The Manhattan district attorney will no longer prosecute quality-of-life offenses such as public urination, drinking in public, littering and misdeeds in the subway — and even those with outstanding warrants would avoid jail.
The new, free-pass policy was announced late Tuesday with written endorsements from Police Commissioner Bratton and Mayor de Blasio.
Cyrus Vance Jr. said his office will now just issue summonses for such non-violent offenses, which he estimated will divert 10,000 cases a year from Manhattan Criminal Court.
The unilateral policy shift seemed to embrace Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito’s January proposal for sweeping legislation to decriminalize non-violent offenses city-wide, which has yet to be put up for a vote.
Law-and-order critics immediately slammed the move, saying it repeals the “Broken Windows” policy implemented by Bratton in the 1990s during his first stint as police commissioner under then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
That theory, which spurred a dramatic drop in crime, holds that cracking down on low-level offenses deters more serious crimes.
“They are now sending a message that minor offenses are no longer important to address as quality of life issues in New York City,” said Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants’ Benevolent Association, racting to the Vance announcement.
“This must be the new version of Bratton 2.0. This totally contradicts everything he has preached, philosophized and lectured about across the nation. Now, these offenses are no different than parking tickets.”
But Vance defended the shift, saying, “By ensuring courts are not unnecessarily bogged down with minor offenses committed by those who pose no threat to public safety, we help focus police and prosecutorial resources on those who commit serious crimes.”
The change will be done “without jeopardizing the public safety,” insisted Bratton.
De Blasio agreed the new policy allows the NYPD to go after “a narrow group of individuals driving violent crime” while preventing “unnecessary jail time for low-level offenses.”
For her part, Mark-Viverito applauded Vance’s move but said a consistent city-wide law is needed to remove potentially hundreds of thousands of low-level , non-violent offenses from the court docket.
“There is more work to be done,” said her spokesman, Eric Koch.
Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson said, “I applaud this effort,” but declined to say whether he would do the same. The Queens and Staten Island DA’s offices declined comment.