While the New York criminals need to be punished for their violence and lawlessness, former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said Democrat leadership is ultimately to blame for it all increasing, having made "a mess" of the state.
"That question needs to be asked of the people who created the mess that we're in, and that's the legislature in Albany, the governor, the City Council, and the mayor here in New York City," Bratton told Sunday's "The Cats Roundtable" hosted by John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM-N.Y. "Things were going great in the state and city up until about 2018 when the legislature decided they're going to reform the reforms – and they made a mess of it."
After years of Democrats' policing and bail reform, the last year and a half of the coronavirus pandemic has only "compounded" the crime wave and "totally collapsed the system," Bratton added.
"The criminal justice system in the state is a mess," he said. "It was compounded by the coronavirus, which totally collapsed the system. It's going to take years to fix, unfortunately."
Violent crime is the most pressing issue, but all criminals start small and progress to the worst crimes, according to Bratton.
"Violent crime in New York is one problem, but the larger problem," Bratton said, is "the grooming ground, is the disorderly behavior.
"No district attorney wants to effectively prosecute anybody for minor crimes," he lamented. "The legislature has made it almost impossible to do anything.
The police, prosecutors, and the judges have all been hampered by the Democrats' policies, Bratton continued.
"So it is any surprise that we have violent crime? The legislature still refuses to give judges in the state the power to hold somebody . . . who is a danger to the public," he said. "Judges really have no control or discretion.
"This state is a mess!"
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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