Latest news with #RaisetheAgelaw
New York Post
09-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Albany mayor and progressives owe ex-DA Soares an apology
After yet another epic weekend of teen gun crime in Albany, local Democrats are implicitly admitting that longtime District Attorney David Soares was right after all — a year after the party machine ousted him for refusing to shut up about how state 'reforms' fuel the violence. Amid generally slamming overbroad criminal-justice changes for New York's rising crime, Soares relentlessly fingered the Raise the Age law for teaching teens all the wrong lessons — angering the Legislature's leaders enough that they got the Albany party to deny him the party line in last year's election. The 2017 Raise the Age law upped the age of criminal responsibility to 18 — mandating that nearly all 16- and 17-year-olds, even those charged with violent offenses or caught with loaded guns, go to Family Court and so walk right out with barely a slap on the wrist. Now, after teen shootings left 10 wounded and (thanks to a flare gun) set a house ablaze, Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan is echoing Soares: 'This is not about needing more youth basketball,' she fumed. 'These are some of the hardest kids to reach.' Albany is 'flooded with guns,' she declared last month after two teens were shot near the Governor's Mansion. 'At what number will the body count be enough to prompt action?' Soares asked after two fatal shootings in 2023. Two years later, the body count continues to rise. And the carnage will continue unless and until Democrats representing communities plagued by youth gun crimes demand an end to the Legislature's failed criminal-justice experiments.
New York Post
06-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Migrant gangs are taking advantage of New York's weak juvenile-justice laws
The pint-sized Diablos of 42nd Street — Tren de Aragua's JV squad — are Exhibit A in the case against progressive state and city policies that empower juvenile street gangs, and indeed encourage older gangbangers to recruit the kids. Yes, Biden-era open-borders policies let TdA set up shop here, but New York's own policies gave us the Dickensian 'little devils.' Migrant thugs aged 12 to 17 brutally attacked two NYPD cops who tried to stop a 'wolf-pack-style' mugging in Times Square over the weekend; police have arrested five suspects so far, thanks significantly to the gang database that progressives want to eliminate. Allegedly led by a 12-year-old mastermind, the Little Devils robbery crew has more than 34 known members with over 240 arrests among them, per police. By law, these tween and teen terrors must have their crimes adjudicated in Family Court, where judges are reluctant to remand even the worst offenders to juvenile detention. That near-immunity encourages adult gangbangers to do heavy underage recruiting, yet another perverse result of 'reforms' like the Raise the Age law. But the powers that be don't want to hear it: Last year, Democrats ousted 'progressive' Albany DA David Soares for blaming soaring youth gun violence on the state's bungled criminal-justice reforms. New Yorkers can at least hope to see career-criminal Tren gang-groomers deported, but 'asylum seekers' are only part of the problem. Teens and even tweens caught with loaded weapons, in violent attacks or in repeated crimes shouldn't go to Family Court for little more than lectures; police and prosecutors must be able to treat them as the menaces they've become. In a press conference Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams pointedly asked city and state lawmakers, 'Whose side are you on?' Good question. But will any of the candidates in the city's Democratic mayoral primary stand with the mayor in demanding the Legislature stop siding with the criminal class?
