DA Bragg underplayed shoplifting arrest, NYPD sergeants’ union alleges
The soft-on-crime Manhattan District Attorney’s office “intentionally omitted all facts” about a violent theft in a Chelsea store — including key information about an alleged weapon used during the crime — leading to a mere shoplifting charge and the release of an “assault and robbery recidivist,” according to an NYPD union, sources, and court documents.
Newly-elected DA Alvin Bragg has already been under fire for his left wing ideology, which has even had the NYPD’s top cop worried for the safety of her officers.
On Friday night, the NYPD’s Sergeant Benevolent Association added fuel to a growing inferno, claiming in a beware-of-Bragg message to members that an assistant district attorney in Manhattan was caught apparently trying to white-wash court documents in a shoplifting case at a TJ Maxx store on 6th Ave and West 18th Street.
The firestorm came as:
- Police busted Cristian Hall, 30 — who’s been arrested 21 times with nine cases still open including robbery with a deadly weapon and assault — for trying to rip off the store.
- An assistant district attorney’s affidavit including no mention of the alleged weapon or threats in Hall’s latest arrest.
- The arresting officer refusing to sign off on it until supervisors intervene and the record was corrected.
- Hall was released without bail after his arrest* NYPD officials scrambled to try to address future conflicts.
- Bragg claimed surprise about the SBA backlash.
“It has come to our attention that during the processing of a Manhattan shoplifting arrest where the suspect threatened employees with a pair of cutting-shears, the ADA preparing the accusatory instrument intentionally omitted all facts related to the perp threatening the employees with a weapon,” SBA President Vincent Vallelong wrote in the email obtained by The Post. “Fortunately, the arresting officer had the sense to refuse to sign.”
Hall, 30, was nabbed at the TJ Maxx store at about 1:30 p.m Thursday, according to a criminal complaint.
A store security guard reported seeing Hall “remove several items, including bedding, women’s shoes, and bath supply items from the shelves and bypass the store cash registers without paying for the items,” the arresting officer wrote in the complaint.
The guard said when he approached Hall “the defendant displayed a pair of shears.”He then pointed them toward the guard and said “Don’t f—ing touch me” before leaving the store, according to the complaint.
Yet the Assistant District Attorney’s petit larceny affidavit ���only stated ‘defendant stole and possessed stolen property’ and not that he displayed cutting shears and stated ‘Don’t f—ing touch me,'”– which the officer refused to sign, according to an internal NYPD memo seen by The Post.
Leaving out the details of a suspect threatening store employees with cutting-shears is the difference between being charged with second-degree robbery, a felony and possible jail time, and petit larceny, a misdemeanor, said former NYC prosecutor Eric Nelson.
“It’s a big difference. Huge. Especially if he [the suspect] has prior convictions,” Nelson said.
The stunned cop told the ADA that the affidavit “did not accurately reflect elements of the crime where the property was forcibly removed with the threat of physical injury by displaying the cutting shears and therefore she would not (sign) and attest to its accuracy and truthfulness,” the memo says.
An NYPD deputy inspector then called the ADA and had the affidavit amended “to include the shears and threatening statement,” but the charges based on Bragg’s policy remained petit larceny, according to the memo.
Bragg told staff this week that suspects initially charged with armed robbery of a store would only get hit with petit larceny if no one was seriously hurt and there was no “genuine risk” of harm.
The officer then signed the amended affidavit for Hall, who was also charged with criminal possession of stolen property.
As for the suspect, the memo noted that on Tuesday he “did the same thing at the Fairway Market” a few blocks north. In that incident, Hall allegedly tried to steal items and when confronted by a security guard, shears fell out of his coat, according to a source.
Police sources described Hall as a “felony assault recidivist, robbery recidivist and transit offender.”
His still open criminal cases number six in Manhattan; two in Queens; and one in Brooklyn. They include a Dec. 12 arrest for robbery and forcible theft with a deadly weapon in Sunset Park and a Dec. 28 charge of first-degree robbery for forcible theft with a deadly weapon in Gramercy Park, according to law enforcement sources.
He was released without bail after the TJ Maxx arrest.
A petit larceny charge “would get a desk appearance ticket and fall under Bragg’s ‘no prosecution memo,’” said Joseph Giacalone, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor and ex-NYPD sergeant, adding that a second-degree robbery conviction could land a suspect behind bars “for up to 10 years.”
The NYPD memo noted that members of the department’s legal team were “working with the Police Commissioner to develop a response to the issues presented by the new DA not to prosecute certain crimes in Manhattan (and) what will be the Department response if Police Officers/Detectives refuse to sign Affidavits they feel are not accurate or truthful.”
“We remind you to be hyper-vigilant when reviewing any accusatory instrument prepared by the Manhattan DA’s office. Make sure that what you sign is exactly what happened. I don’t think we have to tell you that if you sign something prepared by a Manhattan District Attorney that is inaccurate, they will blame you and prosecute you,” the SBA wrote in its memo.
Vallelong said if Bragg “wants to re-write the penal law, make him own it.”
Bragg refused to address the SBA’s memo Saturday after he spoke at the National Action Network in Harlem. “I haven’t seen the SBA memo so I can’t comment on that,” he said.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said Friday she wanted to talk to Bragg about his policies saying in an email to officers she was “very concerned about the implications to your safety as police officers, the safety of the public and justice for the victims.”
Sewell made an unannounced visit Friday to the 13th Precinct, where the officer in the affidavit standoff worked, sources said. Attention was called, then Sewell spoke briefly to the desk sergeant, telling officers to “stay safe,” sources said.
The defensive DA said at NAN he and Sewell will be having “discussions and collaboration.”
Additional reporting by Joe Marino, Georgett Roberts and Dean Balsamini
