The migrants who may have hopped on a bus to California after being busted in the caught-on-video beatdown of two NYPD cops couldn’t be arrested even if law enforcement tracked them down — because they were already freed without bail.
John Miller, a former top NYPD official and CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst pointed out the bail issue in an interview on the network Friday, saying that it’s “stirred a lot of controversy about the criminal justice reform and the assault on the police officers.”
Police believe the group of four — Darwin Andres Gomez, 19, Kelvin Servita Arocha, 19, Wilson Juarez, 21, and Yorman Reveron, 24 — may have skipped town Wednesday after giving phony names to a church-affiliated nonprofit group that helps migrants get rides out of the city, sources previously told The Post.
Miller, the NYPD’s former deputy commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism, said the asylum-seeking suspects boarded a bus headed to Calexico – a California city on the Mexico border – by way of St. Louis, Missouri.
“Now normally, we probably wouldn’t even be talking about this because the US Marshals and detectives would be waiting for them in St. Louis,” Miller said, “but they were released on their own recognizance, which means police have nothing to arrest them on, on the assumption – which they have to operate on – that they’ll be back for their [March 4] court date.”
“The chances of that happening when four people get on a bus with false names and head for the city that literally you can cross the street into the Mexican border is probably unlikely,” he added.
All were charged with second-degree assault on a police officer — which is a bail-eligible offense.
Three — Gomez, Arocha, and Juarez — were released on their own recognizance by Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Marisol Martinez Alonso at their arraignments Monday.
The judge put Reveron on supervised release, finding that he could be a flight risk, after prosecutors noted he had two open Manhattan cases, according to a transcript of the hearing. It remains unclear if taking off would be a violation of his court-ordered release.
Warrants could be issued for their arrests if Reveron, Gomez, Arocha, and Juarez don’t make it back for their March 4 hearing in the police beatdown case.
Reveron is also due back in court Feb. 20 on “other pending matters” unrelated to the assault, a spokesman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said Friday.
The DA’s office has defended not asking for monetary bail by saying it was still reviewing footage of the Saturday attack near Times Square to determine the extent to which the specific suspects were each involved.
A fifth suspect, Jhoan Boada, 22, on Wednesday, was also released without bail on the same charge.
Yohenry Brito, 24, who was arrested later that night, on Thursday became the first of the suspects in the case to be ordered held on bail by Alonso, who set the amount at $15,000 cash or a $50,000 bond after prosecutors argued he had been identified on footage of the attack through a “distinct tattoo.”
Investigators are probing whether any of the suspects involved in the beatdown are linked to five larger, citywide grand larceny and robbery patterns, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Officials are also investigating – out of an abundance of caution – whether any of the Times Square arrestees are connected to a Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua, sources said.
The gang is described in an Interpol report as “Venezuela’s most powerful homegrown criminal actor and the only Venezuelan gang that has successfully projected its power abroad.”
They are also probing whether one 19-year-old suspect in the cop beating – who has not yet been arrested – has connections to the gang, the sources said. That teen was once arrested and faced 10 charges in a single day, Miller said.
“So what the detectives are telling me is they have crews here that operate in New York, do all their stealing, then go to Florida to spend the money, and then come back and I’m, like, ‘Well, why don’t they just stay and steal in Florida?” Miller said. “[The detectives] said, because there you go to jail.”
Asked about the bail issue on Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul noted the case was still under investigation, but that she believed the accused attackers should have been held behind bars.
“My number one priority is protecting the people of this state, and any time there is an assault on a police officer, which is a very serious offense, bail should be sought,” she told reporters after the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York Winter Conference.
The Democratic governor on Thursday said in no uncertain terms that the migrants allegedly involved in the assault should be deported.
“Get them all and send them back,” Hochul told reporters. “You don’t touch our police officers. You don’t touch anyone.”
Additional reporting by Khristina Narizhnaya
