Coming off a year that saw the highest percentage-point spikes in homicides and shootings in decades, the Big Apple continues to struggle. With each passing day, rising crime moves any return to a post-pandemic normal further out of reach.
Last week, four people were brutally stabbed in separate attacks along New York City’s A train; two died. Not long after, police arrested Rigoberto Lopez, who authorities say confessed to all four attacks. Lopez allegedly has a troubling rap sheet for assaults and criminal contempt. Yet he had been released after his most recent arrest in the fall, when police allege he was walking the streets of Washington Heights with a kitchen knife and 48 bags of cocaine.
“Why was he out?” blared a Post cover headline. The answer: because of New York’s misguided pretrial-detention rules, which prohibit judges from even considering the risks posed to the community by a criminal defendant. Still, state officials show no sign of willingness to fill this gaping hole in the law.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Rafael A. Mangual is a fellow and deputy director for legal policy at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Follow him on Twitter here.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
