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Candidates Running for NY Governor Call to Remove Manhattan DA Bragg, who will not Prosecute Many Crimes

Candidates Running for NY Governor Call to Remove Manhattan DA Bragg, who will not Prosecute Many Crimes

By Yehudit Garmaise

After Alvin Bragg (D), Manhattan’s newly-elected district attorney, sent a 10-page memo to the prosecutors who work for him that they should avoid seeking prison time for all criminals: except those who commit murder, the worst cases of assault, and financial crimes that involve vast sums of money, a chorus of naysayers have chimed in to point out problems with his progressive plan. 

While Eric Adams won the mayoral Democratic nomination by laying out well-thought out plans to reverse the sharp rise in crime that Mayor Bill de Blasio repeatedly said would simply disappear as the pandemic wound down, Bragg announced that he would not charge many low-level crimes, nor would he prosecute many felony charges, including armed robberies and drug dealing.

“Bragg can’t pick and choose what laws not to enforce,” Long Island Congressman Tom Suozzi, a fellow Democrat, told the New York Post. “You can’t say, ‘I’m not going to enforce the law.’ 

“His policy sends a very bad message. This is a green light for chaos.” 

In fact, three Republican candidates for governor: Long Island Rep. Lee Zeldin, Rob Astorino, and Andrew Giuliani all said that if they were elected governor, they would remove Bragg, who was failing to enforce the law, from office. 

“You can’t have a vibrant city if criminals are being coddled,” said Astorino, a former Westchester County executive. “It’s absurd and dangerous, and we can’t stand for it.

“It is illegal what he’s doing. As governor, I would use the authority under the state constitution to remove Bragg from office.”

Zeldin, who said that Bragg is “refusing to do his job,” added, “You have to make sure the streets belong to the law-abiding citizens, not the criminals.”

Responding to widespread criticism, Bragg claimed that career criminals would be better served by mental health services and addiction treatment than imprisonment.

“This is going to make us safer,” Bragg said. “It’s intuitive. It’s common sense.

“I don’t understand the push back.”

Progressive district attorneys and other elected officials, however, in cities, such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago have employed similar tactics, claiming the continued prosecution of “low-level” crimes just reinforces racism, just before seeing their crime rates spiral shockingly upward.

After Keechant Sewell, New York City’s new police commissioner, reviewed Bragg’s memo, she wrote that “she is very concerned about the implications to your safety as police officers, the safety of the public and justice for the victims,” in an email that she sent to approximately 36,000 NYPD members.

Sewell added that Bragg’s policies will "invite violence against police officers and will have deleterious effects on our relationship with the communities we protect."


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