In November on 2017, the voters of the City of Brotherly Love voted in a self-proclaimed “progressive prosecutor,” a criminal defense attorney, Larry Krasner, whose campaign website proudly proclaims that:

During his first term, he has supported victims, he has exonerated the innocent, and he has held police accountable. He has reduced future years of incarceration and supervision while helping to drop the jail population. He has focused on the most serious crimes in Philadelphia while working with leaders to address the root causes of violence.

Translation: Mr Krasner hates the police and loves the criminal class. He wants to keep criminals out of jail, and reduce probation times.

His policies include ending criminal charges against those caught with marijuana possession, ending cash bail for those accused of some misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, reducing supervision for parolees, and seeking more lenient sentences for certain crimes. During his time in office, he has advocated for greater police accountability and pursued police misconduct.

Mr Krasner made no secret of his plans when he first ran for office, and the good citizens of Philadelphia elected him to become District Attorney. Clearly, the majority of Philadelphians are perfectly comfortable with hating the police and coddling criminals.

The draconian, economy-destroying reaction to the COVID-19 panicdemic — and no, that’s not a misspelling; panic is exactly how the response should be characterized — included mass job losses, and many communities put eviction moratoria in place, so those who could not — or would not — pay their rent wouldn’t be thrown out of the apartments in which they lived.

Well, evictions have resumed, and the left are unhappy. It’s very difficult to proclaim that people should be able to simply live without paying rent to property owners, so now the left are using the tactic of complaining about how evictions are handled.

‘I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy’: Housing advocates say eviction process in Philly must change

During a two-hour hearing, tenants and attorneys described a system that’s violent and traumatic.

By Aaron Moselle | Wednesday, June 21, 2023 | 5:19 PM EDT

The knock on the door startled Mark Person.

The person waiting outside shocked him.

It was a deputy landlord-tenant officer. And he was there to evict Person from his Roxborough apartment.

“He looked at his watch and said I had 10 minutes, and that he had others to serve and that I had to hurry up and be out. There was no notice of courtesy — just him standing with his hand atop his pistol like a cowboy Western,” said Person.

As has been journalistic practice in recent times, the article begins with a sort of human-interest hook. The original from WHYY, Philadelphia’s National Public Radio station is not behind a paywall.

As we have previously noted, a deputy landlord-tenant officer had an eviction go bad, and a woman, over $8,000 behind in her rent, being kicked out was shot in the head.

Naturally, it didn’t take long before the Usual Suspects were up in arms, as the furthest left Democratic mayoral candidate, Helen Gym Flaherty — who, thank the Lord, lost in the primary — to politicize it. She tweeted:

While details are still coming to light, I’m appalled by today’s shooting at Girard Court Apartments and my heart is with the impacted families.

I’ve raised alarm bells for years about our city’s terrible eviction practices and worked to reform them.

So, what did we have? The family were more than $8,000 in arrears on their rent, which was apparently forgiven by the owner, in lieu of an agreement that they’d move out by the end of 2022. But the family wanted to stay, and petitioned the court to extend, for an unspecified period of time, a petition which was denied. If the eviction was being carried out on March 29^th, the tenants had stayed three months beyond their agreed evacuation date.

In a subscribers-only article, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that City Councilcritters:

Jamie Gauthier and Kendra Brooks called for hearings in April after a deputy landlord-tenant officer shot a woman in the head during an attempted eviction lockout in North Philadelphia. Police said a struggle ensued between 35-year-old tenant Angel Davis and the privately contracted officer, who has still not been identified. The deputy discharged a weapon and struck Davis, who was hospitalized in critical condition.

The shooting sparked a protest and shined a light on a shadowy corner of the city’s legal system — one that housing advocates said is long overdue for sweeping reforms. Calls ranged from increased notice before lockouts occur to ramping up social service outreach to higher training standards and transparency.

The liberal councilcritters don’t like the system, don’t like it at all!

Instead of relying on sworn law enforcement personnel, Philadelphia’s courts allow a private for-profit attorney known as the landlord-tenant officer to carry out eviction orders in exchange for the right to collect millions in fees from landlords. The landlord-tenant officer in turn deputizes independent contractors hired to serve final notices and enforce lockouts.

Gauthier, a Democrat who represents West Philadelphia, described it as a profit-driven arrangement that lacked the oversight standards of other government agencies.

“There is no public bidding process, no standard for how to execute evictions, no mandatory training or law enforcement certification for deputies, and no accountability and oversight,” Gauthier said.

There is an unspoken undercurrent in all of this, that the left would like for all evictions to be handled by the sheriff. Some evictions in Philly still are, but the private system is less expensive for property owners, and thus more frequently used. If the City Council can increase the costs for the landlord-tenant officers, the higher costs could bring the landlord-tenant office to become just as expensive as having the sheriff handle things.

Lawmakers gathered reform ideas from housing attorneys and people who have been evicted. Brooks’ office said the Landlord-Tenant Office was created under state law but the city is exploring whether it has power to enact certain reforms — like requiring a detailed contract between the court system and the office. There currently isn’t one in place.

“(H)ousing attorneys and people who have been evicted,” huh? “(H)ousing advocates,” as quoted above, huh? In other words, people on one side of the issue.

And thus we come back to Larry Krasner, the prosecutor elected on a promise not to prosecute so much. Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal is pretty lousy in her job, but at least she hasn’t promised to refuse to do evictions. The obvious question becomes: if the City Council can eliminate the Landlord-Tenant Office, and push all evictions onto the Sheriff’s Department, would the city not see a Democratic candidate for sheriff make a campaign promise not to enforce any eviction orders? That, after all, would make “housing advocates” and their fellow travelers very, very happy, as it would for the people who see landlords as being Snidely Whiplash, tying Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks.

The left have been slowly — and some would argue not-so-slowly — turning the City of Brotherly Love into a crime-and-drug-addiction filled [insert vulgar term for feces here] hole, and if the left can somehow deprive honest people of their property by refusing to enforce evictions, that would be the final straw.
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