Albany District Attorney David Soares deserves every New Yorker’s thanks for his relentless demands that the Legislature fix the disastrous Raise the Age law.
The 2018 law is driving the years-long epidemic of gun violence involving kids under 18.
And Soares isn’t giving up though his fellow Democrats, who control the state, refuse to listen. CBS 6 reports that he recently met with Albany County legislators asking them to join him his drive.
Flagging a recent fatal shooting involving a teen gunman who’d had several run-ins with the justice system, he told them: “We witnessed the murder of a young man at the hands of another young man that had gone through the family court Raise the Age process and was a beneficiary there at a minimum of three times.”
Last year, the outspoken, progressive Albany DA blasted Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers over RTA and other criminal-justice reforms that have “normalized” violence without consequences in urban minority communities across the state.
In just three months (May to July) this year, he reports, 12 out of 18 underaged Albany County suspects hit with violent felony charges have been re-arrested.
It’s the same in New York City, where violent-crime arrests of teens have skyrocketed and juvenile recidivism spiked.
Family Court wasn’t designed to “deal with violent, super, super, violent youth,” Soares explains, while the absence of consequences or rehabilitation invites juveniles to re-offend.
Without “strategic intervention that deals with [criminal] behavior,” he warns, all RTA does is release troubled kids with “underdeveloped minds and Glocks” back into the community.
Staten Island DA Michael McMahon, who has voiced similar concerns, says lawmakers must “get tough on these young people by restoring consequences for their actions.”
Ironically, Soares won his first DA race with George Soros’ backing. But unlike later “Soros DAs,” he puts community needs (and reality!) ahead of ideology.
Above all, he wants to save the lives of young people, largely black and Hispanic — victims and shooters.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and state legislators should want to do the same.
