It’s beyond obvious why progressives are stalling the state budget rather than accept Gov. Kathy Hochul’s modest proposals on involuntary commitment and “discovery” reform: These radicals hate cops, distrust all judges and harbor an irrational animosity toward criminal justice itself.
These lawmakers would rather let criminals go free and lunatics slash innocent bystanders with broken bottles than have law enforcement do its job.
Consider Hochul’s call to add a smidgeon of sanity to the discovery laws, which govern the kind of evidence prosecutors must gather and share with defense attorneys: Even if lawmakers OK’d all her fixes, New York would still have — by far! — the most burdensome discovery rules in America.
Hochul, for example, wants to scrap the requirement that district attorneys collect all “related” evidence, even if it’s clearly irrelevant to the case. Sensible: Why require irrelevant material?
She’d also let the courts impose less severe sanctions than dismissing a case when discovery rules are violated.
Lefty lawmakers don’t trust judges to decide any of that: They insist on sticking to rules that spring even the unmistakably guilty on trivial technical grounds.
Too bad if that, say, puts a woman in grave risk of domestic violence. Or a serial felon nabbed with an illegal gun goes free.
It’s madness. If we can’t trust cops, judges and prosecutors to run a good-faith criminal-justice system, why even have one?
Maybe that’s what the radicals want — but not normal folks.
Ditto with their lack of trust in cops taking in mentally ill people who clearly need help and may pose a danger to themselves and others.
Hochul’s changes would make it easier to force someone at least to be evaluated for mental illness; she’d also give nurse practitioners the right to commit someone if a doctor agrees.
Again, reasonable.
Yet lawmakers won’t hear of it, citing phony fears of racism.
Instead, they propose pouring mountains of taxpayer cash on unworkable (particularly upstate) “crisis-management teams” that would be powerless to actually get dangerous mentally ill people off the streets.
All of which leaves New Yorkers with revolving doors for repeat offenders like Muslim Brunson — who was free, cops say, to slash a random woman despite having sat through 36 mental-health hearings.
When will the sensible retake control of the asylum — er, state Capitol?