Two cop killers and their progressive progeny
The death on May 1 of American terrorist Kathy Boudin reignited my personal memory of her murderous act more than 40 years ago. Boudin’s son, like his mother and father, a far-left ideologue, faces a recall election on June 7 as San Francisco’s district attorney. The sins of the parents shouldn’t be visited on the son. But there’s always something in the blood.
On Oct. 20, 1981, I was a kid reporter at The Rockland Review, a weekly newspaper in Nanuet, N.Y. My phone rang just after 4 p.m. The Daily News photo desk was calling to ask if we were covering the armed robbery of a Brink’s truck outside the Nanuet Mall. We weren’t.
I hung up and sprinted through the woods that separated The Rockland Review from the mall’s parking lot. I arrived to see the back doors of the armored truck flung open, the dead body of security guard Peter Paige covered in a white sheet and a gun on the ground, circled in chalk.
The escaping Brink’s robbers, unmasked as members of the Weather Underground, a domestic terrorist group, then ambushed and shot dead Nyack police officers Edward O’Grady and Waverly Brown at a nearby police roadblock. Brown, the first Black officer on the Nyack police force, was machine-gunned in half by members of the Black Liberation Army, the “Black Power” revolutionaries and comrades of the Weather Underground.
Neither Boudin, David Gilbert nor getaway driver Judith Clark pulled the triggers that day. But, for participating in the premeditated, armed robbery, they were all rightly convicted of felony murder and appropriately sentenced to decades behind bars. They certainly knew better: Gilbert, Boudin and Clark were all in their 30s. Clark had been expelled from the University of Chicago for participating in student protests. Boudin was valedictorian of her 1965 class at Bryn Mawr and the daughter of famed civil liberties attorney and left-wing activist Leonard Boudin. Gilbert is a Columbia University grad.
There’s no redemption for cop killers, especially multiple-cop killers. Gilbert, Boudin and Clark all deserved to die behind bars.
Instead, Clark was released in May 2019 after then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo commuted her sentence to 35 years to life, making her eligible for parole in December 2016.
The recently-deceased Boudin was released in 2003 after only 22 years in prison. Her common-law partner Gilbert, granted parole in October 2021 and released in November, would still be in prison if not for the successful lobbying of Cuomo by San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin — the son of Boudin and Gilbert. These parents of the year left 14-month-old Chesa in the care of Weather Underground buddies Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, who were raising their own 4-year-old son, Zayd Ayers.
By reaching out to Cuomo on behalf of his father, Chesa Boudin misused the powers of his office. Sure, it’s his father. But a district attorney has no business lobbying a governor to free his dad from prison. The rest of us can only write a letter to the governor, seeking clemency for our parent.
The voters of San Francisco can repudiate Cuomo’s wrongheaded decision to grant Gilbert clemency by recalling Chesa Boudin. That would be a good start: Boudin is but one of the big-city, woke DAs coast-to-coast who should face a recall election for the softon-crime policies devastating their cities.
A campaign to recall Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is supported by many of his staff, who allege they’ve been punished for objecting to Gascón’s progressive prosecutorial policies.
Soon after new Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg issued his infamous “Day One” criminal justice reform memo on Jan. 3 — telling prosecutors to seek prison time as a last resort, reduce pre-trial detention, downgrade some felonies to misdemeanors and not prosecute fare-beating, resisting arrest and other non-violent crimes — a dozen or more longtime assistant district attorneys in that office resigned. The turnover resulted from what “appears to be such a cultural and radical shift in policy,” onetime Manhattan ADA Mark Bederow said at the time.
Under intense internal and external pressure from colleagues, Gov. Hochul, police, the media and Manhattanites, Bragg walked back his turnstile justice memo a month later. He advisedly modified his progressive stances on key issues including gun possession, robbery prosecutions and resisting arrest. “Violence against police officers will not be tolerated,” Bragg’s corrective memo stated.
Elected in 2017, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s lefty criminal justice reform policies include not bringing criminal charges against those caught in possession of marijuana, ending cash bail for some misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, reducing supervision for parolees, seeking more lenient sentences for certain crimes and reducing incarceration. He advocates for greater police accountability and pursues police misconduct prosecutions.
It’s high time to get hard on soft-on-crime prosecutors. San Francisco can lead the way by recalling Chesa Boudin on June 7.