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Join Telegram ChannelU.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat, blasted New York leaders over the weekend for failed criminal justice reforms that allowed “homicidal carnage” in broad daylight last week, leading to the killing of three innocent people at the hands of a violent and mentally ill man, released prematurely.
“The DOC bureaucrat [Department of Correction] who authorized Ramon's early release should be fired,” Torres wrote in a fiery letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York Mayor Eric Adams, both Democrats. “Those who cannot be trusted with security public should no longer be employed by the people. of New York.”
He added that “layers and layers of government failure” allowed Ramon Rivera, an eight-time felon whose last stint behind bars involved a transfer to Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric ward, where he attacked a correctional officer.
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Ramon Rivera, 51, charged with three stabbing murders, leaves the New York Police Department's 10th Precinct on Monday, November 18, 2024. (Sam Costanza for the New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Last week, police arrested the 51-year-old homeless man for allegedly stabbing three people to death in separate stabbings in Manhattan on November 18.
We live in a city and state where the only people who seem to suffer consequences are crime victims and their loved ones. Enough is enough.
Torres called the city DOC the “worst offender” in Rivera's case after releasing him four months earlier for “good behavior” despite the Bellevue assault, for which he was not even punished, according to Torres.
Congressman Ritchie Torres speaks during a joint press conference with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand outside 333 E. 181 St., Bronx, January 17, 2022. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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Read the letter:
“These tragedies are preventable, but neither the city nor the state appears to possess the political will to prevent them, even though they have the tools to do so,” Torres wrote. “The state refuses to grant the mayor the legal authority he needs to keep dangerous people off the streets. The city refuses to hold the DOC accountable for the early release of a clearly dangerous criminal who went on a stabbing spree The end result is incompetence that is not only destructive but deadly to New Yorkers.”
Governor Kathy Hochul speaks during a briefing September 13, 2023 in New York. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)
Adams also placed some of the blame for the spate of stabbing attacks on Hochul, calling on Albany to give city police more power “to institutionalize people” during a press briefing last week.
Homelessness, mental illness, and violent recidivism continue to plague New York.
Two tourists were stabbed last week in random attacks, one, a 55-year-old Dane, stabbed on the Upper West Side, and the other, a 42-year-old Italian, had his hand slashed. Police arrested a 25-year-old Manhattan man for the first attack after his mother reported him, and they were looking for a woman in connection with the second, according to FOX 5 New York.
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The stabbings come as Daniel Penny, a 26-year-old Marine veteran studying architecture in the city, is on trial for the strangulation death of another homeless man, Jordan Neely, who died after Penny caught during an outburst of death threats shouted at a subway car.
The defense concluded its case Friday by revealing that Neely had a warrant open for his arrest on the day of his death.
Mayor Eric Adams speaks to reporters after a press conference in New York, September 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, file)
Torres has a history of moderate positions and opposes his party's left wing for its support of pro-Hamas protesters, soft-on-crime policies and other “ivory tower nonsense” that he says , cost Democrats on Election Day.
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He called Hochul last week the “new Joe Biden” and urged him to step down if Democrats want to maintain their grip on power in the Empire State.
“She may be in denial about the extent of her vulnerabilities as a Democratic candidate,” he wrote on X. “A Democratic candidate less popular in New York than Donald Trump is in grave danger of losing to a Republican in 2026.”