Progressive Prosecutors And Rising Crime
– By Howard Sierer –
Who is your district attorney? Probably over 95% of Americans couldn’t answer that question, even though district attorneys are elected officials and appear on ballots along with mayors and city councils. Taking advantage of that relative anonymity, progressive activists backed by ultraliberal billionaire George Soros have radically changed local law enforcement for the worse in a number of cities.
Approximately 90 percent of criminal cases in the U.S. are handled by 2,300 elected district attorneys spread across 3,143 counties. The rest are prosecuted by U.S. attorneys operating under the Department of Justice. Until recently, elected county district attorneys enforced criminal laws regardless of their party affiliation and were largely out of the public eye with the occasional exception of a publicized murder case or big-dollar corruption prosecution.
Over the last 30 years, they played a critical role in driving down crime rates, which peaked in 1992, by prosecuting violent criminals while at the same time creating thousands of alternatives to incarceration, such as drug courts, domestic violence courts, mental health courts, and other highly successful programs.
But what happens if a district attorney refuses to execute the laws of the land? We are witnessing the results today in a dozen or more Democratic cities across America with progressive district attorneys.
Progressives are motivated by two beliefs. First, the entire criminal justice system is systemically racist. Second: the only way to fix the system is to dismantle it by replacing law-and-order district attorneys with pro-criminal and anti-police district attorneys.
While most of us associate police with local law enforcement, prosecutors, not police, are the actual gatekeepers of the criminal justice system. District attorneys decide whether to file charges and which charges to file. By replacing traditional prosecutors with attorneys who see defendants as victims, liberal law professor Rachel Barkow says it has been possible “to reverse-engineer and dismantle the criminal justice infrastructure.”
Progressive prosecutors have openly and blatantly implemented their “defendants as victims” policies. Kim Foxx of Chicago, the first big city Soros-funded progressive prosecutor, unilaterally raised the bar for prosecuting felony shoplifting from $300 per incident to $1,000 per incident, essentially declaring open season on retail stores.
Rachael Rollins, the former district attorney of Suffolk County (Boston), posted a list of 15 misdemeanors her office would not prosecute, including trespassing, shoplifting, larceny under $250, disturbing the peace, receiving stolen property, operating a vehicle with a suspended or revoked license, wanton or malicious destruction of property, and possession with intent to distribute illegal drugs.
Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascon issued a written directive to his 1,000 prosecutors detailing the 13 misdemeanors that “shall be declined or dismissed before arraignment and without conditions” unless certain exceptions or other “factors” exist.
The results of these and similar policies have been disastrous, especially for the primarily black neighborhoods that are home to most of the real victims.
In the five years before 2018, when Larry Krasner was elected in Philadelphia, there was an average of 271 homicides per year. Since 2018, there have been an average of 457 per year—of which 83 percent of the victims were black.
In Chicago, in the six years before Kim Foxx became state’s attorney for Cook County in 2017, there was an average of 510 homicides per year. That number rose to 660 in her first year, and through 2022 it averaged 666 per year—with over 75 percent of the victims being black.
These and other progressive prosecutors are usurping the constitutional role of state legislatures. Once elected, these prosecutors refuse to prosecute entire categories of crimes that have been enacted in their states. They justify their refusal by claiming “prosecutorial discretion.”
Prosecutorial discretion provides wide latitude in determining when, who, how, and even whether to prosecute apparent violations of criminal law. Importantly, prosecutorial discretion properly implemented applies to individual cases and relies on factors such as the strength of the case and the prosecution’s general deterrence value.
However, it does not give prosecutors the power to redefine crime and punishment. By refusing to prosecute entire categories of crime, progressive prosecutors are in effect repealing criminal statutes and acting in place of the legislature.
Voters are acting to restore law and order after seeing crime increase, retail stores close and entire neighborhoods become war zones. Voters in Baltimore and San Francisco have ousted progressive prosecutors Marilyn Mosby and Chesa Boudin, respectively. Kim Gardner of St. Louis and Rachael Rollins of Boston have resigned under ethical clouds. George Gascon in Los Angeles has barely survived two recall petitions.
The lesson for voters across America is to pay more attention to otherwise “low visibility” local races such as those for district attorney and sheriff. Law and order should not be partisan issues.
