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NY Gov. Cuomo preparing to release 900 criminals & offer Mets tickets to show up for trial

Conservative Review

It looks like Christmas will come early this year in New York for violent criminals, while peaceful taxpayers will be stuck with a lump of coal.

Come January 1, thanks to a bill signed earlier this year by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, criminals arrested for roughly 400 categories of misdemeanors and felonies will be released immediately without the need to post any cash bail pretrial. Other criminals will get off with limited cash bail or other forms of unsecured bond. This means that people arrested for criminally negligent homicide, any drug trafficking and gang activity, or aggravated assault (even against children) will be released indefinitely while awaiting trial, which often takes a long time. This law applies retroactively to those already in jail awaiting trial for these crimes.

Now, the New York Post is reporting that the state Office of Court Administration is now working on a plan to begin staggering 880 releases of current criminals beginning in December. According to the Post, the Legal Aid Society, a taxpayer-funded legal aid group that has notoriously helped free violent criminals, is already filing motions to get these people released as soon as possible. The Legal Aid Society is the same taxpayer-funded group that is now defending Randy Santos, the man accused of beating four homeless men to death in Chinatown last month.

“It is completely arbitrary and cruel to hold people pre-trial now who will have to be released come Jan. 1,” said Marie Ndiaye, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society. In the case of Santos, he was on the streets despite numerous arrests for violent crimes and skipping court hearings. It’s richly ironic for the Legal Aid Society to be promoting a new jailbreak program under the promise that these people released pretrial won’t skip court dates. The only cruelty here is leaving the most violent criminals on the streets to assault, sexually molest, and murder.

But fear not, as an incentive for them to show up at court, a plan is being concocted by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Office of Criminal Justice. The Post reports that he is trying to bribe these criminals with free tickets to Mets baseball games as an incentive to show up for trial. The assumption is that the Mets are not as popular as the Yankees. But as one cop is quoted as saying, “Are Yankees tickets reserved for murderers? I am sure it will only be a matter of time before they get out on no bail.’’

Another cop quoted by the Post asked rhetorically, “What do the victims get — to watch it on TV?’’

This is no joke, though. And it’s not just happening in liberal bastions like New York. Republicans and even President Trump have bought into this notion of one-sided “criminal justice reform” and “bail reform” all focused on leniencies for criminals.

Yesterday, the president was still touting the federal jailbreak bill known as First Step Act, which retroactively freed many of the worst gang-bangers and drug traffickers with long rap sheets who graduated to the federal system.

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As I’ve noted before, jailbreak policies hurt African-Americans more than anyone else, a point the president made consistently before ceding this issue to the jailbreak movement. The overwhelming majority of the public wants government to be tougher, not weaker, on crime.

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