On June 25, 2019, in a nightclub in Woodside, Queens, public defender Tiffany Cabán claimed election night victory as the borough’s newest District Attorney. Backed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cabán—a queer Latina woman from Richmond Hill, Queens, who ran on ending mass incarceration and the war on drugs—beamed as the crowd shouted “DSA!” In theory, it was a left-wing victory: Cabán had run among a slate of seven candidates, including Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, and won. But just days later, outstanding provisional and absentee ballots changed the picture. After the final tally, Katz, a moderate and the Democratic party’s favored choice, led by a mere 60 votes. Cabán conceded.

Almost exactly four years later, on June 27, Katz will try to keep her office. This time, her leading opponent in the Democratic primary is a candidate who is nothing like Cabán. Katz faces George Grasso, a former NYPD cop and an administrative judge for criminal matters for Queens Supreme Court who decided to leave the bench more than two years early because he “could no longer keep [his] mouth shut” about the state of the city’s public safety, he told Mother Jones and Bolts. 

The shift in debate in this primary race is the latest example of a broader transformation in the politics of crime and public safety in New York. Instead of a challenge from a leftist like Cabán, the insurgent candidate is Grasso: a man who gleefully calls himself the “anti-Krasner,” a reference to Philadelphia’s progressive district attorney. Grasso is openly advocating for a return to law-and-order approach to policing.

His entrance into a Democratic primary is indicative of a move to the right foreshadowed by New York’s Democratic leaders. Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul have touted tough-on-crime policies, doubling down on critiques of bail reform, and moving away from decarceral solutions. The contours of the Queen’s race is part of a larger national narrative, according to experts: In Democratic cities, like San Francisco and Boston, tough-on-crime rhetoric has become a norm again. Data-driven critiques, and reevaluations of criminal justice policy, have less sway—some Democrats, instead, want to return to the politics of law-and-order.

Grasso started out as a “foot cop” in southeast Queens in 1979. He rose to first deputy police commissioner of the NYPD, a position he held for almost a decade, before, most recently, taking the bench as an administrative judge in the Queens Supreme Court. Often, Grasso mentions his tenure with former New York City police commissioner Bill Bratton, who has endorsed him, as core to his beliefs about policing. He says his priority is to return the DA’s office to the quality-of-life enforcement Bratton embraced—criminalizing lesser offenses such as defacing property and fare evasion that “create conditions conducive to” increased crime and violence. (Grasso was part of the Giuliani-era team that designed the first quality of life strategy for Commissioner Bratton.)

In conversation with Mother Jones and Bolts, Grasso mentions specifically taking on fare evasion. The Friday following the death of Jordan Neely—an unhoused Black New Yorker who was choked to death by another passenger on a subway train car—Grasso took to Twitter, not to express outrage at Neely’s public killing, but to criticize the NYPD for ending warrant checks for violating transit laws, a policy that ended due to overwhelmingly targeting houseless New Yorkers. “WHAT!!!! This is the misguided policy that led directly to Mr. Neely’s death and Mr. Penny’s arrest!” he wrote.

Grasso told Mother Jones and Bolts that if the law had been enforced properly, Neely would have likely have ended up back on Rikers Island. “Maybe they would’ve hooked him up with some kind of mental healthcare or something,” he said. “We know one thing for sure, he would be alive today.” (This year, three people have died at Rikers. Last year was the deadliest in a quarter century, Gothamist reported, with 19 deaths at the jail; six are reported to have been suicides.)

While Grasso extols broken windows policing, he says he wants to prioritize mental health as DA, creating the office’s first mental health bureau and turning Rikers Island into a Bellevue Hospital satellite to treat the majority of the incarcerated population at Rikers who struggle with mental illness. During his judicial tenure Grasso championed alternatives to incarceration, creating diversion programs for teens in partnership with the Center for Court Innovation.

“I really hate the fact that people say, ‘Oh, Grasso’s coming in from the right.’ I’m telling you, I do not consider myself right-wing in any way, shape, or form,” he said. “MAGA makes me wanna throw up.”

Despite that, Grasso has created an independent “Public Safety” party line on the General Election ballot in November to ensure all Queens voters, including Republicans, can vote for him. He’s spoken at both Central Queens and Queens Village Republican clubs in the past few months. He says it was because requests to speak at Queens Democratic clubs were denied.

Grasso’s rhetoric is a “caricature of a Republican throwback,” according to Anthony C. Thompson, a professor of clinical law emeritus of law at New York University and founder of the faculty’s Center on Race, Inequality and the Law. “If we look at history, Katz tacked to the left rhetorically to respond to her opponent [in 2019], so it is a legitimate question to say, ‘Will she tack to the right to respond to Grasso?”

The incumbent Katz is once again backed by the New York Democratic Party stalwarts. She has received $12,500 in donations from Jay Jacobs since 2022, the head of the New York State Democratic Party, and has been endorsed by state officials including U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez. She has led a fairly moderate reelection campaign focused on straddling the line—attempting to triangulate between reform and harsher crackdowns on crime. Katz has defended her record of getting guns off the street and curtailing retail theft, while also making structural changes to the criminal legal system called for by some progressives.

In May, Katz shared her campaign ad, and tweeted that it is “appropriately titled, ‘Promise’”—a reference to pledges she made to voters when she took office in 2020. Katz has fulfilled some of them. She notably created a wrongful conviction unit and a hate crimes bureau within the DA’s office. 

But Katz has been shaky on other reforms. In her 2019 campaign, Katz vowed not to prosecute low-level marijuana charges. In 2021, she did dismiss thousands of marijuana-related offenses, but this April her office began cracking down on unlicensed cannabis vendors. On sex-work cases, Katz said she would work to implement the controversial Nordic model which prosecutes clients and sex traffickers, not sex workers, but according to Documented, Queens still maintains the highest rates of prosecution for prostitution arrests in the city.

Katz has maintained a conventional approach to office that follows that of a politician responding to pressure rather than a prosecutor committed to fixing problems, according to Thompson. He points out her decision to start a conviction integrity unit, for example. “She didn’t say, ‘When we reversed 99 cases because of conviction integrity problems, we then looked at the prosecutors who tried those cases and had them engage in training or fire them,’” Thompson says. “It’s been very much a political response. It sounds like what a state assembly person would respond, not what a thoughtful district attorney who’s trying to change her office would respond.”

Most notably, Katz has waffled in her views on bail reform. At the start of her last campaign, in December 2018, she said she would no longer seek cash bail for misdemeanors and advocate for broader state legislation that would do the same. Six months later in a June candidate debate, Katz said, “under my administration, there will be no cash bail.” Then, one week after taking office in 2020, an assistant district attorney in Katz’s office set bail for a man charged with stealing a cellphone at $50,000, breaking her initial reform pledge. (When NY1’s Erroll Louis questioned Katz about reneging, she said she believed cash bail was unfair “deep in [her] heart” but that Queens was not ready to eliminate it.)

Bail reform has stood in for broader discussions about crime in New York in the past three years since it went into effect. Adams and Hochul have both pointed to the 2019 bail reform law—which sought to end cash bail for a wide array of misdemeanors and non-violent felonies to prevent jail time for low-income defendants—as a reason for spiking crime.

This spring, New York’s state legislature, with Hochul’s blessing, passed a budget that rolled back some of the most significant reforms of the 2019 bail law. The changes eliminated the provision that judges needed to use the “least restrictive” means to ensure defendants return to court. Now, judges are allowed to set any conditions they deem necessary—including setting cash bail, which, advocates have warned, will lead to more pretrial incarceration. 

Both Grasso and Katz have supported this rollback, and in fact have each argued for a further revision to bail reform, to include a “dangerousness standard” that would allow judges to consider defendants’ past conviction or other more nebulous factors in order to detain them pretrial. Hochul has argued against implementing dangerousness calling it “subjective” and “determined by the color of [defendants’] skin and perception of dangerousness,” but critics have said her new revision is equally as arbitrary and biased. (It ultimately was not included in the budget that passed.) 

On May 5, Katz joined Adams and Hochul at an event to sign the controversial bail reform changes into law. Katz called it a “welcome amendment” in a statement. But Grasso believes it doesn’t go far enough. He has said the fact of Katz’s attendance at the event proves she isn’t “serious” about setting a true dangerousness standard for defendants. 

Queens had the second largest number of arrests for misdemeanors, according to recent data from New York City’s Criminal Justice Agency, among the five boroughs. More than 17,000 people were arrested in Queens on low-level offenses, many of whom, if unable to post bail, could end up in Rikers for months at a time.

While the 2019 race moved the frame of what the new DA could do in office and how she could use her discretion wisely for safety and justice, Katz is hardly seen as a reformer, says Insha Rahman, the vice president for advocacy and partnerships for the Vera Institute of Justice. “Some of her policies are indeed reform oriented,” Rahman says. “[But] Katz has in general been less reform minded in her first term in office, than say, certainly Eric Gonzalez in Brooklyn, or Alvin Bragg in Manhattan.”

In other U.S. cities, Rahman says, there’s more appetite among voters for solutions to crime that don’t resort to failed models of justice. Just last month, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, home to Pittsburgh, voters elected public defender Matt Dugan over the incumbent Steve Zappala in the Democratic primary. But in DA races across New York state there are far fewer self-professed reformers on the ballot than four years ago. In the Bronx, defense attorney Tess Cohen is challenging incumbent Darcel Clark on a progressive platform, but in Queens, progressives have largely haven’t weighed in on the contest between Katz and Grasso. (Cabán did not respond to a request for an interview.)

One exception has been progressive city councilmember Shekar Krishnan, who publicly supported Tiffany Cabán in 2019. He wrote that he has not “always seen eye to eye” with Katz, but still commended her for her efforts in a June QNS editorial where he endorsed her run against “dubious opponents.” 

As with most off-year elections, turnout will determine the outcome. In the 2019 primaries, only 11.9 percent of Queens voters showed up to the polls. It is the immigrant borough, with 46 percent of residents who were born outside of the country. 

One difficulty in projecting the results could be the presence on the ballot of Devian Daniels, a former public defender, who entered the race in mid-April. While Daniels is running to reform the office with a focus on decriminalizing poverty and ending mass incarceration, she does not have an active campaign, with any contributions or endorsements on record—with the exception of submitting signatures for ballot placement. Her candidacy was not approved by the New York City Bar Association. Daniels has also been tied to Hiram Monserrate, the former New York legislator convicted of federal corruption charges for stealing city council funds and for assaulting his girlfriend. (Daniels did not respond in time for requests for comment.)

Still, Katz is expected to prevail. Neither Rahman nor Thompson believe Grasso will win the primary. Yet both worry about how progressives might hold Katz’ office accountable.

“I think the danger is that Katz will misinterpret a victory as a signal that she doesn’t need to do anything differently, ” Thompson tells Mother Jones and Bolts. “The great challenge around people who really wanna see true racial equity in the criminal legal system and true reform is: How do we continue to keep elected officials’ feet to the fire?”

The post Melinda Katz Once Faced Off Against DSA. Now It’s New York’s Police Lobby. appeared first on Bolts.

Ryan says he was there to monitor the police behavior toward protesters, standing removed from the gathering. “I said, ‘Okay, I’ll go watch,’ because police have a tendency to overreach to these little things,” he recounts. “I don’t think I should have been arrested. But I was.” The police initially accused him of resisting arrest but they later admitted that this characterization was incorrect and apologized; still, they maintained trespassing charges.

A few weeks later, Ryan announced his candidacy for Broome County district attorney. He says he’d bring into the office a more skeptical perspective toward the criminal legal system, born of his experience as a defense attorney and public defender. “We all know that they police certain communities and treat certain communities differently,” he told Bolts. “If you’re not in a position of power to change it, then it’s not going to change.” 

He added, “The only one who is a gatekeeper to make sure that horrible jobs aren’t done is the district attorney because he or she has the ultimate discretion on whether to prosecute and how to prosecute, and what justice to extract from each individual situation.”

Broome County’s DA race is among dozens this year that will decide who leads local prosecution and law enforcement in New York. Fifteen counties are electing their sheriffs and 24 their DA, and the filing deadline for candidates to run for a party’s nomination passed last month. 

Most counties drew just one candidate who’ll be facing no competition. They include conservative sheriffs who have resisted gun control, the high-profile DAs of Rochester and Staten Island, and a sheriff who defied calls to resign for sharing a racist social media post—and is now poised to stay in office for four more years. 

Still, a few flashpoints have emerged. Candidates are taking contrasting approaches on bail in Broome, discovery reform in the Bronx, and policing in Queens. Rensselaer County (Troy) faces another reckoning with its unusual decision to partner with federal immigration authorities.

Bolts has compiled a full list of candidates running in the June 27 primaries, which will decide the nominees of the four political parties that have ballot lines in New York State: the Democratic, Republican, Working Families, and Conservative parties. Candidates can still petition until late May to appear on the Nov. 7 ballot as an independent.

These elections are unfolding against the backdrop of reforms the state adopted in 2019 to detain fewer people pretrial and offer defendants more access to the evidence against them. Democrats earlier this month agreed to roll back those reforms after years of pressure by many DAs and sheriffs. Their new package, championed by Governor Kathy Hochul, gives judges’ more authority to impose bail, amid other provisions that will likely increase pretrial detention. Hochul also backed a push by New York City DAs to loosen discovery rules requiring that prosecutors quickly share evidence with the defense, but the final legislation did not touch those.

Tess Cohen, a defense attorney and former prosecutor who is running for DA in the Bronx, is one of a few candidates this year who is voicing support for the original pretrial reforms and distaste for the rollbacks. Cohen is running in the Democratic primary against Bronx DA Darcel Clark, who was reported by City & State to be the chief instigator in lobbying state politicians to  loosen discovery rules. (Clark and other city DAs flipped on their push in the final days.) Cohen faults state politicians for making policy based on the media blowing up specific instances of crime.

“The problem with people like the governor bowing down to press coverage that is sensationalist and fear-mongering, and almost always inaccurate, is that we actually make our communities less safe when we do that,” Cohen told Bolts. “We have very good data that shows that holding people at Rikers Island on bail or low level crimes does not make us safer.” 

A study released in March by the John Jay College found that people who were released due to the bail reform were less likely to be rearrested. 

Eli Northrup, a staunch proponent of the original reforms as policy director at the Bronx Defenders, hopes that the upcoming elections usher in more local officials who are “looking to change the system, shrink the system, work toward having fewer people incarcerated, rather than using it as a tool for coercing pleas.”  But he is also circumspect after the new rollbacks. Even if a reformer were to win an office, he says, they’d likely have to contend with police unions, mayors, and other entrenched powers looking to block reforms. “What we should be doing is spending less money on policing and prosecution and investing that very money into the communities that are harmed the most by violence,” he says.

To kick off Bolts’ coverage of New York’s criminal justice elections this year, here are five storylines that jump out since the filing deadline has passed.

1. Challenges from opposite directions for two New York City DAs 

Queens four years ago saw a tense Democratic primary for DA between Tiffany Cabán, a public defender who ran as a decarceral candidate, and Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, who prevailed by just 60 votes. Four years later, Katz faces a primary challenge from her right from George Grasso, a retired judge and former NYPD official, who is calling for harsher policing and thinks the city is waging a “war on cops.” Grasso is running with the support of Bill Bratton, the former NYPD commissioner and a frequent critic of policing reforms. 

Public defender Devian Daniels is running as well, saying she wants to fight mass incarceration from the Queens DA’s office after “years of witnessing abuses on the front lines as defense counsel.” The Democratic primary typically amounts to victory in this blue stronghold. 

In the Bronx, Darcel Clark’s sole primary challenger, Tess Cohen, says wants to take the DA’s office in a more progressive direction. She says that Clark’s lobbying to loosen the state’s discovery rules is emblematic of how prosecutors can coerce defendants into guilty pleas. “If you’re held in Rikers, and you can only get out if you plead guilty, and you can’t make that argument that you’re actually innocent because you don’t have the evidence, then you end up pleading guilty just to get out of Rikers,” she told Bolts. 

Cohen explained that she would also change how the office decides whether to recommend for pretrial detainment. “If we are in a space where our recommendation for sentence or our plea offer means the person is immediately going to be released from jail, they should be released anyways,” she said. “You should not be holding someone in jail that you plan to release the minute they plead guilty.” 

Clark did not reply to a request for comment.

2. North of New York City, the policy contrasts on pretrial reform are muted

Broome County, on the border with Pennsylvania, had the highest rate of people detained in jail as of 2020, the year the reforms were first implemented, according to data compiled by the Vera Institute for Justice. Ryan, the Democratic lawyer running for DA, told Bolts he supports the reforms, crediting them for helping slightly reduce the local jail population. 

But his two Republican opponents in this swing county disagree. Incumbent Michael Korchak has pushed for their repeal for years, while his primary rival Paul Battisti, a defense attorney, says the reforms were “extreme.” Neither Battisti nor Korchak replied to requests for comment. Their rhetoric is in line with the position of many, but not all, upstate DAs who have lobbied to roll back the pretrial reforms ever since they passed in 2019. 

But candidates have tended to converge on pretrial policy in the other DA races north of New York City. There are three such counties besides Broome with more than 100,000 residents. 

In Ulster County, Democrat Manny Nneji, who is currently the chief assistant prosecutor, faces Michael Kavanagh, who used to have the same job and now works as a defense attorney, and is running as a Republican. In interviews with Hudson Valley One earlier this year, both candidates largely agreed that the 2019 bail reform should be made more restrictive, and jostled about who is tougher on crime.

In Onondaga County, home to Syracuse, Incumbent William Fitzpatrick is running for re-election as a Republican against Chuck Keller, who filed to run for the Democratic nomination but also that of the Conservative Party, an established party in the state. (New York law allows candidates to run for multiple nominations at once.) The Syracuse Post-Standard reports that the local Conservative Party in March chose to endorse Keller over Kitzpatrick after Keller shared with them that he supports bail reform roll backs in line with what lawmakers ended up passing in early May. (Christine Varga is also running in the Conservative Party primary.)

In Dutchess County, Republican William Grady is retiring this year after 40 years as DA, a tenure during which he strongly fought statewide reform proposals. Democrat Anthony Parisi and Republican Matthew Weishaupt, who have both worked as prosecutors under Grady, are running to replace him; after he entered the race, Parisi faced a threat of retribution from Grady, for which the DA later apologized. Weishaupt has said he thinks the discovery reforms are “dangerous” in how they help defendants. Parisi did not reply to questions on his views on the reforms.

Six smaller counties—Columbia, Delaware, Hamilton, Lewis, Seneca, and Sullivan, with populations ranging from 5,000 to 80,000 residents—also host contested DA races this year. 

3. Half of this year’s DA elections are uncontested

A single candidate is running unopposed in 12 of New York’s DA races. Ten of them are already in office, but two are newcomers: Todd Carville ​​in Oneida County and Anthony DiMartino in Oswego County. Both are Republicans and currently work as assistant prosecutors.

Michael McMahon, Staten Island’s DA, is running unopposed for the second consecutive cycle: He is a Democrat in a red-leaning county, but the GOP did not put up a candidate against him. He has been very critical of the criminal justice reforms adopted by his party’s lawmakers, and has pushed for their rollback. Another prominent critic of the pretrial reforms, Monroe County (Rochester) DA Sandra Doorley, is also running unopposed. Doorley, a Republican who was the president of the state’s DA association back when the reforms were first implemented in 2020, faced a heated challenge four years ago but is now on a golden path toward a fourth term.

4. Will ICE’s 287(g) program retain a foothold in New York?

Rensselaer County, home to Troy, is the only county in New York State that participates in ICE’s 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to act like federal immigration agents in county jails—and one of the only blue-leaning counties in the nation with such an agreement. Immigrants’ rights activists from Cape Cod to suburban Atlanta have targeted 287(g) by getting involved in sheriff’s elections in recent years, tipping these offices toward candidates who pledged to terminate their offices’ partnerships with ICE.

Patrick Russo, the Republican sheriff who joined 287(g), is retiring this year. The race to replace him will decide whether ICE’s program retains its sole foothold in New York.

But will anyone even make the case for breaking ties with ICE? The two Republicans who are running for Russo’s office, Kyle Bourgault and Jason Stocklas, each told Bolts that they would maintain their county in the program with no hesitation. 

The only Democratic candidate, Brian Owens, did not return repeated requests for comment. He said at a press conference last month that he had no position on the matter. “I’d want to educate myself a little more before I’d make any decision on that,” he said. Owens is a former police chief of Troy, a city that during his tenure saw local activism pressuring officials to not collaborate with ICE, so these are not new questions. Still, Russo coasted to re-election unopposed four years ago, and it remains to be seen whether the 2023 cycle gives immigrants’ rights activists any more of an opening. 

5. Most incumbent sheriffs are virtually certain of securing new terms

Albany Sheriff Craig Apple drew national attention in 2021 for filing a criminal complaint against then-Governor Andrew Cuomo for groping, but he also attracted criticism for fumbling the case. The New York Times reported at the time that Apple seemed to be made of Teflon, having rebounded from past controversies with multiple re-election bids where he faced no opponent. History repeated itself again—he drew no challenger this year. 

But judging by the lay of the land throughout the state, this says less about Apple than it does about a broader dearth of engagement in New York’s local elections: Overall, 80 percent of the state’s sheriff races are uncontested this year. 

This includes the sheriffs of Fulton and Greene County, who have fiercely opposed a new gun law banning concealed weapons in a long list of public spaces, alongside many peers who are not up for election this year. Fulton’s Richard Giardino took to Fox News to signal he’d only loosely enforce it. 

And it includes Rockland County Sheriff Louie Falco, who faced calls for his resignation in 2020 after he shared a link from a white supremacist website about Black people on Facebook. Three years later, he won’t even face any opponent as he coasts to a fourth term.

The post Tensions High on Bail and Policing as New Yorkers Elect DAs and Sheriffs appeared first on Bolts.

Cabán claimed victory in the Democratic primary on Election Night last week. As of publication, she leads Queens Borough President Melinda Katz by 1,199 votes, with approximately 6,300 ballots left to be counted. If she retains her lead, she would be favored to win the general election in this heavily Democratic county.

Cabán, who has said she would be a “decarceral prosecutor,” is far from the first candidate to run on ending mass incarceration. But she has uncommonly centered her candidacy on the voices of those most affected by the problems of the criminal legal system. “Our policies should be coming from community members that are directly impacted by them,” she told The Appeal in February. 

She said this in the context of explaining her support for fully decriminalizing sex work, a stance staked by few if any of the “progressive prosecutors” elected in recent years. In a press release issued last week, Decrim NY, a coalition of groups working for decriminalization, praised Cabán for her “consistent, vocal uplifting of the voices of people who trade sex, so often excluded in her mainstream media.” Cabán even elevated decriminalization into an issue in the presidential race.

“We are not there to police bodies and take away folks’ autonomy,” she told BuzzFeed. Writing in the New Republic, Melissa Gira Grant places Cabán’s campaign in the legacy of organizations like INCITE and Survived & Punished, “which have long called for alternatives to policing and prosecution to keep communities safe.” 

Indeed, a core aspect of Cabán’s bid has been her advocacy for altogether shrinking the criminal legal system, rather than just prosecuting differently. The very first commitment on her website’s issues page is to “prosecute less.” She has promised to write a memo to her staff “on day one” instructing them to “not prosecute sex workers, customers,” and to “not prosecute under the promoting prostitution charges.” She also says she would decline to prosecute other charges, including recreational drug use. Cabán also said she would create a conviction review unit; Queens is the only New York City borough to lack one. 

Such decarcerative policies could impact the future of jail space in New York City. DAs have no direct say on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to replace Rikers Island with new borough-based jails, but a drop in the incarcerated population in Queens could pressure city officials to design facilities with less capacity, as discussed in the Political Report’s June roundtable.

This race gets portrayed as a redo of last summer’s congressional primary between Joe Crowley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Democratic establishment versus left insurgency. It’s true that some battlelines were similar. Crowley, the local Democratic Party, and Governor Andrew Cuomo endorsed Katz; Ocasio-Cortez and the city’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter backed Cabán. 

But Cabán also received some prominent support, including the New York Times’s, testifying to the political terrain’s continued shift on criminal justice reform.

That characterization can also overlook that Cabán’s focus on decarceration enabled her to tap into New York’s substantial activism to overhaul the criminal legal system. “The crisis of mass incarceration and criminalization has personally impacted so many of us, and as a result, we know that jails and prisons are not the remedy to problems caused by underinvestment and structural racism” Erin George, the criminal justice campaigns director of Citizen Action of New York, a group that endorsed Caban, told the Political Report. “The enormous grassroots energy and activism around Tiffany Caban’s campaign comes from regular people understanding that this system is doing irreparable harm.”

David Brand, an editor at the Queens Daily Eagle, characterized the election similarly in the Political Report’s roundtable on the election. “It’s about the movement of people on the ground who delivered” Occasio-Cortez’s win, he said. “There’s such a powerful grassroots movement of organizations that have been advocating for justice reform and amplifying the voices of people who are incarcerated, or people, communities of color who are experiencing overpolicing.”

St. Louis County saw this same interplay between grassroots voices and local politics last year, when voters ousted Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch four years after the Ferguson protests. 

“People who are impacted know it’s not just their stories, but rarely do they get to tell their story, and rarely do people care enough to listen to their story,” Reverend Dr. Cassandra Gould, the executive director of Missouri Faith Voices, told the Political Report in December about her organization’s work in the St. Louis election. “Using their voice and engaging in a democratic process, it’s also a way to lift their voice. We were able to connect the story of their pain to their opportunity to make something different happen, as opposed to keeping it to yourself but not ever bringing it to light.”

If she retains her lead over Katz, Cabán would face Republican Daniel Kogan, an attorney, in November’s general election. But Kogan has yet to decide whether he will actually campaign, and the Eagle reported that the GOP may still maneuver to replace him with a more prominent candidate. 

Elsewhere in New York

There were other competitive DA primaries in New York last week, two of which in counties with more than 100,000 residents. These campaigns did not place mass incarceration at the forefront as in Queens, however.

Thomas Walsh will likely be the new DA of Rockland County, north of New York City. A retired judge, Walsh easily won a four-way Democratic primary in this open race; he will also appear on the ballot as the nominee of the Republican and Conservative parties. Assemblymember Kenneth Zebrowski, Walsh’s chief primary opponent, may still run in the general election for the Working Families Party; attorney Michael Diederich is running as an independent. 

Walsh ran on creating a special unit to investigate financial crimes; he is emphasizing offenses like welfare or unemployment fraud rather than white-collar crimes. In a policy document on the opioid crisis, Walsh states that “we will not be able to arrest our way out of this epidemic” and promises “alternatives to incarceration,” but he also says he will prosecute all overdose deaths as a homicide, a practice that public health advocates have denounced as harmful. Walsh has also pledged to “combat wrongful convictions,” which would include creating a conviction review unit and reviewing all past convictions obtained based on uncorroborated evidence. 

In Broome County, defense attorney Paul Battisti has a 137-vote lead over Michael Korchak, the chief assistant to the county’s retiring DA, in the GOP primary. (Approximately 600 absentee ballots remain to be counted.) The winner of this sharply negative race will face Democrat Debra Gelson, a trial attorney and former assistant DA, in the general election. Both Republicans ran on conventional tough-on-crime rhetoric. Battisti faulted the incumbent DA’s office for “lenient plea bargains” and promised “more aggressive prosecution.” Rejecting that characterization, Korchak touted his role in obtaining long sentences. “The DA’s job is not that of a social worker,” he said. Both candidates talked of diverting people with addiction issues to a drug court, but they did so while delineating implausibly bright lines between sellers and users.

The post Tiffany Cabán’s Success in Queens Shines Spotlight on Grassroots Organizing appeared first on Bolts.

Queens hosts the year’s marquee election for district attorney on June 25. For activists looking to harness local officials’ power to overhaul the criminal legal system, this race is the latest chapter in efforts that saw new victories in Northern Virginia last week. It will shape the prospects of reform and decarceration in a county of nearly 2.4 million people.

On Monday, I sat down to talk about this election and its stakes with three New York journalists who have covered it all year: David Brand from the Queens Daily Eagle, Christine Chung from The City, and Aaron Morrison from The Appeal.
We discussed why this election has captured people’s attention, how the language of reform is ubiquitous and how that creates new challenges, and how the result will impact issues including wrongful convictions, sex work, and jail space in New York City. You can listen to the conversation, or read the transcript below. 

Daniel Nichanian: Local DA elections are often very quiet affairs. Richard Brown was unopposed six times while running for re-election. But this year’s election has really exploded in terms of local visibility and organizing, and in terms of the buzz it has received. What do you think has made this race break through and capture people’s imagination and demands for change to this extent?

David Brand: I think it shows the power of the movement to shine a light on the power of prosecutors across the country, that has been informed by races in, recently Philadelphia with Larry Krasner and Boston with Rachael Rollins. Because Queens is massive, basically the size of Philadelphia and Boston combined, this is a real opportunity for a massive county to affect some real criminal justice reform in the prosecutor’s office. There’s also a lot of media who live in the area, and because it’s the only really big ticket election in New York City right now, I think so many of us have begun or continue paying attention to this. The timing really helps. And there’s so much movement on the ground here in Queens, I’m sure Christine or Aaron can talk about.

Christine Chung: Yeah. What your question mentioned, the fact that DA Brown, who was the DA for 28 years or so—he died a few months ago—the fact that it’s an opportunity for a serious change in Queens is another reason why a lot of eyes are on this race. It’s been a long time since there’s been an election for DA, so naturally people are curious about it. The field is also really crowded, seven people. When it’s an exciting race and has a lot of promising candidates, people are going to watch.

Aaron Morrison: And I’ll just add, I kind of like how symbolic this race can be. Queens is home to roughly 2.4 million people. There are roughly 2.4 million people incarcerated in this entire country. The symbolism of a place like Queens having a real opportunity to reform its criminal legal system, I think is really what’s drawing a lot of attention.

Brand: I think that’s so true. I noticed that the other day looking at a statistic that the population of Queens is also the population of people incarcerated in the country, I thought that was really powerful, it’s cool that you noticed that. I think Queens has become like the spiritual heart of the progressive movement and the movement of the Democratic Socialists of America. That’s drawing a lot of attention to the race, especially in the wake of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez winning her congressional primary and then going into D.C. But I think it’s also about more than just Ocasio-Cortez, I think it’s about the movement of people on the ground who delivered the victory for her. There’s such a powerful grassroots movement of organizations that have been advocating for justice reform and amplifying the voices of people who are incarcerated, or people, communities of color who are experiencing overpolicing. That has been so strong and so vocal, and I think really heartening to see the power that these grassroots movements have been able to wield.

Chung: On the political side, I think eyes are on the race to see if the AOC effect is real and can sustain another election cycle. Like David was saying, this grassroots push—DSA, Real Justice PAC, groups like these—leading to her upset over a really longtime incumbent, which was a huge, huge defeat for the Queens Democratic Party. People are waiting to see if this is more than just a one-off and if it’s going to happen again with Tiffany Cabán.

Nichanian: David, you mentioned Krasner in Philly and Rollins in Boston as the flag bearers of the movement around changing the way DAs work and operate. They both have actually just endorsed one of the candidates in this race, Tiffany Cabán. How much is the existence of that movement around the country resonating in this campaign, and are the alignments around the race corresponding to what we have seen elsewhere?

Brand: I think the existence of a nationwide movement is really powerful in this campaign. You see that in the contributions to Cabán’s campaign, especially in the most recent 11-day pre-primary important. She’s gotten more than 4000 contributions from all across the country, I think really aided by an endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but more importantly Ocasio-Cortez sending an email soliciting contributions to her massive email list. What I think is kind of funny about Rollins and Krasner endorsing Cabán is, first, Councilmember Rory Lancman who was the first to announce candidacy and was the most progressive, was building himself for many months, almost a year, maybe more, as the Larry Krasner of Queens in terms of being a reformer. The other thing is Rachel Rollins, who did her endorsement of Cabán today: Back in February when Mina Malik was still rumored to be announcing, she was about to announce, her people first reached out to my former colleagues, Christina Carrega, and told her that Malik was thinking of announcing and we were reporting some stories about it for the Queens Eagle. Rachel Rollins responded to one of my stories that Mina Malik had retweeted, saying whatever you need I got you, and now a few days before the primary election, she endorses Cabán. I think that Cabán has become a symbol, political symbol, for many people wanting to attach themselves to as well.

Chung: One thing that I would add is, I think we’re seeing a lot of language from the progressive prosecutor movement, language that’s been used by Rollins and Krasner, being repurposed in this race by candidates other than just Tiffany Cabán. I’ve heard Melinda Katz talk about restorative justice quite a few times as well. She drops the Cure Violence model a lot. Tiffany Cabán talks a lot about how she’s a decarceral prosecutor, not just a progressive prosecutor. Then we’re also seeing, I think this is in the wake of Rollins outlining a decline to prosecute list, a lot of the candidates in this race have done similar things as well. They’ve been talking a lot about what specific charges they wouldn’t prosecute, as opposed to the discussion centering what they would prosecute, what constitutes a crime. That’s a very important shift that we’ve seen resonate in this race as well.

Brand: Definitely.

Morrison: I actually I just spoke to Tiffany Cabán this morning, and it’s safe to say she told me that she certainly hopes that this movement of progressive prosecutors, she certainly hopes that plays in her favor. She mentioned the recent Virginia victories, who beat out the more conservative establishment there. She certainly is well aware, and I would say banking on the idea that this carries over into next week’s primary.

Chung: The question, though, is do the people in Queens care? Are people paying attention in Southeast Queens and in other parts of Queens other than just AOC bastion, Astoria, Long Island City area, do people actually care about these endorsements, Rollins and Krasner? We don’t really know.

Brand: I think that’s key. Southeast Queens, as usual one of the most powerful voting blocs in the entire country, has been kind of ignored when it comes to reporting, and I think ignored by some of the candidates. I question how much Cabán has spent time there. I think more recently, a lot of people have been canvassing the area from the Cabán campaign. But I think for many months they never went there. I think a lot of the campaigning and canvassing and grassroots stuff there has been a little more under the radar. I really think who wins that area is going to win the election.

Morrison: I know at least Melinda Katz and Mina Malik have opened offices in Southeast Queens.

Brand: I think Melinda Katz has two, right?

Chung: Yes she has two, I’ve heard that as well. And she has the endorsement of Congressman Meeks, who leads the Queens Democrats.

Brand: She has almost all the leaders there, except maybe James Sanders, a state senator there who backed Lancman. Malik’s been doing a lot there, and she’s known in the community, I think.

Morrison: It’s interesting that Meeks has endorsed Katz because Meeks used to work in the Queens DA’s office with Greg Lasak.

Nichanian: I want to take a step back before we go into the candidates and the contrasts between them to look at the current DA’s office in Queens. This race is said to be an especially big opportunity to overhaul the legal system because of how unreformed, so to speak, the Queens DA’s office is compared to its counterparts in NYC. Do you share that characterization? What makes this DA office more of a bastion of older-school ‘tough-on-crime’ policies than other areas of New York City?

Morrison: Well, if you listen to me speak to the folks in the Queens DA’s office, they are not anti-reform at all. A couple months ago, they started putting out these weekly papers to the public.

Chung: John Ryan, right? Letters to the People of Queens, or something like that.

Brand: Getting ready for a career as a pundit if it doesn’t work out for him.

Morrison: Right, right. They’ve been talking about alternative sentencing, domestic violence, and some of the issues that the candidates have been focusing on while they’ve been out campaigning.
But I think all of us can agree that yes, if there is room for reform anywhere in the boroughs of New York City, it’s in Queens more than anywhere else.

Chung: It’s the only borough without a conviction integrity unit. I think David also did a story about the marijuana prosecutions in Queens, right?

Brand: Yeah, it’s leading the city, and the racial disparities have actually gotten worse even as marijuana prosecutions have significantly decreased. I think what Aaron said though about if you talk to people in the office, especially the top officials: They do see themselves as reformers to an extent. That’s why I think John Ryan has really bristled at the campaign being a referendum on 28 years of Richard Brown’s tenure. For them, for people like John Ryan, or other top officials like James Quinn, Bob Masters who has been in the office for 40 years. I think, if this were 10 or 15 years ago, that some of the things they’ve implemented at the time were progressive. It’s just that the thinking has changed around some of those reforms, and there’s been inertia. I think that it’s hard to effect real change when people have been in the same position for many years. I see that on a lot of the reforms that they made, when it comes to sex trafficking court, substance abuse intervention court, drug intervention court, people still have to plead guilty to an offense. That still becomes a mark on their record, something hanging over them, even if they can get that conviction waived by completing a program or something like that. It’s still something that hangs over them.

James Quinn, who is one of the top officials, went to a Close Rikers meeting and talked about how a lot of the rhetoric around mass incarceration is wrong, that in fact there’s only 11 people from Queens currently in Rikers who their only offense was a misdemeanor. Maybe that’s technically true, that their offense was one misdemeanor, but it kind of ignores people whose larger criminal record is basically based on low level offenses that many of the current DA candidates say they won’t even prosecute. I think there’s just a resistance to taking that next step into considering, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t be considering those things at all.” Maybe if someone has six or seven offenses and they’re for marijuana possession or turnstile jumping, you can re-examine all of those offenses and not just say, well, this is just the latest in a long line of a criminal record.

Chung: I think some of the Queens top executive assistant district attorneys would even go so far as to say that people incarcerated in Rikers right now don’t include people who are there for low level offenses, like sex work. That’s some of the language I’ve heard out of that office. They don’t even think that it’s really the problem that candidates have made it out to be.

Brand: I think you’re right.

Nichanian: This is great, because when you read about this race, the word reform is ubiquitous⁠—not just in what the incumbent office is saying, but also in how all the candidates are positioning themselves as champions of reform in some way. As criminal justice reform has progressed in local elections in the past few years, that’s something we’ve seen across the board, in more progressive counties especially, where incumbents or challengers whatever their politics are using the same language. That’s the success of the movement but also makes it harder to figure out who stands for what. In your work on Queens, how do you unpack what “reform” means, and how do you cover so many candidates’ approaches to criminal justice reform in a way that adds clarity to the fault lines?

Morrison: For one, I think it’s just important, even as they’ve taken on the rhetoric of reform, and, almost—I don’t want to say radical positions because I don’t think you can be radical and be a prosecutor, personally, but I think some of what they have been saying, sounds great. But the bottom line is, you still have to lock people up. There are voters out there who want to know, who are you actually going to go after? Who are you prosecuting, if you’re not prosecuting the sort of low-level offenses and some of the public nuisance things that have created a climate and culture of overpolicing poor and people of color, communities. I think that’s where you kind of get the clarity: Alright, it’s fine for you say to say you’re not going to prosecute, but you’re still a prosecutor, the job is to combat crime and to punish crime in a community, so what are you actually going to do? Who are you going to go after? I think some of the candidates have actually answered that question in some ways. But one thing I noticed at candidate forums is that when Lasak says something about dialing back some of the very far to the left rhetoric, he gets applause from the audience, because there are people out there that still want to know that you’re going to keep them safe.

Chung: I think that we see this conflict a lot with Tiffany Cabán as well. The balance between reform and putting people in jail, or keeping Queens safe, the language some people might use. I’m not very clear on what her stance is for the borough-based jails. I know that she wants to close Rikers but that she doesn’t want new jails and so she would invest in transitional housing. But realistically, where would the people go whose offenses rise to the level of incarceration? I don’t think she’s really answered that question clearly, publicly.

Brand: I agree. And kind of what both of you guys said: Queens is so huge. Though there are relatively few crimes compared to past years, and decline to prosecute a lot of offenses would lead to even fewer people who are going to jails or being sentenced to prison, it’s still a pretty high volume of offenses being committed. And so it’s unclear where would those people go, if there wasn’t a jail. But then I would love to hear more about sentencing policy. Something I think Larry Krasner made very clear when he did become prosecutor, that his assistant district attorneys were going to seek the low end of sentencing guidelines at pretty much all circumstances. That’s something I’d like to hear candidates talk more about, because if someone is charged and convicted of a violent crime, what is the sentencing going to be, what is it going to happen? Would they pursue felony murder as a charge? There’s a pretty high profile case right now that one of them is going to inherit, probably. Two men allegedly robbed a cell phone store, one was in the store, one was allegedly acting as the lookout. Police responded to that scene. One of the officers was shot and killed by friendly fire by another officer, and both of those suspects, both of those defendants are now charged with felony murder. That’s a controversial charge. I tried talking with some of the candidates about it, and just giving some very vague answers to that. So I want to know what are some of these controversial things that they are going to actually pursue when it comes to people who are charged and convicted of violent crimes.

Nichanian: Is it fair to say that the campaign has focused more on, there’s this nonviolent/violent binary in how people discuss reform. Has that played out on how people have focused on the language of reform in this election? That’s kind of what I hear you saying, David?

Brand: I think maybe this deserves some more reporting. I think it’s become more about what wouldn’t people prosecute, less about what would they prosecute? Or how would they go about that? I think that we could probably do a better job of asking those questions. I think that nonviolent versus violent offenses is some of the binary, I guess. But I think some of the conversation is also about what is considered a violent felony that is not exactly violent. Cabán, for example, has brought up, you can get charged with second degree grand larceny, which is considered a violent felony, for stealing Amazon packages, and should that person be sentenced to a long prison term because of that. I guess a question that I would have is how would they prosecute some of the more violent, maybe horrific, disturbing crimes.

Morrison: I would ask, just to add to that, I would ask the candidates what other states, maybe, or other jurisdictions they might look to, if they think it’s being done properly elsewhere. I know California has reformed the way it treats—in some respects, not all the way—felony murder, in the same way that you mentioned, David, where if someone’s the lookout but in the course of the crime someone dies, someone is killed, both people or all people involved are charged in some way in connection to the murder or manslaughter. California has actually passed reforms that says that they’re not going to hold folks life without parole in some very serious or violent crimes, especially when mitigating factors show that this person, person B, had less to do with the actual violent offense than person A.

Chung: With regards to some of the actions going on in other states when it comes to reform, I know that DA Krasner has a sentencing review unit, obviously there’s a conviction review unit already, where he’s reviewing past sentences to see if they were too severe or too intense. I’d be curious if this is something that other DA candidates in this race would be interested in adopting or implementing as well.

Nichanian: On the conviction integrity unit point: Christine, you brought that up earlier as something that Queens doesn’t have. And that’s an issue that has come up in the past two weeks because of Ava DuVernay’s new film “When They See Us,” on the Central Park Five case, which has amplified the conversation around wrongful convictions and the role of DAs in that. How has that issue played out in this election? And what are the odds of real reform on the issue of conviction integrity unit and conviction reviews in the aftermath of this primary?

Morrison; For The Appeal, I did a story about the lack of conviction integrity unit in Queens. Queens is the only borough in New York City without a conviction review or conviction integrity unit. Let me just say that I did talk to the Queen’s DA office, and they say they’ve had a policy where, when people come forward with allegations of wrongful convictions, DA Richard Brown would assign those cases or those allegations for review to his executive staff. Then they would build a team and report back to Richard Brown, and then they would go forward from there. But there’s not an official integrity unit, and most experts say that any good integrity unit is going to be independent of the rest of the office. So if DA Brown had his top brass reviewing these cases, cases of their colleagues, or in certain cases, cases that they themselves prosecuted, that is not really what, at least in the eyes of academics and folks who are teaching criminal justice around the nation, that’s not what you want in a conviction integrity unit.

That said, I asked all of the candidates, what do you want to know in regards to conviction integrity unit, and all of them said they support it. Some had more detailed responses on that than others. For instance, Rory Lancman has had a conviction integrity unit policy established for much longer than any other candidates. Mina Malik released hers recently, I think it was this month. The thing that struck me was that all of the candidates, except for Mina Malik, could not name one case that they would currently review. In recent debates and forums, they’ve talked about the Chanel Lewis case. But there are many older cases that could be good for review in a new revamped DA’s office or under a newly-created conviction integrity unit in Queens.

Brand : It just really surprises me that they wouldn’t, even just to score PR points, start the conviction review unit that’s been relatively successful in Brooklyn, that the DA’s office in Staten Island is starting and received funding from the City Council. I think the next candidate will do that. Greg Lasak has made it basically a key tenet of his entire campaign from the very beginning. His first campaign video in October last year featured people who he helped reverse convictions for during his time as a top official in the DA’s office. Malik really promotes her role in the Brooklyn DA’s office in helping to start the conviction review unit there. Lancman, of course, as a city councilmember, helped allocate funding, including to Staten Island to start the conviction review unit. So I think the next DA will definitely put that into place. But that’s a really interesting point, Aaron, that none of the candidates could bring up a case that they would want to review.

Morrison: Except for Mina Malik. Mina Malik did bring up the case of Carlton Roman.

Chung: As a specific example she gave?

Morrison: Yes, specific. So, you’re saying you would do this, but you’ve got to have a couple of cases in mind already. Or hasn’t someone approached your campaign asking for some help in this regard? Mina Malik was the only one to offer one example. I don’t want to give her more credit than is due because it was just one example.

Nichanian: Another issue I want to jump on is the debate around Rikers Island. The debate around how, when to close it, whether to close it even, and what to replace it with rages on, and that has echoed in the election. In what way will the identity of the next DA impact that conversation and impact what happens to jail space in the city?

Chung: To my knowledge DAs don’t actually have any kind of official input on what happens with the closure with Rikers and the plan with the borough-based jails. Am I right in that?

Brand: Yeah, I think you’re right.

Chung: They’ve all weighed in. They all have opinions about it. Most of the candidates support closing Rikers. But most don’t think that the Mayor’s borough-based jail plan is a good idea for Queens. I think the only one fully across the board is Rory Lancman. It’s obviously a key issue in the DA race, but as for their actual power in what happens next for the city, I think it’s pretty nonexistent.

Brand: I think the plan is going to continue and you’ll see the next mayor support it and the next councilmembers continue to support it without getting cold feet. But I think the next DA, the role that they will have could impact the actual final plan because if they are able to reduce the jail population significantly, that could have an impact on just how large the facilities are. The Mayor’s office has already signaled that they estimate the jail population will decrease from initial estimates of 5,000 by 2026 to 4,000. The next district attorney will have a huge role to play in ensuring that that estimate is accurate, and that maybe could even get the jail population lower than that. That, again, could affect the final design, because if you have a place designed right now for 5,700 detainees, for an estimated 5,000 detainee population. They’ve said that they would consider making it smaller to accommodate a 4,000 detainee population. If they’re willing to that maybe they’d be willing to go even smaller, I don’t know.

Chung: That’s a good point. I should mention that Melinda Katz, the Queens Borough President, does have some input into the general city planning process. She had a land use hearing last Thursday to talk about the borough-based jail plan. So she does have some sort of input into the process.

Morrison: One other way, and I think this is echoing what David said, that the DA’s office is going to have impact on how big or small the new jail is, is with the revamping of diversion programs in the Queens DA’s office. I know many candidates are saying they want to set up diversion programs where it’s almost like the person doesn’t even touch the criminal legal system, which means they’re not being detained at all and are just being steered towards community-based programs, community-oriented groups who already know that person’s family, or know that person personally and can intervene before it becomes a matter of charging and putting someone into the system. So I think diversion programs will also play a role in what happens with Rikers Island and the new jails.

Nichanian: There’s been a major spectrum, on this point about diversion, in DA elections around the country. There’s been a conversation around whether to just drop charges entirely and not touch certain categories of cases, versus how to expand diversion programs and alternative ways of approaching charges. This has played out in this campaign, with the conversation around whether to just not prosecute some cases at all. We were talking about that earlier. How has this election advanced that conversation? How have the contrast played out between whether to just not prosecute at all, whether to prosecute in the new manner, whether it’s just a matter of not incarcerating? What are the contrasts on this issue?

Brand: All the candidates pretty early on were down with, basically, prosecutorial reform 101, which is not prosecuting certain low level offenses, marijuana possession, turnstile jumping. I think, gradually, more and more have been expanding that list. I think Lancman was pretty early on with an extensive list of offenses he wouldn’t prosecute. Cabán, also. I think you see more Melinda Katz starting to borrow some of that rhetoric, talking about what she wouldn’t prosecute and also how she wouldn’t request bail under almost all circumstances, and that has evolved from an earlier position of not requesting bail on misdemeanors.

Chung: One of the main issues that they’ve really diverged on is sex work. That’s been something that people have changed their positions on a little bit too. Right now I think at this point all the canddiates are declining to prosecute sex workers, and they disagree on the rest of the constellation of sex work related charges, like loitering, patronizing, promotion. But in the beginning, from the first debate, I think held by VOCAL-New York, till now, their positions have changed. Even at at an early forum, Greg Lasak said sex work was bad for the community and it was really detrimental to quality of life, and now you see him saying that he would decline to prosecute sex workers. So I think that’s a really interesting shift.

Morrison: But also, my experiences of it has been difficult to follow the candidates on their positions, I think you’re right, Christine, that most of them have moved to the left on the list. But just recently, Lasak went back to saying that all of these things can be case-by-case basis.

Chung: Yeah, he said that to me too.

Morrison: He’s willing to say he doesn’r want to be a mass incarcerator, but he’s not going to commit to having any sort of blanket policy for some of these issues, including turnstile jumpers, and sex workers. So, in my experience it’s been difficult to pin them down on those issues because they seem to be trying to out-woke each other.

Chung: I totally agree. I think that their positions have changed from forum to forum. Even when you ask them for their decline-to-prosecute list, that might differ from what they actually say at a forum the next day.

Brand: That’s a good point. It’s hard, because there’s so many forums in so many different places, and so many different audiences. And the messaging can change. There could be five forums in one week, and you can go a week without going to one of them, and then things have changed a bit. And it can be hard to keep track of. I think it would be really great to try to get those would-not-prosecute lists, the same things that Rachael Rollins got a lot of acclaim for publishing and that Larry Krasner did as well. I think certain candidates have those, and have those explicitly, I think Lancman does. But I think other candidates, like you said, talk about it case by case basis and don’t want to really commit to anything, and especially maybe hedging their bets if they do get into office and that’s one campaign promise that they don’t have to hold or break.

Nichanian: A last question before I let you all go: The DA Association of New York [DAASNY], which is the statewide association that lobbies on behalf of the state’s DAs, has been in the news a lot in the past year as warning against or opposing some of the reforms that have been discussed. Some of the candidates in this race—David, you wrote about this a few months ago—have said that they wish to withdraw from that statewide DA association. What are the stakes of that conversation around statewide reform, and around this question of whether these candidates would remain in the association?

Brand: You hear from certain candidates who say that you need to be in the system to change it. And so certain candidates say they would stay in, so that they can try to effect change from the inside. Other candidates say there’s no point in being in, especially when they seem to advocate for the status quo. And then hardcore reformers say that by some of the prosecutors from bigger counties like Queens remaining in DAASNY, it lends credibility to some of the more status quo or regressive prosecutors in smaller counties, especially rural counties, throughout the state. I don’t know, I guess it’s hard for me to have an opinion on that. I can see those different perspectives. I think that, ultimately, it just matters, if you’re going to stay in it, that you’re willing to criticize things that you don’t agree with. If you say you’re reform, you say you disagree, you want to stay in DAASNY, then continue criticizing from the inside. But I guess, ultimately, I don’t see what the point is, if you are going to criticize all of what they’re doing and say you’re a reformer and that they don’t uphold your reform perspective. I guess I kind of talked myself through my opinion there. I think that if you’re going to criticize them, then why even be in it?

Chung: And there are Lancman, right, and Cabán, who wouldn’t?

Brand: I think Lancman wouldn’t join, Cabán wouldn’t join.

Morrison: Especially the more progressive or the furthest to the left of the field, it’s hard to say you’re going to bring transformational change to that office and remain part of a group that has opposed pretty much all of the reforms that you are promising to bring to the county. It just seems like the only way you can have credibility with constituents is to not join DAASNY. We’re talking about, just for example, discovery reform. Even back when Cuomo signed the executive order saying that the attorney general’s office would investigate officer-involved shootings, DAASNY opposed that, bringing in a special prosecutor or taking it outside of the office so that police aren’t policing the police, or that the close relationship between DAs and police officers doesn’t continue to be a problem when it comes to public confidence in investigations of officer-involved force.

Chung: I think it’s notable to point out too that whoever becomes the next Queens DA, if they were to opt out of DAASNY, would be an anomaly for the rest of the city, because Brooklyn’s Eric Gonzales, Manhattan’s Cy Vance are definitely in it. I think Vance was a past president. I’m not sure about Staten Island. But it would be breaking with precedent.

Brand: I wonder if it would also be a model for the other DAs to follow. Because they would face pressure saying, the Queens DA opted out of joining this organization, are you going to do that? And that would become an issue in upcoming elections, like the Manhattan DA election, where Dan Quart is positioning himself as the progressive alternative to Vance.

Chung: Yea, I guess we’ll see.

Brand: I think that this has been an amazing race and it’s been an amazing way to raise awareness about the incredible power that a prosecutor has, and that this is just the beginning. This is happening in Queens right now. There’’s going to be more DA elections. Is someone going to push Eric Gonzales in Brooklyn to embrace even more progressive reforms? How are people going to challenge Cy Vance in Manhattan? This is really just the beginning here in New York, or maybe not the beginning, but I think a continuation of some of the changes that began in Brooklyn are now becoming more intense here in Queens, and are going to continue to expand throughout the city.

Nichanian: On that exciting note, I want to thank all of you for joining this conversation. It’s been very interesting and I hope others find it interesting as well. Thank you!

Chung: Thank you.

Morrison: Thanks.

Brand: Awesome to be here, awesome to talk to you guys. Thank you.

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