A continuing, egregious threat to public safety
Manhattan: If anyone has any doubt about the lunacy of New York’s current criminal justice system, one need only read “Feces fiend curses judge and walks” (March 3). The miscreant is the poster child for what is wrong with our Legislature, district attorneys and judges. This man, with 44 prior arrests, smeared his feces into the face of an innocent straphanger, committed a string of additional recent attacks on our citizenry, including a vile anti-Semitic hate crime, and cannot be held in jail or detained at least for a mental evaluation? He cursed the judge, sneered at the victims and exhibited behavior so repulsive that his release back onto the streets with no bail conditions literally shocks the conscience. The bail reform law cannot possibly be intended to allow these types of individuals to continually prey upon the public with virtual impunity. With such an incorrigible anti-social history, I would suggest that detention of some type should be mandated under the penal law or N.Y. mental hygiene law because this man clearly presents a risk of serious injury to himself and/or others.
Our system of justice must take the thumb off the scales in favor of the criminal at the expense of our law-abiding community. The time has finally come for the innocent public to be given the priority it deserves. Let this shocking example of leniency be a rallying cry to reboot our criminal justice machine so that common sense and protection of the public become the foundation for action by our three branches of government.