Rampant crime in New York: how bail cancellation law made police powerless against violators

New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea has criticized the state's criminal justice system and reiterated his frequent calls for legislative changes. According to him, the current laws, in particular the abolition of bail, simply do not give the police the opportunity to clear the streets of weapons and criminals. Fox 5.

“We are arresting the offender for pushing a woman down the stairs and letting her out back into the street,” Shi said. - This is madness".

It is about New York's newly introduced law, which provides for the abolition of bail for non-violent crimes. Violators of the order are arrested, the date of the trial is set and released.

Another example of the dangers of this practice relates to the brutal, unprovoked attack on a woman in Chinatown on Monday 31 May. Police arrested 48-year-old Alexander Wright in this case. And he has a fairly extensive criminal reputation.

Police records indicate that Wright had been arrested at least 17 times prior to this. The reasons for the arrests included several attacks on people: an attack on a 72-year-old man, spitting in the face of a woman, and beating a police officer.

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Wright was once again released on May 27. Then the arrest was led by a criminal riot he organized, during which he poured hot coffee on two New York police officers on one day, scratched the man's eye and smashed a window on Madison Avenue.

“We cannot chase our tail: catch and release, catch and release,” Shi said.

“Regardless of whether the person needs mental health care, jail time, or both, the solution cannot be to send him back out on the street,” Shi said at the city police union.

Cases like these raise questions about the state's bail reform law, which went into effect a year and a half ago. Shi and other critics of the document, which lifted bail for many categories of defendants, say it allows criminals to break the law over and over again.

“In my opinion, they (the state legislators who passed the law) undermined our entire system without thinking about the specific consequences,” said John Flynn, District Attorney for Erie County, who is vice president of the New York State District Attorneys Association.

Flynn believes that judges in New York should have the right to decide whether the accused is a danger to society and whether bail should be set for his release or not.

“Quite frankly, there are ways to give judges more leeway in deciding whether to be released on bail,” he said.

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But supporters of the bail reform bill say that is not the problem. They stress that Wright was given bail, but he was released and started breaking the law again.

“The problem is that we have high unemployment, high homelessness, we have a lot of people with mental health problems, and we don't have any supportive systems for them,” said Stanley Fritz, director of political affairs at Citizens Action.

He noted that in 2020 the law have already been amendedexpanding the list of crimes for which judges can establish bail.

“The New York State Legislature updated the bail law, and they did so despite many objections from human rights defenders like mine and others. So now it's easier to take people into custody, ”he said. "But this situation did not develop because of the cancellation of the bail."