'It's Going to Be Deadly': Murder Rates Are Already Up, Now NYC D.A. Won't Prosecute Armed Robbery

After only a few weeks in his new position, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr., a progressive Democrat, is already receiving stern criticism on how he's doing his job.  

According to The New York Post, Bragg has ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for hordes of criminals and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies and drug dealing. 

These new policies were put in place, according to Bragg's Day 1 Memo to his staff. 

Among his rules for prosecutors, his office will not prosecute armed robberies for businesses. Suspects who are apprehended after stealing less than $1,000 worth of items will now be charged with a misdemeanor. 

The other crimes the Manhattan D.A.'s office will no longer prosecute, include resisting arrest, fare beating, prostitution, and trespassing.  

From Bragg's memo, it seems the only perpetrators who could face serious time behind bars are murderers. But even that has its limitations. The D.A. tells his assistants a 20-year sentence is the maximum sentence, absent exceptional circumstances.

"In no case seek a sentence of life without parole," the memo reads. 

Writing for the City Journal, Seth Barron, the managing editor for the American Mind, points out, "Manhattan has elected a far-left prosecutor in the mold of San Francisco's Chesa Boudin, Chicago's Kim Foxx, and Philadelphia's Larry Krasner—and done so at a time when the disastrous consequences of their policies have become all too clear."

Jennifer Harrison, the founder of Victims Rights NY, told Fox News she believes Bragg's policies are going to lead to the deaths of New Yorkers.

"He's paving the way for an even bigger bloodbath than what we have seen in New York City already," she said. "It's going to be deadly."

"Not prosecuting crime and standing with socialists, advocating to release more violent criminals with blanket release mandates, when murder rates are up, what, 45% over the past two years ... is not the message that we want to be sending," Harrison added. 

Bragg's memo has also drawn the ire of members of the NYPD. 

"In Bragg's Manhattan, you can resist arrest, deal drugs, obstruct arrests, and even carry a gun and get away with it," Detectives’ Endowment Association President Paul DiGiacomo said in a statement.

A Manhattan police supervisor told The Post, "The identical platform has not worked out in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore."

"It will lead to more young lives lost to gang violence and innocent people being hurt both physically and emotionally," the supervisor added. 

It is a fact that violent crime has risen in New York City since the summer of 2020 when looters smashed storefronts in both Manhattan and the Bronx. Eric Adams, the city's new mayor, a former NYPD captain, even voiced his concern about law and order during his campaign. 

In a recent op-ed for The Daily Signal, The Heritage Foundation's news outlet, Jarrett Stepman wrote, "The problem remains that whatever the mayor and police department do to clean up criminality, those measures can be easily undermined by an out-of-control district attorney who simply refuses to bring criminals to justice in the name of social justice."

"That's what may soon happen in New York," Stepman said. 

"The New York district attorney said that his policies were meant to 'marry fairness and safety.' But given the details of his memo, it's clear this marriage is a sham," he wrote. 

Writing for The Post, Larry Celona, Tamar Lapin, Tina Moore, Reuven Fenton, and Bruce Golding, asked a very compelling question. 

"Who needs soft-on-crime judges when the district attorney doesn't even want to lock up the bad guys?"

According to The Post, Bragg responded to his critics Sunday by telling congregants at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, "It has been a challenging two weeks, church family. Challenging."

“Part of the discussion that’s been so frustrating the last couple weeks is the suggestion that … I don’t know public safety,” he said. “The reality is … before I turned 21, I had a semi-automatic weapon pointed at my head, I had a knife to my throat, a homicide victim at my doorstep, and was shot at. I know public safety.”

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