Bail reform not on agenda of Eric Adams’ NYC crime summit, key attendee says
Mayor Eric Adams announced a major summit conference on the Big Apple’s crime problem Friday and said the state’s controversial bail reform law will be on the table — but a key attendee said it isn’t even part of the agenda.
During a morning appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Adams touted the planned summit after being asked whether bail reform “gives everyone the feeling that…there are no consequences” for the city’s bad guys.
“Officers are doing their job, but once we apprehend people, we must send a strong message in our criminal justice system: It won’t be the catch-repeat action that’s taking place right now,” Adams said.
“And we’re hoping that’s what the summit this weekend is able to accomplish. How do we deal with this bottleneck? How do we deal with dangerous people still on our streets?”
But Leading civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel — who City Hall said will be part of the weekend conference at Gracie Mansion — told The Post that bail reform wasn’t among the subjects for the two days of panel discussions.
“We don’t think we can find common ground on the bail law,” he said.
“There will be no panel on the bail law.”
Siegel, the former longtime executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the panels would address issues including “prosecutors not getting discovery [evidence] to defendants in a timely manner” and whether more people should be hired to expedite the process.
“The focus should be to find common ground despite our differences,” he said.
“The criminal justice system is neither just or effective.”
All five city district attorneys — including embattled Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez — will be among the summit participants, according to a list released by City Hall.
Both state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Assembly Leader Carl Heastie (D-The Bronx) — who passed bail reform and have resisted efforts to roll it back — will not be there and will send their legal counsels instead.
In 2019, Gonzalez also announced a soft-on-crime plan called “Justice 2020” but earlier this year called for “tweaks” to the 2019 bail reform law, which critics — including the NYPD — have blamed for fueling crime and recidivism.
Bragg has faced a firestorm of criticism — and an exodus of veteran prosecutors — since imposing a series of soft-on-crime policies after he took office on Jan. 1.
Gov. Kathy Hochul — who in July rejected Adams’ call for a special session of the Legislature to address crime — will be sending three aides, including her policy director, according to the list.
The Democratic governor, who’s been losing ground in recent polls to Republican challenger Lee Zeldin, has said there would be no action on bail reform before the Legislature reconvenes in January.
State Attorney General Letitia James — who on Wednesday said officials need “to be looking at bail reform” — is sending her chief of staff.
James has previously championed cashless bail and her sudden shift in tone came after a new poll showed her largely unknown GOP rival, Michael Henry, had narrowed her lead to 11 percentage points.
City Hall shot back at the criticism and said the purpose of the confab was to find compromise on matters less politically charged than bail that would bolster the administration’s law enforcement efforts.
“This gathering is meant to bring together stakeholders with a diverse set of viewpoints and advance specific items on which they can find common ground – such as avoiding pretrial delay, identifying shared funding priorities, and securing additional resources to help the serious mentally ill,” said City Hall communications director Max Young.
“Outside of this gathering every group involved will continue to advocate for their own agenda, and the Adams administration will not take its foot off the gas in pursuit of targeted changes to state laws that will get recidivists off the street and make all New Yorkers safer.”
