Morningside Heights Local Is Lone Democratic Challenger In Manhattan District Attorney Race

By Gus Saltonstall

A Morningside Heights lawyer and professor is currently the lone Democratic candidate challenging Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in his primary bid for re-election this June.

Patrick Timmins, a longtime New York litigator and adjunct law professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, announced his candidacy at the end of January for the top legal position in Manhattan.

West Side Rag recently sat down with Timmins to discuss his decision to run, along with his campaign platform and thoughts on the neighborhood.

Answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

WSR: Could you tell us a little bit about your background, both on a personal and professional level?

Timmins: My family is from Manhattan with deep roots. I had Irish immigrant grandparents who came over and lived in Hell’s Kitchen. My mother was born in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, and my family lived in Inwood. I was born in Washington Heights, grew up in the Bronx, and then as soon as I could, I moved back to Manhattan and have lived in the borough my entire adult life.

I’ve always been interested in law. I went to law school at night for four years at Pace University, and from there, I graduated and had my ticket to practice law. That was a great honor for me and my family. My father didn’t graduate high school and went on to become a cooper [a barrel maker], so getting my ticket to practice law was really important to me, and I wanted to get the full benefit of it and give as much of myself to the profession as I could.

Timmins went on to work in former Democratic Assemblymember John Dearie’s office in the Bronx before taking a position within the Bronx District Attorney’s Office for a number of years. He eventually joined a law firm as a civil litigator for retired union members and others diagnosed with cancer from exposure to asbestos, while continuing his schedule of teaching at night. He’s done both for the last 22 years.

WSR: Why was this the right moment for you to run for Manhattan District Attorney?

Timmins: I take the subway a lot at off hours, early in the morning and late at night, and most of my rides in recent years, especially in 2024, were very tense. It was an experience I realized I had never felt before, and this is coming from someone who rode the trains back in the 70s, in the East Bronx, to school every day.

The crime below ground on the trains is a problem, the street situation with the jump in serious assaults isn’t any better. And then my family and I — just going to the local pharmacy and having your deodorant or toothpaste locked up continues the frustration. It made me realize drastic change has to occur, and that I could be the one to bring that change.

My love is for Manhattan and the island of Manhattan. I want everyone to thrive and feel good about living where they do, take pride in it, and not be afraid. Before anything else, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is a local district attorney’s office, and my first priority will be dealing with local crime and securing public safety.

WSR: In terms of your platform for the office, what are the areas you have the most focus on?

Timmins: Continuing with the importance of safety underground, fare evasion has been off the wall. The MTA says it lost $700 million in fare evasion last year, and I believe that if we bring back effective enforcement of fare evasion, it will both help recoup this huge sum of money and also go a long way in helping the overall safety of the borough.

The fare evasion, along with the more serious platform pushings and subway slashings in recent years, make us all feel uneasy. The trains are such an important part of living in New York City, and people have to feel comfortable, at least comfortable enough to think it’s an easy ride, as opposed to, ‘Hey, I’ve got to be tense, I’ve got to be alert, I can’t listen to a podcast, I can’t read the paper, I’ve got to have my eyes everywhere on every ride.’

WSR: What are some of the other specific plans that you would look to bring to the office?

Timmins: Discovery law in New York essentially means that the District Attorney’s Office has up to 15 days to turn over all evidence for each case. When evidence isn’t turned in by the deadline, cases get dismissed without prejudice, meaning you can bring it back at some point, but how many of these cases don’t get brought back? I would make sure everybody in my Manhattan District Attorney’s Office would work like hell to make that 15-day deadline, so we don’t lose cases that way.

Additionally, we know that shoplifting and fare evasion aren’t serious crimes in one sense, but the deterrence of these crimes is serious to the overall feel of the city. Let’s say a fare jumper gets stopped by police, then has their record looked up and has to wait. I’m even recommending that we have a judge, legal aide and a prosecutor in the subway system at a major transit hub to quickly process these cases, so the person caught would also have to get taken down to that location. All of this becomes a big inconvenience to the person who decided to jump the turnstile. That, in and of itself, the deterrence piece of criminal justice and being inconvenienced, will go a long way in stopping these types of crimes.

Nobody stealing a candy bar or hopping a turnstile, unless it’s their twentieth time, is going to go to jail. But the importance is finding ways to purely stop the flow of small ways people don’t follow laws.

WSR: What do you see as the importance of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office working with other agencies and leaders in the city?

Timmins: What I want to do is create a great bond between the mayor, police commissioner, and the district attorney. That harmony’s been difficult to create, given our current mayor is on his fourth police commissioner. But I believe when those parties can work together, with cops knowing that if they arrest someone, the case will be prosecuted and not dropped, a better overall environment for public safety can be created.

I’m going to make every effort, every week, to get close to the mayor and police commissioner.

WSR: Any other elements of the job you feel strongly about?

Timmins: Expungement, which means your criminal record would be removed in certain cases from your overall record. There’s a really great state senator in Harlem named Cordell Clear who has introduced this “Clean the Slate” idea, and I would want my office to take a similar approach.

This is for people, for example, who have a possession conviction for marijuana or some other controlled substance in the 1990s, but are still contending with that on their record. If you have paid your debt to society on a non-violent crime in most cases, and you haven’t reoffended, I’m big on, let’s do everything we can to now scrub that conviction, so it doesn’t appear on a computer system, so these people have the peace of mind and go forward with their lives.

Another part of my platform is to honor self defense. Self defense is in the penal law, and there are various parts of its definition. We want to teach and have everybody understand the parameters of self defense, and when somebody is attacked, and the initiator is someone else, you don’t go and immediately arrest the individual who fought back and saved themselves or saved others. I want to make sure to honor that process.

WSR: What do you say to a voter who has anxiety about you not previously holding any sort of elected office?

Timmins: I would say: ‘Look at my background.’ I’ve been a local prosecutor during a very difficult time in the Bronx for four years, I’ve been teaching for 22 years at John Jay, and I’ve lived in Manhattan and loved Manhattan. You can continue with what you’re getting now, without any forecast of drastic or real change. Or you can hopefully think of me, evaluate me, hear me out, and then make your best choice.

Republican Maud Maron is also a declared candidate in the 2025 Manhattan District Attorney race. The Democratic primary election date is on June 24.

WSR: What does the Morningside Heights community mean to you?

Timmins: I love the neighborhood. I live in Morningside Heights, but I’m close to the border of West Harlem. My kids played baseball in the West Harlem Little League for eight years. A lot of good people. A lot of people that just want to live regular lives. I’ve been connected to the West Side of Manhattan my entire life. I’m never leaving Manhattan. I’m going to die in Manhattan. That’s how much I love it and that’s why I want to give the borough as much as I can.

WSR: Any particular favorite spots in the neighborhood?

Timmins: My family and I, my wife and three adult children, we like going to Pisticci. Tom’s Diner is a great place for breakfast. I like shopping along the Broadway corridor from West 110th to 116th streets. Riverside Park is fantastic, my kids learned a lot of lessons just playing sports there.

WSR: Any closing message?

Timmins: I want everybody in Manhattan to have a sense of freedom, a sense of safety, and I know it can be achieved. I love the island, but I think things need to change drastically. We need to get the crime down, and as Manhattan District Attorney, I want to be the one to implement the plans so this drastic change for the good can take place.

You can find out more about Timmins on his website — HERE.

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