Another vital criminal justice fix that Hochul’s ignoring
“A glaring weakness in our effort to combat gun violence is the fact that you have an age raise that still allows 16- and 17-year-olds to possess loaded firearms,” Albany District Attorney David Soares told The Post. in a critique of the public safety goals outlined by Governor Kathy Hochul in her State of the State address.
Right off the bat: It’s another huge omission when Hochul claims to put public safety first.
Soares, a progressive backed by George Soros, has long noted issues with Raise the Age, a 2018 law that sends most teenage defendants to Family Court rather than the adult justice system.
He has also criticized Hochul and the legislature for the no-bail law and other reforms that Soares believes have “normalized” violence. “No meaningful legislative action has been taken to address parole reform and Raise the Age, which have had a significant impact on violent crime in our most vulnerable neighborhoods,” he thundered after two more fatal shootings in Albany this fall. past.
Soares criticized Hochul and the state legislature for providing reform laws that he claims have “normalized” violence. Photo by Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
The cookies and hot chocolate approach to teenage gun violence just doesn’t work, Soares told The Post.
Last fall, a bombshell analysis by the NYPD found that the number of teen shootings and fatalities in NYC has tripled in the past five years — a deadly trend that coincides with the passage of the Raise the Age Act. The report also noted that teenage recidivism has increased since 2017.
This means: Teenagers are the main driver of the alarming increase in gun violence across the city. Worse, it means more young people start a life of crime – which means big trouble for the future, with a growing criminal class.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie prides himself on being a “numbers guy,” but ignores data showing that the Raise the Age Act has been a disaster for minority teens. Instead, he sticks to his theory that the teenage brain simply can’t learn self-restraint, so it’s simply wrong to hold young people responsible — regardless of the consequences for society or themselves.
So he won’t consider fixing the RTA, and Hochul isn’t willing to force the issue. And the body count of young victims in minority communities around the state will continue to rise.
Never mind that the government has immense power in budget negotiations to insist on legislative changes: It is committed to working with the Legislature, no matter how few lawmakers want to work with it on anything but spending and taxes more and more. a lot.
The worst is yet to come, New York.
