Armed robbers go free under the Democrats

Alvin Bragg is the latest in a growing number of radical progressive prosecutors who have been elected across America. Picture: Getty Images

You’ll have heard a lot about how supposedly far to the right America’s Republican Party has moved in recent years. You hear less in the media about extremism in the Democratic Party, which is usually depicted as a genial organisation of decent people simply trying to do their bit to address the inequalities and injustices in American life.

As a result it’s hard to understand why American politics has become so partisan; in most coverage it’s put down to a kind of pathology among racist white folk, eager to restore the country to some sort of glorious antebellum order.

So let me introduce you to Alvin Bragg, the new district attorney for Manhattan. He is the local prosecutor whose job it is to enforce the law, prosecute crime and protect citizens in perhaps the most famous jurisdiction in the whole of the United States.

He took office on January 1, along with the new Democratic mayoral administration of Eric Adams, a former police officer, a black man who grew up in gritty parts of the city. Adams was elected on a promise to reduce violent crime, which has surged in the last two years after more than two decades of steep decline.

Bragg, however, seems to have other ideas. On his first day in office the new DA had a clarion message for his team of law-enforcement officers: he was going to stop enforcing a whole lot of laws.

In a memorandum to the prosecutors he oversees, Bragg laid out new guidelines that said they should not “seek a carceral sentence” except for murder and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence, some sex crimes and public corruption. Prosecutors, it said, should also seek life sentences only in the most extreme cases. Most striking, some grave offences such as armed robbery would no longer be prosecuted as felonies but could be downgraded to misdemeanours, for which the convicted are generally merely fined; unless, in the language of the memo, there was a “genuine risk of physical harm” involved.

Puzzled police and public were left to wonder in precisely what circumstances someone waving a weapon in the face of a shopkeeper might not represent a genuine risk of physical harm. They didn’t have to wait long.

This week the New York Post reported that a 42-year-old man who stole goods from a pharmacy while wielding a knife was arrested by police and charged with robbery. But when he appeared in court a few days later, prosecutors had downgraded the offence to “petit larceny”, for which minimal or no imprisonment is the penalty.

In both principle and practice then, the message is clear from Manhattan’s senior law-enforcement officer: whole categories of violent crime, hitherto punished by imprisonment, would in future be treated as minor offences.

Now it should be said that there is a strong case for reducing incarceration in the US. America locks up way too many people, many of them for nonviolent crimes, and continuing racial disparities in the enforcement of the law are a legitimate case for redress.

NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell. Picture: AFP

But even fellow members of the new Democratic administration in the city were alarmed at the idea that violent criminals might now be allowed to walk. Keechant Sewell, the newly appointed city police commissioner, and the first black woman to hold the job, immediately demanded an explanation of the new rules. Under pressure, Bragg has promised he’s serious about fighting crime and said his rules were being “misunderstood”. So far though the evidence in courtrooms is that he intends to make good on his promises.

What gives the Manhattan DA’s new approach larger political significance is that Bragg is only the latest in a growing number of radical progressive prosecutors who have been elected across the country, usually in extremely low-turnout Democratic primaries in cities the party controls.

In San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere, carbon-copy Democrats have been elected thanks in significant part to large financial contributions from left-wing groups, most notably philanthropic organisations funded by George Soros, the uber-progressive hedge fund billionaire who once nearly broke the Bank of England. These groups favour what were once fringe ideas in the name of racial justice, such as defunding the police, not prosecuting certain types of violent crime, denying platforms to people who challenge prevailing ideological orthodoxy and abolishing immigration enforcement, and their clout has increased dramatically.

Moderate Democrats have become alarmed at the party’s embrace of extreme ideology, a trend accelerated in the wake of the protests after the death of George Floyd in 2020. But the momentum in the Democratic Party from activists, grassroots supporters who turn out to vote in primaries and financial backers is all in favour of the far left.

Candid, an organisation that connects donors and groups for progressive causes, calculated that in the years from 2011 to 2019 philanthropy provided dollars 3.3 billion in “racial equity funding”. In the last two years alone more than dollars 24 billion has been donated or pledged, according to Anna Koob, director of research standards at Candid. Much of this funding finds its way to the radicals who wind up driving Democratic politics.

Not the smallest irony is that the policies favoured by these activists hurt ethnic minorities the most. It’s they who suffer when police are withdrawn from the streets or violent criminals allowed to return to their avocation. A referendum last year in Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, which asked voters to abolish the city police department was defeated thanks to hefty votes against from districts dominated by black citizens.

For many law-abiding Americans, fearing for their lives in Democratic-run cities, those supposed right-wing insurrectionists you keep reading about are not the political extremists that most alarm them.

The Times