By Trevor Shakohl
Left-wing district attorneys implementing policies such as bail reform bear significant responsibility for the nationwide spike in crime, former New York City police commissioner Bill Bratton argued Monday.
Many cities’ district attorneys sympathetic to “criminal justice reform” are releasing criminals who should be in jail, Bratton told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo in an interview aired Monday. Such cities have borne the brunt of the crime wave thanks to bail reforms and other criminal justice reforms, he said.
“My own belief, my own perspective, and I talk about this, I speak about it, I write about it continually, is that the crime surge in America right how has been politically created, and in cities where it’s occurring most dramatically, [sic] are those cities that have elected, and we have to blame the voters for this, have elected district attorneys, prosecutors who are embracing the criminal justice reform movement, bail reform, if you will,” the Homeland Security Advisory Council chair and former Los Angeles Police Department chief stated.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon has been heavily criticized for eliminating cash bail, stopping prosecutors from going to parole hearings with victims and their families and barring all death penalty prosecution. Bratton also spoke out against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in January after his office would not prosecute some low-level offenses any longer.
The former police chief argued to Cuomo that proposals and policies of district attorneys tied to the “criminal justice reform movement” are “not working,” despite reform of some kind being necessary. He called the country’s inner cities “a mess” that would not improve “any time soon.” (RELATED: While Dems Blast Red States Over Crime, Blue Cities Are The Catalyst, Experts Say)
“You cannot point out one city in America that has one of these criminal justice reform district attorneys where crime is going down, so let’s wake up,” Bratton told Cuomo. “There’s something wrong with that, basically, form of prosecution.”
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