Parents put their children on the school bus every morning and trusted that they return home.
Seniors walk out of their dogs, assuming their neighborhoods are safe.
These are not luxury; They are the most basic expectations of a functioning society.
Yet dangerous legislation in Albany threatens that safety again.
Two radical accounts – the Elder Parole Bill and the Fair and Timely Parole Act – will open prison doors and let convicted murderers and violent criminals run.
As a public prosecutor of Suffolk County, I cannot remain silent while public safety is sacrificed for ideology.
Thousands of cases illustrate the insanity of these two accounts, although I only need two from the recent past of Long Island to prove my point: the massacre of Colin Ferguson and the murder of 8-year-old Thomas Valva.
The older conditional bill is brought as a grazing mission: it would make prisoners work more than 55 who have served 15 years, argue for conditional release.
It sounds compassionate – until you realize who is in line.
Colin Ferguson, the monster that killed six innocent Long Island Rail Road Pendelaars in 1993, leaving 19 others injured in a cold-blooded shooting extraction, is now 67, far beyond the age threshold of the bill.
Do we want to place it every two years for the notorious conditional conditional release of New York? The blood did not know on his hands for fifteen years.
Even if conditional release is refused, why would we want to drag the families of the victims – people who just try to get home from the work in a trainuto – to a conditional sign to hear the worst day of their lives again?
The conditional release is notoriously antagonistic for victims, their families and public prosecutors, and it only gets worse, with the most victims reporting that they rarely, or never, receive a timely notification of conditional hearings.
That is not compassionate, and it is not alone. Middle age does not undo evil.
Then there is the honest and timely conditional law, an ironic name for a dangerous game.
It draws up the conditional hearing and changes the rules by establishing that conditional decisions are mainly based on the current risk instead of actions in the past, so that almost a passage is made to violent delinquents.
Consider Michael Valva, the ex-Nypd agent convicted in Suffolk County for the murder of 2020 of his own son, Thomas.
This was not a one-off judgment in the Valva judgment and his fiancée, Angela Pollina, starter and defeated 8-year-old Thomas and forced him to sleep in an icy garage until he died of hypothermia.
The case had several examples of the tortured existence of this child in this house of horror.
Valva’s 25-year punishment reflects the corruption of his actions.
Should his’ good behavior ‘ever outweigh the tragic horror of Thomas’ life?
This bill says yes, with the priority of the progress of a convicted person above the stolen life of a child.
That is not honesty; It is insanity.
Let me be clear: I believe in rehabilitation and second opportunities.
But I also believe that some acts are so horrible, so corrupt that those who commit them forfeit the right to run free among us.
I also believe that powerful, sustainable conviction deteriorates crime.
There is a line and Albany tries to erase it.
New York has already suffered enough due to the consequences of incorrect reforms of criminal justice.
“Bail reform” connects the hands of public prosecutors and judges and flows our streets with repeated perpetrators.
The result?
Spikes in violent crime, overwhelmed law enforcement and a growing sense of fear in our communities.
We cannot allow these conditional accounts to be the next wave of reckless policy.
What is most furious is the decoupling between Albany’s legislative rooms and the real impact that these accounts will have: the fear of a mother to meet her attacker in the store.
The pain of a family that must experience the murder of a loved one in recurring conditional hearings.
These accounts will be re-applied victims, raise heavily fought peace and make neighborhoods less safe at all to satisfy a political agenda that prioritizes criminals over communities.
And there is a very real threat that these accounts will be collected sufficiently democratic and working parties from the parties to pass this year.
New Yorkers must express themselves.
Contact your senator and member of the meeting.
Claim that they oppose older conditional release and fair and timely conditional law.
Require that they remember the victims.
Require that they remember their duty towards public safety.
Ray Tierney is the public prosecutor in Suffolk County. He has been the public prosecutor for more than 30 years.
