OPINION:
Jose Alba, a bodega owner in New York City, faced a life-changing event on July 1, 2022. On that day, a couple entered his shop and wanted to purchase some potato chips. The woman’s credit card was declined, so he refused the purchase. That’s when her boyfriend lunged at Mr. Alba, who, as he described, “seemed ready to kill me.”
The man threw Mr. Alba around the store. The girlfriend stabbed Mr. Alba, and all of it was caught on the bodega’s security cameras.
“I truly believed they were they to kill me. So faced with this, I did what I knew I had to do to save my life, what the law allows me to do, to save my life. I stabbed that man in self-defense,” Mr. Alba wrote in testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, which on Monday held a hearing on victims of crime in the Big Apple.
What happened next to Mr. Alba was a miscarriage of justice. When the police arrived, they arrested Mr. Alba, and he was charged with murder in the second degree. He couldn’t make bail, so he was sent to Rikers Island for almost a week.
“I believe that law enforcement and DA’s Office didn’t investigate the case fully. They rushed to judgment and I suffered because of it,” Mr. Alba testified. He said he was made out to be the “villain,” when in reality, he was the victim.
The district attorney prosecuting Mr. Alba’s case? Alvin Bragg.
The charges against Mr. Alba were ultimately dropped, thanks in part to the video footage of the attack and widespread media outrage, not Mr. Bragg’s good sense.
Mr. Bragg is a soft-on-crime prosecutor, more often siding with the criminal than the victim. Upon entering office, Mr. Bragg downgraded 52% of felony cases to misdemeanors. He has successfully prosecuted only half of his cases, much lower than his predecessor. Last year in New York City, nearly a third of shoplifting arrests involved just 327 people, according to the police department. Collectively, these 327 criminals were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times.
Not surprisingly, crime has risen. Last year, the streets of New York were meaner than they have been in 15 years due to soaring felony crimes. More than 170,000 felony crimes were reported, the most since 2006, when the New York Police Department started making its statistics publicly available. Although homicides in the Big Apple dropped in 2022, every other category of major crimes saw an increase, leading to an overall 22% increase from the year prior.
Shortly before the House hearing, Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Rep. Jerry Nadler condemned the event as a political stunt.
“This hearing is being called for one reason and one reason only, to protect Donald Trump,” Mr. Nadler said, slamming the session as an “outrageous abuse of power.”
Some would say the same of Mr. Bragg’s 34-count indictment against the former president, based on the testimonies of a porn star and a convicted felon.
Still, elections have consequences on both sides of the aisle.
Those who testified before the House Committee on Monday, however, had a very different take.
“Victims have no voice in politics or government. So I want to thank this committee from the very bottom of my heart for giving victims a voice today,” testified Jennifer Harrison, whose boyfriend and his best friend were murdered in 2005 and whose murderers were given a “sweetheart” deal by prosecutors. Only one of the three murderers spent any time in prison and then was let out early for good behavior.
“We live in a completely upside-down world where somehow those of us thrown into it, through no choice or fault of our own, have become the villains for simply wanting justice while those that have intentionally inflicted harm on others have become victims,” she said. “In our newfound ‘progressive society’ all empathy, compassion and logic have been replaced by a depraved indifference towards human life. And it is not just happening here in NY but in many places across the country.”
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