NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea expressed outrage Tuesday over the soft-on-crime bail reform laws that allowed a disturbed man to allegedly slug a deaf Manhattan straphanger — just days after he was busted in another similar attack.
“I mean, that was a horrific attack and what I fear here … is we can’t fall into a place where this is normalized, where that’s accepted behavior,” the top cop said on FOX 5’s “Good Day New York,” two days after 41-year-old Vladimir Pierre allegedly attacked his latest victim.
“Any time it happens, it’s terrible — particularly to an innocent woman — that’s just going to work or going to church, [which] in this case I think it was. When you hear that it happened four days before, that’s when my blood gets to boil now.”
He echoed his familiar comments about the revolving-door criminal justice system.
“When you look at laws that make us release individuals before they even go to a judge, you just shake your head,” the commissioner said.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea expressed outrage over how bail laws allowed a man to allegedly punch someone on the subway after being arrested earlier for the same crime. Paul MartinkaPierre, a reputed member of Brooklyn’s Newkirk street gang with 27 prior arrests, was just freed last Wednesday — thanks to bail reform laws — after randomly striking 30-year-old Crystal Porter as she waited for the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens shuttle, police sources said.
He was free to strike again shortly after 10:30 a.m. Sunday, this time at Union Square — allegedly slugging 59-year-old Xingjuan Zhou, who is deaf, sending her reeling onto the tracks. Good Samaritans came to Zhou’s aid and pulled her off the tracks to safety.
Pierre faces charges of second-degree attempted assault, third-degree assault and second-degree reckless endangerment, prosecutors said.
Judge Melissa Jackson ordered Pierre to be held indefinitely pending the results of a psychiatric exam, after the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office requested he be held on $25,000 cash bail or a $75,000 bond.
“There is a question of fitness to proceed,” Jackson said in court on Monday. “There is some question of his mental capacity.”
Meanwhile, Shea argued that the NYPD is doing well at keeping crime down on the rails.
“So you know, overall, when you look at transit, [Chief Kathleen] O’Reilly is doing a phenomenal job,” he said. “When you look at the overall crime numbers in transit, they’re actually very strong.”
