DA Alvin Bragg Ripped For Rampant Crime In NYC

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who filed costs earlier this 12 months towards former President Donald Trump relating to a hush cash fee to grownup movie star Stormy Daniels, has admitted he fears the rising stage of crime within the Big Apple.

That is very true of crime on town’s subways, the place violence has been rising for years amid some efforts to crack down.

“I know from the statistics that transit crime is down. But when one of my family members gets on the train, I get a knot in my stomach. I live here; I’m raising my family here, so we have a lot more work to do,” Bragg stated. “We do a number of long-term investigations involving wiretaps. We do targeted enforcement, so we are seeing the returns on that investigative work, and we’re going to do that kind of work.”

The DA’s private admission — which comes as he has been broadly criticized for being comfortable on crime — feeds the general public’s notion of rising crime within the metropolis.

The New York Post’s editorial board lately torched Bragg and his “woke policies” in a narrative titled, “Alvin Bragg’s agenda is STILL irrelevant to city’s real needs.”

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With shoplifting and violent crime nonetheless far too excessive throughout town, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg final week pushed for . . . extra hate-crime legal guidelines. Huh? He barely prosecutes felonies already on the books. Yet Bragg joined with state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblywoman Grace Lee (each D-Manhattan) to ask the Legislature so as to add 30-plus crimes (corresponding to forcible touching, graffiti and sexual assault) to the record of 66 costs eligible for hate-crime standing.

Showing a motive for a criminal offense is a daily a part of prosecution, however including thought-crime penalties on high of the sentence is an invite to mind-reading that doesn’t belong within the lawbooks. The legislation ought to give attention to anti-social actions — however doing that’s evidently one thing Bragg . . . hates. At least, he doesn’t like sending anybody to jail or jail for a lot of something.

Starting along with his disgraceful “Day 1” memo to his workplace, Bragg has emphasised a “decarceral” agenda that treats prosecution as a significant risk to society. Along with state criminal-justice “reforms” pushing the identical misbegotten strategy, that’s produced a steep rise in shootings and different violent crimes — in addition to file shoplifting that’s compelled many retailers to shut and left the remaining locking up most of their cabinets, even the toothpaste.

The DA’s lowlights embrace a sweet-heart plea deal final December for a gangbanger with a historical past of robbing high-end Madison Avenue boutiques (Bragg stated his workplace had an excessive amount of on its plate), the aborted homicide cost towards bodega employee Jose Alba in a transparent case of self-defense in addition to charging Marine Corps vet Daniel Penny with manslaughter within the dying of Jordan Neely, a mentally unhinged vagrant threatening different straphangers.

Last week, Manhattan prosecutors requested a choose to show down Trump’s request to drop legal costs associated to a hush cash fee. They stated the previous president was making an attempt to keep away from accountability by abusing his political energy.

When prosecutors appeared into the hush cash case this 12 months, they stated they obtained new data from “campaign insiders” that backs up their declare that Trump paid grownup movie star Stormy Daniels hush cash after which lined it up.

For many causes, Trump requested for the indictment to be thrown out final month. One of them was that it was introduced six years after the alleged cover-up in an try to mess with the 2024 presidential election.

The workplace of the New York district legal professional requested Judge Juan Merchan to disregard the argument and observe the legislation equally.

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In March, Trump was charged with altering enterprise information to commit or disguise one other crime.

Prosecutors say this was a part of a plan to cover funds that Trump made to Michael Cohen to reimburse him for paying Stormy Daniels hush cash to maintain her from speaking about an affair she had with Trump earlier than the 2016 election. Trump has stated he isn’t responsible of the 34 costs and denied having an affair.