Next Phila. D.A. looks back and ahead

While Williams said driving up the conviction rate, especially for violent offenders, is crucial, he returned throughout the interview to the idea that his job is to make the city safer.

He talked admiringly of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, which has an entire unit dedicated to crime prevention.

"Your family would prefer that you were not shot, not that you were shot and, damn it, the D.A.'s Office handled it well," he said. "There has to be new ways to figure out what it means to be a D.A."

Referring to a "holistic approach," Williams discussed the nontraditional ways he could attack crime, such as reaching out to community groups and schools.

Epps said Williams had brought a number of people, such as victims' advocates and anti-gun-violence groups, who are not "obvious allies to the D.A.'s Office," into the transition process.

Williams said that illegal guns would be a focus of his administration, and that he would lobby to add to state law a Philadelphia-only mandatory sentence for possession of an illegal firearm.

The law would be similar to one in New York City, used to send former New York Giants football player Plaxico Burress to prison for carrying a gun illegally.

"He wants to be a significant voice on decreasing gun violence," Aronchick said. "He's also a public official with a big voice, and lobbying for change is something he feels strongly about."

As Williams talked, he sat behind a neatly organized desk that bore a management advice book, The First 90 Days, written by a former Harvard University professor. He was clearly already grappling with the budgetary headaches he is soon to inherit.

The D.A.'s Office is now operating under a $29 million budget, a deep 9 percent cut from the previous fiscal year.

Williams said Nutter's budget staff had already warned that the administration was seeking a further 7.5 percent reduction in the office's funding in the next fiscal year, which will start July 1.

"I can't spend money like a drunken sailor, but I don't think we can stand a reduction, let alone 7.5 percent," he said.

As district attorney, Williams will oversee 318 assistant district attorneys who have gone two years without a pay raise. The office also has 175 support personnel, far fewer than in similar offices around the nation.

The staff keeps shrinking, he said.

In a city with a widespread problem with witness intimidation, Williams noted, the office has only 23 victim/witness service staffers, eight fewer than on the payroll at the start of 2009.

Williams said that at times, people working in the D.A.'s Office "in many ways feel like they're on a Bataan death march in a system built for failure."

Contact staff writer Craig R. McCoy

at 215-854-4821 or cmccoy@phillynews.com.