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A Philadelphia police officer is in critical condition after getting shot just three miles away from President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in the city on Saturday.
According to one report from the New York Post, an unnamed 31-year-old police officer was shot in the neck during a car stop in Kensington. The officer and his partner were supposedly inspecting a car that they pulled over when they noticed a gun holster, prompting one of the four occupants to flee.
The suspect allegedly fired three shots while he ran, striking the six-year veteran officer in the neck. His partner returned fire before rushing his wounded partner to the nearby Temple University Hospital Emergency, where he remains in critical condition while undergoing surgery as of Sunday morning.
The suspected shooter, along with the other occupants of the car, were quickly put into police custody.
The Philadelphia Inquirer further reported that this victim was now the eighth Philadelphia police officer to get shot in the Pennsylvania city since October.
The incident took place around 7:30 PM ET, just thirty minutes after President Trump began speaking to rally goers at the Liacouras Center at Temple University, and roughly a 10-minute drive away from the shooting’s location.
The president addressed Philadelphia’s crime problems during the speech, promising to provide the city’s police officers with the “respect, protection, and support” they need to drive crime “to zero.”
Vowing to “stand with the heroes of law enforcement,” Trump said he would “surge federal law enforcement resources to places that need them most,” including areas of Philadelphia where crime is “absolutely out of control.”
Trump then faulted the Philadelphia “Soros-backed” Democrat District Attorney Larry Krasner over the city’s crime rates, calling him a “despicable Marxist prosecutor” because “he refuses to prosecute people.”
Trump claimed that, “Krasner has the blood of countless men, women, and children on his hands, including thousands of African American citizens because he refuses to prosecute people.”
“They don’t refuse to prosecute me,” the president told audience members. “I’ve got more prosecutions than any human being. I’ve got more prosecutions than the great Alphonse Capone.”
Prior to his rally, President Trump met with members of law enforcement from Philadelphia, shaking hands with an entire large group while even signing his trademarked gold sneakers on the tarmac next to Trump Force One.
Larry Krasner was elected in 2017 as district attorney of Philadelphia. A self-described “progressive prosecutor,” Krasner has supposedly focused his tenure on reducing incarceration, ending cash bail, and reducing supervision for parolees.
Since Krasner took office on Jan. 1, 2018, Philadelphia saw an average of 488 homicides per year through Dec. 31, 2023. During this same time period from the beginning of 2012 until the conclusion of 2017, the city’s homicide rates averaged 282 victims per year, according to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Crime Map and Stats.
Therefore, Philadelphia’s annual homicide rate roughly increased 42 percent on average under six years of Larry Krasner in comparison to the six year average prior to his entering office.
Krasner was ultimately impeached by the Pennsylvania state House in Nov. 2022 for a “lack of proper leadership,” which serves as a “direct and proximate cause of the crisis currently facing the city of Philadelphia.”
The impeachment, which was voted largely along party lines, came shortly after the city saw record high homicide rates with 562 murders in 2021, and 514 more in 2022.
Shortly after the vote, Democrat Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler issued a court order declaring that the district attorney’s actions failed to meet the legal impeachment thresholds. Krasner’s impeachment trial was later postponed by the state Senate, followed by the Commonwealth Court’s decision to uphold Ceisler’s previous ruling.
