Soares calls for special session to fix ‘failed’ crime statutes

“They’ve been drafting legislation for the world they want to live in as opposed to the world that we’re currently living in,” Soares said in a six-minute videotaped statement released by his office. “The irony here is that the very Black lives that was the justification for many of the failed legislation that had been passed here in Albany County are the very Black lives most impacted by the violence.

“It’s failing our youth,” he continued. “It’s not working, because what we continue to see are the same young people who are being apprehended for very violent acts back out on the street and continuing to engage in the same behavior.”

Soares, a Democrat, said police are finding more and more young people arming themselves with firearms because they believe they need to protect themselves from others carrying guns and that police may not provide that protection.

“When young people are losing faith in the system, I think we have to pay attention,” he said.

Soares cited a case the Times Union had previously highlighted in stories detailing the state’s poor rollout of the Raise the Age statute, which has resulted in many teenagers who have been arrested for violent crimes or illegal possession of firearms having their cases shifted to Family Court, where they have received little if any meaningful intervention.

The alleged shortfalls in Raise the Age were exposed in October when two teenagers armed with “ghost” handguns, including a fully automatic 9mm capable of firing 50 rounds in a few seconds, were arrested during a traffic stop in Albany as they drove through a neighborhood in a Porsche with its headlights off at night, according to law enforcement officials and police records obtained by the Times Union.

Police suspected the boys, a 16-year-old from Clifton Park and a 17-year-old from Troy, were planning a drive-by shooting when they were stopped.

Since police stopped them before any shots were fired, and the boy in the rear seat of the car — seated next to an open window — was not found holding the guns recovered from the vehicle, their cases were transferred to Family Court.

Following their arrests, the teenagers emerged as suspects in a previous drive-by shooting in Rensselaer County in which shell casings at the scene were connected to the firearms seized from the Porsche they were driving in Albany. A judge determined there were not “extraordinary circumstances,” and the teens’ cases were allowed to remain in Family Court.

On June 22, the 17-year-old boy, who lives in Schenectady, was arrested again by Albany police after he ran into a residence on McCrossin Avenue as officers chased him on foot. A police report said the boy was armed with a non-serialized AR-15 semiautomatic rifle that had a round in the chamber and 29 rounds in an ammunition magazine. A second boy, who was 16 and had been walking with the 17-year-old, was charged with illegally carrying a loaded 9mm handgun.

Both of the teens were suspects in a robbery earlier that evening. Court records indicate the 17-year-old was charged with felony charges of weapons possession, possession of an assault weapon, possession of an ammunition-feeding device, burglary and illegal entry of a dwelling. The 17-year-old is not in police custody or at a juvenile detention facility. But Soares said their office has filed a motion seeking to prevent the teenager’s new case from being transferred to Family Court.

“You have leadership saying they’re doing everything possible to help stem the wave of crime and violence, and yet this is the laws that we’re left with,” Soares said. “It’s incumbent on us to improve the criminal justice system. … Criminal justice policy should be pragmatic; you can’t just simply wave a wand and hope for things to happen.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former New York Police Department captain, also has called on the governor and Legislature to return to Albany for a special session to amend the state’s bail and Raise the Age statutes. The Democrat said New York City’s crime wave has been largely a result of repeat offenders, some of whom have been released from custody following dozens of arrests.

Hochul has countered that the Legislature amended the bail statutes this year — though lawmakers did not address the Raise the Age issues — and that judges have more leeway to set bail or to hold someone in custody, including for failing to appear in court or being arrested for new crimes.

“Every one of those changes gives them the tools they need to work toward our common objective of increasing public safety,” Hochul said earlier this week.

Hochul also said recently that “people are conflating bail and Raise the Age here; Raise the Age has been in effect even longer than the bail change is my understanding. … I’m willing to look at any changes that the Legislature wants to put forth to make sure that New Yorkers are safer without a doubt.”

Adams, also a critic of the Raise the Age statute, has focused his efforts on pushing lawmakers to change the law to allow judges to consider whether someone is a threat to public safety when deciding whether they should remain in custody or have bail set. The mayor said arrests had increased 24 percent this year compared to last year, and that arrests for seven major felonies are up nearly 30 percent and firearms arrests “are at a 27-year high.”

“Time and time again, our police officers (are) making arrests and then the person who is arrested for assault, felonious assault, robberies and gun possessions, they’re finding themselves back on the street within days if not hours after arrest and they go on to commit more crimes within weeks if not days,” Adams said this week. “This is about a small number of people that are taking advantage of the existing laws to endanger our city.”

Among the measures the Legislature focused on earlier this year was giving judges more discretion on whether to transfer the cases of juvenile and adolescent offenders who are arrested for gun crimes to Family Court. There have been high rates of rearrest among that group.

At the time the legislation was passed in 2017 — raising the age of adult criminal responsibility in New York to age 18 — lawmakers said the programming behind the law change was critical to ushering in a new era for New York’s treatment of adolescent and juvenile offenders. Previously, many of those teenagers were sucked into the adult criminal justice system, where they ended up in county jails or state prisons.

Yet the Times Union reported in February that the programming behind the changed statute has lagged, including a failure to increase the capacity of juvenile detention facilities where young offenders in need of detention are supposed to receive intervention.

The failure to create enough new beds statewide, leaving a severe shortage at juvenile detention facilities, prompted Hochul to include a provision in the current state budget that allows adolescent offenders to be housed in adult jails under limited circumstances. That practice has since occurred, including in Albany County.

The severe bed shortage has resulted in many teenage defendants being released from custody for violent offenses or, in some instances, transported to juvenile detention facilities hours away from their homes. 

As of February, the state had distributed just $270 million of the $800 million that was dedicated to the Raise the Age legislation that was enacted into law as part of the 2018 state budget. 

A recent New York City study also found nearly 50 percent of 16-year-olds were rearrested for new crimes in the first year after the Raise the Age statute went into effect more than three years ago. The New York City Criminal Justice Agency revealed similar high rates of recidivism for 17-year-olds affected by the change — and noted that if researchers could track outcomes in Family Court, the negative outcomes for those age groups might have been even higher.

Among the challenges the Raise the Age statute poses for prosecutors and police is they are required to show that a firearm had been “displayed” in order to keep an adolescent offender’s case in adult criminal court. In the Albany case when the two teenagers were driving the Porsche to what police believed was an imminent drive-by shooting, prosecutors lost their “extraordinary circumstance” argument because they could not demonstrate the weapons in their vehicle were being “brandished.”

The law is further complicated because the term “extraordinary circumstance” was not defined by the lawmakers who crafted the legislation.

The Times Union’s February story noted that teens in Family Court for violent crimes routinely are released under supervision but receive little if any therapy or intervention while their cases are pending — often for months. Many are required to wear ankle monitoring bracelets.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speak Carl E. Heastie have pushed back on making further amendments to the bail and Raise the Age statutes.

When asked earlier this year about the Raise the Age issues, Heastie had said: “I want to see data. … I’m constantly being asked to make changes. I need to see how it worked; I need to see if resources reached the places … or, is it a resource issue or is it more of a policy issue?” 

But when pressed about what data he would rely on and where it would come from — since the outcomes of Family Court cases for juvenile and adolescent offenders are apparently not tracked in a statewide database —  a spokeswoman for the speaker implied, as have other juvenile justice stakeholders, that Raise the Age implementation had been hampered by the pandemic.

“It has been less than three years since Raise the Age was implemented, two of which were during a pandemic,” the speaker’s office said in a statement, without elaborating on what data would be reviewed. “We need to continue to get feedback from agencies, courts and advocates.”