Philadelphia

And padding city and state coffers with millions of dollars.

On Jan. 23, 2007, a pair of officers from the Philadelphia Police Department’s Narcotics Field Unit (NFU) received information from a “reliable source” that drug sales were being conducted in the vicinity of 22nd and Jackson Streets, on the city’s south side. “Numerous B/Ms” — NFU officers Reginald Graham and Sylvia Jones would later write in a […]

In 2012, Gilbert Narvaez was convicted on drug-dealing charges and sent to a Pennsylvania prison for a three- to eight-year sentence. Narvaez maintained his innocence and argued that he was the victim of a bad cop named Christopher Hulmes, who claimed that in 2011 he had seen Narvaez in Philadelphia’s Fairhill neighborhood peddling narcotics. “He was just […]

In early February, the Philadelphia City Council made history: It voted unanimously in favor of ending the use of cash bail. The resolution, passed February 1, urges the district attorney’s office and the courts “to institute internal policies that reduce reliance on cash bail” and called on the state legislature and state Supreme Court to eliminate […]

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is bringing much-needed change to the city’s notoriously ineffective conviction review unit (CRU). The district attorney’s office confirmed to The Appeal that Patricia Cummings, former head of the Dallas County district attorney’s conviction integrity unit, has joined the Philadelphia DA to lead the the office’s review of old cases for evidence […]

For decades, Philadelphia held the dubious honor of hosting America’s largest open-air heroin market in a tangle of pockmarked streets on the city’s north side, known as the “Badlands.” On Tuesday, less than two weeks after Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf declared the overdose crisis a public health emergency, city officials, including District Attorney Larry Krasner and […]

null null By the end of his senior year in a Philadelphia high school in June 2017, Jamal had missed out on completing his certification in the culinary arts, playing on the basketball team, attending prom, and walking across the stage at his graduation. He was barred from working a job to help his mother […]

It didn’t take too much deliberation for the Philadelphia Inquirer to render its guilty verdict against District Attorney Larry Krasner after he took office on January 2: “the first days of Krasner’s administration,” the editorial board intoned nine days later, “seem more about imprudence than jurisprudence” Zing. A rhyme. But what does it all mean? Well, Krasner swiftly ousted […]

Philadelphia implemented the “focused deterrence” model of gang policing, which includes the promise of critical social services. The reality is much different.

Rallies & petitions grow for the rapper Meek Mill
I want to preface what I’m about to say by first making it clear that I’m not a Meek Mill fan.

A pattern of scandals, misconduct, and federal reversals seem to plague the state’s district attorneys.

On Labor Day 2017, Giovanni Jerry Reid of Philadelphia was released from Graterford Prison in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He had served 26 years of a life sentence without possibility of parole, imposed when he was only 16 years old. On that warm, sunny morning, as he took his very first steps as a free adult, […]

In May, Philadelphians went to the polls and made history, voting by a large margin to back civil rights attorney Larry Krasner in the city’s Democratic primary for district attorney. On Sunday, residents awoke to find that the Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board had endorsed Krasner’s Republican opponent, Beth Grossman, a former top prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office. […]

The Washington Post, the Root, and others have recently written about a District of Columbia police officer who was seen in D.C. Superior Court wearing a t-shirt with a white supremacist symbol and the grim reaper holding a rifle and police badge. Under the ugly image of death is the caption “let me see that waistband […]

The future was limitless for Seth Williams when he was sworn in as district attorney of Philadelphia almost eight years ago.

Since Larry Krasner began his campaign for Philadelphia District Attorney, the consensus has been that he will have to win over the stringent objections of the Philadelphia police.