COVID-19 may be killing people and ravaging the economy, but for Mayor Bill de Blasio, it’s the perfect excuse to swing open city jail doors and free inmates.
That’s a fair conclusion anyway, given his recent boasts of reaching a “milestone,” with less than 4,000 people now behind bars after the city set more than 2,000 loose over virus fears. It’s “one part of the overall effort to create a system that is smaller, safer and fairer for all,” he gloats.
By “fairer for all,” he means “softer on those behind bars.” Which is why former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton — who helped engineer Gotham’s stunning drop in crime in the early ’90s, then came back under de Blasio to ensure crime kept coming down despite the mayor’s instincts — labels that “cukoo-land.”
“They are literally celebrating that they have less than 4,000 incarcerated,” Bratton fumed Sunday. He says in reality, the state’s botched bail reform, and the failed attempt to fix it this year, “created another virus”: a “criminal-justice virus.”
And now, under the guise of containing COVID, City Hall is now emptying jails even faster, worsening the problem: As The Post reported, 50 of the first 1,500 who were released were already rearrested — and some of them released yet again.
A week ago, cops nabbed Robert Pondexter for attempted rape. He’d been sprung April 15 as part of the effort to curb the virus at Rikers, where he was detained first on another rape charge, and then, when that charge was dropped, on an unrelated parole violation.
Earlier, a convicted murderer was freed — and quickly rearrested for bank robbery.
We support the compassionate release of inmates who pose little risk to public safety, but de Blasio’s plainly unwilling to stop there. As Bratton notes, there are “9,000 Corrections officers out there, 4,000 prisoners” and a jail that once housed 22,000. “You’d think they’d be able to space them out enough” to protect them from the virus and “keep them away from the public.”
The only logical explanation for why that’s not happening: De Blasio is letting folks out for ideological reasons, and public safety be damned.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost...us-to-empty-nyc-jails-at-publics-expense/amp/
That’s a fair conclusion anyway, given his recent boasts of reaching a “milestone,” with less than 4,000 people now behind bars after the city set more than 2,000 loose over virus fears. It’s “one part of the overall effort to create a system that is smaller, safer and fairer for all,” he gloats.
By “fairer for all,” he means “softer on those behind bars.” Which is why former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton — who helped engineer Gotham’s stunning drop in crime in the early ’90s, then came back under de Blasio to ensure crime kept coming down despite the mayor’s instincts — labels that “cukoo-land.”
“They are literally celebrating that they have less than 4,000 incarcerated,” Bratton fumed Sunday. He says in reality, the state’s botched bail reform, and the failed attempt to fix it this year, “created another virus”: a “criminal-justice virus.”
And now, under the guise of containing COVID, City Hall is now emptying jails even faster, worsening the problem: As The Post reported, 50 of the first 1,500 who were released were already rearrested — and some of them released yet again.
A week ago, cops nabbed Robert Pondexter for attempted rape. He’d been sprung April 15 as part of the effort to curb the virus at Rikers, where he was detained first on another rape charge, and then, when that charge was dropped, on an unrelated parole violation.
Earlier, a convicted murderer was freed — and quickly rearrested for bank robbery.
We support the compassionate release of inmates who pose little risk to public safety, but de Blasio’s plainly unwilling to stop there. As Bratton notes, there are “9,000 Corrections officers out there, 4,000 prisoners” and a jail that once housed 22,000. “You’d think they’d be able to space them out enough” to protect them from the virus and “keep them away from the public.”
The only logical explanation for why that’s not happening: De Blasio is letting folks out for ideological reasons, and public safety be damned.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost...us-to-empty-nyc-jails-at-publics-expense/amp/
