Q&A with former Judge and Philadelphia District Attorney candidate Patrick Dugan

Former Army paratrooper and Judge Patrick Dugan finds himself as the sole challenger to firebrand progressive prosecutor and current DA Larry Krasner in a Democratic primary that will ultimately decide who stays – or takes over as – the city’s top prosecutor (the Democratic primary victor is all but assured of becoming the city’s next district attorney since the GOP is not fielding a candidate in November).

Dugan, who says his policies can reduce crime and recidivism, sat down with City & State to discuss his upbringing in the city, his approach to justice and how the Democrat is toeing the ‘tough-on-crime’ line in the primary.  

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

For many residents and politicians, a key indicator of a safe neighborhood is whether or not parents and grandparents can spend time on their porches. What have you heard from older Philadelphians while campaigning? 

We used to think that that was a big deal living in the city – sitting on the porch if you were lucky enough to have one, or you just sat on your front steps. That's how the neighborhood would intermingle. All the kids would just run up and down a block and it was almost like a festival, particularly in the summertime. 

I remember so many ladies coming over and sitting on the steps with my mom, or my mom going down the street to sit on the steps with the other ladies and drink their coffee, most of them smoking cigarettes. Unfortunately, my mom died of lung cancer because she smoked so darn long, but it was part of the family and the neighborhood. 

We had these white steps and we would watch my grandmother come out and scrub the steps. People take pride in them, but unfortunately, in a lot of neighborhoods, they're scared to come out. Now they're afraid. I used to go to the corner store all the time. I used to ride the El and the 15 trolley car as a kid. We're afraid to let our children do that now. We're afraid to let our children walk home from school. 

We are not safer. It's pretty much a fact, and most people understand that. And if you're not feeling safe to go to the corner store, I don't see how you're freer.

Are there any cases that have stuck with you from your time in municipal court?

I was on the bench for 17 years in municipal court, and I think the one case that will stay with me forever is a little girl named Danieal Kelly, a little girl who had all kinds of physical disabilities. 

That child died of neglect. She had siblings, she had a parent, she had social workers coming into that house, and nobody took care of that little girl. She died and had maggots on the back of her body. She had lost all kinds of weight, and nobody seemed to care about that little girl. 

And she was thriving in Texas, where she was living with family before being brought back to Philadelphia. The teachers who came and testified talked about what a vibrant young lady she was, with a great laugh. And then to see what she was about 10 or 11 years old, when yet all these adults in her life and nobody seemed to care about her – that one stays with me. 

But I’ve had some great days, too. I have people who graduate from one of our courts, like Veterans Court, and they come in and say, ‘Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for giving me my family back.’ We heard that time and time again. In Veterans Court, there was a less than 10% recidivism rate. When it was rocking and rolling, we were hearing more than 100 cases a year; frankly, we've been down to not much more than two dozen these last couple years. That's due to the lack of cooperation from our main partner, which is the District Attorney's Office. 

My peers saw the same thing in a court called Dawn's Court, which was for women trapped as sex workers. Out of 481 women who were arrested for prostitution – in a similar program with a holistic type of approach to restorative justice – there was a 79% success rate where they got off drugs and got reunited with their family, and there were 16 drug-free child births. 

I was a president judge a year after Krasner took over, but Dawn's Court just went by the wayside – now we have pretty much zero participants. Despite woman after woman testifying on the record, ‘Thank you for saving my life.’ they're just out there dying on the vine. Nobody's taking care of them. The johns, the people who solicit a prostitute, are mostly men who are coming out there to pay these women to have sex with them. These women are addicted to drugs, are abused and they are abusing these ladies to make them a victim again. There have been zero people who have been charged with that. They're still victimizing people and that's a crime that should be taken care of. We used to bring those men in on a Saturday morning, charge them $250 and force them to watch a video of who these women are. They're your sisters, they're your mothers, they're your cousins, they're somebody's family member. We try to educate them that they’re a human being – and it worked. Those men didn’t come back. They weren't arrested again. These diversion programs work, but we need all partners to be part of it, and the district attorney does not want to be a part of programs like this.

You mentioned a holistic approach to restorative justice. Can you elaborate on that and what it means to you?

When Krasner became the district attorney over seven years ago, I was excited because of what he said on the campaign trail. It appeared that he was going to embrace diversion programs. Seth Williams, for all the issues that he may have had on a personal basis with finances and whatnot, his District Attorney's Office was all in on diversion programs. I'm proud to say that he embraced it, but it stopped happening. 

What we do in diversion court is, we assess each individual. So you got arrested, you have X charge. What are the other underlying issues? Do you need mental health treatment? Do you need substance abuse treatment? Do you need anger management? Do you need help with a job? Do you need help with education? Do you know how to read? And it goes across the board. We assess what it is, but we try to address all the issues for that person. And we have mentors. Mentors are a great aspect of these types of courts we've had in some of the programs, mental health specialists in the room, nurses in the room that triage, particularly up at Kensington and Allegheny. At 3901 Whitaker, there’s the AMP program – Alternative Misdemeanor Program – that Krasner is not a fan of; he is not a very good partner on that. He's not been a partner with the mayor on the wellness court, nor with Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel. I will be a partner with the folks who are also involved in the criminal justice system, and that's including the public defender, obviously, the District Attorney’s Office, the court, the police, the mayor, the Office of Public Safety and the community. I'll be a full partner with everybody, but we have to have that holistic type of approach to save people from coming back to court. That's where they deserve a break, not after running around with a gun.

Do you consider yourself a politician?

I have to say I'm a politician now because I'm running. But no, I'm not a politician. I was a judge, and for 17 years I had to keep my mouth shut unless I said something on a bench. So I couldn't post on Facebook what I feel about what's going on in the nation, city and state. Now I'm just me. I’m not trying to make sure that I have a long career as a district attorney, nor do I want to be the mayor or the governor. All I want to do is help make our city safer for my grandchildren and for other people's grandchildren. I want to go back a little bit when it was a little bit safer. The city's always been gritty, but (I want it to be) a little bit safer for us to play around on our damn streets, and that's it just isn't happening. So no, I guess I'm really not a politician. I'm just Pat Dugan from Fairmount and from Frankford.

How are you pitching yourself to voters to distinguish yourself from the incumbent?

I'm the one who wants to come out and call out Krasner. I think Krasner is the worst thing that's ever happened to Philadelphia. Somebody had to step up. I could just go down policy by policy. The murder rate went up from the day he took office, and it just spiked, and all he wants to do is blame others – it’s COVID or it's a national trend. But it's not a national trend when a man threatens to kill his pregnant girlfriend with a gun, the complaint is made, the arrest warrant is set up, and then Krasner will not charge that person. There's a specific case in 2020 and that man went and killed his pregnant girlfriend a couple weeks later. That man should have been charged because they had a credible witness saying he did this, but Krasner wanted more. I'm sorry, you have to take care of that victim. Now she's a murder victim. That's why there was a spike, because Krasner was not doing the job that he swore an oath to do. He is the fox in the henhouse. He's this guy from the suburbs who has no clue what it's like to go to Overbrook High School or Lincoln High school or to ride the El. He has no clue. He has no compassion for these victims, and there are so many specific cases like this. 

How do you balance your message to a voter who is against mass incarceration but is also concerned about gun crime and retail theft? 

I want to make this clear: I am not for mass incarceration. I don't want to go back to policies that happened 20, 30 years ago. The injustice in the system certainly has to change. So mass incarceration, I don't believe in it, but certainly people who are running around shooting our fellow citizens should be prosecuted and jailed. 

It's just not right that you get shot with an AK-47 and the deal that the Krasner made was for three and a half years for putting somebody in a wheelchair. That's just not the way that it should be done. 

When COVID happened, I was the president judge in municipal court. Men and women were stuck in jail when the world stopped, so I went into the prison. I started COVID Court, where a judge went in with only a mask. I had hearings inside the jails so that we could help expedite those cases … Other judges volunteered to help do it, but I went in there so I could help people have their hearing move forward, and then those who deserved it would get out of jail. 

I also went to SCI Phoenix. A lot of people with long sentences are up there. I went up there for a Veterans Day ceremony and met a lifer, a convicted murderer. We had a conversation and came up with this idea for prisoners to take these classes to become a peer mentor. They got certified to be a peer mentor, and I brought newer defendants from my courtroom to the prison, and we had a round table with them. These men stuck in jail, murderers, people with life sentences, people with 30- or 40-year sentences, were trying to talk to the newer defendants about how to not make the same dumb mistakes that they made so they don't wind up being their cell mate. 

I believe I've done hundreds and hundreds of expungements, so I have a record that I hope people can see through that I do not believe in mass incarceration. But again, if you're going to run around and shoot our fellow citizens here, those criminals have to be taken care of. We have to make our streets safer.

But how do you balance that line of the ‘tough-on-crime’ brand while treating those that are unhoused or facing addiction with dignity and compassion?

So the balance is: you're accountable. If you're going to run around and commit some horrible crimes, you must have a prompt hearing. You have to have a hearing now, not after you carry your gun three, four, five or six times and you get away with it. No, we got to get that first time and then assess whether we can we help this person. And we will try, but we can't just keep giving time and time again with these guns.

I am the judge who authorized the Eviction Diversion Program. I was the president judge and had some great team members who did grunt work on this. I have to give a big shout-out to now Commonwealth Court Judge Matt Wolf. We also worked together with people like (then-City Councilmember) Helen Gym and we created Eviction Diversion Court. $300 million flowed into the landlords, and 46,000 families from Philadelphia avoided eviction. 

As the president judge, I started a resource hub in the basement of the Criminal Justice Center. Anybody who walks into the courthouse – staff members, attorneys, defendants, victims, anybody – could go down there and get help. They could get themselves some mental health appointments, they could try to get their benefits turned on. I'm proud to say that I was the one, along with some very good staff members who came up with that, to just try to help people, because that's who I am. 

Does pursuing federal cases against the Trump administration take away from the city's bandwidth to handle local issues? Is it the role of the DA to ensure that the city is being protected constitutionally from the federal government?

I think anybody with a megaphone should be standing up to Donald Trump. My analysis is that the worst person elected in the history of the City of Philadelphia is Larry Krasner. The worst person elected in the history of the United States is Donald Trump. They both have different political sides but they're almost the same person. When they disagree with you, all they want to do is call you names. When they both came into office, they fired everybody. They're governing by executive orders. Krasner did that with his retail theft policy in 2018. And with the name-calling…they seem to be the same person. 

They’re both on the far side of their political party, and neither has any ambition to come a little bit in and make the tent a little bit bigger. I want my tent to include from the extreme far left to the extreme far right, because when I'm the district attorney, if you commit a crime, we're going to have an issue, particularly if you're running around with a gun. 

No matter what side you're on, if it's a crime, if it's a good person that had a bad day, I'm going to try to help them. 

Krasner likes to blame the economy. It's not the economy; it was your retail theft policy. So our tax base is being drawn away. We're losing stores. Macy's cannot sustain thousands of retail thefts. That's why these stores are leaving, not to mention 52nd Street, not to mention Kensington Avenue, not to mention Lehigh Avenue. These mom-and-pop stores cannot sustain this. When was the last time you wanted to target a Rite-Aid or a Walmart and you didn't have to ask somebody, ‘Could you unlock the deodorant?’ For me, this is all on the failed policies of the District Attorney's Office.

What are your thoughts on the cash bail system?

Cash bail is an economic hold (someone being detained pretrial when they cannot afford to pay the amount set by the court, even if they are not considered a danger). If I get arrested and I get $1,000 bail, I have to pay 10%, so somebody would come and pay $100 bail. So if a poor person gets that and doesn't have $100 bail, should that person be sitting in jail for a month or two months? Absolutely not. 

We have to get much better on cash bail, because people shouldn't have economic holds. Over 50% of the cases that we've had in front of us in municipal court, we ROR – released on recognizance – while we try and look at that. So we've tried to do it. 

Do you believe in capital punishment?

The death penalty is not a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, because, for the most part, I'm a ‘no,’ because there's a moratorium. It's not going to happen. We're just wasting time. 

But if you walk into a kindergarten and shoot 26 people or babies. I'm coming with the death penalty. If you stand over a police officer and pump 10 rounds into his head, yeah, I'm coming at you with the death penalty. But I really don't want to do the death penalty. I prefer not to. It's not going to be a normal course of action for me, but in those crazy, horrible, tragic ways that sometimes these criminals act, yes, I will look at it. It's not a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

How would DA Dugan work with Mayor Cherelle Parker and Police Commissioner Bethel?

When this question was asked at a forum, Krasner actually said that he doesn't work for Mayor Parker, that he doesn't respect the director of public safety and that office. That's been a problem. 

Krasner doesn’t want to work with anybody, because he’s always the smartest person in the room. I look forward to being a partner with Mayor Parker, the police commissioner, and all these other partners in the city, especially the community. I think that Commissioner Bethel and Mayor Parker are responsible for some of the decline in crime because they've changed strategies and policies that Krasner really isn't coming along with them. I look forward to working with the mayor, because she ran on ‘We got to get harder on crime.’ We can't just let everybody go.