Grudge and fury
Mayor de Blasio on Monday blamed the city’s high crime rate on courts across the five boroughs — in the process revealing that they have rendered just 18 criminal verdicts in the first half of this year.
The astoundingly low number contrasts with 405 during the same pre-pandemic period in 2019.
“Whether it’s something as horrible as a murder or gun violence, you need a culture of consequences,” de Blasio said at his daily remote press briefing from City Hall.
“The court system not functioning is having a bigger impact than almost any other factor right now. The absence of those consequences for a whole variety of crimes is undermining public safety.”
The city’s crime outlook is bleak. Shootings are up 5.3 percent compared with this time last year. Murders are close to last year’s numbers — 299 compared to 303 at this time in 2020 — and those figures are an almost 40 percent spike from 2019. Felony assaults have increased by 5 percent.
De Blasio said he has offered to help bring the court system back from the pandemic by providing more space, vaccines and other measures — but court officials have refused the aid.
Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, pushed back at the mayor’s indictment of the judicial branch — and then cast the blame on yet another element of the criminaljustice system.
“His gaslighting rhetoric regarding court operations in an attempt to shift the public-safety discussion continues,” Chalfen said.
“The court system has been back at full strength — with all judges and staff fully back in person in the courthouses since May. Trials are being held, but for cases to be tried, you need the prosecution and defense to have their cases prepared, which isn’t occurring in a number of counties.”
Still, despite blaming district attorneys for a good share of the slowdown, Chalfen admitted that OCA is limiting the number of trials to three at any given time in each county to allow for social distancing. For example, at least two courtrooms are occupied per trial — one as the trial court and another as the jury room.
Before the pandemic there was no limit on the number of trials that could take place simultaneously, and Brooklyn Supreme Court often hosted up to 12 at a time, a source said.
But those limits alone don’t account for the huge drop in verdicts.
Last summer, de Blasio and thenGov. Andrew Cuomo blamed each other for the city’s crime surge, with the mayor pointing the finger at the court system, which is controlled by the state.
In July 2020, Cuomo attributed the “devastating” crime wave sweeping the Big Apple to anti-cop sentiment and de Blasio’s decision to release inmates from Rikers Island during the pandemic.