The racist message at the heart of Pennsylvania’s new Act 40

With the enactment of Act 40, which strips power from the city’s elected district attorney and hands it to an appointed special prosecutor, I believe Philadelphia has become the Northern equivalent of Jackson, Miss.

The law, which as it made its way through the General Assembly was known as Senate Bill 140, allows the state’s attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor for crimes that occur at or near SEPTA property in Philadelphia.

Because SEPTA stops are nearly everywhere in the city, this new law effectively empowers the state to take over nearly any case that takes place within city limits, and it diminishes the authority of the elected district attorney, Larry Krasner.

By doing so, this law disenfranchises the 155,000 Philadelphians who in 2021 re-elected Krasner, a progressive prosecutor whose policies are the antithesis of the GOP’s tough-on-crime approach.

However, this is not just about policy. It’s about racism. It reflects the paternalistic view by the mostly white, GOP-led state Senate that Black and brown people who make up the bulk of the city’s population should not be left to decide how criminal justice is administered in their own communities.

And this is just the latest attempt by the legislature to target Krasner, who was the subject of an unsuccessful — and misguided — impeachment effort in Harrisburg just last year.

We’ve seen this same kind of thing play out earlier this year in Jackson — a majority Black city where a mostly white and Republican state legislature sought to appoint special judges and prosecutors to usurp the authority of elected officials in the city. It was signed into law in April by Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican.

The move was met with both local and national outrage, as residents challenged the law in state court. The U.S. Justice Department also filed suit, calling the legislation exactly what it was: a racially discriminatory policy that targeted Black people.

But that’s the kind of thing one might expect in Mississippi — a state whose history of slavery, followed by decades of Jim Crow and violent racial oppression, is well-documented.

While Pennsylvania, a Northern state with a plethora of hate groups, has witnessed the number of race-based hate crimes skyrocket from 62 in 2020 to 199 in 2022, I never expected to see Mississippi’s policies enacted in a predominantly Black corner of the commonwealth. Clearly, I was not watching closely enough.

A spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said that he signed the new law because the approval of the state budget was contingent upon the enactment of a package of bills that included the Act 40 legislation.

Nevertheless, the measure undercuts a duly elected official in the state’s largest city, and it undermines voters like me — people who voted for both Krasner and Shapiro.

State Sen. Sharif Street, the state Democratic Party chair whose 3rd Senatorial District includes parts of Philadelphia, voted against the legislation and believes it is unconstitutional.

“It’s unconstitutional because Philadelphia is the only … majority Black and brown county, and that’s the only place where it applies,” Street told me in an interview on WURD Radio. “Because it doesn’t just say everywhere where there’s SEPTA, because that would include all of our surrounding counties. No, it says only in the county of the first class … basically the suggestion of the bill is that Philadelphians aren’t responsible enough to choose our own prosecutor.”

» READ MORE: What was Larry Krasner’s biggest offense? Correctly calling out a racist criminal justice system. | Solomon Jones

Street, who called Act 40 a law enforcement measure that’s masquerading as a transportation law, said the legislation prevents state funding from being used to create the office of the special prosecutor. That means the funding for such an office would have to come from the city of Philadelphia — a fact that should be troubling to all of us.

Given that it would be up to the state attorney general to actually appoint the special prosecutor, Street believes the best way to stop the bill from being implemented is to pressure the attorney general not to do so because the bill does not pass constitutional muster.

In the meantime, I fully expect that the law will be challenged in court. Krasner told me as much in a WURD interview. He said he plans to fight for the right to represent the people who elected him.

Whatever happens, I’m convinced Krasner’s troubles stem from the fact that he had the temerity to try to change a racist criminal justice system from the inside. He’s exonerated the wrongly convicted, turned away the testimony of crooked cops, and charged police officers who’ve killed unarmed people from Philadelphia’s poorest communities.

In other words, Krasner did what the people elected him to do, and we must fight to make sure he stays.