The suspect in the murder of a 21 year-old Temple University student was arrested on Aug. 14th and charged with eight crimes in connection with an armed carjacking, including aggravated assault, robbery, conspiracy and possession of an unlicensed gun.
A judge set bail that day at $200,000 monetary, meaning the suspect, Latif Williams, 17, had to plunk down a 10% deposit of $20,000 to get out of jail.
The cops did their job. But then it was the duty of the D.A.'s office under Larry Krasner to prosecute the case. What happened next helps explain why Philadelphia today has already set an all-time record of 510 murders, with a whole month left to go in 2021.
On Aug. 20, less than a week after his arrest, Municipal Court Joffie Pittman lowered the bail for Williams to $200,000 unsecured, meaning the defendant had to post no money at all to stay out of jail, but the judge also ordered Williams to be held under house arrest.
The D.A. filed no appeal. On Sept. 16th, Judge Charles Hayden granted the D.A.'s request for a continuance after a "victim/witness failed to appear" in court, according to the Municipal Court docket.
On Sept. 30th, only the second listing for the preliminary hearing in the case, Judge Martin Coleman granted the D.A.'s motion to withdraw all eight charges against Williams, and he was a free man.
According to the cops, Williams shot Collington, who fought back, twice in the chest; the victim died about a half-hour later.
For a teenager, Williams has quite a rap sheet, as well as amazing record of success when being prosecuted by the D.A.'s office under that noted criminal justice reformer, Larry Krasner.
Williams's first arrest dates back to November 2017, the month he turned 13, for robbing a college student on the Temple campus of a cell phone, in addition to assaulting her.
Although he was arrested for that robbery, there is no record of the resolution of that case, which may be due to the youth of Williams.
On July 20, 2019, Williams was locked up for selling drugs. On Aug. 21, 2020, the D.A.'s office under Larry Krasner withdrew the charges against him.
On May 31, 2020, during the George Floyd riots, Williams was arrested for burglary, rioting and looting. According to the police, Williams kicked a police car window out and spit on the cops.
On Sept. 18, 2020, the D.A.'s office under Larry Krasner withdrew all those charges against Williams.
On Nov. 6, 2020, Williams was arrested for selling drugs. On Sept. 10, 2021, the D.A.'s office under Larry Krasner withdrew those charges.
During his short life, Williams's victim racked up another kind of record.
“Our son was and is our hero, and this senseless act crushes us,” she wrote. “Sam spent all of his free time raising awareness for the issues that meant the most to him. In his honor, we will do everything to make sure that there is Justice For Sam.”
Online, friends of Collington, who had campaigned on behalf of Bernie Sanders for president, were trying to stop people from turning Collington's murder into a political weapon against the campaign to reform the criminal justice system that's led in this town by D.A. Krasner.
This time, apparently, the incompetence of Krasner's office was responsible for the murder of one of his own supporters. But that's not how Douglas Leake saw it.
Online, Leake described his friend Sam Collington as a "devout Marxist" who "would not want his death to be used to push any sort of right-wing pro-police agenda such as stop and frisk."
"We must not let this travesty spawn oppression of any kind," Leake wrote. "I will never stop defending his legacy of radical justice, peace and equality."
A veteran prosecutor, however, noted that the latest episode of the incompetence of Krasner's office in prosecuting gun crimes should have nothing to do with politics.
"There's nothing right-wing about holding violent criminals accountable while respecting the Constitution, due process and the right to a jury trial," the veteran prosecutor said. "The job of the police and the prosecutors is to lawfully acquire evidence and convict violent criminals, to protect the rest of us."
With apologies to Douglas Leake, Sam Collington now joins a long list of innocent victims of Larry Krasner's "progressive reforms that includes:
-- Hassan Elliott, an armed and dangerous gang member and convicted drug dealer, who walked out of prison a free man after the D.A. gave him a sweetheart sentence on a gun pinch, and then the D.A. looked the other way on three alleged parole violations for Elliott. Elliott proceeded to shoot and kill Corporal James O'Connor, who was trying to serve him with an arrest warrant for murder.
-- Razique Bumpas, whom, after the D.A.'s office failed to approve two arrest warrants for, shot and killed Ishan Charmidah Rahman, a 39 year-old pregnant woman; her unborn baby also died.
-- Josephus Davis, a two-time convicted robber who was arrested again for an alleged carjacking and an aggravated assault, has his bail lowered in the two new cases from a total of $300,000 all the way down to $32,000, so his family had to plunk down only $3,200 to spring him out of jail. Davis proceeded to shoot and kill Millan Loncar, a recent Temple grad who was out walking his dog.
-- Taray Herring, a convicted sex offender with a dozen arrests on his rap sheet whom Krasner let out of jail because the D.A. was afraid he'd catch Covid, allegedly killed, hacked up and dismembered the body of Peter Gerold, 70, a licensed masseuse.
-- Tyree Miles, whom the D.A. dismissed a total of a dozen charges against on three different occasions, after he was accused of first attacking his girlfriend, then the cops, and finally his mother, brother and other relatives. Miles was finally charged with involuntary manslaughter, after his 10 year-old niece shot herself to death with her uncle's gun, a weapon that Miles had illegally and carelessly stored at her house.
-- Michael Banks, whom the D.A.'s office plea-bargained a felony gun charge against down to a misdemeanor, got involved in a neighborhood shoot out, and shot and killed Zamar Jones, a 7-year-old boy who was sitting out on his front porch, playing with his toy race car and scooter.
-- Adriano Coriano, whom the D.A.'s office had an arrest warrant for, for allegedly violating a protection order by repeatedly stalking, harassing and assaulting his ex-wife. While the D.A.'s office sat on that arrest warrant for six straight days, Coriano shot and killed his ex-wife, Gladys Coriano.
And these are just a few of Krasner's greatest hits. There are so many more that I've listed in detail, along with other atrocities committed by the D.A., on a separate webpage on ralphcipriano.com that's dubbed "Toxic Justice."
In a city's that's been diehard Democratic since 1952, you have to wonder what the tipping point is, when it comes to dead bodies.
500? 600? 1,000?
How many dead bodies will it take before the voters of this city realize that the Larry Krasner social experiment isn't working, and that the costs, in terms of flesh and blood, is just too high?
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