents to Philadelphia. Republican Trump said at the White House on Monday that he was “going to do something,” listing Philadelphia and several other cities he said were all run by liberal Democrats.
Krasner’s statement noted his father and uncles served in the military during World War II to fight fascism.
He said charging federal officers who commit crimes of assault and kidnapping is “the least we can do” to honor people who opposed fascism during World War II as well as “those who are fighting it even now.”
Philadelphia and many other places have experienced large protests over police brutality and racial injustice in recent months, triggered by the May 25 death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, called the targeting of cities led by Democratic mayors “a politicization of federal resources that should outrage all taxpayers.”
Krasner said during a legislative hearing on Tuesday that his office will hold people legally accountable if they shoot people in the head with rubber bullets or engage in crimes.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he will send federal agents into Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico, to help combat rising crime, expanding the administration’s intervention in local enforcement as he runs for reelection under a “law-and-order” mantle.
Using the same alarmist language he has employed to describe illegal immigration, Trump painted Democrat-led cities as out of control and lashed out at the “radical left," even though criminal justice experts say a spike in violence in some cities defies easy explanation.
“In recent weeks there has been a radical movement to defund, dismantle and dissolve our police department,” Trump said at a White House event, blaming the movement for “a shocking explosion of shootings, killings, murders and heinous crimes of violence."
“This bloodshed must end," he said. “This bloodshed will end.”
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