Albanys getting set to sock New York with yet MORE pro-criminal laws thatll make us even LESS safe
Parents put their children on the school bus each morning, trusting they’ll return home.Seniors walk their dogs, assuming their neighborhoods are safe.These are not luxuries; they’re the most basic expectations of a functioning society.Yet dangerous legislation in Albany again threatens that safety.Two radical bills — the Elder Parole Bill and the Fair and Timely Parole Act — will open prison doors and allow convicted murderers and violent criminals to walk free.As Suffolk County’s district attorney, I cannot remain silent while public safety is sacrificed for ideology.Thousands of cases illustrate the insanity of these two bills, though I need only two from the Long Island’s recent past to prove my point: Colin Ferguson’s commuter-train massacre and the murder of 8-year-old Thomas Valva.The Elder Parole bill is peddled as a mercy mission: it would let inmates over 55 who’ve served 15 years plead for parole.It sounds compassionate — until you realize who’s in line. Colin Ferguson, the monster who murdered six innocent Long Island Rail Road commuters in 1993, leaving 19 others injured, in a cold-blooded shooting rampage, is 67 now, well past the bill’s age threshold. Do we want to put him in front of New York’s notoriously lenient parole board every two years? Fifteen years doesn’t erase the blood on his hands.Even if parole is denied, why would we want to drag the families of the victims — people just trying to get home from work who were sitting in a train car — to a parole board hearing every two years to relive the worst day of their lives?The parole process is notoriously antagonistic to victims, their families and prosecutors, and it’s only getting worse, with most victims reporting that they seldom, if ever, receive timely notification of parole hearings.That’s not compassionate, and it is not just.
Reaching middle age does not undo evil.Then there’s the Fair and Timely Parole Act, an ironic name for a dangerous game.It ...