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. 

 

Brian getting out early

From the NY Times:

There may have been more corrupt politicians in New York than former State Assemblyman Brian M. McLaughlin, even though he admitted stealing from his campaign, the state government, labor unions, even a Little League program in Queens.

But there may not be many who have cooperated with the government as fully as he has.

Mr. McLaughlin’s assistance, prosecutors said in court papers, helped them win convictions for bribery and corruption against State Senator Carl Kruger, Assemblyman Anthony S. Seminerio and David Rosen, the chief executive of the nonprofit MediSys Health Network.

Mr. McLaughlin also was the prosecution’s main witness against Santo Petrocelli Sr., an electrical contractor who pleaded guilty in 2009 to paying bribes for labor peace, those papers said.

On Wednesday, Mr. McLaughlin was rewarded for that cooperation when Judge Richard J. Sullivan of Federal District Court in Manhattan reduced his prison sentence to six years, from the original term of 10, the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan said.

Mr. McLaughlin has served nearly five years at a low-security prison in Otisville, N.Y., and will most likely receive time off for good behavior, his lawyer, Michael F. Armstrong, said. He will be eligible for release this year.

Shirley says entire Senate is corrupt

From the Daily News:

Huntley said she agreed to become an informant — spying on pols using James Bond-like gadgets like a video camera hidden in a water bottle — to protect her family from being prosecuted along with her. And to those who condemn her betrayal, she offers a middle finger.

“I could care less what the politicians think about me,” Huntley, 74, told the Daily News in an exclusive interview. “They know what I say is true because they live it every day. Albany is a mess. It’s all about money and power. I don’t think most of them give a tinker’s damn about their constituents.”

Huntley is indeed unabashed.

“If John (Sampson) and Malcolm (Smith) would talk, oh my God,” she said provocatively. “They flip him (Sampson) and you’ll need a special election to elect a whole new damn Senate.”

Why do pols talk like they're in the mafia?

From the NY Post:

State Sen. John Sampson, of Brooklyn, was arrested by the FBI this morning and charged with embezzling $440,000 between 1998 and 2008, funneling some of the cash into his unsuccessful 2005 campaign to become Brooklyn district attorney — and chillingly using a mole in the federal prosecutor's office to try and identify witnesses against him so he could arrange to "take them out."

At a press conference announcing the veteran politician's arrest, Eastern District US Attorney Loretta Lynch revealed the disturbing allegations that Sampson had a Justice Department mole in her office to keep tabs on the criminal probe into his activities — and leak information about the identify of federal informants.

"He did attempt to trade on a personal relationship with an administrative employee [of the Justice Department]...to gain information," Lynch said this morning.

The feds charge that Sampson explained to an unnamed real estate associate that he was attempting to discover the identities of federal witnesses in the Brooklyn US Attorney's mortgage fraud probe into his activities.

In one ominous exchange, Sampson allegedly told the real estate associate that if they could learn the identity of the federal informants, that "Sampson could arrange to 'take them out,'" the feds said today.

That Brooklyn federal employee has since been terminated, but Lynch declined to offer details about an internal probe that followed — saying aspects of the investigation into Sampson's alleged wrongdoing is ongoing.