BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Investigative Reporter
Another major issue along with the immigration, is safety, the No Bail laws. Now you were in the county legislature when the No Bail laws were passed up in New York. Over 400 crimes are taken off the judge’s ability to post bail for these criminals. You had one criminal who robbed seven banks in New York City and the seventh time he got arrested as he’s being perp, walked into the station, he thanked to the media thanked the Democrats in the assembly for passing the No Bail laws allowing him to do this. Hochul has put some band aids on the no bail laws, but it’s still a problem. What do you plan to do to help get rid of this travesty of the law?
“That was one of the major issues that I ran on two years ago. We have fought that in the assembly. We have fought for the proposed changes to the bail law in the sense that it’s not enough. So, in 2019, when they were passed and they went into effect in 2020 what the revisions to the bail law did was, as you said, remove offenses that were previously eligible for bail to be set and make them bail ineligible offenses. And most offenses are, with the exception of intentional murder and a number of the higher-level sex offenses and then there’s certain ones but robbery, you know, basic robbery does not involve a weapon. It’s just forcible taking, which is a D Felony, burglary number of drug possession charges, you just judges can’t set bail. And that’s a problem. We know that’s a problem because it, now the person if, if, you know, from my experience as a prosecutor, first of all, it was not always, it was not easy to get bail.” McGowan stated.
“I remember advocating very strongly on one particular case. It was an attempted rape case involving a 17-year-old defendant who had been out on bail on a burglary and grand larceny. While out on bail, attempted to rape a woman and very viciously violent attack, she was able to fight him off. By great work by the NYPD, he was apprehended and we put our case to the, judge that he should be in on bail because the point being the judge, he’s already out on bail, so he should be remanded a pending prosecution of these offenses because he’s demonstrated a complete lack of complete disrespect and, and lack of regard for the rule of law, including the judge’s rule.
“They’ve tried to do some changes, some window dressing that they’re wholly ineffective that aren’t enough providing some more discretion back to judges, but it really doesn’t amount to a whole lot. It’s really just for the governor to say, hey, look, we, we made changes to it. Well, you’re not making enough. On the one hand, you’re saying it’s great all the things we did, but we’re peeling them back. So why are we going back on it if it’s so great, it’s not, they’re just trying to appeal to those who are opposed to these bail changes.”
What we’re doing is we’re, we’re fighting, we’re creating records that every time this comes up, it usually comes up in the budget process. Unfortunately, something bad I feel like is, is going to happen and things bad, things already happened. I mean, look at Officer Diller, Jonathan Diller who was shot and killed last year in the city.
That’s one example of, of people who had been out, had been prosecuted, had multiple felony convictions as a result of that crime, that murder of that on duty officer I introduced legislation that would make somebody, ineligible for release. So bail would have to be set.”
Talking about the no bail laws that even certain crimes in front of schools can’t be, can’t be given bail like prostitution and drug and all that stuff in front of, in front of the schools. That leads us into the idea of school funding and the idea of having resource officers in schools; let’s look at school funding first, then we’ll get the resource officers.
What do you have planned to help get more money into Rockland County school districts? What can we do to get more funding to help districts like East Ramapo and the districts that are better performing to get them more money?
“So one of the things that we did last year is we defeated the governor’s proposal to eliminate the hold harmless provision. The hold harmless provision with respect to school funding states that the funding provided to a school district will not dip below the prior year’s funding so it, it at least creates a floor of funding and that helps, especially in the last couple of years and then probably the foreseeable future where we’re not going to deliver a budget on time and when we don’t deliver a budget on time, which is due April 1st of each year, the school districts that are trying to then get their budget together. They’re, they’re now waiting for us as we get further into April and into May, right?”
“That creates an issue if we were to eliminate the hold harmless, not only does it, potentially less funding for schools, which is not good, but it doesn’t create a floor that the administrators can rely upon in, in preparing their budget and then we’re taking longer to get the budget done. So we need to ensure that the hold harmless provision with respect to the state school formula remains intact.”