According to a new report, New York City business owners, who’s shops were pillaged and looted by rioting Antifa® brand Black Lives Matter™ terrorists, were totally screwed by left-leaning district attorneys, more interested in getting a look at Donald Trump’s taxes than enforcing laws. Property laws are simply an illusion of White privilege, they insist.
Business owners furious
Business owners like Jessica Betancourt are furious about the numbers coming out of a new report. They show that nearly all the looters police managed to catch have been released back into the wild with barely a slap on the wrist, encouraged to do it again. Not only does she own an eyeglass shop which got pillaged and plundered, she’s vice president of a local merchants association.
The whole group is upset and seem to be on the verge of going vigilante, since the police aren’t allowed to do anything. When they do manage to catch a criminal, the prosecutors can’t be bothered to prosecute. What’s worse, the liberal lawyers agree with the looters and feel they have every right to snatch and grab what they please, all in the interest of social justice.
Local news station WNBC-TV got their hands on some NYPD data that reveal shocking numbers. District attorneys for NYC dropped literally hundreds of business looting cases, letting the vast majority off “scot-free.” Out of 118 arrests in the Bronx, for instance, District Attorney Darcel D. Clark dismissed 73 out of hand. That’s 60% at one whack with no penalty at all.
Only 19 people were convicted of anything and those charges were reduced to misdemeanors like trespassing with no real penalty. Betancourt’s shop was one that was plundered. “Those numbers, to be honest with you, are disgusting. I was in total shock that everything is being brushed off to the side. They could do it again because they know they won’t get the right punishment.” They won’t get any punishment, just the rewards of what they grab.
Over at the merchants association, her friends are just as upset. The way business owners see the situation, criminals are “getting away with” ransacking their stores at will. In the borough of Manhattan, where the riots happened nightly for over a year, “there were reportedly 485 arrests for looting and burglary.”
So far, “222 cases have been dropped, 73 had the charges reduced significantly, and 128 cases remain open.” All those Antifa® inspired youngsters getting their education on the streets “were sent to family court.” The police are hopping mad too. Why bother catching these criminals and rounding up all the evidence when it only gets tossed in the toilet?
Police angry too
Before the prosecutors in the DA’s office ever see a file, the police do phenomenal amounts of work to build the case. First, they had to pour though hours and hours of surveillance footage sent over by the business owners, then troll endlessly through social media accounts for criminals “bragging about committing crimes.”
As described by NYPD Deputy Inspector Andrew Arias, they “had to analyze each case individually and see if, in fact, we could prove the right person had committed the crime.” The follow-up investigations into the looting reports, he noted, “were tedious.”
When NYPD Chief of Patrol Wilbur Chapman got wind of an internal memo written by Manhattan DA Cy Vance, he came unglued. “If they are so overworked that they can’t handle the mission that they’re hired for, then maybe they should find another line of work.” He’s exasperated that the DA “allowed people who committed crimes to go scot-free.”
Vance shafted the business owners by dropping the cases, reportedly instructing “his prosecutors to review the criminal histories of the defendants, whether police could really place the suspects at the scenes, and if the suspects caused “any damage to the store.”
He spelled it out for those who still felt sympathy for business owners. “”For many of these commercial burglaries, you will be asked to reduce the initial felony charge to a misdemeanor and to dispose of the case with an eye towards rehabilitation.” Rehabilitation meaning “reloading” of the improvised weapons.
As The Blaze notes, “Bronx DA Darcell Clark declined repeated requests for an interview, as did Manhattan DA Cy Vance, whose office has been busy with a team of prosecutors investigating separate allegations of tax fraud surrounding President Trump’s businesses.”