PHILLY D.A.

• Author: Ciaramella, C.J.
• Position: DOCUMENTARY

Philly D.A., an eight-part documentary series by Independent Lens on PBS, follows progressive Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a former civil rights attorney who made a career out of suing the police, through his tumultuous first few years in office.

Krasner's was among the first and most significant victories in a well-funded campaign to elect civil libertarians to district attorney offices across the country, but he encountered political headwinds as violent crime in the city spiked.

For Krasner, getting elected was the easy part. Philly D.A. shows him facing fierce attacks for refusing to pursue the death penalty, for his support of supervised injection sites, and for his attempts to rein in the police. After his improbable victory, he immediately begins trying to ram reforms through a recalcitrant system. Impolitic and impatient, he fires dozens of line prosecutors and refuses to kowtow to police unions.

The costs of the chummy relationship...