>> Good evening, and welcome to MetroFocus.
I am Jenna Flanagan.
Of all of the issues our elected officials are fighting about in Albany, that there is perhaps in a's controversial bail reform law.
The policy eliminated the use of cash bail for most misdemeanors and some violent -- nonviolent felony charges in an attempt to ensure it no one would have to sit in jail simply because they could not afford to pay their way out.
Bail reform has been criticized by Republicans and some Democrats who argue these changes to our pretrial system are the main reason we saw a spike in violent crimes in 2020.
One such Democrat is the Albany County district attorney, who says he was uninvited from testifying at a recent state hearing reviewing bail reform because of his public opposition to the law.
He joins us tonight.
Mr. district attorney, welcome to MetroFocus.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> Just so that everyone is clear, I was wondering if you could give us your understanding or legal definition of the term bail reform, because we have heard it a lot but everyone might not be on the same page.
>> I think you are right.
Often times when people regardless of where they stand on the reform issues are talking about increases in crime and what has changed, often times the issue is pegged to bail reform, but it is a confluence of all of the reforms that have been passed over the course of the last three years at that have given rise to what we are now experiencing in communities like Albany County, which is a dramatic increase in crime and violence, and more specifically crime and violence as it relates to very specific communities.
It is not just bail reform.
It is discovery reform, raise the age and a host of other reforms.
Jenna: Is this something you were always against from the onset, or was this something where you began to change her mind as time went on and you saw perhaps the changes in the crime rates?
>> Let me be very clear.
There was no one who had a closer seat at the time to these changes as I was the then president of the District Attorney's Association, so we had an opportunity to review some of these bills prior to their passage, and as a member of the Association, we certainly could see some of the benefits, but we also saw some of the dangers.
The thing I continue to harp and drive home for our leaders at the time was, look, all of the positive things about these reforms are going to be undermined by the mistakes we also see here, and unfortunately these bills were passed.
Every year they have gone back to make some adjustments but not enough to correct the issues we still believe are responsible for the increase in violence today.
Primarily, we are talking about the criminal justice system, a system that deals with dangerous people, and to get judges who we elect are prohibited from considering dangerousness.
Judges are prohibited from considering community safety.
Those are the two primary issues that I think undermined all of the other value that these reforms may have brought.
Jenna: So that is one of the things you could take us a bit deeper into what you see as some of the problems with this law.
>> Take for example, at the very beginning, what the legislature did was they basically eliminated all misdemeanors from bail consideration.
It was presumptive release.
At the judge could not even consider many of these misdemeanors for purposes of holding an individual in.
In that entire class of misdemeanors, there were sex offenses, there were hate crimes, which event the legislature upon their realization went back and make corrections, those corrections were not enough.
The idea that an individual who continues to go into a retailer and steal merchandise, and the only thing you can take into consideration is whether the person is going to be punctual and returned to court but not take a look at this person's entire history, maybe there are prior offenses were violence.
The ability for a judge not to be able to consider it, the inability of a prosecutor to make those arguments has led to recidivism, so those are the issues we continue to take issue with.
Now, at the idea that a person who is engaged in a nonviolent crime, first-time offender sitting in jail awaiting trial, I think we all agree with the principle that that person should not be sitting in jail, but we are not talking about those individuals.
What we are talking about are the career criminals that have benefited immensely from these reforms, and we would like the legislature to take a serious look at these issues and provide us with an opportunity and audience to debate these issues.
>> You also mentioned that the bail reform along has been detrimental to specific communities.
I am wondering if you can expand or highlight who you are talking about?
>> I think we get mired into talking about statistics.
Very often it is one group citing certain statistics and in group setting other statistics.
Other times those numbers are not that far off, that I think it is misleading when we say, for example, Albany County over the course of the last three years has experienced a 30% increase in violent crime.
Those numbers are right, they are correct.
But I think we tended to spread those numbers across all communities, and that is simply not true.
The suburban communities in Albany County and have not experienced a 30% increase in crimes.
The neighborhoods that have are the black and brown communities.
Ironically, the very community the legislature intended to benefit from these reforms.
But what we are seeing is more violence, rate or and brown victimization, and that is really the only issue that I a few weeks ago wanted to address with our legislators, and we were denied that opportunity to engage in that conversation.
Again, when you hear about for example New York State having a 40 plus percent increase in crimes, we are not talking about that 40% affecting all communities equally.
We are talking about those increases happening in like in a brown pockets of our communities.
Jenna: Building off what you were saying, I would have to point out in the same last three years that you mentioned, we have also all been through the trauma of a worldwide global pandemic, and there have been several other states that have seen spikes in violent crimes also in poor communities, which we do notice statistically speaking were hit harder by the impact of the pandemic.
Unemployment, job loss, food insecurity, etc.
And they also saw a similar increase.
Is this mail reform or was this something -- bail reform or was there something more existential?
>> We have had the benefit in the state of New York as being the national leader all throughout the country of being the largest safe state, and how did we do that?
We were able to achieve those goals by being tough on violent crime, but also smart about diversion, so we have applied those principles all throughout, and we have achieved record level reductions in crime, improved public safety.
We are among the few states that have been able to shut prisons down while other states have expanded their prison industrial complex, so this idea that all of these changes are brought upon by COVID is just absurd.
The reality is, if you take criminals and you catch a criminal, and then you are able to release that criminal, that criminal will continue to criminal, OK?
They will continue to engage in this crime.
New York State has lost population.
That is something we are struggling with.
How does one explain how we have seen increases all across the board in crimes with a diminishing state population?
It is common sense that it is the same people who continue to commit crimes that we now apprehend, that we release who were out there committing additional crimes.
The other thing I will say about comparisons with different states, we have never been Chicago, Illinois, Baltimore, Maryland, L.A.
If you look at the numbers prior to COVID and you look at the numbers prior to reform, New York was always heading in the right trajectory when those other cities, all of whom have also embraced the same reform ideologies, mind you, we were always going in a different direction from them.
I am glad you asked that question.
Jenna: I want to touch on the fact that you were uninvited from testifying, so I want to get into the Albany back-and-forth, so bear with me.
I understand it that you did to release written testimony, and in that you said, quote, the immobilization of criminals is not a critical part of public safety akin to pretending the earth is flat, i.e., assuming that people will or will not be able to show up for bail reform is a ridiculous assertion.
I want to also add a Democrat from the Bronx, who was also presiding over the hearings, responded saying door testimony was offensive, pejorative, and condescending.
What is your response to that?
>> What is offensive and really condescending is changing the criminal justice laws in the state of New York driving the state into the calamity we are in at the moment and pretending we are not in this moment.
I like Senator Bailey, who by the way I respect and admire, unlike Senator Bailey I am the person that asked to speak with victims.
I have to explain to people why the person that we apprehended is now out on the streets.
I am the person who has to continue to looking out to protecting those individuals, and this is not about politics for me.
It never has been.
This is about public safety, and the reality is you can talk about numbers, statistics, but at the end of the date we are talking about real human beings who are being harmed by these policies, and that should invite greater dialogue.
Jenna: That is the note we will have to leave it on, but I want to thank Albany District Attorney for joining us tonight on MetroFocus to discuss the critical issue in Albany of bail reform.
Thank you for joining us.
>> Thank you.
Jenna: Absolutely.
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