Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced on taking office he would not prosecute even some very violent crimes.
Almost immediately after he distributed his now-infamous Day One memo, two police officers were killed and a few others shot.
A 19-year-old girl was shot and killed working at a Harlem Burger King.
He is incompetent, and we knew this would happen — I and others warned of it during the campaign.
And that was way before he woke up one day and decided a former US president is one of the few people he would actually prosecute.
Things have not gotten better, only progressively worse (pun intended).
In his first year, Bragg downgraded 52% of felonies to misdemeanors — compared with 39% downgraded in 2019 — and had a dismal 51% conviction rate for felonies he did charge.
No one is safer as he promised as a result of his delusion and diversions.
Bragg released a woman who participated in the brutal killing of a US veteran on time served after only 14 months.
In Alvin Bragg’s New York, you can literally get away with murder.
But don’t you dare defend yourself or his office will prosecute you as the criminal while treating your attacker as the victim — just as he did with bodega clerk Jose Alba, who ended up fleeing Gotham for the safety of the Dominican Republic.
A customer’s boyfriend attacked Alba after the woman refused to pay for a bag of chips.
She also stabbed Alba, who in self-defense grabbed a knife and ultimately killed the boyfriend.
Guess who was the only person to face charges in that case?
Not the woman who stabbed Alba. Only Alba, the victim, was charged.
Alvin Bragg is not a champion for the little guy. He is no hero. He is a criminal enabler.
Plain and simple.
Victims call me, an outspoken advocate for violent-crime victims and homicide-victim survivors, almost on a daily basis completely distraught with the way the public defenders in disguise in Bragg’s office have treated them.
Bragg refuses to prosecute violent recidivists, and they are rightly scared their attacker or the person who killed their child or other loved one will go free.
The DA’s excuse is discovery reform — a policy he supported.
He says he doesn’t have enough “resources” to make sure New Yorkers don’t get killed by taking very violent people off the streets.
Yet he has the resources to prosecute a former president on charges everyone else decided he couldn’t be prosecuted for?
We have four city district attorneys with the same public-defender mentality.
They pride themselves on overturning “wrongful” convictions of gang members and murderers.
But one of them just did everything in his power to wrongly indict a former president, and everyone is cheering. We have completely lost our way.
Prosecutors sick of soft-on-criminals policy have left Bragg’s office in droves.
Only a select few are left to fight for victims.
The rest are all career public defenders like Dafna Yoran, who is in charge of most major cases and conceived Manhattan’s first “restorative justice” sentencing.
It is a very scary time to be here. God forbid you or your family are victimized: Who do you have to fight for you? Certainly not Alvin Bragg.
Bragg has given excuse after excuse to not prosecute violent criminals, forsaking not only their distraught and forever changed victims but the entire justice system.
If he is going to target politicians attempting to make a comeback, how about Andrew Cuomo, who actually might have committed crimes in Manhattan within the statute of limitations?
At the very least, Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa openly admitted to obstruction of justice. Obviously the murder of more than 15,000 people in nursing homes is outside Bragg’s purview.
When Bragg indicted Trump on charges no other prosecutor thought could or should be made, he proved where there’s a will there’s a way.
You backed yourself into this corner, Alvin. No more excuses. Stop using your office as an extension of legal aid.
Start doing your job and prosecuting all criminals, without the politics and ideology.
New Yorkers deserve better. They deserve to feel safe.
And all real victims deserve justice and at the very least to be treated with the respect you have lacked.
Jennifer Harrison is a survivor of a homicide victim and the founder of Victims Rights NY.