NYC Democrat challenging Bragg in DAs race vows to get tough on subway crime and fare evasion

A Democrat challenging Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in a primary this June vowed to get tough on subway crime – including targeting fare beaters – as he slammed the incumbent’s “poor” prosecuting record.Civil litigator and former Bronx prosecutor Patrick Timmins said he’s aiming to ease the “tension” of straphangers after a series of violent incidents in the city’s transit system.“No one’s getting a safe, comfortable, easy ride,” he argued in a recent interview.

“We all know about the platform pushing, subway slashing, it’s at historical levels.”Timmins, an uptown Manhattan resident, said cracking down on fare beating would prevent larger crimes underground.“I understand ‘what’s a fare evasion here and there,’ but once there’s 20 of them by one person, then maybe something should be done,” he said.“Most of the people who go down below the ground or even up to an elevated train and commit an attempted murder, a felonious assault, all those things are generally not people who swipe to get in.”When Bragg, a former federal prosecutor, first assumed office, he quickly instructed staff not to prosecute fare evasion as part of a day one memo that faced backlash.

Timmins criticized Bragg for two prosecutions he dropped after fierce backlash that the accused were defending themselves — the case of bodega worker Jose Alba accused of fatally stabbing an ex-convict who shoved him around inside a deli and the case of Chinatown landlord Brian Chin who beat a homeless man after the vagrant attacked him with a weapon.He also questioned the failed prosecution of Marine veteran Daniel Penny in the subway death of Jordan Neely, calling it a “toss-up maybe.”“There’s been a lot of poor decisions by Alvin Bragg in those three-plus years,” Timmins said, adding later, “I’m a common sense Democrat.”But Timmins also vowed to aggressively expunge the records of people who served their time with a main focus on drug o...