So far, the race for district attorney reads like something right out of a Dick Wolf teleplay. You’ve got the hubristic incumbent, a pugilistic, anti-establishment zealot whose yen for decarceration has helped fuel the nationwide progressive prosecution trend. You’ve got the old-school “law and order” challenger, a 35-year prosecutor, decrying the soft-on-crime, revolving-door justice meted out by said incumbent.

And, recently, you had the case study that brings our gripping script to its compelling crescendo: The cold-blooded murder of a young man in Brewerytown who had the audacity to take his dog for a walk; turns out, his alleged murderer should have never been free to kill. Lenient judges, in concert with an acquiescent DAs office, had twice dramatically lowered the bail of scumbag defendant Josephus Davis, despite his history of robberies, a carjacking, and assault while in custody.

Cue the “dun dun”:

In a city with an out-of-control murder epidemic—499 in 2020, the most in 30 years—challenger Carlos Vega has been quick to seize on the case as emblematic of incumbent Larry Krasner’s soft-on-crime orientation. Since Krasner took office, homicides have jumped a whopping 58 percent; of the roughly 9,000 shootings since 2015, just 21 percent led to criminal charges, and less than one-tenth of those resulted in convictions.

“This was never a binary choice between reform and safety—but Larry made it so,” says a former assistant Philly DA who left the office before Krasner took over. “You can’t be dogmatic in this line of work. Zealots will put communities at risk.”

The DA’s own data dashboard shows that, every year of his tenure, Krasner’s office has dismissed or withdrawn more violent cases and gun cases than the year before. In fact, the average annual number of such cases that were dismissed or withdrawn has increased by 85 percent during Krasner’s tenure, compared with the four years before he took office. This despite the fact that, according to the police, more illegal gun arrests were made last year than at any time since 2015.

Mayor Jim Kenney and two police commissioners—Richard Ross and current Commissioner Outlaw—have all criticized Krasner’s crime-fighting record, which lags far behind that of his predecessor, Seth Williams, who himself wound up imprisoned for public corruption. (Philadelphia: There Are No Heroes Here.)

“It’s revolving-door justice,” says Vega, who was chief homicide prosecutor when Krasner fired him and 30 other experienced lawyers in the DAs office on day one of the new administration in 2018. “You send a message when you take someone in and they’re back out on the streets in three to eight hours. Larry says he can’t get convictions because no one wants to testify. Well, who is going to say something if they know that guy is just going to be back out there in a few hours, looking right at you?”

Vega is a prosecutor’s prosecutor; he works arm-in-arm with the police and venerates victims. In our half-hour conversation, just about every sentence contained a subject, a verb and the phrases “public safety” and “representing the victim.” It makes for a stark contrast with Krasner, who spent his career suing the police and who, throughout much of his term in office, has time and again seemed to disrespect the victims of crime prosecutors like Vega take a virtual blood oath to speak for.

So what we have is the makings of a classic criminal justice reform versus law and order donnybrook, a race that might have national implications as to the staying power of all these new-breed prosecutors who prioritize decarceration and holding cops accountable.

But that’s actually too bad, because there is a nuanced argument to be engaged here. The real issue when it comes to crime and punishment in Philadelphia ought not to be so binary: Reform or public safety.

The real question ought to be: Is there a way to reform the criminal justice system while also keeping city streets safe for law-abiding citizens?

After all, the vociferous law and order critics of Krasner—especially recently resigned U.S. Attorney William McSwain and, now, Vega—barely concede that Krasner’s critique of the criminal justice system has merit. Cash bail does criminalize poverty; the death penalty is racist and kills innocent men; and the parole and probation system is not an alternative to incarceration so much as a driver of it, as evidenced by the Harvard study, Less Is More: How Reducing Probation Populations Can Improve Outcomes.

Krasner deserves credit for pointing out these systemic flaws, and working to fix them. His office has exonerated 17 men—17!— who have been falsely convicted and imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. It’s an astounding number, and likely only a fraction of those who have been ill-served by a runaway injustice system.

Rather than acknowledge the flaw, Vega, looking to score points, pounces when I bring up the exonerations: “When you exonerate someone, someone is still dead and someone still killed them,” he says. “Has Larry ever said he’s going to find the real murderer?”

For his part, Krasner tends to obfuscate or just plain hide—this week, he sent an assistant to face the questions about the Brewerytown murder. He refuses to concede that his office’s seeming decarcerate-at-all costs ethos—the plea bargains, the slap-on-the-wrist sentencing requests, the motions for low bail, the releasing of defendants on their own recognizance, the failure to prosecute gun cases—can fuel a culture of lawlessness on the streets.

For all of Krasner’s attacks on Donald Trump, there are glaring similarities: The mismanagement; the inability to work with others; the shoot-from-the-hip drama; and the swallowing up of an agenda by crisis. Murder is Larry Krasner’s pandemic.

“This was never a binary choice between reform and safety—but Larry made it so,” says a former assistant Philly DA who left the office before Krasner took over. “You can’t be dogmatic in this line of work. Zealots will put communities at risk.”

There is a model for a third way. In Delaware County, first term District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer is proving that reform and public safety need not be mutually exclusive, that you can make real systemic inroads without being a de facto accomplice to murder and mayhem.

“When I was running, my opposition tried to say I was going to do for Delco what Larry Krasner has done for Philadelphia,” says Stollsteimer. “There was a flyer distributed with a photoshopped image that was half me and half Larry. But now those same people are coming up to me and saying they were wrong. We’re proving law and order and justice need not be two conflicting ideas.”

Unlike Krasner’s go-it-alone style, Stollsteimer has worked with all stakeholders—cops, judges, public defenders, activists—to make change. He’s made possession of marijuana for personal use a fine, akin to a parking ticket; begun the process of taking back management of the county’s privately-run prison; overseen a 33-percent drop in incarceration over the last year by releasing those in for minor parole or probation violations; and worked with law enforcement to bring proven focused deterrence policing, which Krasner has opposed, to the gun violence hotspot of Chester, where shootings are down this year.

“A lot of reforms, like our marijuana policy, I could have just enacted on my own as part of my prosecutorial discretion,” Stollsteimer says. “But I didn’t want to impose a policy. Lasting change in politics happens through collaboration. So we all sat down together and worked out how to best serve the citizens.”

There’s that stark contrast, again. Who, after all, hasn’t Krasner feuded with? Both police commissioners, the cops, (there were no chants of “fuck the police” at Stollsteimer headquarters on his election night, as there was at Krasner’s in 2017), even Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

It makes you wonder not only about Krasner’s strategic acumen, but also his managerial chops. Before becoming DA, he’d never run anything bigger than his own law office, and it’s shown. The missteps have included the hiring of a cutting edge former prosecutor to train his young guns in the ABCs of progressive prosecution, a move we at The Citizen lauded. Turns out, though, that said consultant, Adam Foss, is being investigated on allegations of sexual assault.

Patricia Cummings, the woman Krasner hired to head the Conviction Integrity Unit—where all those exonerations come from—is the judicial villain of the Showtime documentary series Outcry, the story of the railroading of a Texas high school football star. Cummings represented the kid, and seems to sell him out in the series, making one wonder about Krasner’s judgment: This is your paragon of integrity?

And don’t forget the abuse of power road rage allegations against Krasner’s then-chief homicide prosecutor, Anthony Voci.

The irony is hard to miss. For all of Krasner’s attacks on Donald Trump, there are glaring similarities: The mismanagement; the inability to work with others; the shoot-from-the-hip drama; and the swallowing up of an agenda by crisis. Murder is Larry Krasner’s pandemic. And like Trump, Krasner’s goal doesn’t seem to be to serve you. Rather, as that former ADA told me, it seems to be to do as he’s always done: “Stick his finger in the eye of the system.”

The contrast to Stollsteimer is palpable. At one point in our conversation, I asked the Delco DA about actually putting away bad guys. “I’m personally prosecuting an internet child porn case in Havertown right now,” he said. “It’s the most vile, disgusting stuff you’ve ever seen. There will be no plea deal. I’m more than happy to give this guy a trial. I can’t wait.”

Imagine that, I thought, a prosecutor who believes in prosecuting when the cause is just. “We make a ton of arrests,” Stollsteimer says. “And we have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to gun violence. But that’s no longer just what law enforcement is about.”

That’s the kind of forward-thinking mindset the streets of Philly could desperately use. Here’s hoping that, between now and primary day in May, we get a reasoned debate about how Philly can model a type of law enforcement that reforms what needs reforming but doesn’t allow terrorists to return and run amok in distressed Black and Brown neighborhoods, because in no way is that progressive.