This question has been asked ad nauseum since Albany decided to enact these disastrous changes in 2019. Under the guise of social justice and criminal justice reform, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) and the Democrat-run State Legislature passed a comprehensive overhaul of how New York handles prosecutive and general criminal justice. The most notable change was that of bail requirements, in which a slew of offenses remove prosecutors’ abilities to remand criminals and require a cash bond or bail for release. The law also removes much of judges’ discretion in holding criminals who may pose a threat to the community or might be a flight risk.
Albany’s logic in making these changes was that low-level or first-time offenders may or may not be further negatively affected by the criminal justice system in the event they cannot afford to post bail. The accusation by Albany is that the criminal justice system becomes pay-to-play, wherein more affluent offenders can post bail, while poorer offenders have to suffer the consequences of being jailed. Albany further connected this idea with the fact that some of the less fortunate offenders are of lower socioeconomic status, which the left inevitably connects to race. In short, their argument is that the criminal justice system was systemically and intrinsically oppressive, and the solution was to abolish the retention of criminals on cash bail to even the playing field.
What resulted, not to the shock of many, was a revolving-door criminal justice system, wherein criminals can continue to offend at their leisure instead of being held. While we won’t argue that there might be some aspects of “pay-to-play” involved in any criminal justice system, the risk is simply not worth the reward. There can be creative ways of punishing affluent offenders without risking the well-being, peace, or even lives of the general public with these illogical bail reform changes.
The other problem is that the bail reform changes do not only apply to low-level charges. In the wake of the recent discoveries of human remains scattered across the Town of Babylon, the loopholes of these reforms are fully unearthed. All four suspects charged with tampering with evidence and concealment of a human corpse were released on supervision with GPS ankle monitors and were forced to surrender their passports.
Sure, they’re being tracked and they can’t go anywhere. When have rules and laws ever fully prevented any unwanted behavior?
But if you’re a rational person, the top thought on your mind is probably:
“Why are people guilty of concealing a human corpse and tampering with evidence not being detained?”
We’d like to toast you for reaching such a conclusion that Albany has apparently not been able to make for almost five years.
But that’s just the knee-jerk response. It gets even worse when the police say the suspects removed meat cleavers, butcher knives, and significant amounts of blood from their Amityville residence. There seems to be substantial evidence that they butchered the body in-house.
While the suspects have not been charged in the murders of the victims, we wouldn’t chastise you for assuming they had a hand in it. We’re not alleging these four are also murderers, but these are questions that need to be asked when such people are simply released back onto the streets.
Furthermore, the bail reform laws significantly kneecap police and prosecutors’ abilities to do their jobs, something many of our elected and community officials have echoed since these laws were passed in 2019. It stymies the ever-effective and valiant efforts of our District Attorney Ray Tierney, whose monumental breakthroughs in the Gilgo Beach murders – conveniently, also in Babylon – have proven his and his office’s abilities to crack cold cases of the highest degree. We understand checks and balances on power are necessary, but why take away the most basic tools prosecutors, law enforcement, and judges use to gauge the potential safety of a community based on the defendants who are brought in?
We do not doubt Tierney’s abilities in handling this case, nor do we doubt the Suffolk County Police Department’s abilities to further investigate this. Who we do not have faith in, if it even needs to be said, is the State Legislature. They either know exactly what they’re doing and are deliberately contributing to a society ruled by chaos, or they are just truly inept and are so haughty in their ways that they can’t even pump the brakes a little bit.
They have no prerogative in the former and no excuse in the latter. Officials have made it clear the disastrous consequences these laws would have even before their passage. They have spared no expense in the last five years rightfully decrying the monumentally out-of-touch nature of these reforms and the politicians who penned them.
We continue to hold out hope that common sense will return to Albany someday, but until then, it seems it’s almost every man – or county – for himself.
