New York's bail reform law has led to a rise in Omerta

 

NY Post

With shootings in the city up 87 percent this year and murder mushrooming by 34 percent, the NYPD needs cooperating witnesses more than ever.

But they are coming up against a wall of stony silence. And cops and prosecutors point to myriad reasons.

“The community helps solve lots of different types of crimes,” Giacalone said. “When the public doesn’t trust the police, the information stops flowing. And that information is vital.”

Police worry that COVID-19 changes like ubiquitous face masks will make it even more difficult to identify shooters.

Then there is the rising tidal wave of gang violence, where scores are settled on the streets and not a court of law. Gangbangers rarely talk.

“It’s a challenging time,” said NYPD spokesman Al Baker. “There’s an anti-snitch culture that’s taken root amid a level of violence that makes people reluctant to cooperate with our investigators. But we work every day with our partners in the city’s district attorneys’ offices to combat this culture and to solve crimes and help ensure public safety.”

Experts say recently enacted laws that endanger witnesses aren’t helping matters.

“The New York State Bail Reform Act has royally screwed up policing,” Sgt. Joseph Imperatrice, founder of Blue Lives Matter NYC, told The Post, saying the new discovery rules and judges letting criminals go have reversed “decades of progress.”

“Witnesses and confidential informants have little to no protection in regards to the new discovery rules,” he explained. (Reliable confidential informants, also known as CIs, are often paid).

“Old-school policing, where good officers would meet with people on the street to gain information, has dwindled,” he added. “Many witnesses know that their personal information will be available and possibly get out to the defense team.”

Under the new rules, prosecutors must give defense counsel the name and contact information of anyone with information relevant to a case within 15 days of arraignment — ­regardless of whether the person will testify at trial.

One seasoned Brooklyn detective said the new discovery rules have a lot to do with cops being stonewalled. “Witnesses ask if the shooter will get their name and they are told, ‘Probably yes,’ ” he said.

He said he used to have cooperating witnesses in about 75 percent of cases, but “now I would say we get witnesses in less than half of the cases.”

  Impunity City

 This bail reform law was designed to bring down inmate population in prisons, most notably Rikers Island, to make way for four tower prisons in four boroughs that no one wants. Sorry, no sane person wants. The list of crimes that are exempt from judge's decision to set bail are mostly based on the most violent and devastating acts you can commit on your fellow citizens and damage them for life mentally and financially. And a majority of them are burglaries and robberies, which are usually committed with the use of a gun.