Last week brought not one but at least three reminders of the carnage revolving-door justice inflicts on the city, even as voters seem poised to elect a huge fan of “decarceration” as mayor.
Accused machete-wielding Bronx attacker Timothy Bohler, alleged Brooklyn subway-beating maniac David Mazariegos and accused Manhattan subway slasher Demitri Marshall all kept getting sprung despite escalating violent offenses.
Bohler, a career criminal with 45 prior arrests, stands accused of chopping off a stranger’s fingers in a vicious attack over a dog. And he faces new charges in a fatal hit-and-run that killed a cancer survivor last year — while on supervised release from prison.
Sentenced to six years for the attempted murder of a deli clerk, he received a conditional release after four, then dodged jail twice last year after charges in separate Bronx domestic violence and rape cases got dropped.
Mazariegos reportedly confessed to beating a security guard to death in a vicious subway-station plummeling; he was out on $1,000 bail for a similar assault outside a Chelsea theater in June.
The judge in the earlier case actually noted, “The severity of [his alleged crimes] is increasing over time,” but found his hands tied by the laws as he set the low bail after prosecutors reduced the charges from a felony to a misdemeanor.
He has some 33 prior arrests, with a history of criminal cases dismissed due to his mental-health issues and is listed in the MTA’s transit recidivist database.
He’s been through multiple supposedly therapeutic programs, including an “animation project internship” and six weeks of a Youth Justice Network rehab effort for at-risk male youth that includes boxing lessons.
It’s not clear if those boxing lessons helped him pummel Italian immigrant Nicola Tanzi to death.
Demitri Marshall, charged in a random slashing outside a Lower East Side subway (seven stiches for the victim), was due to be jailed on $50,000 cash bail last month after a similar attack in The Bronx — but the judge opted to cut him loose.
Though he was a repeat offender with a stint in state prison under his belt, Judge Ralph Wolf was swayed by the defense’s claims that he had “community ties” and was enrolled in a drug-treatment program — plus Marshall’s vow to “stay out of trouble.”
All this is the fruit of a half-decade of misguided criminal-justice reforms and a political culture that produces soft-on-crime judges — both of them the product of the progressive “decarceral” movement that insists jail and prison are the wrong approach to even serial violent criminals, even as it offers no better way to protect the public.
To ensure the courts can’t jail most perps, progs are intent on replacing the Rikers Island complex with four smaller replacements — and Zohran Mamdani wants Rikers to close by 2027 even though none of the new jails will be built yet.
In the Legislature, he’s voted for every possible bill to reduce sentences, promote early releases, divert criminals to “alternatives” to incarceration and so on.
He’s a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose Agenda for Decarceration includes not just closing Rikers without replacements, but also abolishing the NYPD’s gang database and decriminalizing “sex work.”
Timothy Buhler, David Mazariego and Demitri Marshall all should’ve been locked away before they grew more violent, but Mamdani wants to triple-down on the philosophy that encouraged them to grow worse.
New Yorkers who want a safer city need to vote against him and his perilous agenda.