Editorial
Death sentence for N.Y.
The courts are going to get people killed. Judges are risking New Yorkers’ lives by barring police from taking even the most reasonable actions to prevent crime.
Three Manhattan Appellate Division justices on Tuesday threw out the prosecution of a 14-year-old with a loaded gun on the ground that cops had violated his rights.
Think you’ve read about this before? You have not. This is the second instance in a week in which three judges on the same bench found police guilty of overstepping constitutional bounds in busting an armed 14-year-old.
The new decision is as threatening to public safety as the first. In both cases, the teens moved on to getting busted for violent crimes. The facts behind the latest judicial outrage:
At 9:35 p.m., police see Jaquan M. in a drug-prone West Harlem area. He walks slowly, peers from between parked cars, paces in circles, talks on a cell phone, paces some more, puts his backpack down, gingerly removes an object from his waistband and places it in the pack.
Officer Mourad Arslanbek asks Jaquan where he is going. Jaquan shows the address, scribbled on his arm, of a known drug location. Arslanbek asks what’s in the backpack, which appears heavy.
Jaquan answers, “Nothing,” and suggests the cop look inside for papers with his name on them. He finds an envelope containing a 9-mm. semiautomatic and 11 rounds, encased in bubble wrap.
According to Justices Angela Mazzarelli, Helen Freedman and Dianne Renwick, Arslanbek had subjected Jaquan to an illegal stop-and-frisk . They concluded that the officer did not have a reasonable suspicion to think Jaquan was engaged in criminal activity — the legal prerequisite a cop must have to stop someone for questioning.
Mazzarelli, Freedman and Renwick are among the many in New York who harbor deep anti-police antipathy. Blinded by ideology, they insist that they are better equipped than officers who patrol the streets every day, their lives on the line, to determine when cops have a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing and when they don’t.
Consider that these three judges found it crucial that Jaquan had the gun in a white envelope.
The cops could not actually see the weapon, and so, in the judges’ eyes, the officers had no grounds to check the backpack. Memo to teens: Mazzarelli, Freedman and Renwick say cops must leave you alone if you carry your guns in envelopes.
This could be very useful advice for Jaquan. After the gun arrest, he was picked up in connection with two robberies and a grand larceny.
In last week’s stop-and-frisk ruling, Justices Peter Tom, Karla Moskowitz and Nelson Roman followed similar handcuff-the-cops logic in letting go a teen who was arrested in a shooting while his gun case was pending.
These six judges looked at textbook examples of police work and found them unconstitutional. If the rulings stand, cops will be forced to drop all preventive measures and stand by as blood flows.
The courts are going to get people killed. Judges are risking New Yorkers’ lives by barring police from taking even the most reasonable actions to prevent crime.
Three Manhattan Appellate Division justices on Tuesday threw out the prosecution of a 14-year-old with a loaded gun on the ground that cops had violated his rights.
Think you’ve read about this before? You have not. This is the second instance in a week in which three judges on the same bench found police guilty of overstepping constitutional bounds in busting an armed 14-year-old.
The new decision is as threatening to public safety as the first. In both cases, the teens moved on to getting busted for violent crimes. The facts behind the latest judicial outrage:
At 9:35 p.m., police see Jaquan M. in a drug-prone West Harlem area. He walks slowly, peers from between parked cars, paces in circles, talks on a cell phone, paces some more, puts his backpack down, gingerly removes an object from his waistband and places it in the pack.
Officer MouradArslanbek asks Jaquan where he is going. Jaquan shows the address, scribbled on his arm, of a known drug location. Arslanbek asks what’s in the backpack, which appears heavy.
Jaquan answers, “Nothing,” and suggests the cop look inside for papers with his name on them. He finds an envelope containing a 9-mm. semiautomatic and 11 rounds, encased in bubble wrap.
According to Justices Angela Mazzarelli, Helen Freedman and Dianne Renwick, Arslanbek had subjected Jaquan to an illegal stop-and-frisk . They concluded that the officer did not have a reasonable suspicion to think Jaquan was engaged in criminal activity — the legal prerequisite a cop must have to stop someone for questioning.
Mazzarelli, Freedman and Renwick are among the many in New York who harbor deep anti-police antipathy. Blinded by ideology, they insist that they are better equipped than officers who patrol the streets every day, their lives on the line, to determine when cops have a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing and when they don’t.
Consider that these three judges found it crucial that Jaquan had the gun in a white envelope.
The cops could not actually see the weapon, and so, in the judges’ eyes, the officers had no grounds to check the backpack. Memo to teens: Mazzarelli, Freedman and Renwick say cops must leave you alone if you carry your guns in envelopes.
This could be very useful advice for Jaquan. After the gun arrest, he was picked up in connection with two robberies and a grand larceny.
In last week’s stop-and-frisk ruling, Justices Peter Tom, Karla Moskowitz and Nelson Roman followed similar handcuff-the-cops logic in letting go a teen who was arrested in a shooting while his gun case was pending.
These six judges looked at textbook examples of police work and found them unconstitutional. If the rulings stand, cops will be forced to drop all preventive measures and stand by as blood flows.