24 THE QUEENS COURIER • JANUARY 9, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
editorial
Time to tweak cash bail reforms
As lawmakers stream back to Albany
this week for the start of the new legislative
STORY: ‘Life is too expensive here’: Senior immigrants in
Flushing putting off retirement
SUMMARY: A growing number of Chinese seniors living in
Flushing are working past 60, the normal retirement age
in China.
REACH: 65,880 people (as of 1/6/20)
session, they will be tasked
with fixing New York’s cash bail reform
that was part of the criminal justice
law changes pushed by the Democratic
majority and signed into law.
Blowback from law-and-order
Republicans and many in law enforcement
has been intense in the week since
the new law went into effect, removing
detention and cash bail for nearly
all misdemeanors and nonviolent felony
cases such as stalking, larceny and
assault as a hate crime.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo addressed the
brewing controversy Monday calling
bail reforms a work in progress.
“Bail reform is right. But changing
the system is complicated and then has
a number of ramifications,” Cuomo
said. “There are other changes that
need to be made.”
Attorney General Letitia James said
the new bail laws should be revisited by
lawmakers.
“Safety should be the first priority,”
she said.
Social justice advocates hailed the
new bail reforms, making the case
that people facing criminal charges
were already being released before the
reforms, just as long as they could
post bail. It was only poor people who
couldn’t post bail under the old laws,
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penalizing people based on wealth level
alone.
“The whole idea of the bail reform
is that someone should not be held in
simply because they can’t afford bail,
and we all saw plenty of horrible examples
of that,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
“Kalief Browder is the worst example
but there were many.”
The controversy comes at a time
where anti-Semitic attacks have rocked
the metropolitan area including the
machete attack on the Orthodox community
in Monsey in Rockland County.
A Brooklyn Assemblyman has proposed
legislation that would bring back
cash bail for hate crimes.
State Senator Michael Gianaris, one
of the chief architects of the criminal
justice reform laws, told reporters he is
open to discussing changes.
“Everyone is obviously concerned
about the severity of hate crimes and
the outbreak of hate crimes,” Gianaris
said. “I expect that this conversation
will be one that unfolds over the next
several weeks, and we will do what’s
appropriate to keep everybody safe and
to also keep the system fair.”
We suggest amending the statute to
reinstitute judicial discretion to assess
whether a person is too dangerous to
be released and, at the very least, give
judges more options when dealing with
hate crimes.
Courtesy of de Blasio’s offi ce
Mayor Bill de Blasio and new Police Commissioner Dermot Shea expressed their concerns about cash
bail reforms that were implemented Jan. 1.
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