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Former bodega clerk Jose Alba joined the households of different crime victims and their supporters Monday in railing towards Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg at a contentious GOP-led House Judiciary Committee hearing concentrating on the lefty prosecutor.
The group testified at a particular congressional “discipline listening to” on the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, placing Bragg on the new seat in entrance of a nationwide viewers.
The DA was not on the listening to.
The eight individuals who spoke or offered statements decried Big Apple crime and Bragg’s controversial alleged lax insurance policies, which critics say favor criminals over legislation and order.
Those testifying ran the gamut — from victims, their households and advocates to law-enforcement officers:
Alba, who is in his early 60s, was initially charged with homicide by Bragg’s workplace for fatally stabbing a person who attacked him behind the counter on the retailer the place he labored in July. Alba spent per week on Rikers Island earlier than the costs towards him have been dropped after widespread outcry.
“I took delight within the onerous work I put in on daily basis on the retailer to earn my very own cash and help myself and my household,” Alba, who was at Monday’s listening to, testified via his lawyer. “That is once I encountered a real and actual risk to my life after I merely instructed a girl that she couldn’t have potato chips as a result of her cost was declined.
“I used to be head to head together with her boyfriend who appeared able to kill me,” he mentioned. “He attacked me violently, threw me across the retailer. The girl stabbed me herself. I actually consider they have been there to kill me.”
Jennifer Harrison, the founding father of Victims Rights NY, suffered via her boyfriend and his pal being murdered in New Jersey in 2005. Three brothers have been arrested and charged with the slayings, however solely considered one of them ended up serving time in jail. Harrison has been an advocate for crime victims ever since.
“Nobody needed to take heed to us, the victims who should dwell with the results of those choices for the remainder of our lives, after we warned of the hurt this may trigger,” she mentioned of soft-on-crime insurance policies. “Victims haven’t any voice in politics or authorities.”
Madeline Brame is the chairwoman of the Victims Rights Reform Council and the mom of former US Army vet Hason Corea, who was crushed and stabbed to loss of life in Harlem in 2018. Bragg inherited the case after taking workplace in 2022 — and lower offers with three of the 4 suspects, all siblings.
“He dismissed — utterly dismissed — gang assault and homicide indictments towards two of the defendants clearly on video taking part within the brutal, savage slaughter of my son,” Brame mentioned of the DA. “And so far as the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, if he’s receiving one penny of federal {dollars}, you should pull that funding till he begins doing his rattling job and prosecuting crime.”
Robert Holden, a Democratic New York City councilman representing District 30 in Queens and a member of the council’s bipartisan “Common Sense Caucus, is a proponent of rolling again features of New York’s controversial bail statute and helps granting judges extra powers to set bail.
“We have repeat offenders receiving lenient sentences and committing a number of crimes shortly after being launched,” Holden mentioned “From the day he took workplace, it appears Alvin Bragg’s high precedence was to maintain criminals out of jail and free to roam the streets.”
Rebecca Fischer, govt director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, a bunch that advocates for stricter gun legal guidelines together with background checks, intervention and prevention providers, instructed the committee that New York ranks forty seventh out of the 50 states in gun-violence charges.
“Traffickers go elsewhere to supply weapons shortly and illegally as a result of gun purchasers are required to undergo a background test and licensing course of in New York,” she famous. “The nationwide gun-trafficking disaster is basically the results of weak gun legal guidelines in different states and the truth that Congress has not enacted complete federal gun-reform legal guidelines.”
Paul DiGiacomo, president of the New York City’s Detectives’ Endowment Association, has been among the many most vocal critics of state bail-reform measures that critics say permit extra harmful criminals again onto the streets, the place the NYPD is pressured to take care of them.
“The similar individuals are being arrested time and again for violent crime,” he instructed the committee. “They should be held in jail. There has been a reckless disregard for the legislation that has led to unprecedented gun violence, robberies, car-jacking, house invasions, burglaries, shoplifting and disturbances by the mentally unwell.”
Barry Borgen is the daddy of Joseph Borgen, who was attacked and brutally crushed in an anti-Semitic assault close to Times Square in 2021. Joseph Borgen’s attackers later lower plea offers with Bragg’s workplace.
“I sit right here in entrance of the committee with the two-year anniversary of the assault quickly approaching to talk of the continued wrestle with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg,” the elder Borgen mentioned.
“While the delays and continued hold-ups within the authorized case are discouraging, it’s the sweetheart slap-on-the-wrist deal supplied to one of many attackers in my son’s case that’s exemplary of DA Bragg’s incompetence on the subject of finishing up justice,” he instructed the committee.
Jim Kessler is co-founder and senior vice chairman for coverage of Third Way, a progressive coverage assume tank which has addressed nationwide gun coverage and developments. He argued that New York gun and crime charges are favorable in comparison with different states, together with many pink states.
“If we needed a listening to in regards to the ravages of crime, why aren’t we in Baton Rouge or Louisville, the place 5 folks have been murdered within the blink of an eye fixed in a mass capturing at a downtown financial institution?” he mentioned.
Or within the homicide capital of California,” Kessler mentioned. “Which is just not Los Angeles or San Francisco or Oakland … however in [House] Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy’s district of Kern County, with its county seat of Bakersfield.”
