Boasted he’d be freed – and he was
A Brooklyn homeless man was arrested three times in just 36 hours last week, boasting to NYPD cops that he would dodge bail at each turn because he “didn’t have a record.”
He proved to be right. Agustín García, 63, was charged with robbing two Manhattan straphangers — wielding a knife against one of them — and stealing a beer from a Bronx bodega in rapid succession, prosecutors and law-enforcement sources told The Post.
Manhattan prosecutors twice asked that García (above) be held on bail amid his alleged crime spree, only to be denied by judges.
It wasn’t until the suspect was busted a third time that he was sent to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, although still without any bail to keep him locked up.
“We can arrest people, we can cut them loose, incarcerate them, but it’s not addressing the underlying problems,’’ said a frustrated law-enforcement source. “There are so many underlying issues when it comes to revolving-door criminaljustice problems. But by far, the No. 1 issue we see in cases . . . . is mental health.”
García’s distraught brother José said the source was spot-on in his sibling’s case.
“My brother . . . has been sick for the past 25 years,” José García told The Post on Sunday, saying Agustín suffers from schizophrenia. “When he goes to the hospital and is committed there, sometimes for a month or two, he sometimes doesn’t get the treatment completely, and they release him. And once they release him, the problem comes back again.”
Agustín García’s alleged spree began at around 7:30 p.m. Nov. 21, when police say he swiped a dozen cans of Coors Light beer from a bodega on East 165th Street in The Bronx. He was charged with petty larceny and freed by cops on a deskappearance ticket.
Police said he was busted again early Nov. 22 at the Canal Street subway station in Manhattan after allegedly stealing a straphanger’s backpack and pulling a knife on her.
“I know I’m getting out,’’ García boasted to cops at the Fifth Precinct station house after that arrest, according to sources. “I have no record.’’
García, who sources said has no prior convictions, was charged with felony robbery, and Manhattan prosecutors asked that he be held in lieu of $15,000 cash bail or a $45,000 bond. But García was cut loose on supervised release by Manhattan Criminal Court Judge James Clynes.
Back on the street, he stole an iPhone from another straphanger at the West 145th Street-Lenox Avenue subway station around 7:15 a.m. Nov. 23, cops allege. He was soon caught and charged with grand larceny and criminal trespassing.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said it recommended that García be kept behind bars in lieu of $20,000 cash bail or a $60,000 bond. But Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Valentina Morales instead ordered a 72-hour psych evaluation at Bellevue. The hospital said García was still there Sunday.
A spokesman for the state court system said the judges who declined to set bail used their discretion as allowed by law.
“Nearly 300 defendants are arraigned every day in New York City Criminal Court,” Lucian Chalfen, of the Office of Court Administration, told The Post.
“The one thing they all have in common is . . . a Criminal Court judge who, with purposely enacted, extremely limited discretion, must foretell the future,” Chalfen said.