Opinion: D.A Bragg's Office Brags about Get Out of Jail Free for Violent Felons

By Ophelia Garrett

In Brief:

The office of District Attorney Alvin Bragg, currently infamous for prosecuting President Trump, should be infamous for far more sinister reasons. 

The Background: 

Bragg’s chief prosecutor, Meg Reiss, has bragged of letting violent offenders, even murderers off the hook, all in the name of “restorative justice.” But where is the justice in allowing the criminals back onto the street to inflict more crime on innocent and law-abiding citizens? And yet, D.A. Bragg’s office is scraping the very bottom of the barrel for any scrap of anything they can get to stick to Trump.

Another problem with Bragg’s chief prosecutor, she has stated criminals are not “bad dudes,” yet blasts juries for believing police officers deserve the “benefit of the doubt” when facing misconduct allegations. 

Reiss further thinks (uhm, there wasn’t a better way to state that) if a victim doesn’t have a lot of family, they don’t really need justice…

It was an incident between two people that knew each other very well. And it was sort of… a fight that ended up with one person dying and the person who was charged had substance misuse issues and other things. And going through the outcome in the case, it just seemed appropriate for restorative practice rather than a carceral sentence.

Reiss justified her “leniency” because the victim only had one family member, a daughter who’d never even met the victim. 

Reiss also believes that this work of hers somehow counterbalances years of racism. She previously founded the Institute for Innovation on Prosecution, to bring about racial equity reforms rooted in critical race theory ideology. Because we should take historical factors into account when dealing out justice for modern crimes…yeah, I’m waiting for that to make sense too.

And lastly, those actions are undermining the police department and the brave officers risking their lives daily to remove these criminals from the street, only to have her unceremoniously toss them back onto the public and thereby causing the officers to risk their lives yet again. A game of Gladiator, if you will. 

"Your charging authority gives you the power to check and counterbalance some police actions. Recognize the systems that are upstream from your office that may perpetuate racial disparities in the justice system, and take steps in your own office to resist those trends."

It should be noted that D.A. Braggs office deleted the “Meet Our Team” page for its employees ahead of Trump's indictment. Multiple employees also scrubbed their Twitter accounts, to hide who possibly knows what. 

Notable Quotes: 

“If he is going to target politicians attempting to make a comeback, how about Andrew Cuomo, who actually might have committed crimes in Manhattan within the statute of limitations? At the very least, Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa openly admitted to obstruction of justice. Obviously, the murder of more than 15,000 people in nursing homes is outside Bragg’s purview.” –Jennifer Harrison, New York Post