Alvin Bragg Has Given New York City Over to ‘Lawlessness’: Democratic Councilman

At a House Judiciary Committee field hearing in New York City on April 17, Democratic City Councilman Robert Holden criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s’s leadership — or perceived lack thereof.

Holden testified before the committee,” I’m’m here to address the violence that has taken over the place in recent years as a result of the failed progressive policies implemented by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.”

Holden claimed that the district attorney’s’s” soft on crime” policies suggested that his top priority was keeping criminals out of jail rather than defending law-abiding citizens, noting that Bragg had experienced a” dramatic shift” in the prosecution of crime during his first year in office.

The councillor stated that Bragg” issued a memo on his first time in office that decriminalized many offenses and reduced charges for harsh crime.” This served as a warning to all criminals that New York County’s’s law-abiding residents were empty period.

According to Holden, Bragg is a part of the” pro-crime element” in New York City, along with officials on the state level and in the city council.

Following his testimony, the councilor told The Epoch Times in an interview,” We’re’re going to have to change this.” People in New York state and city will eventually grow tired of it and start to leave. I am aware that many of my colleagues have relocated outside of New York City.

Holden suggested a straightforward fix: begin enforcing transparency.

Holden said,” That means you should go to jail if you commit a crime— you shoot your gun in New York City.” ” Arrow down the perpetrators.” Period.

In January 2022, Bragg took work. According to the New York City Police Department( NYPD ), overall index crime in the city had increased by 22.4 percent year over year by the end of the year. However, the number of murders decreased by 11.3 cents, which is the lowest point since 2019.

However, for the first quarter of 2023, grand larceny, homicides, and rapes all trended upward, year over year, while felony assaults and car thefts increased.

Holden, however, observed that Bragg had a propensity to downgrade the majority of crimes to offenses while refusing to bring charges against others during the hearing on Monday.

He observed that under Bragg, aggressive offenses like resisting arrest, trespass, suffer escape, and adultery are no longer prosecuted, which has significantly increased criminal exercise on Manhattan’s’s streets.

” Severe offenses, such as knifepoint assault, commercial and residential burglary, arms hands, and low-level drug dealing, are being charged with lesser crimes or being plea-bartered home, leading to shorter sentences or no jail time for some.”

52 cents of the criminal cases Bragg’s’s office reviewed in 2022 were downgraded to offenses, according to Politifact. Additionally, that number has risen to 54 % for cases as of 2023.

Holden is not the first person to condemn Bragg’s’s leniency toward offense, either.

Given his decision to upgrade falsification of business records charges— typically a misdemeanor in the state of New York — against former President Donald Trump to felony charges in an investigation, the district attorney’s’s record has recently come under closer scrutiny.