Bail reform opponents face ‘fear mongering’ critique at Kew Gardens meeting

Queens Senior Executive Assistant District Attorney James Quinn and Councilmember Robert Holden spoke Monday at a Community Board 9 forum on an upcoming state bail reform. Eagle photo by Jonathan Sperling

By David Brand

A Queens Community Board 9 forum on state bail reforms grew heated in Kew Gardens Monday, as bail reform opponents invited to describe their concerns about the new law sparred with attendees from the defense bar who accused them of “fear mongering.” 

A state measure set to take effect Jan. 1 will eliminate cash bail for anyone charged with misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, as well as certain burglary and robbery charges that are considered violent felonies. Queens Senior Executive Assistant District Attorney James Quinn, an outspoken opponent of the measure, read from a four-page list of the bail-ineligible offenses as some attendees shook their heads with concern. 

The bail reform law was “passed by the state legislature, appropriately enough on April Fool’s Day,” Quinn said, referring to the measure included in a package of reforms passed in the state budget last legislative session. Quinn later told attendees that some state senators told him they were not aware of the sweeping impact of the reform. He declined to name the senators.  

Quinn said he and other top officials in the DA’s Office are concerned that judges will not have the discretion to set bail based on a person’s history of arrests or convictions. “It doesn’t matter how many past offenses he has. It doesn’t matter how many times he has not appeared in court. It doesn’t matter what his record is,” he said.

During a question-and-answer session, opponents at the meeting, including Queens public defenders, countered that judges can order defendants to supervised release programs and compel them to comply with the conditions of their release. The attorneys and advocates also said that defendants’ extensive criminal histories often reflect over-policing in communities of color, as well as older criminal justice policies that have disproportionately affected black and Latino New Yorkers.

“This bail reform law has been a reaction to overreach by law enforcement,” Legal Aid staff attorney Gabe Munson told Quinn. “I’ve seen defendant after defendant, invariably, statistically, black and brown people, coming through the system since the 1980s.”

Legal Aid attorney Roslyn Morrison criticized Queens Community Board 9 for only inviting bail reform opponents to speak on a panel. Eagle photo by Jonathan Sperling

Bail is often used to hold low-income people in jail pretrial simply because they cannot afford to get out, Munson said.

“As a senior executive assistant district attorney who has been in power for a number of decades, you have seen and been part of the architecture of mass incarceration,” he added. “It seems to me that the forum and the presentation smacks of fear mongering.”

Councilmember Robert Holden was also invited to speak at the event and used the occasion to condemn the city’s plan to close Rikers Island jails in favor of four new detention facilities, including one in Kew Gardens. CB9 voted unanimously against the jail, which will be located in their district, in its advisory role.

The effort to close Rikers “became a religious movement” in the council, Holden said Monday. Criminal justice reformers, he added, tend to be young people who did not live through the city’s high-crime era of the 1980s, a period of historic disinvestment in the public sector and a severe crack cocaine epidemic.

“The people that are going to question this are the people you’ll see who are very young and they haven’t lived through it,” Holden said, adding that his car was broken into so many times that his insurance dropped him. He also said he chased a would-be burglar who tried breaking into a neighbor’s home in 1989 because he wanted to identify the man to police.

“He was so desperate and he knew someone was chasing him, he burglarized three other houses in the area,” he said. “So many people would not have done what I did.”

After Quinn and Holden outlined their opposition to the bail reform law, public defender Roslyn Morrison criticized CB9 for only inviting speakers who criticized the measure. 

“It is disingenuous to have a forum where we’re trying to educate people on bail reform and have only one perspective represented,” Morrison said. “Imagine if were taking all the money for incarceration and putting into things like drug treatment.”

Other attendees were more receptive to Quinn and Holden’s presentation, however.

“I’m of an age where I’m scared,” said CB9 member John Carter, adding that residents “want to stay here and they don’t want to become the victim.”

A woman who identified herself as Dee said she found common ground among the opponents  and supporters of bail reform. The legislature and the justice system should focus more on mental health treatment to get to the root cause of many crimes, she said.

“If we can get to people with mental health issues and get them the real help that they need, the population of Rikers will go way down,” she said. 

“I grew up in Glendale [and] I stepped over junkies every day,” she continued. “By putting them in jail, they’re only coming out and they’re more angry, they’ve learned tricks inside. We need to fix the mental health system.” 

Additional reporting by Jonathan Sperling