Krasner critic is the last angry man

They say inquiring minds want to know, and there are few minds as inquiring as Ralph Cipriano’s.

Ralph Cipriano is Larry Krasner’s worst nightmare (Photo: Stu Bykofsky)

His long journalistic career as a muckraking reporter was capped by two things — pulling back the curtain on corruption in many institutions, including the Catholic Church, and by suing the Philadelphia Inquirer when one of its editors provided libelous quotes about the truthfulness of Cipriano’s work to the Washington Post. 

Since such a comment could have ended his career, Cipriano did what any angry man would do and sued, The Inquirer settled for an undisclosed sum paid to Cipriano, and issued a public apology from the editor.

[Personal disclosure: Two decades later, I sued the Inquirer and staffer Inga Saffron for defamation. A jury found Saffron’s statements to be “outrageous,” and fined both her and the newspaper in December 2022.]

Putting daily journalism behind him, Cipriano became an author, and then the architect of BigTrial.net, a website supported by James Beasley’s law firm, reporting on legal issues and trials. Cipriano eventually broke from the law firm and continued the blog, last year bringing it to substack.

Cipriano’s forte is criminal justice and police, and he has more cop sources than Dick Tracy.

He is conservative, and has been Philadelphia’s worst nightmare for progressive D.A. Larry Krasner from the day he took office and fired almost three dozen veteran prosecutors, and then announced a long list of crimes he would no longer prosecute.

In “The Godfather” movies, you may recall certain gentlemen suffered  from “a stone in my shoe” that they wished to be removed. Sometimes by a bullet behind the ear, sometimes by a garrote. 

Krasner has police officers charged with removing the reporter when he gets annoying. Two officers, Cipriano learned through an Open Records request, maintain a “working file” on this gadfly reporter, as if he were a criminal menace.

At news conferences, Krasner simply walks away (or runs away), from legitimate questions asked by a legitimate, if hostile, reporter. Most of the rest of the press corps, according to Cipriano, are there to administer belly rubs.

To be fair, on occasion, they take a bite out of Krasner, as detailed here, about chaos in the DAO — District Attorney’s Office.

That’s once in a Blue Moon, while Cipriano was filing reports weekly if not more. 

At my request, Cipriano provided a Greatest Hits List on the twice-elected (non)prosecutor. The document reveals a stunning amount of work and makes you wonder why so much of this reporting is seen nowhere else.

When I was still at the Daily News and Inquirer, Krasner’s useless director of  communications, Jane Roh, was incommunicado. Her wall-building and boss-shielding is particularly hypocritical and despicable from, Roh, a former reporter, who went from shining a light on facts to throwing a basket over them. A DAO assistant, Cameron Kline, was sometimes available, but the office cold-shouldered anyone not seen as “friendly” and Kline couldn’t take it any more and eventually left

Obstruction is not how it’s supposed to work, so last July Cipriano started attending DAO weekly news conferences. He did that, he says, because for three years Krasner and Roh ignored his emailed questions. Three years.

Even in person, Krasner “made a habit of ignoring me and my questions. This is called viewpoint discrimination, and it’s unconstitutional,” says Cipriano, who adds he was twice escorted out by Krasner’s security detail.

A regular news conference attendee, who spoke on condition of anonymity confirms what Cipriano says. 

Krasner  “used to block him off for weeks on end,” but finally took questions from Cipriano — but always last.

Why? 

“So he could offer a plausible answer and then walk away,” making it impossible for Cipriano, or anyone else, to ask a follow up question, which Cipriano always had. “He scripted his questions,” said the other reporter, who described the process as an “arm wrestling contest.”

Cipriano, he says, is “opinionated,” but also  “a legend.”

Does he get out of line?

“No, he just wants and deserves, an answer” to his questions.

Those questions are often off-topic, says another reporter who attends most news conferences. “He’s pushy and rude, but I don’t think that makes him out of line. I think it is Krasner who is out of line to walk out in a huff, like he often does, while being grilled by Ralph.”

He adds that Cipriano is more of a columnist, with a point of view, than a straight news reporter.

Cipriano’s latest crusade concerns an allegation that Krasner covered up a report of domestic abuse involving Leigh Owens, his director of community engagement, and a subordinate, paralegal Corinne Buda, with whom he was having an affair.

Owens later surfaced, Cipriano reported, as the campaign director for mayoral candidate Helen Gym, who refused to answer questions about Owen, as did Krasner.

When Cipriano asked Krasner why he didn’t follow a Mayoral executive order that all complaints of sexual harassment must be reported, Krasner ducked. 

Cipriano is pissed that the mainstream media lets Krasner get away with a lot.

Like that as the city’s chief law enforcement officer he is an investor in the Tiger Building, which owes the city back taxes. That’s personal.

Professionally, “people of color, the people Krasner allegedly cares so much about, are being shot, murdered and carjacked in historic numbers due to his insane policies,” says Cipriano, coming off like the last angry man. “Stores are leaving town because they can no longer afford to have thieves ransack their shelves with impunity.

“Kensington is an open-air drug market and brothel because of Krasner’s permissive policies,” he says.

“Cops no longer do their jobs because they are afraid Krasner will arrest them, and the mayor and the police commissioner will go along with it, and stab cops in the back for doing their jobs,” he continues.

He covers Krasner like a jilted lover with a score to settle, and I don’t mean anything homo about that. I mean the intensity.

When he first told me how he doesn’t get his questions answered I wondered why other reporters would let the D.A. get away with blowing off a colleague. 

When I found out Krasner keeps Cipriano last, it was clear that was done to prevent other reporters from following up, if they were interested in doing that, as they should. 

But maybe they wouldn’t take the side of the last angry man.