Top cop rails at ❛strike free❜
Shea blames subway attack on bail laws
NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea expressed outrage Tuesday over the soft-on-crime bail-reform laws that allowed a disturbed man to allegedly slug a deaf Manhattan straphanger — just days after he was busted for a similar assault.
“I mean, that was a horrific attack, and what I fear here . . . is we can’t fall into a place where this is normalized, where that’s accepted behavior,” the top cop said on FOX 5’s “Good Day New York,” two days after 41-year-old Vladimir Pierre allegedly attacked his latest victim.
“Anytime it happens, it’s terrible — particularly to an innocent woman — that’s just going to work or going to church, [which] in this case I think it was. When you hear that it [also] happened four days before, that’s when my blood gets to boil now.”
He echoed his familiar comments about the revolvingdoor criminal-justice system: “When you look at laws that make us release individuals before they even go to a judge, you just shake your head.”
Pierre, reportedly a member of Brooklyn’s Newkirk street gang with 27 prior arrests, was just freed last Wednesday — thanks to bail-reform laws — after randomly hitting 30-yearold Crystal Porter as she waited for the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens shuttle, police sources said.
He was free to strike again shortly after 10:30 a.m. Sunday, this time at the Union Square/14th Street station — allegedly slugging 59-year-old Xingjuan Zhou, who is deaf, sending her reeling onto the tracks. Good Samaritans came to Zhou’s aid and pulled her to safety.
Pierre faces charges of seconddegree attempted assault, thirddegree assault and second-degree reckless endangerment, prosecutors said.
Judge Melissa Jackson ordered Pierre to be held pending the results of a psychiatric exam, after the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office requested he be held in lieu of $25,000 cash bail or a $75,000 bond.
“There is a question of fitness to proceed,” Jackson said in court on Monday. “There is some question of his mental capacity.”
Meanwhile, Shea argued that the NYPD is doing well at keeping crime down on the rails.
“Overall, when you look at transit, [Transit Chief Kathleen] O’Reilly is doing a phenomenal job,” he said.
“When you look at the overall crime numbers in transit, they’re actually very strong.”