A Level 3 serial sex offender enters a nursery school playground, is arrested, and then is set free.
A man brutally beats his girlfriend in front of her two young children and arrested for child endangerment and menacing — only to be let back onto our streets.
A woman with a history of anti-Semitic violence punches a mother who was walking with her three-year-old yet is now moving freely among us.
None of this is normal.
The safety of our citizenry in New York today stands at the mercy of a state government controlled by far-left New York City politicians who enacted bail reforms that are sending criminals back into our communities.
It’s time the federal government stepped in and fulfilled its role of promoting public safety and the rule of law.
As a conservative, I am a firm believer in state powers. I am loath to ask for federal intervention. But when state politicians, in the furtherance of a radical, left-wing agenda, enact policies that endanger our children, place law enforcement in harm’s way, put pedophiles back onto our streets, and allow the furtherance of hate crimes, we must ask our federal government for help.
Critics will surely lambaste the idea of federal intervention and claim it has no role in this fight — leave it to the state to figure its way out of this mess. In theory, that makes sense, but what happens when the politicians who created this mess ignore the problem and refuse to act? It’s the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse.
The Justice Department has many tools it can use. For example, the department can open an investigation as to whether these “reforms” are in violation of federal statutes that protect certain classes of individuals — hate crimes and actions against our most vulnerable.
Are these reforms in violation of any grants given to New York state? Likewise, the department can step up its intervention into cases such as that of Tiffany Harris, referenced above, who is accused of hate crimes. It could expand its intervention to those cases where children are abused or endangered.
If the DOJ can launch an investigation into conditions at prisons in Mississippi, surely it can spare the time to examine legislation that is literally putting law-abiding citizens in grave danger.
This is not to question the intentions of some who believe our criminal justice system needs reform. But in an era where we are supposed to protect victims, this law could require a woman who is raped to allow an alleged perpetrator back into her home to collect evidence if that’s where the rape occurred.
Firefighters and emergency personnel who respond to the scene of a crime are required to give their personal information to free-roaming criminals.
Law enforcement officers are overwhelmed attempting to comply with bureaucratic obstacles that include reams of paperwork, which means less time protecting the public.
Where does this end? Unfortunately, for the people of New York, it is only beginning. According to the New York City Police Department, 482 people so far this year were released only to re-offend. Among their alleged crimes was a murder that would not have happened had the offender been behind bars.
We are past the point of whether this is a Republican or Democratic issue. This is about common sense. This is about public safety and protecting our children. It’s about restoring the basic tenets of living in a society where we feel safe and free of fear, knowing that when people commit the most heinous of crimes, they are arrested and not released back onto our streets just so they can do it again.
If the politicians in Albany don’t understand that or refuse to understand that, then it is time the federal government investigate.