
By Daniel Katzive
Alvin Bragg is making the rounds. The District Attorney for Manhattan has kicked off the new year with a series of interviews, sitting down with NY1, the New York Times, City and State, and others. Last week, it was West Side Rag’s turn to talk with the DA about issues on the minds of Upper West Siders.
We asked the district attorney why he was reaching out to news organizations across the borough now. He told us that hitting the one-year mark in his four-year term in office meant the timing was right to discuss his track record. But he also acknowledged that something he has learned on the job is that he needs to communicate more with the community on what his office is doing.
“We have a saying among prosecutors: ‘The work speaks for itself,’” Bragg said. “That’s true in a micro sense. But in a more macro sense, the work doesn’t speak for itself….We’ve got to contextualize it, we’ve got to put it out there for folks.”
A lifelong resident of Central Harlem, Bragg notes that he has spent a lot of time on the Upper West Side. He attended the private Trinity School on West 91st Street before going on to Harvard for college and law school. The Upper West Side, he says, “is a great example of how we are an island of really great, deep-knit communities.” He mentions recently sharing fond memories with a friend of Twin Donut near the 96th Street IRT station. He knows the neighborhood.
We brought up the recent murder of Maria Hernandez, 74, in her apartment on West 83rd Street. A suspect was quickly arrested for the crime who, police said, had a prior conviction for murder, for which he served a lengthy sentence. Just a few months before Hernandez’s death, the suspect was arrested again on charges of burglary and released on his own recognizance. Our readers questioned how the justice system is handling prior offenders with violent histories.
While he did not comment on the Hernandez case, Bragg said “violent crime is what we spend most of our time thinking about at the DA’s office, particularly starting with gun violence, which dropped this past year, and on gun interdictions, which is a significant input into why shootings and homicides are down, not just citywide, but further in Manhattan. We are putting our resources on those in the community who are doing the most significant harm and asking in court every single day for bail.”
With respect to bail laws, he pointed to data showing the violent felony re-offender rate for those out on bail is a number that’s been relatively stable pre- and post- the state’s 2020 bail reform law. “Obviously any violent felony is not a good thing. But we keep a close eye on that number, and that number has been relatively stable. We are keeping an eye on the data and happy to talk to those in Albany as they have this conversation. And we’ll look at any language [on bail laws] that they put in front of us,” Bragg said.
Shifting away from the most violent of crimes, we brought up the word “consequences.” It’s a word we hear often at the West Side Rag, in comments posted on our site and at community forums from West Side residents and even in remarks made by police officers and police leadership. Generally, the context is that people feel that the consequences are not sufficient for some of the lower level crimes that we’re seeing affect the community.
The DA again referred to the track record of the past year, citing the response of his office in cooperation with the NYPD to the surge in shoplifting in the borough in early 2022. “We compared our data with [the NYPD’s data] and saw that 14% or so of those arrested for shoplifting accounted for more than 45% of the arrests in 2021. So we started focusing on that population and looked at those who had three or more shoplifting arrests in 2021. So we are focused and very active in that space and a third of that population was in custody at the end of last year.”
“We have got to have consequences,” but law enforcement also needs to look at “underlying drivers of crime,” Bragg said. “So for that population where mental health or substance abuse were maybe driving that, we’re looking at alternatives as well…. And we’re focusing on those who are recidivists but also connecting folks to services….We have to do both, with smart and targeted enforcement combined with community investments that prevent the misconduct in the first place.”
We asked about how deteriorating conditions at Rikers Island played into the equation. Does dysfunction in the city’s jail make judges and prosecutors more reluctant to hold suspects awaiting trial?
While Bragg was careful to say he couldn’t speak for judges, he allowed that “generally I think the conditions at Rikers weigh on many of us in the system,” and explained that “as a matter of policy, I talk often about needing a third lane. We have to make very, very challenging decisions every day on people who in the perfect world would neither be out in our neighborhoods nor in Rikers.”
He spoke about the need for secure pre-trial facilities for those with mental health issues and about plans from Gov. Kathy Hochul to restore inpatient psychiatric beds in hospitals across the state. “Absent those resources, the 500 great career prosecutors in the office each day are making really, really challenging decisions. We obviously make them in a granular way based on the facts of the case and the background, but we need more resources. We need alternatives. We need those psychiatric beds. And obviously we ultimately need a place for pretrial detention that has better conditions.”
Bragg’s office has announced its own plans to try to address the crisis in mental health in the borough. There are two parts to the program, a community-based program connecting people in need with mental health services, and a court-based program getting services for suspects at arraignment.
For Bragg, the community program has a personal connection. “My dad used to run homeless shelters for the city, and we would walk around Harlem and the Upper West Side, talking to who he’d refer to as clients, and I would see that kind of human connection. Then this year as DA and sitting in criminal court: if you go down to criminal court you see the shortcomings of our social service network, particularly our healthcare infrastructure. So we think that piece is going to help a lot of those people who may have no justice involvement, on the prevention side.”
In terms of the court-based program, Bragg said, “Right now if you get arrested and arraigned let’s say on Tuesday at eight o’clock, someone says, oh, we’ve got this service for you if you go to such and such building Friday at 9:00. But you know, folks who present in criminal court who need that service usually don’t have an Outlook calendar so you have got to get them while they are there and make the connection while they are still there, getting the resources and start the connection.”
Will it work? Will people look around a year from now and say “you know what, things seem a little bit better”? we asked.
Bragg concedes that “none of this is a panacea. But it’s part of the puzzle.” He added, “if we did nothing else, if we stopped prosecuting people and only did this, that wouldn’t work. Right? So we’re going to continue our enforcement and then also think about other ideas.” Bragg said he believes in “thoughtful, targeted prosecution, paired with thoughtful preventive intervention. I think this is the way forward on these issues.”
“Look, there are no silver bullets here. It’s an all-of-the-above approach.”
At least Eliza Orlins didn’t win in 2021. I know someone who volunteered with her campaign because they dealt with police abuse of power and were discriminated against by ethnicity/religion by the police. When they wanted Orlins to hear their concerns, they got radio silence and when she was criticized about her lack of response to her own volunteer who dealt with police abuse of power, she blocked the person raising this issue on social media. This is a big problem with why progressives will have a hard time winning and relating to constituents. They want to say slogans like “defund/abolish the police” while not listening or trying to help victims of police abuse of power.
“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”. – Milton Friedman
Get rid of “bail reform” and start arresting and holding criminals.
You’re not a criminal until you’ve been tried and convicted. And if you have money, you can pay the bail before your trial. So what you are talking about is people accused of crimes who can’t afford the bail.
I’d love if the Manhattan DA focused on DAing and not Social Services.
Between homicides, burglaries, illegal weed shops, generally unsafe environment, I’d imagine there’s actual work for his office to be done. The UWS has changed. And we’re in a bit of a bubble. Imagine being in an already, less safe, zip code?
I totally agree. His job is to put the bad guys away. It sounds like he spends his whole day looking for misleading statistics to defend his questionable decisions and trying to be a social justice warrior rather than doing his job. If he wants to create programs to help people, that is a wonderful goal, but he is in the wrong job.
As he accurately notes, recidivists are our biggest problem. We all make mistakes, but those who repeatedly commit crimes are no longer “making mistakes.” They should not be among us. Let’s spend our resources helping those who can be helped. Only a third of those who have shoplifted three or more times are in jail? That is not nearly enough. Shoplifting once should not be a major crime but should be on someone’s record. Shoplifting three or more times is a major problem.
That being said, I think that those who want to remove Bragg from office are being extreme. Let’s work to change the laws that he is supposed to be enforcing to give him less flexibility in “interpreting” them. And let’s remember this when he tries to run for re-election.
Thank you to WSR for this very helpful interview.
Very well said.
The only reason why people are pushing for Bragg to be removed is because he’s the Manhattan DA. The Bronx and Brooklyn DA have similar policies, but since Manhattan is the center of everything, particular attention is being paid to Manhattan.
Also because the UWS is in Manhattan….
Manhattan is one of five boroughs. Manhattan shouldn’t be entitled to special treatment. Manhattan needs the outer boroughs. The reason why gentrification in the outer boroughs is a thing is because neighborhoods like the UWS and Soho don’t want to sacrifice their historic districts to build more housing so everyone who wants to live in Manhattan can do so.
Advocating removal is, in this case, not an extreme position. In the state of NY, voters cannot recall a DA, and removal by the governor is the only remedy until the next election. Tying the DAs hands regarding how crimes are prosecuted is also legally impossible due to prosecutorial discretion: https://www.city-journal.org/progressive-prosecutors-abuse-prosecutorial-discretion. Recidivism and rising crime rates are a direct result of “bail reform” and unilateral prosecutorial inaction on entire classes of crimes, some of which are violent. We no longer have the luxury of being pollyannish on this.
Why don’t you have the same zeal to recall Darcell Clark in the Bronx?
Because we live in Manhattan. People of the Bronx should think for themselves
” If he wants to create programs to help people, that is a wonderful goal, but he is in the wrong job.”
Good point.
He says, “So we are focused and very active in that space …” Space? Vague and ambiguous verbiage does not induce confidence in this reader.
By the time the perp faces the DA they are accused of breaking a law. There is either enough evidence or not but is it the role of the DA and his office to decide that laws that exist today aren’t fair and should not apply to people even if they didn’t follow them? Writing laws is the job of the legislature and we have many working overtime to try to change them. I believe DA Bragg was elected to prove guilt to a jury. It sounds from the article that he may be using his position to let off perps that he feels sorry for based upon his personal biases, his own lived experience, or his personal views of the laws in place at the time. There are a lot of laws I don’t like but as a law abiding person I know I must follow them.
Hear, hear. Progressive DAs gone wild.
Police officers cut breaks all the time, prosecutors use prosecutorial discretion all the time, even under Giuliani and Bloomberg. Not only that, the reality is that criminal courts (and housing court too) ends up being a defacto social service center where people end up getting help only when things go bad.
It’s hard to know where to start. These progressive DAs, and their supporters, forget that their role is to zealously prosecute alleged criminals on behalf of the state, which means for the benefit of all citizens. To do otherwise is dereliction. Addressing the “root causes” of crime is not within the DAs purview, nor should it be. And even so, then we must actually address root causes, i.e. poverty, culture of violence, abuse/neglect in the home, absentee parents, etc.. Criminality cannot be remedied by back-ending reform—we cannot define it away, or simply not punish bad actors because its in some far-reaching, abstract sense “unfair.” If criminals aren’t responsible for their actions because they are mere products of systems and external forces, then NO ONE is responsible by extension of the same logic. And if personal responsibility goes out the window, as it seems to be, riding the wave of this post-modern, post-structural social movement, then we’re left with chaos. People need to distinguish between what may philosophically be the case and the practical, actual consequences of basing policy on those (very shaky, in no way conclusive) philosophical underpinnings. It’s time to move away from this and back toward straightforward, punitive, and retributive justice, which is proven to deter criminality by imposing real consequences. We need to commit the mentally ill and drug addicted to treatment facilities. Our social ills must be redressed by other means. Public defenders masquerading as prosecutors serve only to create grave imbalances in the justice system, and grave danger to the law-abiding among us. We are not stats, we are people. And many of us work hard, pay taxes, and raise children here. There is no reason under the sun that should dissuade us from demanding our government provide the basics, the most important of which is public safety, the biggest casualty of progressive policies. And if our governor had any sense, she would remove DA Bragg from office. People of the UWS—please wake up, please put the pressure on our political leadership, and please vote responsibly.
Great answer. The DA’s job no matter your race, creed, color, party affiliation is purely to prosecute criminals to the fullest extent of the law, and put people in jail and keep the public safe. It is not to work with and placate criminals.
Defendants are people as well. Should we punish truly bad actors yes, but sending people upstate and throwing away the key doesn’t help. In fact, people in prison for a long time and get out end up reoffending. What’s the solution then? Lock people up forever for relatively minor offenses? We have to provide public safety, not sow chaos, but also ensure the well being of society and that unfortunately means Defendants are people too.
Of course defendants are people too. Nobody is advocating for locking up “forever” for minor offenses. Well-being of the society depends not only on well-being of the defendants. Law-abiding citizens are people too.
Watch the CRIME CRIME CRIME trolls spin themselves into a frenzy in these comments. Pass the popcorn
Cool ad hominem.
Bragg notes the felony reoffender rate is declining. He doesn’t note that the DA’s office manipulates these stats every time they take plea to a lesser/misdemeanor charge. Which also reduces the likelhood of a “bailable” offense the next time the criminal is caught.
You also wouldn’t want the Nassau County DA’s plea bargaining policy. Prosecutors have no discretion on whether to reduce charges. They have to constantly get approval from supervisors and a defense attorney cannot talk with who’s pulling the strings. In Nassau County it would take more court appearances to get the same or worse disposition compared to NYC. Also it is harder to qualify for a public defender and more cases go to trial in Nassau County than in NYC just so the prosecution can prove they can zealously prosecute cases (they lose a lot of times too).
This man is an activist. DA’s should not be activists. I wish I could move out of NYC but I can’t. Remembering what this city was during the Bloomberg years makes me want to cry.
Think bail reform doesn’t encourage crime? then please explain this – 5PM today 1/31 from another NYC paper: “A pair of gun-toting bandits robbed 13 people in three boroughs during a wild two-hour crime spree early Tuesday — only to crash their minivan as they were about to raid a fourth borough, police said. One of the suspects boasted he’d be back on the streets in no time when he was arrested at the crash scene Tuesday morning.
“In 24 hours I’ll be out on bail,” he vowed as he was put into a police cruiser in handcuffs, according to Fox 5 News.”
Am not buying what he is selling. The proof is in the pudding. Career criminals on the street harming people.
While I support criminal justice/bail reform, the City has no capacity to make it work.
There are no real services (mental health/substance abuse) for those arrested, there is no place for them to go and no monitoring.
Instead of building jails in the boroughs, the City should 1) rebuild Rikers to be a humane facility and also 2) build voluntary halfway house/rehab residence facilities there for people released but need these services
Meanwhile, while we’re waiting, we can’t have violent criminals released back to the streets on the grounds that Rikers is dangerous. The violent criminals pose danger to everyone else.
I have been skeptical about Bragg, for all the usual reasons, but I find his comments moderately encouraging and tending toward the reasonable. But he needs to keep in mind that repression of crime is not only his job; it is the principal function and basis of legitimization of local government. On shoplifting, for example, more needs to be done, including stopping blatant fencing on the subway and elsewhere.
If only throwing people in jail was a deterrent to crime, things would be so much simpler.
Thank you, Karin. So hard for people to think out of the “what is the DA’s [very limited, inexpansive] job box” when it comes to crime, rather than delving into what conditions cause crime and what needs to be done societally to address its root causes.
Many of us feel powerless but that doesn’t mean we need to be heartless. Bragg at least has a broader perspective.
Thank you DA Bragg for this: “Alvin Bragg defends plea deal in brazen antisemitic beating | A defendant who said he’d ‘do it again’ if given the chance was offered a plea deal by the Manhattan district attorney.”
–https://jewishinsider.com/2023/01/alvin-bragg-new-york-hate-crimes-antisemitism/
Good article. Talking data, not hysteria.
Such hard-hitting and challenging questions! Three property thefts before you face consequences seems entirely too heavy handed! It should be at least 10. And Rikers is just too broke for us to even think about locking up recidivist criminals there so they need to be allowed to wipe the shelves bare until there’s a four seasons they can check into. We should be gratified Bragg is so focused on violent crime when businesses are vandalized and stolen from on a nightly basis. But of course, those things aren’t really happening according to our good state senator Brad Hoylman. It’s just a figment of the NY Posts imagination, police department stats be damned! What a city!
Wish WSR had touched on this:
“…(Prosecutor)…Mark F. Pomerantz, resigned in protest early last year after the newly elected district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, decided not to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump at that time. By then, the inquiry was more narrowly focused on whether the former president had fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to secure loans.
Donald J. Trump grew his business, fortune and fame “through a pattern of criminal activity,” according to a new book by a veteran prosecutor, who reveals that the Manhattan district attorney’s office once considered charging the former president with racketeering, a law often used against the Mafia. “
“smart and targeted enforcement” That’s what Stop & Frisk was.