Following in the infamous footsteps of Chicago and San Francisco, New York’s new woke district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said he was confused by the furor his new policy of decriminalizing criminal behavior was creating in the city.
“We said we were going to marry fairness and safety, and we laid out a specific plan,” Bragg said according to Fox News.
“We put it on the website. We put it in print. And this week, after Jan. 1, we got down to work, and we are doing what we said we would do,” he continued. “This is going to make us safer. It’s intuitive. It’s common sense. I don’t understand the pushback.”
The pushback is coming from guys like former New York City NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton who blamed billionaire George Soros for helping elect district attorneys who put racial politics before fighting crime.
Soros has “effectively destroyed the criminal justice system in America,” Bratton said, according to the Daily Mail.
He called Bragg’s woke policies of downgrading burglary, armed robbery and drug dealing from felonies to just misdemeanors a “recipe for disaster.” .
DA Alvin Bragg is about to turn New York City into a complete death trap. pic.twitter.com/tiX90xVeFW
— Desi Cuellar for Congress (NY-14) (@DesiJCuellar) January 6, 2022
New York City is already reeling from one of the worst crime waves ever in the wake of reforms that saw fewer police on the streets and budget slashed for community policing.
“Crime is off the charts,” said GOP state Sen. Andrew Lanza, a former Manhattan prosecutor, according to the New York Post.
“Government’s most basic responsibility is public safety,” he added. “The misguided policies from the left have failed miserably in that regard and as a result New York is less safe and less livable than it has been in generations.”
San Francisco and Chicago have seen similar racially driven policies by district attorneys that decriminalized many crimes, making crime rates soar as citizens and police feel powerless to stop criminal gangs who feel emboldened.
*DEA Statement*
“Where there are drugs, there are guns. They go together,” said Detectives’
Endowment Association President Paul DiGiacomo. “D.A. Bragg has made
himself the police, the judge and the jury.” pic.twitter.com/brBeoJ6XFG— Detectives’ Endowment Association (@NYCPDDEA) January 4, 2022
Bragg’s policies are also in conflict with stated objectives of new New York Mayor Eric Adams, a former cop who campaigned on restoring normal policing to the streets of the city.
“One wants cops to do more; the other wants prosecutors to do less,” said the New York Daily News about the two. “One is wholeheartedly embracing the authority and responsibilities of the mayoralty. The other is exercising his prosecutorial power by increasingly declining to use it.”
Either way, New Yorkers won’t win.
