Queens DA-elect Katz names transition team

/
Queens DA-elect MELINDA KATZ, the current borough president, DELIVERED THE STATE OF THE BOROUGH ADDRESS EARLIER THIS YEAR. PHOTO COURTESY OF QUEENS BOROUGH PRESIDENT MELINDA KATZ.

Queens DA-elect MELINDA KATZ, the current borough president, DELIVERED THE STATE OF THE BOROUGH ADDRESS EARLIER THIS YEAR. PHOTO COURTESY OF QUEENS BOROUGH PRESIDENT MELINDA KATZ.

By David Brand

Queens District Attorney-elect Melinda Katz has unveiled her 31-member transition team as she prepares to take over as the borough’s top prosecutor. Katz will lead an office that has been run by the same core group of executive staff members for nearly three decades. 

“We’re going to make sure Queens stays the safest borough in the city,” said Renfroe, a former Legal Aid attorney and past president of the Macon B. Allen Black Bar Association.

Katz, the current Queens Borough President, filled out the team with several defense attorneys, nonprofit leaders and activists, who will help facilitate “a new dawn of justice in Queens,” she said.

“Justice has been denied as other counties in our state and across the country were at the forefront of reforming our criminal justice system,” Katz said in a statement. “We will prove definitively in Queens that you can enhance safety and equality at the same time, in a way that is collaborative and benefits all of us.”

The diverse roster of transition team members include outspoken critics of the policies of the Queens DA’s Office under late DA Richard Brown — who served from 1991 until his death in May — and Acting DA John Ryan. 

Defense attorney Victoria Brown-Douglas, who is black, has criticized a relative lack of diversity among executive staff members and called on the DA’s Office to employ more people of color, especially men.

“There are hundreds of men of color being prosecuted in Queens, and those numbers are horrible,” Brown-Douglas told the Eagle in March. “When my clients look in my face, they see what’s possible for themselves.”

Latino Lawyers Association of Queens County President Thomas Oliva has advocated for Latinx residents of Queens to ascend to positions of authority, including in the Queens DA’s Office. He said he welcomed the opportunity to serve on the transition team.

“When you’re asked to sit at the table for these kind of conversations given how much is going on in Queens, you have to do it," Oliva told the Eagle Friday.

The LLAQC said in a statement that the organization was “honored and heartened” to be included in the analysis of “the needed institutional changes in and out of the Queens District Attorneys Office.”

“At the same time, we are sobered by the depth of the needed changes not the least of which is the lack and absence of Latino representation through out the office from the executive level to line assistant positions,” the LLAQC added. “Effective change on that scale can only take place with a determined and long term commitment. We see this step, being included on Ms. Katz' transition team, as an important first step of many steps going forward."

Reverend Kirsten John Foy, a civil rights activist and another transition team member, served as a surrogate for Katz during the primary campaign.

“Changing this system is going to take a skilled administrator with deep ties to communities throughout Queens: someone who can not only listen to our concerns, but know how to work the levers of power to effect change,” Foy wrote in an op-ed for the Eagle in June. 

“District Attorneys may have a lot of power to change the justice system, but the system often pushes back,” he continued. “Melinda has a career-long track record of taking on powerful interests and changing the system to fight for those she represents.”

The team includes at least five former prosecutors: Oliva and Brown-Douglas, as well as Lucy Lang, executive director Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Jane Manning, director of the Women's Equal Justice Project Victoria Brown-Douglas; and Hugh Mo, former deputy commissioner of the NYPD.

The full transition team includes: 

  • Anstiss Agnew - Forestdale, Inc.

  • Amy Arundell - United Federation of Teachers

  • Nicole Paultre Bell - Activist

  • Pascale Bernard, MSW - Planned Parenthood of New York City

  • Dr. John H. Boyd, II - New Greater Bethel Ministries

  • Victoria Brown-Douglas, Esq. - Lawyer's Guild of the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York

  • Joan B. Brown, Esq.

  • Dr. Tricia Callender, PhD - Sociologist

  • Ray Cameron - NYC Department of Probation

  • David Cohen - 32BJ SEIU

  • Reverend Dr. Phil Craig - Greater Springfield Community Church

  • Sister Tesa Fitzgerald - Hour Children, Inc.

  • Reverend Kirsten John Foy - Arc of Justice

  • Joshua Glick, Esq. - Queens Law Associates

  • Everett Hopkins, Esq. - Macon B. Allen Black Bar Association

  • Lucy Lang, Esq. - Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY)

  • Jacques M. Leandre, Esq.

  • Hon. Jeffrey Lebowitz - Justice of the New York State Supreme Court (Retired)

  • Jack Leibler, Esq.

  • Nelson A. Madrid, Esq.

  • Jane Manning, Esq. - Women's Equal Justice Project

  • Hugh H. Mo, Esq. - Former Deputy Commissioner, New York City Police Department

  • Dilip Nath - SUNY Downstate Medical Center

  • Thomas Oliva, Esq. - Latino Lawyers Association of Queens County

  • JoAnne Page, Esq. - The Fortune Society

  • Camille Russell, Esq.

  • Lisa Schreibersdorf, Esq. - Brooklyn Defender Services

  • Matthew Silverstein - America Works of New York, Inc.

  • M. Jane Stanicki - Hour Children, Inc.