Albany lawmakers finished their work for the year Wednesday, and soon New Yorkers may be a little less safe than they were in January.
Oh, not dramatically so. The pro-crime heavy lifting happened four years ago, when progressive Democrats took undisputed control of Albany and set about to neuter New York’s penal law.
That’s when “bail reform” happened — followed by an historic, across-the-board crime wave that has yet to recede.
Unsurprisingly, Albany just made matters worse, passing bills that effectively will erase untold thousands of criminal records and open the way toward undoing an unknowable number of criminal convictions while paralyzing the state’s courts with uncountable frivolous appeals.
Think of it as a continuum: 2023 was a year for fine-tuning structural damage done years earlier to New York’s criminal-justice system. Stand by for even worse next year.
The effect of this year’s brainstorms — the so-called “Clean Slate” bill to evaporate criminal records and the equally dubious “Wrongful Conviction” bill to give inmates a second bite out of the Big Apple — will be real, if subtle.
Connecting the street-crime dots is difficult. But putting more criminals on the streets — thank you, “bail reform” — obviously means more crime on the streets, too.
That fellow stabbed to death Wednesday in Washington Square Park may or may not have been killed by a direct “bail reform” beneficiary. But surely he fell victim to a pro-criminal culture now gripping New York lawmakers.
It’s certainly no coincidence that crime is up sharply since 2019, or that random knife attacks seem to be the latest thing in the city. And summer is only two days old. So hang on.
Now here’s the thing: There can be no justice under law if there is no meaningful punishment for law-breaking. Human nature is such that criminals will prosper, victims will suffer and social constraints will fray.
Are Daniel Penny, the so-called F-train vigilante, and Jordan Williams, who killed an assailant on the J-train last month, aberrations — or harbingers?
This much has become clear since 2019: In matters of public safety, Albany’s progressives have picked a side: They view criminals as a constituency, and they are acting accordingly.
All this doesn’t just send corrosive messages — it radiates them.
It tells every neighborhood in New York — long since a majority-minority city, by the way — that they are on their own. It’s no longer enough to be hard-working, upstanding and law-abiding — the progressives are with the criminals.
Practically speaking, the new normal presents the NYPD — and street cops in particular — with a potentially crippling dilemma.
That is, why make an entirely legitimate arrest in the first place when offenders will simply be sent on their way — if not with an apology for the inconvenience, at least with the functional equivalent?
Or, more ominously, when any contact with a criminal carries a high risk of caught-on-video confrontation with potentially career-ending consequences — or worse?
No wonder cops cluster in subway stairwells, right?
Gov. Hochul really needs to tear herself away from her principal concerns — her husband’s business interests — long enough to veto the two new bills.
Sure, the progressives will bring them back in January, or sooner. But sometimes governors must do what’s necessary.
Oh, right.
Forget it, Kat. It’s Albany.
