Prosecutors tried this week to keep the shrieking mental patient who has been terrorizing a Brooklyn Heights preschool behind bars — but a judge released him into one of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new jail-alternative programs for so-called “safe” defendants, The Post has learned.
The attorneys had asked during a court appearance Tuesday that Alex Kovner, 43, be held in lieu of $1,000 bail.
That would have been more than enough to keep him in jail pending the disposition of his latest misdemeanor charges involving the Imagine Early Learning Center.
Kovner has twice this month barged into the $24,000-a-year preschool, shrieking gibberish and profanities and having to be removed by cops, according to court records.
But despite Kovner’s evident instability, Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Andrew Borrok sprang him Tuesday into one of de Blasio’s much-touted new jail-alternative programs, Brooklyn Justice Initiatives.
Kovner’s judicial benefactor, Borrok, is an eccentric multimillionaire real estate investor who has been a judge only since last year.
While he’s been a lawyer for more than 20 years, Borrok’s online résumés indicate he has had limited legal experience beyond handling real estate-related lawsuits.
As The Post revealed during Borrok’s 2014 judicial campaign, the then-candidate poured $250,000 of his own money into running — only to find himself unopposed.
Borrok declined to comment through state Office of Court Administration spokesman Lucian Chalfen.
Brooklyn Justice Initiatives is a collaboration between the Mayor’s Office and the state court system, and is headed by Jessica Kay, a social worker who served on de Blasio’s Task Force on Behavioral Health and the Criminal Justice System.
Brooklyn Justice Initiatives is currently supervising nearly 900 defendants, more than in any other borough.
In praising such supervised-release programs in April, de Blasio stressed that they will “ensure that people who can be safely supervised in the community can stay there.”
Yet concerned parents at Imagine Early Learning say that the obsessed Kovner — one of the defendants under pretrial supervision in Brooklyn — is decidedly not safe.
“People are freaked out,” one shaken mother told The Post.
City Hall did not immediately comment on Kovner being released to Brooklyn Justice Initiatives.
Because Kovner is not accused of directly assaulting a child, he is facing only misdemeanor charges, including trespassing and acting in a manner injurious to a child.
Kovner, of Midwood, is due back in court — possibly before Borrok again — on July 18.