NYPD Police Commissioner: Crime Has Skyrocketed Because Of Democrats’ Bail

  • Thread starter Thread starter Theo520
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
@Theo520, why did you post this in the Social Justice category? Is there a connection to the Church’s social doctrine? If not, perhaps we should file it under World News.
 
Last edited:
Beryllos said:
@Theo520, why did you post this in the Social Justice category? Is there a connection to the Church’s social doctrine? If not, perhaps we should file it under World News.
Click to expand...
The underlying legislation is all about ‘social justice’, so it seems a good fit.

I too am against just locking people up but actions (crimes) still need consequences.
 
This law has been a disaster all over the state. Even those charged with violent crimes, such as manslaughter, vehicular homicide, robbery 3rd, possession of child pornography, and statutory rape, are being released without any means to assure that they return to court, since those offenses and many others don’t meet the extremely narrow criteria to be considered violent felonies under NYS law. There have already been multiple instances of individuals who were arrested for domestic violence returning immediately to their homes and assaulting their family members again. Even many democrats are calling for a repeal, which says something since most dems are terrified of opposing Cuomo (who in all fairness has now admitted that the law is flawed, but forced it through nonetheless).

The most egregious part of this law, however, is that now names, addresses and phone numbers of all victims and witnesses must be turned over to the defendant. This means that a woman who has fled her abusive husband and is now hiding in a shelter will have her location revealed. Now whenever I take a statement from anyone, I have to make sure that he or she is aware that I legally cannot protect his or her identity. As a result, people are not willing to provide statements and we lose crucial evidence. Not that it matters though, since if the defendant chooses not to return to court there’s not much we can do. Even if we succeed in getting a warrant issued, which is now much more difficult, the person will only be released again after we execute it.
 
The current reform law is not the problem. It was a constitutional necessity in a case where trials were taking excessively long. Had the people of New York been intolerant of the injustice in the legal system before this happened, this law would not have been necessary. In the United States, one cannot be imprisoned indefinitely without trial, without the possibility of reasonable bail. The Eighth Amendment reads:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

This is the law. Without a change in the Constitution, it must be obeyed. If it were not for this, there would be no protection for anyone of us against unjust imprisonment. So the solution is, unfortunately, taxes. It takes money to expand the court system so trials can be held quicker.

Now I would be the first to agree that the issue of discovery being ill-conceived. The accused has the right to confront the witness, not to stalk them.
 
Looks like another Hate The Democrats posting.
I’ll pass.
Let the haters hate.
 
It’s not a matter of hating Democrats. Many of them have had a change of heart and are now calling for the law to be repealed. This is a matter of an extremely ill-conceived law that is having horrible consequences. I unfortunately have to deal with this every single day, and so far no good has come of this law.
 
on a small scale, I see the good and bad of this in seattle.

On the one hand the City raised the bar on offenses they will prosecute. First hand I’ve seen how teens have increased their shoplifting. If they do get caught, they are just released without charges. This is bad because now there are no consequences. There is no 'restorative justice’

On the other hand I also work with teens arrested for domestic violence ranging from minor to more sever assaults on family members and property. We avoid giving them a record but do put them in a time out facility for several days, call it juvie light. We try to work with them to take responsibility for their actions while other staff try to connect the family with social services that may be able to help.

It helps some, not others, not perfect. Some keep offending and end up in real jail but others do turn things around and don’t have a teen record. Some think our consequences are too light, but at least we have consequences with the time out of several days to over a week in our facility. Maybe teen shoplifters would also benefit from a time out.
 
Last edited:
The law itself is the problem. No one questioned the need for reform, but this law is proving dangerous. A true reform would have made sure that people could not be held for absurd amounts of time without a trial, including cases where people have been held longer than their sentences would have allowed had they been convicted. It also would have set limits on the amount bail, or mandated supervised release, in cases of non-violent offenders who have no history of skipping court dates without a valid excuse.

What this law did is impose blanket release of any offender, with the exception of accused murderers, forcible rapists and a few other types of violent offenders, without any means to make sure that they return for court. Notable instances already have included a man who killed his “adopted” infant son, and several cases of drunk drivers who killed someone in a crash. We recently had a case of a man who was arrested for beating his wife. He was released, returned home and beat her again. The similar law passed in NJ, which has been much more successful, contained provisions allowing judges to consider the threat posed by defendants as well as their history not showing up for court appearances. In NY judges no longer have any such discretion. One interesting note is that even the comparatively tamer NJ law has resulted in a decrease in the need for private defense attorneys. Since many people are no longer being held at all, there is no need on their part to hire an attorney to get them out of jail. The lack of any urgency makes people more comfortable using public defenders. This has caused a few smaller defense firms to go out of business, and puts more of a burden on taxpayers.

Again, the worst part of this law is by far the fact that we are now forced to turn over names and addresses of witnesses and victims to the defendant, which anyone with experience will tell you leads to witness intimidation. The discovery timeline is also ridiculous, as the amount of paperwork that has to be turned over to the defense in only two weeks is actually impossible. Something that those pushing for this law almost certainly knew.
 
Last edited:
Fuerza said:
The law itself is the problem. No one questioned the need for reform, but this law is proving dangerous. A true reform would have made sure that people could not be held for absurd amounts of time without a trial, including cases where people have been held longer than their sentences would have allowed had they been convicted. It also would have set limits on the amount bail, or mandated supervised release, in cases of non-violent offenders who have no history of skipping court dates without a valid excuse.
Click to expand...
True. There had to be better ways, several, of addressing the injustice without this particular method. Hopefully, since it is proving harmful, something else can be done. One possibility is bail, but with conditions of bail, even ankle monitoring for some. And, like you said, history of violence or missing dates must be weighted.
Fuerza said:
The discovery timeline is also ridiculous, as the amount of paperwork that has to be turned over to the defense in only two weeks is actually impossible. Something that those pushing for this law almost certainly knew.
Click to expand...
On the other hand, quick discovery is one of the essential needs for a speedy trial, though there must be exceptions made for sensitive information. Also, addresses are not needed for discovery, as the defense does not have the right to access the defendants privately.
 
Last edited:
You have misread this. People are being victimized. Crime is what is being hated, and this law seems to be a bad law, in that it has increased criminal activity. But you may be partially right. When people quote from politically biased sources there gets to be a lot of of extra Democrat-this or Trump-that thrown into the actual news.

But this is an issue of social justice. Balancing the needs of the accused with that of society is not easy. I do not blame the Democrats for this attempt (the bail part), but it should have been seen for the failure it is. Most of the blame must be spread out to all who have perpetuated the justice system in New York, the delays and back logs, that led up to the point where something had to be done.
 
Quick discovery is essential, but they imposed an impossible mandate without providing funding. My department has had to hire additional civilian staff to assist with getting everything together and sending it to the DA. Many other police departments and district attorney offices have also had to hire staff without the corresponding budget (something which fortunately the dems are acknowledging, though what’s to be done remains to be seen)

While I certainly agree that the defense does not have the right to personal information, I can tell you that we are required to turn it over. The law even allows the defense access to the crime scene, including private homes. This has caused some emotional trauma to victims in home invasion rape cases, who are powerless to prevent them from coming in their homes.
 
Fuerza said:
true reform would have made sure that people could not be held for absurd amounts of time without a trial,
Click to expand...
As much as I hate stepping into a thread in this forum . . .

I am a lawyer, and I’ll toss a couple of bits in.

a few decades ago, it was common for police officers to simply prosecute petty offensives, without the DA getting involved.

Allowing such things to be handled in a summary fashion, with the defendant being able to opt out, would be a first big step.

And for misdemeanors, at least those for less than six months, allow a trial within a few days (less than a week) for those in custody.

And as for more serious misdemeanors and felonies, get away from the tendency to waive a speedy trial.

I’ll also offer a tidbit: the last one I paid attention to was about two decades ago, but it found that the average mnontghy damage done by property crimes on felony suspects on bail was about a time and a half the cost of incarceration in prison (not jail, which is where they would be waiting).

When I was doing a lot of criminal law, I saw a lot of silly temporary incarcerations, and others where I thought the judge was nuts for granting bail (in one case, sticking to what I put on the record, the defendant was picked up on many warrants for not showing up, was clearly mentally ill, and thought he was in the courtroom from the sitcom Night Court. He was let go with the promise to do some community service and appear a couple of weeks later ,. . .)
 
dochawk said:
a few decades ago, it was common for police officers to simply prosecute petty offensives, without the DA getting involved.
Click to expand...
Can you expand on this a bit more? Did this go beyond issuing citations? The officers would actually act as prosecutors in court? What jurisdiction?

Please note I’m not doubting you, I’ve just never heard of this happening before. I’m a Fed so I can’t even make an arrest without authorization from an AUSA…I can’t imagine leading any kind of court proceeding.
 
Welshrabbit said:
Can you expand on this a bit more? Did this go beyond issuing citations? The officers would actually act as prosecutors in court? What jurisdiction?
Click to expand...
I can’t give you a lot of specifics, but his was part of the background in criminal procedure and the like in law school.

For lesser offenses, arraignment and trial would happen in short order.

The cop would come into court, explain what he found , and rial would happen.

This came up in the context to right to counsel. This generally meant that neither the cop nor the attorney had an attorney.

As the dust settled, it came to rules that a person cannot be imprisoned (even for a day) without being represented, nor can he be convicted of a crime punishable by more than six months without trial by jury. (Thus some states like nevada split misdemeanors into misdemeanors (180 day minimum) and gross misdemeanors (1 year maximum [recently changed to 364 days over immigration consequences{at a time when the governor and legislature were republican, for the doubters}])

Anyway, the reason it was covered was for context in the classes, not as substance.
 
Last edited:
Facts are not hateful. Facts are facts.

Too often the rush to solve one problem fails to pay attention to the law of unintended consequences. The sudden rise in crime, including violent crime appears to be one of those consequences.
 
There should be compassion for the victims. People should be allowed to feel safe on the streets, and to know that crimes perpetrated against them will be justly punished. The idea of punishment serves as a good deterrent from breaking the law.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top