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This commentary is another in a\u00a0<\/em>series on rogue prosecutors<\/em><\/a>\u00a0around the country who have been backed by liberal billionaires such as George Soros and Cari Tuna, and the threat those prosecutors pose to crime victims and others alike.<\/em><\/p>\n We all know Batman\u2019s backstory: A young Bruce Wayne watches in horror as muggers murder his parents.<\/p>\n Lawlessness ran rampant in Gotham City because police and prosecutors couldn\u2019t\u2014or wouldn\u2019t\u2014hold criminals accountable.<\/p>\n Like their fictional counterparts, today\u2019s residents of the real-life Gotham, New York City, face a constant barrage of lawlessness.\u00a0 Stories<\/a> of violent crime abound, with these heinous acts increasing<\/a> exponentially.<\/p>\n Against this background, a new mayor, police commissioner, and district attorney have all taken office within the past several weeks.\u00a0The mayor ran<\/a> on tackling the crime problem, and he appointed a police commissioner who pledged<\/a> to do the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet, Manhattan\u2019s new district attorney has implemented new pro-criminal policies that undercut the mayor\u2019s and police commissioner\u2019s mandate\u2014just like all the other rogue prosecutors<\/a> we have been warning about for almost two years.<\/p>\n Alvin Bragg has taken his policies directly from the rogue prosecutor movement\u2019s required playbook.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bragg\u2019s policies are so bad\u2014and dangerous\u2014that the new police commissioner\u2014Keechant Sewell\u2014felt compelled<\/a> to warn about their dire consequences.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sewell knows, as we have been warning, that cities that have elected rogue prosecutors have seen a dramatic increase in violent crime and crime overall, and her city will look like those others if Bragg acts like the other rogues.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bragg\u2019s policies are likely to lead to the same mayhem in Manhattan, at a time when the borough and the city can least afford it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Following in the footsteps of Los Angeles\u2019 rogue prosecutor, George Gascon<\/a>, Bragg sent a memo<\/a> shortly after taking office to his entire staff detailing his \u201ckey principles\u201d and policies.\u00a0 They took effect that same day.\u00a0<\/p>\n To be clear, those policies are not the result of serious study or debate within the district attorney\u2019s office or with his senior advisers\u2014though Bragg would like you to think that his policies are pure common sense.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, they are simply copycat policies other George Soros-supported or inspired prosecutors have enacted.\u00a0 Just look at the policies Gascon<\/a> implemented in Los Angeles, the ones Kim Foxx<\/a> imposed in Chicago, and the ones Larry Krasner<\/a> put in place in Philadelphia, just to name a few.<\/p>\n Those prosecutors are implementing a top-down agenda funded by Soros and other left-leaning billionaires\u2014either directly or indirectly\u2014by carrying out the diktats of richly funded (and ironically named) pro-criminal organizations such as \u201cFair & Just Prosecution<\/a>,\u201d which is neither fair nor just, at least not to crime victims.<\/p>\n In an effort to create some distance between Soros and some of these rogue DAs, Soros or his affiliated entities contribute to political action committees, which then make \u201cindependent expenditures\u201d on behalf of the candidate.\u00a0 That\u2019s what happened with Bragg.\u00a0<\/p>\n Soros representatives have made a point<\/a> to say that none of the $1 million Soros pumped into the race was funneled to Bragg.\u00a0 The\u00a0 Color of Change PAC expended funds as an independent expenditure supporting Bragg.\u00a0<\/p>\n Oh. Thanks for the clarification.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Color of Change PAC financially supported several prosecutors, each of whom we have highlighted in our \u201cRogue Prosecutor\u201d blog series: Kim Gardner<\/a> (St. Louis), \u00a0Foxx<\/a> (Chicago), \u00a0Gascon<\/a> (Los Angeles), and Krasner<\/a> (Philadelphia), all of whom were elected. The PAC also supported Genevieve Jones-Wright, a public defender who ran for San Diego district attorney, but (thankfully) lost.\u00a0<\/p>\n It beggars belief that Soros and his billionaire friends did not know precisely how their donations would be used, and funneling those donations through a difficult-to-decipher web of companies and organizations\u2014presumably created for the very purpose of providing plausible deniability if things go poorly\u2014cannot hide that fact.\u00a0<\/p>\n Regardless, Bragg\u2019s key principles\u2014driven, he writes, in large part by the experiences he had growing up in Harlem in the 1980s\u2014are virtually identical with those of other Soros-backed district attorneys:<\/p>\n Superficially, those principles might sound reasonable. But they\u2019re not. Bragg and his fellow rogue prosecutors mean something different\u2014and totally unfathomable\u2014to the majority of individuals who hear those talking points.\u00a0<\/p>\n For the record, many conservatives have supported appropriate rehabilitation and reentry programs, including strong support for the federal First Step Act, among other things.<\/p>\n But when Bragg talks about ideas like \u201cdiversion and alternatives to incarceration,\u201d in practice, he really means the elimination of accountability and prison altogether for most offenders.<\/p>\n His push to \u201creduce pretrial incarceration\u201d is more like a shove\u2014shoving aside the possibility of pretrial incarceration for even dangerous defendants in many cases. What\u2019s particularly astonishing is that Bragg is making this push in the face of New York state\u2019s already widely criticized and problematically lax<\/a> bail policies.<\/p>\n When Bragg says he will \u201cfocus on accountability, not sentence length,\u201d he actually means that he will work to eliminate jail and prison sentences for most convicted criminals and in many cases will cajole victims to sit down with their perpetrator to talk about \u201crestorative justice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n While that might be appropriate in a few very limited circumstances, it\u2019s not for the vast majority of crimes and certainly not on the scale that Bragg proposes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Just imagine a crime victim being told that: (1) the violent perpetrator who altered her life forever isn\u2019t going to jail or prison, even though he was convicted; and (2) that, under the office\u2019s \u201crestorative justice\u201d model, she has to sit down with the criminal so they can \u201ctalk it out.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, that\u2019s one of the key features of rogue prosecutors: Their policies are pro-criminal and anti-victim.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bragg, in a tone-deaf comment<\/a> that defies logic, said that his policies are \u201cgoing to make us safer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s intuitive. It\u2019s common sense,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t understand the pushback.\u201d<\/p>\n We do.\u00a0<\/p>\n And others are catching on, too, as they have seen this nightmare play out in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, and everywhere else there\u2019s a rogue prosecutor.<\/p>\n Riddle us this, Batman: Why are Bragg and his fellow \u201cprogressive prosecutors\u201d \u00a0so determined to pursue this problematic path even in the face of bad consequences?<\/p>\n It\u2019s because the rogue prosecutor movement<\/a> is an outgrowth of the same radicals that created the Black Lives Matter movement, as detailed in our colleague Mike Gonzalez\u2019s book<\/a>, \u201cBLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As we have detailed in our major research paper<\/a> on the topic, the rogue prosecutor movement is not shy about its beliefs, which are twofold: (1) the entire criminal justice system is systemically racist, and (2) the criminal justice system must be \u201creverse-engineered\u201d to eliminate the racist rot that supposedly infects the entire system.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course, the entire criminal justice system is not \u201csystemically racist.\u201d\u00a0 As one columnist recently wrote, race relations in America are better than ever<\/a>, even though many liberals won\u2019t admit it<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Like Boston\u2019s former rogue prosecutor, Rachael Rollins<\/a>, whom the Biden administration recently elevated<\/a> to be the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, and Los Angeles\u2019 Gascon, Bragg has announced crimes that his office won\u2019t prosecute, even though they remain criminal offenses in the state of New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n These are some of the many crimes you can now commit with impunity in Manhattan:<\/p>\n In other words, Bragg unilaterally appointed himself a one-man legislative committee with the power to ignore\u2014and override\u2014the laws New York\u2019s legislature passed, and New York\u2019s governor duly signed into law.<\/p>\n As experience has shown in other cities with similar \u201cwon\u2019t prosecute\u201d lists, as soon as the word gets out that the district attorney won\u2019t prosecute certain crimes, you see an explosion in the rates of those crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n And when the district attorney won\u2019t prosecute certain crimes, the police have no incentive to arrest people for committing those crimes.\u00a0 And when the arrests for those crimes go down in raw numbers, the rogue prosecutors brag, in circular reasoning, that the \u201cdata\u201d proves that their approach works\u2014because the number of arrests for those crimes have gone down.<\/p>\n As if the \u201cwon\u2019t prosecute\u201d list isn\u2019t disturbing enough, even more disturbing is Bragg\u2019s decision to require his deputies to water down (undercharge) serious criminal offenses from serious felonies to mere misdemeanors.\u00a0<\/p>\n When you combine that with Bragg\u2019s new directive requiring a presumption of pretrial non-incarceration for every case (discussed below), except for those charged with homicide and a few other heinous crimes, there is no doubt that his intent is to favor criminals at the expense of New Yorkers he was elected to protect.<\/p>\n Under Bragg\u2019s scheme, the following crimes are to be watered down:<\/p>\n This makes all suspected low-level drug dealers subject only to misdemeanor prosecution. \u201cLow level\u201d is not defined in the penal law. This also ignores the many existing opportunities for treatment and diversion. In other words, drug dealers are getting a good deal from Bragg.<\/p>\n One of the more dangerous and despicable aspects of this radical movement is the elimination of pretrial detention.\u00a0 They loathe cash bail, claim that it is racist, and are content simply to let most arrested criminals roam free prior to trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bragg is following suit. Now, according to his memo, there is a \u201cpresumption of pretrial non-incarceration\u201d for the following cases:<\/p>\n There\u2019s a narrow class of cases where there is a presumption of pretrial incarceration, to include:<\/p>\n Not only are Bragg\u2019s prosecutors not allowed to ask for pretrial detention, they aren\u2019t allowed to seek a sentence of imprisonment for most cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bragg\u2019s prosecutors can only ask for prison where defendants are convicted of the following offenses:<\/p>\n And to top that off, prosecutors in Bragg\u2019s office may not request a sentence of more than 20 years for crimes where there is an established sentence under the law, or a sentence that can fall within a range, absent exceptional circumstances.\u00a0<\/p>\n So, just like Gascon\u2019s directives disallowing the charging of sentence enhancements, prior convictions, or other common sense \u00a0law-and-order schemes passed by the state legislature to punish the worst criminals, Bragg is sending a loud and clear message to career criminals that he\u2019s on their side and won\u2019t expose them to the full force of the law for violent criminal conduct.<\/p>\n These policies are already having real-world consequences. One judge apparently told<\/a> a knife-wielding robber that he got \u201clucky.\u201d If his case had been prosecuted two weeks earlier, before Bragg took office, the judge told the defendant, \u201cBased on your record, you would have faced a long period of time in jail if convicted.\u201d But now, he\u2019s charged with only a misdemeanor.<\/p>\n Other nutty policies include:<\/p>\n Is it any wonder that deputies in the office are leaving<\/a> as fast as they can?\u00a0 That\u2019s exactly what elected rogue prosecutors are counting on: career, independent line prosecutors will leave the office once they realize that the new boss is more interested in the criminal and less interested in keeping the streets and citizens safe.<\/p>\n Is it any wonder that the district attorneys in New York City\u2019s four other boroughs\u2014some of whom would not consider themselves to be law-and-order prosecutors\u2014are trying to distance<\/a> themselves from Bragg\u2019s policies?<\/p>\n Is it any wonder that the police commissioner issued a statement<\/a> to her officers saying she is \u201cvery concerned about the implications to your safety as police officers, the safety of the public and justice for the victims\u201d?<\/p>\n Is it any wonder that Bragg has hired<\/a> a PR crisis-management team?\u00a0 Just like Gascon did in Los Angeles and other rogues do, it\u2019s to spin a tale divorced from the bloodshed and reality of their harmful policies.<\/p>\n Unlike some elected rogue prosecutors, like Krasner, Bragg was a prosecutor before he was elected.\u00a0 As a former line prosecutor, Bragg should know better than most that the job of the district attorney is to enforce the laws as written and exercise appropriate prosecutorial discretion in individual cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n But once he ran for office and bought into the rogue prosecutor mantra (and took the $1 million from Color of [Soros] Change), he changed his tune to a pro-criminal zealot.<\/p>\n Now, Gotham\u2019s denizens are paying a horrible price, and its criminals are dancing to a happy tune.<\/p>\n Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email\u00a0[email\u00a0protected]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and we\u2019ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular \u201cWe Hear You\u201d feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and\/or state.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nAnother Pro-Criminal Soros Puppet<\/h2>\n
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Policies Nothing to \u2018Bragg\u2019 About<\/h2>\n
Crimes You Can Now Commit in NYC<\/h2>\n
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Watering Down Felonies to Misdemeanors<\/h2>\n
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\u2018Get Out of Jail Free\u2019 Zone<\/h2>\n
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Virtually No Prison Sentences Allowed<\/h2>\n
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New Yorkers Protest Bragg\u2019s Radical Policies<\/h2>\n
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