Acting District Attorney Eric Gonzalez joined City Comptroller Scott Stringer today in condemning U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recent memo to all federal prosecutors requiring them to seek the highest possible charges in every case, carrying the highest sentences.
Gonzalez and Stringer said the memo takes this country back against the draconian mandatory minimum sentencing policies of the 1980’s when crime skyrocketed and murders peaked to over 2,000 victims yearly in New York City. This approach, which led to record numbers of people imprisoned for non-violent offenses, has been widely discredited as crime has come down both in the city and the nation and runs counter to smart on crime policies that have driven down crime in Brooklyn to the lowest levels in history, Gonzalez and Stringer said.
“Our experience in Brooklyn shows why Attorney General Sessions’ announcement is so misguided,” said Gonzalez. “While keeping the people of Brooklyn safe is my top priority, I also know that we are never going to incarcerate ourselves to safety and we are never going to change our communities by only putting people in prison. Public safety does not require us to adhere to an outdated and ineffective ‘tough on crime’ approach. Instead, we need to be smart on crime, which is what we have done in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office.”
“The very criminal justice policies this administration is now embracing are the same ones that failed a generation of Americans, and the same ones that created an unrelenting cycle of crime and poverty in communities across the United States,” said Stringer. “If we want to lower crime and reduce recidivism, that cycle needs to be broken permanently. What the White House is trying to do is completely backwards — and it’s immoral.”
In 2014, then-Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson made New York history by announcing that the Brooklyn DA’s office would no longer prosecute cases involving the possession of small amounts of marijuana. This policy, which Gonzalez wrote and implemented, was a commonsense step forward for law enforcement in Brooklyn by freeing up police officers and prosecutors to focus on serious threats to public safety.
In Brooklyn, studies showed that black people were nine times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people despite the fact that there is virtually no racial disparity in marijuana use. The human toll of these policies cannot be understated, as a criminal conviction serves as a lifelong impediment when it comes to education, housing and employment, according to the officials.
Gonzalez believes that drug use should be treated primarily as a health issue. Trying to solve the drug problem by imposing ever-harsher penalties in drug cases was a misguided strategy in the 1980’s that, instead of reducing the number of people addicted to harsh drugs, the country saw decades of growing prison populations, rising costs, and high recidivism rates among people who were incarcerated for drug use.
Rather than forcing people into the criminal justice system, Gonzalez offers Brooklynites the option of treatment and rehabilitation.
Gonzalez and Stringer made their statements in Downtown Brooklyn’s Walt Whitman Park as part of Stringer’s endorsement of Gonzalez in the Kings County DA race.
“Eric is someone of not just extraordinary intelligence and incredible competence,” said Stringer. “His character is of the highest caliber. He’s guided by an unflappable sense of right and wrong. I’m proud to endorse him – he will continue to be an outstanding district attorney for Brooklyn for years to come.”
The primary is on Sept. 12.
