Some dealers of fentanyl are being released back on the street following their arrests, allowing them to sell more of the highly addictive and dangerous drug, thanks to New York’s lax bail law, a top prosecutor grappling with the crisis claims.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney is calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to make more drug offenses eligible for bail as a way to keep dealers of the lethal synthetic opioid behind bars.
Under New York’s 2019 criminal justice reforms, only class A felony drug offenses are eligible for bail.
“In New York, we have loopholes a mile wide and drug dealers are taking advantage,” Tierney told The Post in a recent interview.
“Our criminal justice laws don’t focus enough on crime victims and the safety of the community.”
Tierney is also requesting that Albany pass a “death by dealer” law to put fentanyl peddlers in prison for a longer period of time.
The fentanyl-fueled opioid crisis has been felt acutely in the Big Apple, which sees fatal drug overdoses every three hours, or eight per day, according to the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York City.
More than 2,800 New Yorkers died of a drug overdose in the city — the vast majority involving fentanyl — over a 12-month span ending in July 2022, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
By comparison, there were 433 homicides in the city last year.
Fentanyl—an opioid 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine—was detected in 80% of drug overdose deaths in the city in 2021 and was the most common substance involved in fatal ODs for the fifth year in a row.
Much of it is smuggled into the US from the southern border by Mexican drug cartels, Attorney General Merrick Garland said last week.
Middle-class Staten Island has been particularly ravaged by the fentanyl scourge– and one lawmaker there supported Tierney’s effort to put the accused merchants of death behind bars pending trial.
“Fentanyl is the most lethal drug of our time. I would fully support legislation that would hold drug dealers accountable and keep them in jail,” Assemblyman Sam Pirozzolo, a Republican who represents the mid-island and eastern portions of the borough, said Sunday.
Meanwhile, more than 400 people died from fentanyl-fueled overdoses in Suffolk in 2021.
The Long Island county that year recorded 32 homicides.
Tierney, in a March 3 letter to Hochul, submitted a list of recommended changes to stiffen the bail law, including making class B felony drug crimes — such as selling a narcotic or possession with intent to sell — a “qualifying offense” for a judge to impose bail and detention. His proposed changes would have to be approved by the Democratic-run Assembly and Senate, which have resisted changes to bail reform.
“This would importantly capture the sale of dangerous narcotics such as Heroin and Fentanyl (a synthetic opioid that is 100 times stronger than morphine), collectively responsible for the doubling of overdose deaths in the past 4 years,” he wrote.
Tierney pointed to the case of Vito Frabizio, who sold fentanyl to a recovering addict, Frank Cairo, 51, who died of an overdose in March 2022.
The dealer was arrested in an undercover sting operation for selling up to 1/8 of an ounce of fentanyl and more than 1/8 of an ounce of cocaine.
But because the charges weren’t bail eligible, he was freed on supervised release — only to later get busted peddling fentanyl again in another undercover operation.
Frabizio was ultimately sentenced to 11 years in prison in November after he pleaded guilty to three counts of third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance.
Still, state law allowed him to get released and inflict more damage following his initial arrest, Tierney said.
“We couldn’t ask for pretrial detention in Frabizio’s case,” Tierney told The Post. “He was actually dealing fentanyl for a month or two-month period” while on supervised release.
Frabizio and other dealers of fentanyl or so-called designer drugs are too dangerous to be put back on the streets for months awaiting disposition of their case, the DA said.
“We should have a dangerous standard so we can ask for bail for fentanyl dealers,” Tierney said.
There have been other cases of accused drug merchants getting sprung while waiting because of the soft-on-crime law — or lenient judges.
Manuel Pagan, 49, was arrested last November allegedly with 20,000 “rainbow” fentanyl pills in Manhattan’s hip Chelsea neighborhood.
He was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance in the first degree — a class A-1 felony that is eligible for bail — but Manhattan Judge James Clyne released him anyway.
In July, California men Luis Estrada and Carlos Santos — suspected Mexican drug-cartel smugglers — were busted with a $1.2 million stash of crystal meth.
But the pair were freed under supervised release after being charged with second-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, as opposed to a narcotic, a rap that does not qualify for bail.
“This is a serious problem,” said New York City Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan told The Post at the time. “The failure to include methamphetamine crimes among bail-eligible offenses was probably an oversight.”
A Republican, Tierney did say he backed Democrat Hochul’s proposal to give judges more discretion in setting bail for defendants accused of serious crimes.
But he said more has to be done.
Under Hochul’s proposal, New York would get rid of a 2019 requirement that judges impose the “least restrictive” means of ensuring that defendants return to court when it comes to those accused of serious crimes.
“You have my most ardent support in this initiative,” Tierney told the governor.
A Hochul rep rattled off a list of items the governor put in her budget to address the opioid scourge — but did not specifically address Tierney’s bail request.
“Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget makes transformative investments to make New York more affordable, more livable and safer, and she looks forward to working with the legislature on a final budget that meets the needs of all New Yorkers,” said spokeswoman Hazel Crampton-Hays on Sunday.
Hochul’s office said her budget request added fentanyl to the list of illegal drugs in the controlled substance law, making it easier to prosecute cases.
She also proposes a new crime for selling an imitation controlled substance, including passing off lethal fentanyl as cocaine.
Hochul’s $227 billion budget plan includes funding to combat the flow of fentanyl into New York. In particular, the governor creates a $7 million Anti-Fentanyl Innovation grant available to prosecutors, allowing them to target supply chains and prosecute cases involving overdose deaths.
The budget proposal also includes $18 million for Crime Analysis Centers across the state, including $2 million to curb the flow of fentanyl into communities.
The chairman of the state Assembly and Senate Codes Committee who oversee crime legislation, Bronx Democrats Jeffrey Dinowitz and Jamaal Bailey, had no immediate comment on Tierney’s proposal.
