Parole granted in slay of cops

Outrage on case of ’71 Harlem double shoot

The state Parole Board has voted to release Anthony Bottom, convicted of killing two police officers in 1971, drawing blistering criticism from relatives of the victims and police union officials.

Bottom, now 68 and known as Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, has been in state prison nearly 43 years for the murders of Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones in Harlem. The board voted Sept. 11 to release him by Oct. 20.

Along with fellow Black Liberation Army members Herman Bell and Albert Washington, Bottom was convicted of ambushing Piagentini and Jones outside a NYCHA development, after luring the cops there with a phony 911 call.

“We are heartbroken to see another of Joe’s killers set free by politics. But more than anything else, we are angry,” Piagentini’s widow Diane said in a statement released by the Police Benevolent Association, the NYPD’s largest union.

Patrick Lynch, head of the PBA, blamed Gov. Cuomo and the state

Legislature for changing parole guidelines to make it easier for people to be freed.

“They knew that changing the parole guidelines would unleash more vicious killers like Anthony Bottom back onto our streets,” Lynch said in a statement. “They have chosen to stand with the murderers, cold-blooded assassins and radicals bent on overthrowing our society.”

Under Cuomo, the parole guidelines were changed to place greater emphasis on an offender’s current risk to the community.

Bottom, who was 20 at the time of the murders, told the New Yorker in a January 2019 story he insisted on his innocence in prior parole hearings but then at the urging of loved ones said he was sad for their deaths.

“Whether I am innocent or guilty of this crime, I have served the time, and I have served the time well,” he told the New Yorker. “I will not be engaged in any form of violence or any form of criminality.”

The Release Aging People in Prison Campaign, Parole Preparation Project, Brooklyn Defenders Services, and The Legal Aid Society applauded the Parole Board’s decision in Bottom’s case.

“The purpose of parole is to evaluate people for release based on who they are today, not to extend sentences into perpetuity,” the groups said in a joint statement. “This and other recent decisions the Parole Board has made based on those principles are the right ones.”

In April, a state judge ordered Bottom released because his age and other factors placed him at risk for the coronavirus. When an appeal by the state kept him in prison, he contracted the virus.

Bell was released April 27, 2018. Washington died in prison at age 64.

Waverly Jones (l.) and Joesph Piagentini (r.) were NYPD officers in Harlem who were both killed in the line of duty in 1971. Anthony Bottoms (below) was one of three men convicted for the crime. Diane Piagentini (bottom), Joseph’s widow, criticized the state Parole Board’s decision to release Bottom from prison .