Saturday afternoon, a Duane Reade security guard was severely stabbed and a shopper threatened by a knife-wielding thief at one of the chain’s midtown Manhattan stores.
Roughly 12 hours later, a straphanger was shot in the hand as his train pulled into the 86th street and Lexington Avenue platform.
That’s life in Manhattan, where transit crime, assault and shoplifting are raging.
“The city has changed so much,” warned Ermal Gura, 35, of Staten Island, who barely escaped the knife-wielding thief. “We have to watch our backs in the stores and on the subway.”
That’s because Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg doesn’t have New Yorkers’ backs.
Thursday, minutes after securing a guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump on 34 felony counts, Bragg boasted, “I did my job.”
Bragg’s not doing his job. The mainstream media are gushing with adulation. But New Yorkers living in constant fear should find Bragg’s stardom nauseating.
He’s being hailed as a hero, but he’s a menace.
Bragg should prioritize jailing violent criminals and repeat offenders, including the shoplifting gangs that are forcing stores to close.
Since the year before he took office, grand larceny crimes – theft of property worth over $1,000 – are up 33%.
Here’s the zinger: Despite spending years and millions of dollars pursuing Trump, Bragg claims he lacks the resources to bring thieves to trial.
In Dec. 2022, with the DA’s investigation of Trump in full swing, cops arrested Charles Lindsay, 22, and charged him with four heists in one week at high-end Madison Avenue boutiques, where he was alleged to have stolen nearly $25,000 in goods, including luxury handbags.
Four grand larceny charges. Lindsay was known to belong to a gang targeting the area and had a long rap sheet.
Yet the DA’s office let Lindsay off, dropping the charges if he consented to five counseling sessions. He didn’t even have to pay the stores for the goods.
Bragg’s office said prosecutors had too much on their plates to try the case.
Criminal lawyer and former Bronx Assistant District Attorney Michael Discioarro said Bragg has 300 prosecutors. “What exactly is he working on?” Discioarro said in a Feb. 2023 interview. Definitely not getting criminals off the streets.
Two months after Lindsay got his sweetheart deal, he was nailed for packing a pistol and mugging a 14-year-old on a Brooklyn playground. The Brooklyn DA’s office had the good sense to ask for $100,000 bail.
Bragg sides with the criminals. That includes fare-beaters. People who beat the fare often have rap sheets and open warrants for more serious crimes. Criminals don’t conscientiously pay the fare, then they rob and assault other riders. Enforcing the fare would keep crime down.
New York state’s bizarre criminal justice “reforms” are partly to blame for the crime surge, but Bragg refuses to recommend bail or incarceration even when the law permits it.
Public anger against Bragg soared when he released four migrant teens charged with beating up two cops in Times Square in February. No bail required. At that point, 20 Republican state senators sent a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul urging her to remove Bragg as DA, explaining that “his incredibly poor judgment is matched only by his unwillingness to take criminals off the street.”
On April 16, in the midst of his own trial, Trump visited the scene of one of Bragg’s biggest mistakes in judgment – the Sanaa Convenient Store in Harlem. Showing total disdain for the right to self-defense, Bragg had charged Jose Alba, clerk at the bodega, with second-degree murder after he stabbed a career criminal who had attacked him over a bag of chips. When the public grew outraged, the charges were dropped.
The bodega’s co-owner told Trump he’s still grappling with rampant crime. Trump pledged to straighten New York out, adding, “Alvin Bragg does nothing.”
Nothing to keep New Yorkers safe.
“Bragg watched his place in the history books take shape,” The Washington Post wrote after Bragg won a conviction against Trump. That’s the problem. New Yorkers need a DA who watches out for them, not for himself.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.
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Long, long overdue for this man to go, i.e. REMOVED from his position immediately. He is a DANGER to the citizens of NYC & a DANGER to the nation with respect to the bogus trial of former president Donald J Trump. The gov of NY should pardon Trump for the sake of NY & the Nation as a whole & if she is unwilling, ( no surprise there ) then the Trump legal team needs to take it to the US Supreme court, i.e. PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, once they rule on it, the Jack Smith case should go away as well…
The blonde BIMBO suing Trump for defamation will NEVER see a penny, that too will go away.
Let me see now, oh yes, that leaves FANI, ( fanny ) of Georgia with her 18 BOGUS charges on Trump’s codefendants, that too I believe will get dropped after all is said & done. The country as a whole has had it up to there necks with all of this BS weaponization of our Federal gov’t Dept. of Injustice…
Bill… :~)
The city might have enough money to prosecute criminals if it didn’t support all the illegal immigrants.
FREE DANIEL PENNY! Another victim of Bragg injustice! His trial starts in October.
NOTHING BUT AN INCOMPETANT LIBERAL BOOB!
Don’t forget Bragg had Soros financing during his campaign for DA. So were a number of big city DAs in Democrat-run states.
Trump evidently is not liked by Soros; nor is anything/anyone who wants a sovereign nation, individual liberty and freedom.
I hope he gets what he has coming to him!
He’s not an actual judge. A real judge would never have begun this show trial in the first place. He’s merely a political hack that’s been appointed into his position. A real black mark against our judicial system.
This is beyond nauseating He is some form of life but it’s not human
Bragg said they went to where to evidence took them. ALL BS deluxe. Translation”… we went to where we went to,…….by “MANUFACTURING” evidence.
The prime example of Bragg’s bias is Daniel Perry. He’s still waiting for his trial on murder charges. Perry step in to protect himself and fellow passengers on the subway in Manhattan. He restrained a black man threatening everyone on the train. Unfortunately it took the police to long to respond and the attacker died. The next week a black thug was threading a black couple. In the perusing assault the man being treating the couple was stabbed to death with a knife. Bragg chose not to prosecute even though a knife was used.
Has THS: Trump Hate Syndrome
Alvin Bragg is a Soros appointed Communist Marxist Democrat who is doing what all good Democrats do now: try to get Trump. That instead of doing their jobs or tackling the issues. They want to destroy Trump so they can destroy US….And the US too…
Bragg’s is a modern day Democrat Party “Uncle Tom Slave” just doing the bidding of his master’s.
They are so stupid that they forget that it was a republican president (Abe Lincoln) and a republican congress that passed the emancipation act , abolishing slavery.
It was mostly heavy Democrat areas of the south that gave way to segregation and the KKK.
They are so ignorant of history and policy failures of the democrat party that were supposedly for there benefit.
All they have to do is look at any democrat city and the ruin they are all in for the past 30 years.
The good news is the Totalitarian Communist Democrat party comrade’s will turn on them too just as soon as they solidify there hold over the government.
If the Govenor doesn’t feel the heat from all NYC citizens, she’ll do nothing to remove a demoncrat DA,
The ABC of the Bragg Case Against DJT:
Alvin Bragg Can Definitely Effect Foggy, Groundless, Hypocritic
Ideologies Justifying Knowledgeable Measures Nothing Of
Practical Quality Really Since Terrifyingly Unverified
Validations Would (E) Xpediently Yield Zero.
TRANSLATION: Consummate Corruption At High Posts.
This is Bopeeps garbage, fill the country with losers, To maintain control and power over perceived enemies. Feed them to their criminals in place and sit back and laugh. Over time we will all feel the hate.
I watch BILL O’REILLY every day on the first channel . He backs up all the news stories with fact . NO SPIN NEWS . It is a accurate summary of each day . I gave up on ABC , CNN , NBC etc … AND , don’t even make me start on idiots like THE VIEW …
So…Mr Ermal Gura, who almost lost your hand (1st paragraph), who will you be voting for? And, who will you be encouraging others to vote for? Therein lies your solution.
What makes this entire issue very suspicious is that Mr. Bragg himself stated that there was no reason to bring this case. It was AFTER he was subjected to pressure from Mr. Pomeranz and from the DOJ/White House through Mr. Colangelo, did he bring this “case”.
So, what changed?? Maybe pressure and promises. Anyone following this knows it is nothing but election interference. All the millions who have fought, died and serve to protect our Constitution must be turning in their graves.
This entire episoed and all related to it are an insult to all vets.
I wonder!! The cost, research, and attorneys used by Bragg to chase Trump is ???
How many street violence thuds could be tried and lock up. While with the left over funds he could buy staff lunch so they could be more productive??
Just a commonsense though to you New Yorkers
The ample and aptly named alvin ‘fat-bag’ bragg is a traitor and criminal miscreant. I wish him all the worst to the very end!