A number of state lawmakers pull double-duty as local Democratic Party bosses — playing a key role in choosing candidates for state Civil and Supreme Court judgeships. Yet these same lawmakers refuse to grant judges the discretion to send accused criminals they deem dangerous to jail.
In other words, they don’t trust their own picks.
State Sen. Jamaal Bailey heads the Bronx Democratic Party organization (though he surely heeds the counsel of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie). Over in the Assembly, Democrats Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn (B’klyn), Michael Cusick (SI) and Pamela Hunter (Onondaga) head their county committees.
The Legislature’s Democrats insist that judges can’t be trusted to exercise discretion because the results will be racist, which can only mean the judges are racist. (And no matter that every other state, even the others that have eliminated cash bail as inherently unfair, gives judges the power to remand dangerous offenders.)
Ignored in this crusade are the mostly minority victims of crime. Notably, the protesters who recently rallied outside Heastie’s Bronx office for fixes to the no-bail law were mainly black, Hispanic and Asian women and mothers.
Wife of slain officer Jason Rivera, Dominique Luzuriaga, speaks at a rally outside of Carl Heastie’s office. Dennis A. ClarkSeems to us that the real racism is to treat those New Yorkers as if they’re invisible.
