On Tuesday, January 14, Judge Patrick Dugan announced that he would resign from his position as judge of Philadelphia’s municipal court to run in this year’s District Attorney (DA) race. He will be a primary challenger to current District Attorney Larry Krasner, who is seeking re-election.
Krasner, a former civil rights attorney who was backed by progressive organizations and activists, has served as DA since 2018. In that time, not only has Philadelphia’s murder rate drastically decreased, but its incarceration rate has dropped by nearly half since 2015. Seemingly, Krasner has done what many expected and wanted him to do.
However, Patrick Dugan paints a different story. He blames Krasner for the increase in retail theft, which he says drives businesses like Wawa—a local favorite—out of the city. This, of course, ignores the primary driver of retail and grocery theft–poverty. Yet Dugan simultaneously refuses to acknowledge that the policies coming out of the DA’s office are what led to the overall decrease in murder by 40%. He says that the rate decrease is merely “about a pendulum” and “some other things” happening in the streets of our city.
Although Dugan has served as a Municipal Judge for many years in the city, some Philadelphians are sure to be unaware of his record. Dugan has a long history of seemingly siding with the powerful over the powerless. On September 23, 2012, during a community parade for Puerto Rican Day, a Philadelphia police officer was fired from his job for sucker-punching a woman in the face after a review by Internal Affairs. However, when charges against the officer were brought forward, Dugan, himself married to a police officer—which he did not disclose—dismissed the charges in 2013. When critics asked how the judge could be impartial, the then Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey, stated, “That is something that when I heard it certainly is troubling.”
Dugan’s bias towards law enforcement appeared in court again in 2018 when he was forced to step aside due to his bias during the case the DA’s office brought against PPD officer Ryan Pownall, who shot and killed Black truck driver David Jones in the back.
Records show that this same officer shot another person in the back, Carnell Williams-Carney, who was then paralyzed for life. In 2010, Pownall was reinstated and welcomed back to the PPD. It was the second time in 20 years that charges were ever brought against a PPD officer for a shooting.
A more recent incident can be seen in Dugan’s time supervising the head of the Landlord Tenant Officer (LTO) office, Marisa Shuter. Shuter is the wife of another Municipal Judge, David C. Shuter. Unlike other cities, the LTO office is a private organization that employs unaccountable armed contractors to carry out eviction orders of the Municipal Court.
During the time Shuter oversaw the LTO office and Dugan supervised her, there were three shootings by LTOs during evictions in the four-month period of March through July of 2023. One of the victims, Angel Davis, was shot in the head, leaving her hospitalized for two weeks with a traumatic brain injury. This string of violence ultimately led to a pause of LTO evictions in July, which resumed in August. Most recently, a lapse in the LTO office’s insurance policy caused a cessation of operations this past September.
Local community organizer and housing activist Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture told People’s World that Dugan “should have been aware of the dangers of the former Landlord Tenant Office headed by Marisa Shuter and how she carried out evictions. She ran the office as a private, for-profit law firm with no accountability to the public, and thus landlords preferred her office to handle evictions since she charged much less than the Sheriff’s Office.” The community organizer added, “Unfortunately, 2023 saw three LTO shootings and two involved young Black women, Angel Davis, shot twice in the head in March, and Latese Bethea, shot in front of her young daughter in July. How does Patrick Dugan explain himself regarding this?”
In a shocking move, the city’s Democratic Party voted to withhold endorsements for any candidate in this race. This would be the second time in four years Krasner was snubbed despite previous incumbents almost always receiving the endorsement. Ward leaders and Democratic Committee members will be able to endorse candidates for each of the 66 wards and place either candidate or no candidate on their sample ballots to be handed out on Election Day.
Despite this, local progressive Democratic Party members are coming out in support of Krasner, in opposition to “violent, mass-incarceration-drive policies,” as Democratic Committee person Patrick Wargo put it. He added, “Larry Krasner stands for second chances—something we all deserve, especially in a system designed to break us down.”
The original election of incumbent Kranser came just two years after the election of Donald Trump for the first time. Philadelphians seemingly wanted to send a clear message of progressive values and political priorities to the far right. With the fascist MAGA forces now threatening democracy and promising more of the same to come, Philadelphians once again must ask themselves if they want a district attorney who will look the other way or take a stand.
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