Outrage in Times Square
The shocking caught-on-video beating of an NYPD officer and a lieutenant by a gang of likely migrants last Saturday night in Times Square has rightly appalled and outraged the city (and much of the nation) and our politicians are scrambling to explain and not doing a very good job.
Gov. Hochul says the offenders should be deported if they are convicted. So does Mayor Adams’ chief of staff, Camille Joseph Varlack. That sounds like they are being tough and resolute, but longstanding federal law makes noncitizens up to and including legal permanent residents deportable if convicted of certain crimes, felony assault very much among them.
If the assailants are indeed migrants, calls for them to be deported are basically redundant, and done for political effect. Ongoing asylum cases will certainty be cut short and they’ll be immediately deemed removable.
State Attorney General Tish James says that the men arrested, five of whom were released until a March 4 court hearing, should have had bail set because it is a serious felony to beat up on-duty police officers trying to enforce the law. Hochul agrees, saying that Albany’s weakening of the bail laws, which she repeatedly tried to reform the reform, is not at issue here.
However, the man to request bail, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office did not seek to hold most of the men at an arraignment last Monday, says that he is reviewing additional video and deepening his probe. Unless that video is a lie, it is hard to see anything but convictions as achieving justice.
But Bragg is also the same DA who published his notorious Day 1 memo two years ago when he first assumed his post, directing his assistants to minimize the use of pre-trial detention. Yes, one of the guys who was charged is still on Rikers, but there were a lot more assailants than one guy in the video of the two cops being thrown to the ground and pummeled and kicked.
There is also that the Bragg memo’s final section is entitled “SPECIAL PROCEDURES FOR CASES INVOLVING NONCITIZENS,” saying that “The Office will seek dispositions that avoid immigration consequences for all misdemeanors, and all felonies for which non-carceral outcomes. are the presumptive outcome” Assaulting police officers we trust have carceral outcomes for citizens and noncitizens alike and ICE will be promptly notified if there are convictions.
As for the men who were released and are not waiting on Rikers, some of them may have skipped town on a bus heading West. If so, are they still planning to appear at their March 4 court hearing and just decided to squeeze in a little cross-country sightseeing in the meantime?
Does someone without a home, and facing deportation if convicted, have a greater incentive to flee? Bail (or being remanded to custody if unable to pay), as we’re always being reminded, is to ensure that the accused returns to court to face the charges.
The hearing is a month from today. The men who were released all promised to come back to court and would face a bench warrant for an arrest if they failed to appear.
As for blaming all migrants for crime, that is just hooey pushed by the right wing. Don’t help them by messing up this case.