2021 Proved Bail Reform’s Danger
IT didn’t take long after New York’s bail-reform laws took effect in January 2020 for crime to surge, yet at the time, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie claimed there wasn’t enough data to suspect a link. Now, after two years under those laws, crime has continued to soar.
Heastie and those in his camp need to take another look at the damage those laws, along with lenient judges and other procrime measures, have done.
Consider the horror stories from 2021 alone:
In June, 31-year-old Raymond Wilson was free in connection with a burglary case when he broke into a 10-year-old girl’s bedroom and molested her while she slept. He’d already been arrested for burglary more than a dozen times, but because of the new statute, judges couldn’t set bail.
Isaac Rodriguez was nabbed almost 50 times this year alone but was released back on the streets because his petit-larceny and stolen-property charges didn’t qualify for bail. It wasn’t until Rodriguez was arrested for a June 7 assault on a 39-year-old Jackson Heights man that he was finally put behind bars.
Ricardo Hernandez was also released without bail after being charged with three hate crimes for pushing an Asian NYPD officer onto Queens subway tracks on April 17. Per the new bail reform, the judge couldn’t do anything about it, saying, “I have absolutely no authority or power to set bail on this defendant for this alleged offense.”
At just 18, Steven Mendez, a reputed gang member, had already racked up three collars yet was freed on probation before allegedly shooting and killing 21-year-old college student Saiko Koma in October. Bronx
Judge Denis Boyle had given him five years’ probation after he pleaded guilty to violent armed robbery.
The overall major-crime number this year rose, too — up 5 percent from last year. The NYPD CompStat program reported more than 98,580 major crimes (murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and auto theft) in 2021, vs. 93,231 at this point for 2020.
Shootings are up another 2.4 percent, after doubling last year. And murders are up, too, on track to hit almost 500, compared with 452 cases tallied last year. The city hasn’t seen that many killings in a decade.
Outgoing Police Commissioner Dermot Shea has been resolute in blaming New York’s bail-reform laws and woke prosecutors. “We are in a place right now which, by any definition, is insanity,” Shea told NBC New York. “When you make public statements, ‘I’m not prosecuting X,’ you’re sending a real strong message to the criminal element.”
He’s right. When you refuse to prosecute low-level crimes, as some city prosecutors have, felons see it as a green light to reoffend. Couple this with New York’s lenient bail-reform laws and soft-oncrime judges, and crime is sure to spike. Yet in 2020, Big Apple prosecutors let 6,500 suspected felons off the hook, twice the rate of 2019.
Fixing the bail-reform laws won’t by itself solve the problem. Fortunately, incoming Mayor Eric Adams has hinted he’ll take other necessary measures, too, like restoring some form of stop, question and frisk and reinstating undercover anti-gun officers.
But giving judges more discretion and keeping dangerous perps behind bars are absolute prerequisites. Pray Adams can finally convince Heastie & Co. of that.