It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, which I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet…

The text above comes right out of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, describing the night her monster finally comes to life. Looking back, it was a dreary night in November 2017 when Larry Krasner was elected district attorney of Philadelphia and a different monster was, in fact, created.

The story of Frankenstein is more than 200 years old, but the premise and parable of it is fresh and alive in Philly, almost — dare I say — fresh as a corpse waiting for a jolt?

Just as Dr. Victor Frankenstein unleashed his morbid experiment onto the villagers back in the 1700s, D.A. Krasner has made a macabre social experiment of his own, not only wreaking havoc on the City of Brotherly Love, but causing the deaths of more than a few innocent villagers with the monster he created.

Yes, it was Larry Krasner-stein who campaigned for district attorney with a promise of ending cash bail because of its disparate impact on low income people, and a new era of “progressive” law enforcement. Nowhere in that promise was it acknowledged that somebody booked for a violent crime would very likely re-offended while out on free or reduced bail.

Because in a city where criminals call the D.A. “Uncle Larry” (for his lenient, soft-on-crime practices of dropping charges and releasing alleged murderers right back into communities) it seems our law enforcement officials just don’t care what the criminals do AFTER they are given a pass under the guise of justice and reform.

And that is unfortunate for the families of Tyree Tyrone, Sgt. James O’Connor and Milan Lincar — and many others.

D.A. Krasner has made a macabre social experiment of his own, not only wreaking havoc on the City of Brotherly Love, but causing the deaths of more than a few innocent villagers with the monster he created.

It was Krasner’s warped social experiment of bail reform that launched a chain of horrid dominoes that caused these men’s untimely and preventable deaths.

The accused murderers of O’Connor, Tyrone and Lincar were out on the street, and they shouldn’t have been.

Krasner did not create the monstrous crimes of Hasan Elliot, but this mad scientist gave him the jolt of freedom so he could commit not one, but two murders.

Elliot was out on parole for a firearms charge when he was arrested for cocaine possession. Krasner’s office let him waltz out of court.

Elliot then allegedly shot and killed Tyree Tyrone and pumped 16 shots out of a rifle on March 13, 2020, ultimately killing Sgt. James O’Connor of Philadelphia Police SWAT as he tried to serve an arrest warrant to him for that same murder. Sixteen shots — remember that. 

Sixteen bullets from a known criminal openly identified as a gang banger member of the 1700 Scattergood Gang — a violent drug-trafficking crew that sold hard drugs and had an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons in a Frankford stash house. 

Mary Shelley’s monster was over eight feet tall, and Hasan Elliott’s rap sheet was just as long.

Once again, the experiment went from bad to worse when 25-year-old Temple University graduate Milan Loncar took his rescue mutt for a walk in his Brewerytown neighborhood earlier this month.

READ MORE — Linda A. Kerns: Krasner’s decarceration fascination contributes to Philly’s skyrocketing murder rate

Loncar was approached by two men who robbed him. He didn’t fight or protest. Still, one of them shoved a gun into his chest and pulled the trigger. He died, still holding onto the leash of his dog when police found his body.

The triggerman was upstanding citizen David L. Josephus – who had been arrested six times since January 2019. Josephus’ rap sheet includes (before the murder of an innocent dogwalker) aggravated assault, robbery, kidnapping, gun charges, conspiracy, attacking a prison guard and carjacking. 

Seemed like a perfect candidate for lowered bail to Krasner’s office.

On December 29, 2020, Judge Teresa Carr Deni reduced his bail from $300,000 to a $20,000 bond, with only ten percent due for him to walk. 

The Assistant D.A.s on the case — with little guidance from an office gutted of career prosecutors by Dr. Krasner-stein — didn’t make a peep. And weeks later, Loncar was dead on a street corner. 

In Shelley’s Frankenstein, the mad scientist worries his fellow students and professors at the University of Ingolstadt in Germany, who warn him that his practices would have disastrous and irreversible consequences on society and mankind. 

Many have warned us, too, as Krasner has turned an effective D.A.’s office into a social experiment: police, victims’ families, and former prosecutors. 

The results of Krasner’s social experiments have been more than disastrous. So much so that former U.S. Attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania William McSwain described Philadelphia’s rising violence as a “public safety crisis,” and pointed to Krasner as the reason: “It is in part due to the public safety crisis that’s going on in Philadelphia right now, which we think is at least in part due to the DA’s office going soft on crime,” McSwain said.

Krasner asked McSwain to prove that accusation in their much-public pissing match. The proof lies at the gravesites of Sgt. James O’Connor, Tyree Tyrone, and now, Milan Loncar.

Patty-Pat Kozlowski lives and writes in the Riverwards, and believes Herman Munster was the best Frankenstein. yopattypat@gmail.com