Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Endorsed a Little-Known Public Defender in Queens

"people who simply stole luggage or Amazon packages from the lobbies of apartment buildings." "Simply stole"? I don't profess to have the answers and I don't have an opinion as to whether the left is correct on this issue or not. But "simply stole" is offensive to anyone who "simply" leaves the possessions of others where they lay. Never forget even the folks doing the simple stealing are well aware it is wrong to steal. Even the poor folks...

I shall vote for Tiffany Cabán. I'm glad that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has made an endorsement so that progressives can rally around a candidate and beat the Queens machine again. The machine candidate, Katz, has been on the public payroll doing approximately nothing during her whole adult career. She has almost never been in a courtroom. If you believe her TV commercials her whole argument for the position she seeks is that her mother was hit by a drunk driver 40 years ago. She is simply running for a new job because she is term-limited as Borough President. Tiffany Cabán has been a public defender, and that's almost all I need to know. Her interest is in serving others and not simply taking home a pay check and making patronage appointments. Good luck to her.

Queens needs someone with experience, such as Judge Greg Lasak, to lead the District Attorney's office. It's not a place for on the job training.

So with the stepping down and passing of Judge Richard Brown as the Queens DA the position is up for grabs. Melinda Katz is a political hack who has zero qualifications to hold that office. As for AOC endorsing Ms Caban that would prevent me from ever voting for her. The new fad among prosecutors is prosecuting laws they only agree with. Never mind it’s the State Penal Law enacted by legislators elected by the citizens. The DA’s in this country those of the left and off the cliff left are preventing, circumventing and actually aiding criminals evade the laws the don’t like. Several DA’s in NYC have decided fare evasion isn’t really a prosecutorial priority but we now have a transit system that 1 in 4 individuals evade paying. It’s dirty, unsafe and taken over by the lawless and homeless the DA’s are partially to blame. I won’t even touch upon pot here. We have DA’s who will lower the criminal charges so illegals will not be deported again the DA’s personal agendas. My point being they aren’t elected to pick and choose what they can and can’t prosecute based upon their “enlightened” legal philosophies. If we the people don’t like a law we will get our elected officials to repeal it or change it! The liberal mind screams everybody needs to be heard well our system provides that in our legislatures. For Queens I’d vote for Greg Lasak NOT Ms Katz, Ms Caban or the other political hacks and most are that are running.

Starting off a district attorney in any county in NYS should meet the minimum requirement to ascend to a judgeship: 10 years. Ms Cabán falls short there and not by days, weeks or months. Judge Brown’s office did run a fair number of effective diversionary programs; that should merit attention and recognition. There were also programs to help youth. I never served in a prosecutor’s office. I did intern two years in the Bronx during law school. My career arc nevertheless included interaction with Judge Brown, his immediate predecessor and most of their colleagues in NYC and Nassau. I also worked with and interacted professionally with many senior prosecutors in several District Attorneys’ Offices. This includes working on a report on ATI and ATD programs and drafting one proposed by a public official who had run for mayor. It also includes developing a CASAC program than ran several years at two NYC public colleges. Also, I got to meet many Queens prosecutors during the period I took many of my CLE required coursework through his office. Judge Brown’s office maintained many community advisory groups as well. This election should be more about ability to run an office than some form of ideological purity; and the Philly D.A. Dad considerable experience before seeking his position. In a political/partisan sense Ms. Cabán may enjoy support but her experience does not a Queens (or other) D.A. make, and those who cast their lot with her candidacy ought to know better.

Sorry, but Queens residents are not pro-criminal like the voters of Philadelphia. Richard Brown was re-elected many times. Even as the number of immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean increased, people still voted for him. Remember that immigrants have lower crime rates than native born Americans, and we want a prosecutor who will protect us. We do not have an epidemic of mass incarceration. Cabán’s campaign shows she doesn’t care about victims. She’s clearly on the side of robbers, rapists, and murderers. It’ll be a disaster if she wins the primary. But given the many candidates, June primary date, and low turnout expected, anything is possible. If she wins, she’ll turn us into Baltimore.

My wife and I visited Philadelphia last summer, one year into Mr. Krasner's tenure. We stayed at upscale hotel across the street from Redding Terminal. The hotel needed to lock the lobby at night. You needed to have a key to use the lobby/bar restrooms. Because the entire neighborhood was full of vagrants—mostly white, FWIW, and in broad daylight—who appeared to be, um, substance-impaired. I might suggest that Ms. Bellafante take a quick field trip to see how some of these policies are actually playing out...

Stealing an unattended package is different than using violence or force to intimidate a victim while stealing a package. Robbery and Theft are different crimes. Why would you want someone charged with a violent crime when no violence was involved? "Robbery differs from theft primarily in that it involves force or intimidation to take property from another person. It is the use of force that makes robbery, in most cases, the more serious crime." From the New York Penal Code: S 155.25 Petit larceny. A person is guilty of petit larceny when he steals property. Petit larceny is a class A misdemeanor.

There is truth in the idea that don't do the crime if you don't want to do the time. But that ignores structural and systematic/systemic inequality. It ignores the over-policing of neighborhoods primarily inhabited by POC. The whole point of prison isn't to "just" keep offenders away from the general population but create a system within prisons that that lowers rates of recidivism. However, with all of the private prisons, their goal isn't to help people and keep them from returning rather they hope they do because it helps their bottom line. We need DAs that are progressive and understand all of these when charging and handling these cases. I completely support Cabán

From the Innocence Project （online）660 cases of Misconduct in 5 states ...the Veritas Initiative at Santa Clara University, the Innocence Project of New Orleans and Resurrection After Exoneration formed the Prosecutorial Oversight Coalition to review the apparent lack of accountability for prosecutorial error and misconduct. On the fifth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Connick v. Thompson, the coalition released Prosecutorial Oversight: A National Dialogue in the Wake of Connick v. Thompson, a report calling for greater transparency and accountability for prosecutors. The report details the findings of original research conducted by the coalition, in which it reviewed court findings of misconduct over a five-year period for five geographically diverse states—California, Arizona, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York—and documented 660 findings of misconduct –a likely undercount given the difficulties in identifying this behavior.

"She has seen violent felony charges attached to people who simply stole luggage or Amazon packages from the lobbies of apartment buildings" "They "simply" stole luggage or Amazon packages? This is written as if Ms. Caban does not take these thefts seriously. Victims might disagree.

Good. There are too many Mike Nifong-like D.A.s who will stop at nothing to make their reputations on being a tough prosecutor so he/she can be re-elected. These D.A.s think their job is to convict, not to seek justice. I have seen many of them (while working in the system) and an equal number who had high integrity and ethics. I admired and befriended the latter. I fought the former. People who are too dedicated to ensuring the system works justly are targeted by these ambitious egomaniacal D.A.s, put on a "Hit List" for harassment, even malicious prosecution, accused of witness tampering and witness intimidation. This abuse is at the state and federal levels, but less common at the federal level. It happens both places. Under our constitution a defendant has the right to present a defense and confront prosecution witnesses. Just because the right exists does not mean it is exercised. It often isn't. Not enough money for a competent defense and investigation. The common causes of false convictions are overzealous prosecution and prosecutorial and police misconduct. That is why there are post-conviction review boards in many D.A.s' offices and the Innocence Project is so busy. So if a prosecutor is more interested in justice than in career mobility, that's good for all.

"She has seen violent felony charges attached to people who simply stole luggage or Amazon packages from the lobbies of apartment buildings. She watched individuals being sent back to prison over and over because they weren’t getting the help they needed." I'd love to hear more about this. I work in criminal law, and at least here in California, there is no legal way for someone who merely steals some luggage or a package to be charged with a violent felony on those facts alone. We are either not getting all the facts, or the DA's Office in Queens really is completely off the rails. (I'm putting my money on the former.)

I was a prosecutor in the office that Larry Krasner now runs. Sometimes people assume I was one of the ones who was fired after he assumed office, but in fact I left the previous year before he even won the prinary, in large part because I was disillusioned with the previous administration’s unwillingness to reform from within. I saw brilliant, decent attorneys who are politically liberal about everything else caught up in the “prosecutorial culture,” oblivious to how societal views about criminal justice have evolved. Larry Krasner was not the person to fix the problems. He was unkind to the career prosecutors he summarily fired, and from what I hear he is cruel and indifferent to victims of crime. But Krasner is what happens when institutions aren’t willing to reform from within, causing the pendulum to swing from one extreme to another.

Until the people realize that they have a major say in their local criminal justice system, they will never affectively deal with the issue of police shootings. Citizens are finally learning that they are the ones who determine whether police will be charged for killings. That is the importance of this type of election.

“I said, ‘Do you really think the problem is that he doesn’t know that what he is doing is wrong?’” Ms. Cabán recalled. The problem is behavioral. People are sent to jail because they did something wrong, not because they are ignorant. Ms. Cabán's contour of tolerance must be defined before she can be trusted as a prosecutor.

Good luck. We need to update how police are promoted. Tying promotions of police to arrests guarantees ever increasing numbers of New Yorkers will be arrested. Where will it stop? When I was young in NYC police would throw away small amounts of drugs found on a young men and women and send them on their way at least some of the time. That would never happen today. A free society should not incareate people who are technically breaking the law, but not causing violence, stealing, etc.

While this article mostly reads as written as supportive of Ms. Cabán. The last paragraph makes clear that the author is especially commending Ms. Katz

It’s about darn time!

I appreciate Caban's nuanced understanding of what causes crime--poverty and the lack of action by the state to address its traumatic and generational effects. She won't be the entire solution, but piece by piece we are building the system we want. Also check out Audia Simpson in Houston, running for a DA position.

There is something to be said for taking a new approach to existing problems. There is also something to be said for appreciating experience, competence in running a large staff, and the ability to weigh the two issues in order to get the best result.