Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (Credit: Matt Rourke, Associated Press)
Normally, using someone’s personal tragedy to make a political statement is wrong. I try to avoid it whenever I can.
That’s why I hesitated to write this column. I thought that maybe I should cover Trump’s really unfortunate, incredibly disrespectful assault on the East Wing.
Or possibly remind you again not to vote for Supreme Court justices who are simply Planned Parenthood escorts in black robes.
Or critique the “Delco accents” in the most recent HBO outing, “Task.”
Or, I don’t know, rail against Congress for not ending the shutdown.
But the voice in my head, the one with the authentic Delco accent kept saying one word, one name: “Kada.”
And I knew that I didn’t have a choice not to write about her.
You know who I’m referring to. Kada Scott was a beautiful and talented young woman murdered by a worthless piece of trash whose name won’t be mentioned here.
The term “beautiful and talented” is overused these days, but in Kada’s case they were a perfect fit. Kada was killed last week on her way home from her job at an assisted living facility.
So in addition to being beautiful, with an exceptional voice as confirmed by my friend Patty-Pat Kozlowski, she was kind.
It’s rare that a 21-year-old would choose to work with the elderly and the infirm, but she did.
And that’s why her death leaves a gaping hole not only in her family but in the lives of everyone who knew her.
I did not know her. But I am writing this column about Kada, because her death is bigger than one family’s grief. Her death reflects the way we treat women in this country, and in this city, years after the Violence Against Women’s Act was passed, and rape shield laws were implemented, and we recognized that domestic violence was an actual crime.
Part of my anger arises out of how changes to immigration laws have made it virtually impossible for a woman fleeing her abusive gang member partner to be granted asylum.
Part of it comes from seeing women and children who were branded, and raped repeatedly, and told to go home when they sought police protection then told by the Trump administration that they were abusing the system.
But the real reason that I am sitting at this keyboard gazing at a picture of Kada Scott is that I am disgusted at another administration that has continued, with the permission of Democrats citywide, to place women and other vulnerable people in danger.
That administration works out of 3 South Penn Square in Philadelphia. That is the District Attorney’s Office. And as we know, the District Attorney is Larry Krasner.
Krasner had wrought a great deal of damage during his first two terms in office, and is now seeking a third term. He has coasted to victory the last two times, fueled by the envy, the anger and the pettiness of progressives who keep talking blather about an unfair, racist justice system.
I roll my eyes when I hear about the brutal and abusive conditions that murderers and rapists have to deal with at the hands of corrupt police officers.
I gag, literally, when I hear about the horrors of cash bail, and how “alleged” murderers and rapists are forced to spend long periods of time behind bars.
I am so very tired of hearing our prosecutor sound like the most rabid defense attorney.
You might say that a lawyer should have more respect for “technicalities” like due process, and I do. But not the way that Larry Krasner has interpreted it.
He has been on a lifelong crusade to graft his anti-police, anti-establishment, anti-GOP and anti- “anything that isn’t to the left of William Kuntzler” philosophy on to the criminal justice system in this city.
He’s been successful, so successful that the man who very likely murdered Kada Scott was released back into the community after having raped and strangled another woman months before.
Krasner’s supporters have been blaming the judge who set a low bail, and ignore the fact that Krasner was fine with it. He didn’t even fight it, didn’t even try and appeal it.
That is the way it goes in that office, do the minimal amount to keep our streets safe.
Better an alleged rapist on the loose than a confirmed “Krasner voter” in custody.
Kada Scott is dead. And I am using her death to make a political point.
And you can be angry with me for doing that, but I am doing it so that other beautiful, talented and kind young women are not memorialized in death instead of celebrated in life.
Larry Krasner’s office runs on a philosophy that does not respect victims, particularly women.
I can’t do very much about the immigration system of Donald Trump, which shares the same jaded approach to violence against women.
I can’t vote the attorney general out of office.
But I can do my damnedest to change the face of the district attorney in Philadelphia. My vote is one vote, and I am casting it in favor of Kada Scott.
This article was originally published in the Delco Daily Times.
