New York City district attorneys have dropped hundreds of looting cases against suspects charged during the unrest in the city following the death of George Floyd.
One year ago, parts of New York City seemed to be spiraling out of control as crowds of looters ravaged the city in the wake of the “racial justice” protests. The mayhem continued for many consecutive nights, from late May into June. At one point, there was even a so-called “looting street party” on the streets of Soho — a famously arty neighborhood of the ’70s and ’80s that has evolved into one of New York’s prime shopping districts located in Lower Manhattan — when hundreds of revelers packed along an unidentified Soho street, some dancing on cars, some smashing the store fronts, and others recording the wild scene on their phones. Once-posh New York areas were trashed, and luxurious stores were ransacked.
One of the Soho residents said back then that what his neighborhood experienced was “not a peaceful protest over the killing of a black man…. It was a war zone in Soho… It was a violent riot with scores of people running amok, indiscriminately smashing the windows of high-end retailers as well as our local bodega. They broke into a mom-and-pop sandwich shop, stealing five bicycles the immigrant deliverymen use. As a result, these poor hardworking folk can no longer do their jobs.”
Even though police were far outnumbered and seemingly unprepared, hundreds of arrests were made. Many of those arrests took place in Manhattan and along some commercial streets in the Bronx where the problems were widespread.
NYPD data reviewed by the NBC New York shows 118 arrests were made in the Bronx during the worst of the looting in early June. Since then, the NYPD says the Bronx District Attorney (DA) and the courts have dismissed most of those cases — 73 in all. Eighteen cases remain open and there have been 19 convictions for mostly lesser counts such as trespassing that carry no jail time.
In Manhattan, the NYPD data shows there were 485 arrests. Of those cases, 222 were later dropped and 73 seeing convictions for lesser counts such as trespassing, which carries no jail time. Another 40 cases involved juveniles and were sent to family court; 128 cases remain open.
Sources in the DA’s offices told NBC New York that evidence, in some cases, was simply not strong enough for proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And with the courts closed amid the pandemic, there was a huge backlog of cases that were unwieldy for both the courts and prosecutors.
NYPD also said they set up a task force after the riots to examine videos and photos to separate out suspected rioters from peaceful protesters, but NYC prosecutors are disposing of most burglary-related cases.
The NYPD claims there were tedious follow-up investigations, where evidence included photos and recovered stolen property, but the district attorneys and the courts did not make any such follow-ups, which “allowed people who committed crimes to go scot free.”
The outlet also reports that in an internal memo, Manhattan DA Cy Vance says there were over 600 commercial burglary arrests in addition to over 3,500 unindicted felony cases in the pipeline waiting to move forward in the courts. The memo says that all those cases were on hold because of the pandemic. “For many of these commercial burglaries, you will be asked to reduce the initial felony charge to a misdemeanor and to dispose of the case … with an eye towards rehabilitation,” Vance informed his attorneys. He also stressed the “continued goal [is] to achieve consistency and equitable treatment in these cases.”
Office of Court Administration’s spokesman Lucian Chalfen said the decisions to dismiss cases were primarily made by the district attorneys.
Business owners and residents in New York City were outraged at the revelation that prosecutors have dropped looting and rioting charges against hundreds of alleged criminals.
And this great jail break extends beyond New York City. Protesters arrested for looting or rioting in many other American cities also appear to have been let off the hook as prosecutors were dropping charges right away, or new laws put them back out on the streets quickly.
The Washington Times reported back in June 2020, that in riot-ravaged St. Louis, the District of Columbia, Philadelphia, and New York, serious charges against hundreds of people arrested for stealing and torching property have been dismissed. Those dismissals have come from the federal level in the nation’s capital, from district attorneys elected with millions in campaign cash from left-wing activist George Soros, and in New York from a bail reform measure that went into effect that year. The same was observed in hard-hit Portland and many other cities.
Reportedly, Soros, through the Justice & Public Safety PAC and other groups, has spent more than $18 million on the election of left-wing DAs since 2015, with mostly successful results (only seven losses out of 29 races). Soros explicitly laid out his case for nationwide criminal justice reform in the second chapter of his book In Defense of Open Society. He cited such measures as one of the major objectives in his America-related philanthropy agenda.
The consequences of all these efforts to re-engineer the U.S. justice system at the local level are as one would expect.
As multiple data sets confirm, 2020 was a record year for violent crime. Preliminary FBI data show that murder rates went up everywhere in America in 2020, and not by a little — by 24.7 percent, if measured nationwide. Criminal justice expert John Roman said 2020’s surge “is the largest increase in violence we’ve seen since 1960, when we started collecting formal crime statistics.”
Now, hundreds of violent criminals are back on the streets of New York thanks to the ultra-liberal DA, in the name of “justice,” “equity,” and “Open Society.”
