Legal Aids relentless pro-crime push puts all New Yorkers in danger

You’ve heard the old saying, “don’t shoot yourself in the foot“ — but that’s exactly what New Yorkers are doing by pouring state and local tax dollars into the Legal Aid Society. Most people think Legal Aid, which is publicly funded, exists to defend the poor in court.But it spends millions of dollars — your hard-earned dollars — on class-action litigation and lobbying to force changes in the law that benefit criminals and handcuff cops.Illegal Aid Society is more like it.“The Legal Aid Society seems hell-bent on ignoring the plight of the victim while hampering the police at every turn,” Ray Kelly, Gotham’s longest-serving police commissioner, told me this week.Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic Party’s front-runner in its mayoral  primary, is promising to add 5,000 cops to the NYPD’s ranks.Kelly laughs off the pledge.“With the rules in place, people don’t want the job,” he said.“Experienced cops are telling their sons and daughters not to enter the force.”The Legal Aid Society’s relentless anti-policing campaign is a big reason why.In its latest bout of loony leftism, Legal Aid this month demanded that cops stop arresting people for what it calls ”low-level” crimes like shoplifting and drug possession.Instead, the group said in a letter to the city’s Department of Investigation, offenders should merely receive summonses instructing them to appear in court at a later date, not be hauled into a police station.In 2021, the letter noted, more than half of those accused of petit larceny got off with a mere summons — but now, Legal Aid lawyers complained, 75% of them are being taken into custody.That’s a good trend, said Kelly, not something to sue about.“Every arrest should have an investigatory aspect to it,” he explained.

“Is the suspect wanted for more serious crimes, or violating parole?  There is no way to find that out except bringing the suspect into the police station.”Why should someone accused of stea...