https://defensemaven.io/blueli...M2NhGU02zPFBXzluxHA/

A bail reform law passed with the state's budget eliminated bail for misdemeanors and non-violent felonies as of Jan. 1.

Albany, NY – A new law that eliminates cash bail for many violent crimes will go into effect on January 1 in New York.

Police and prosecutors now say they are unhappy about the long list of felonies included on the list of criminal offenses that will no longer result in a suspect being held on bail until trial.

"I am not gonna go through another year, where we don't do criminal justice reform," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said during budget negotiations, according to WRGB.

Cuomo said he wanted to reduce the number of people who were held in jail awaiting trial.

But critics have called the new bail reform law overreaching and said it goes too far.

Fulton County Sheriff Richard Giardino, who spent 18 years as a judge, told WRGB there should be more qualifying offenses for bail.

"You leave for work in the morning, we arrest em’ at 7 o’clock on a raid. You get home at 6 o'clock, by the time you get issued an appearance ticket they're back out on the street,” Sheriff Giardino said.

The sheriff said that law enforcement officers are going to spend a lot of time tracking down people who fail to appear for court.

"You're going to see a large spike in people not going to court in the first six to nine months of this, then you're going to see our officers spending numerous hours, numerous days tracking people who have been bench-warranted,” he said.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counter-terrorism John Miller called the plan “misguided” and said that 99 percent of people who are arrested will be released under the new plan, WLNY reported.

“Everybody who gets arrested for anything except for maybe murder and attempted murder is going to be released without having to pay any bail, right at arraignment,” Deputy Commissioner Miller said.

He said the new plan eliminated any incentive for criminals not to repeat their crimes, WLNY reported.

“Before they enacted this law, 89 percent, 89 percent of people were being released at arraignment without having to pay bail anyway,” Deputy Commissioner Miller said. “Now that’s going to go to probably 99 percent, which is going to be a problem because criminals are going to know at the time they’re arrested ‘I’m not really risking going to jail, I’m not really risking anything except going through the system and coming out at the other end.'”

NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan agreed with his department’s counter-terrorism boss.

“You’re talking about people who can sell pounds of cocaine and walk out with no bail. Someone burglarizes your house and walks out with no bail,” Chief Monahan said. “We’re going to be facing some major issues come Jan. 1 if this doesn’t get changed.”

But the governor said he had no plans to change the new reforms because he doesn’t think a person’s freedom should hinge on whether they can afford bail, WRGB reported.

Law enforcement was furious.

“In many cases, we have lost our ability to get people off the street even for a short-term basis. Even just a cool-down period,” Saratoga County Undersheriff Richard Castle told WTEN.

Undersheriff Castle said he was most worried about low-level burglary and robbery charges, as well as the number of bench warrants that will be issued when people stop showing up for court.

“So if someone goes to your house and kicks in your front door and steals items out of your house and we catch them, they will be released. If they do it an hour later, they’ll be released again,” he explained. Also, “We’re now going to have to go find them when they don’t show up in court.”

The undersheriff complained that the bail reform legislation was passed without consulting law enforcement or prosecutors, WTEN reported.

New York Assemblyman Dan Stec said bail reform should have never been passed as part of the budget package and said the changes take away discretion from law enforcement and prosecutors.

"Their hands are tied. Instead of being able to exercise their professional experienced discretion, it's a one-size-fits-all now,” Stec said.

The District Attorneys Association of the State of New York released a list of charges that will no longer qualify a suspect to be held on bail, WTEN reported.

Assault in the third degree
Aggravated vehicular assault
Aggravated assault upon a person less than eleven years old
Criminally negligent homicide
Aggravated vehicular homicide
Manslaughter in the second degree
Unlawful imprisonment in the first degree
Coercion in the first degree
Arson in the third and fourth degree
Grand larceny in the first degree
Criminal possession of a weapon on school grounds or criminal possession of a firearm
Criminal possession of a controlled substance in the first and second degree
Criminal sale of a controlled substance in the first and second degree
Criminal sale of a controlled substance in or near school grounds
Specified felony drug offenses involving the use of children, including the use of a child to commit a controlled substance offense and criminal sale of a controlled substance to a child
Criminal solicitation in the first degree and criminal facilitation in the first degree
Money laundering in support of terrorism in the third and fourth degree
Making a terroristic threat
Patronizing a person for prostitution in a school zone
Promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child
Possessing an obscene sexual performance by a child
Promoting a sexual performance by a child
Failure to register as a sex offender
Obstructing governmental administration in the first and second degree
Obstructing governmental administration by means of a self-defense spray device
Bribery in the first degree
Bribe giving for public office
Bribe receiving in the first degree
Promoting prison contraband in the first and second degree
Resisting arrest
Hindering prosecution
Tampering with a juror and tampering with physical evidence
Aggravated harassment in the first degree
Directing a laser at an aircraft in the first degree
Criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree
Criminal sale of a firearm to a minor
Enterprise corruption and money laundering in the first degree
Aggravated cruelty to animals, overdriving, torturing and injuring animals
Failure to provide proper sustenance
Animal fighting

More mindless leftist stupidity.

Good, let that place burn. The sooner the better.

At least in New York criminals may get arrested and mite face prosecution, it is possible. In San Francisco and Oakland not even that happens anymore.

It is not just there, it is everywhere. I just attended training for the new rules going into effect 1/1/2020 for Municipal Courts state wide in Missouri. Basically the Missouri Supreme Court and Missouri Legislature did a committee review and think no one should be held in jail or be required to post a bond on any muni charges, like DWI, Stealing, and Assaults (St. Louis County PA refers misdemeanor cases back to muni court in almost all cases that were initially sent to State Court).

The criminal-Democrat alliance.

It is amazing at how more lax. the democrats are getting when it comes to being truly corrupt and without morals. They want everything that is not good to be good and everything that is good to be wrong.

I can see the value in this, for some persons. However if half the defendents do not show up in court, then commit more crimes, and the city swirls into a cesspool, let it be. Let the crime rate rise, and perhaps the citizens will vote in better elected officials.

If I was a LEO in some of these areas, I think I would start to not care so much and let the people get what they voted for.

On the upside, access to criminals is improved. Let vigilante justice prevail.

that should get the liberals more votes

quote:

Patronizing a person for prostitution in a school zone
Promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child
Possessing an obscene sexual performance by a child
Promoting a sexual performance by a child
Failure to register as a sex offender

These things alone would probably account for most of their politicians.

Last time the annual body count had to get to 2200+ before the backlash kicked in. We'll see how high it gets this time.

New Yorkers, welcome to the cesspool. This is what you get for putting someone like DeBlasio and his cabal in charge.

I escaped from the Syracuse area 33 years ago. In the new law:

A burglary suspect, released without bail under the new law, will be allowed to tour the crime scene (the victim’s house) with a lawyer to mount a defense. Fitzpatrick pointed out that scenario could even include someone who breaks into a child’s room, but is stopped before doing anything more serious.

Complete article

https://www.syracuse.com/crime...angerous-insane.html

CNY law enforcement sound alarm on justice reform: Flawed, dangerous, insane

Updated 2:03 PM;Today 12:28 PM

By Douglass Dowty | ddowty@syracuse.com

Syracuse, NY -- Law enforcement from across Central New York flooded a meeting room at Syracuse’s jail Thursday to sound the alarm over sweeping changes to the state’s criminal justice system that will start with the New Year.

“We are not resistant to reform, we are resistant to insanity,” Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said.

The reform includes releasing many more people accused of crimes prior to trial. It also requires strict deadlines for turning over evidence to defense lawyers.

Onondaga County Sheriff Gene Conway warned it will “create chaos in the criminal justice system” and pose a “danger to citizens.”

A primary goal of the reform is to keep fewer people incarcerated before they’re convicted of crimes.

Conway said he couldn’t guess how many fewer inmates would be kept at the downtown Justice Center jail, which the county operates.

“I can’t predict that,” Conway said, arguing that such factors were out of his control. “I don’t know today how many people I will have in the jail on Monday.”

But the sheriff did pose a scenario in which there might be half as many inmates at the jail, at least in some areas. The jail population today sits around 600 inmates.

Conway and Fitzpatrick were joined by law enforcement chiefs, sheriffs and DAs from five counties across Central New York. It was one of at least nine news conferences being held Thursday across the state to warn of the law’s pitfalls.

Noticeably absent from the show of solidarity was Syracuse Police Chief Kenton Buckner or other city police personnel. It’s unclear if the focus on the Syracuse University protests had anything to do with their absence.

The statewide news conferences led to a coordinated counter-protest in support of the new law. At least two pro-reform advocates attended Thursday’s news conference, holding signs that read: “We Support Criminal Justice Reform.”

The reform, which was passed during the Democratic-controlled budget process, is the subject of a last-minute challenge among some Republican lawmakers.

Officials said Thursday they are committed to following the law, while supporting the last-minute efforts to delay and change it. DAs and police said they were not opposed to reform, but they say the legislation goes too far and doesn’t provide any money to carry it out.

Fitzpatrick suggested that one of the biggest goals of the law -- taking someone’s wealth out of the equation -- wasn’t really a problem in Onondaga County.

“We do not criminalize poverty,” he said, adding that only six local inmates at present had “nominal bail” (of a few hundred or a thousand dollars) set, and those inmates could seek a review by a higher court.

In one of the more drastic changes, the law takes bail decisions for hundreds of crimes out of the hands of judges. There are more than 400 crimes that will require automatic release with no bail under the law, Conway noted.

And judges will still not be able to consider danger to the community in setting bail. That’s been the case for decades, and will not change under the new law.

The rigid rules create some bizarre and concerning scenarios, law enforcement said.

A suspect, who is bailed out of jail and disappears, cannot be jailed on a charge of bail jumping. Likewise, an inmate charged with escape cannot be held on bail for the new escape charge.
A burglary suspect, released without bail under the new law, will be allowed to tour the crime scene (the victim’s house) with a lawyer to mount a defense. Fitzpatrick pointed out that scenario could even include someone who breaks into a child’s room, but is stopped before doing anything more serious.
A driver, accused of being intoxicated in a crash with serious injuries, cannot be held on bail. Fitzpatrick noted that notorious DWI driver Anthony Saccone couldn’t have been held on bail the night of a triple-fatal crash based on the initial charges (unless authorities could have confirmed it was a fatal before time of arraignment).
Absent a judge’s order, information identifying key witnesses or informants must be turned over to a defendant early in the process. That poses a threat for witnesses and informants, Conway said.


George Kunkel, a counter-protester who held a sign Thursday, accused law enforcement of working behind the scenes to find loopholes in the law and sabotage it when possible.

And the New York Civil Liberties Union also decried law enforcement’s reaction.

“Today’s efforts to derail much-needed changes to our criminal legal system is a sad attempt to disrupt a pathway to justice,” the NYCLU said in a statement. “To suggest that we should maintain the status quo and continue to criminalize and warehouse people due to the size of their bank account is not a form of justice, and we must not heed to the handful of people who insist that it is.”

Other supporters of the law include Citizen Action of New York, New Yorkers United for Justice and Community Bail Funds, a group that helps inmates awaiting trial secure their release.

Law enforcement at Thursday’s news conference responded that they are not opposed to all bail and pretrial reform. Fitzpatrick noted the long history of DAs pushing for specialized courts that help people with drugs, mental health and other issues.

“Nobody is saying the criminal justice system can’t be reformed,” Fitzpatrick said.

But law enforcement’s perspective was cut out of the equation, Conway and others argued.

“It’s the process,” the sheriff said. “It’s that there was no process.”

These reforms have been debated in Albany for the past couple of years. They were not enacted in 2018 after similar concerns were raised. But the state legislature pushed them through as part of the 2019 budget process.

Proponents argue that bail reform would mean savings to taxpayers, since there would be fewer inmates to house and feed.

But Conway and other sheriffs disagreed that fewer inmates would mean lower jail costs. In fact, they argued, costs would increase. The downtown jail is structured so that deputies can watch up to 60 inmates at once in what’s called a pod.

Whether there are 20 inmates or 40 inmates in that pod, the staffing requirements are the same, Conway said. And there would still need to be deputies to transport inmates to court and to secure them at hospitals.

But there would be significantly more costs in collecting evidence under strict deadlines imposed by the pretrial court reforms, he said.

Baldwinsville Police Chief Michael Lafencheck, representing town and village police, said the new rules might even lead police to avoid using body-worn cameras.

Lafencheck said police support use of those cameras, but that there aren’t enough resources to compile all the footage and turn it over under the deadlines imposed by the new law. The only alternative, he said, may be to avoid using the cameras all together.

Cayuga County District Attorney Jon Budelmann estimated that his office will see a “10-fold increase” in the amount of evidence collection work required by the law.

Everyone who spoke expressed concern that no extra money was set aside to implement the changes.

“The law’s reliance on pretrial services will fail without adequate money,” Conway said.

quote:

A suspect, who is bailed out of jail and disappears, cannot be jailed on a charge of bail jumping. Likewise, an inmate charged with escape cannot be held on bail for the new escape charge.
A burglary suspect, released without bail under the new law, will be allowed to tour the crime scene (the victim’s house) with a lawyer to mount a defense. Fitzpatrick pointed out that scenario could even include someone who breaks into a child’s room, but is stopped before doing anything more serious.
A driver, accused of being intoxicated in a crash with serious injuries, cannot be held on bail. Fitzpatrick noted that notorious DWI driver Anthony Saccone couldn’t have been held on bail the night of a triple-fatal crash based on the initial charges (unless authorities could have confirmed it was a fatal before time of arraignment).
Absent a judge’s order, information identifying key witnesses or informants must be turned over to a defendant early in the process. That poses a threat for witnesses and informants, Conway said.

Now this is insane, look forward to when the body count climbs and perhaps the voters will do something.