Seth Barron: Farce Of Daniel Penny Trial Shows Again That DA Alvin Bragg Needs To Go — Now!

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The top manslaughter charge against Daniel Penny was thrown out Friday, with the jury to return next week to debate a lesser alternative, negligent homicide.

It’s an embarrassing defeat for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who never should have brought charges against former Marine Daniel Perry in the first place.

But it’s not the first time Bragg has failed his office. Indeed, since Day 1, the district attorney has been a walking disaster for the city.

He needs to go.

Consider: Violent crime is up and continues to rise, and his “Day 1” promises to “make us safer” by reducing enforcement and punishment have backfired spectacularly.

Look at the subways if you want an obvious cause-and-effect demonstration of the failure of Bragg’s policies.

He vowed to stop prosecuting fare beaters, essentially telling the cops to stop arresting them.

Since he took office, there have been 25 murders in the subways, following decades when the average was one or two a year.

Not everyone who jumps the turnstile is a serious criminal.

But you can bet that everyone who commits a serious crime in the subway beat the fare.

That’s why arresting fare beaters was such a successful strategy during the Broken Windows era of policing.

Criminals may be amoral but they aren’t stupid.

They have animal instincts for finding prey and know exactly what they can and can’t get away with.

Bragg swore to dig into the “root causes” plaguing mentally ill criminals and “not send them to jail.”

We saw how well that worked just a few weeks ago, when Ramon Rivera, a schizophrenic with a lengthy criminal record who was under “supervised release” went on a mid-morning Manhattan rampage, murdering three innocents.

The Manhattan DA also promised to keep “youth” out of adult court.

“Research tells us that prosecuting children in adult court can lead to recidivism, making us less safe,” Bragg explained.

Meanwhile, juvenile crime has exploded citywide, with a 42% annual jump in arrests for major “index crimes” in 2023. Arrests for rape by youths have almost doubled since 2020.

Alvin Bragg isn’t solely responsible for the surge in juvenile crime, which has been driven by statewide “Raise the Age” legislation that diverts 16- and 17-year-old offenders into family court, where they receive slap-on-the-wrist treatment.

But Bragg fully supports this kiddy-coddling, which is why visitors to Central Park and Times Square now face “wolfpacks” of knife-wielding preteens associated with Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Bragg loves to puff himself up by throwing the book at such dangerous criminals as a pair of New Yorkers who allegedly bought fake vaccine cards.

But then he turns around and releases thugs caught on film stomping cops in Times Square.

While Bragg routinely downgrades felony charges to misdemeanors, we see him go after such unlikely suspects as Jose Alba, the elderly bodega clerk who was brutally attacked by the boyfriend of an aggrieved customer.

Austin Simon went behind the register to beat up Alba, but he was stabbed by the brave counterman in an obvious case of self-defense.

Bragg eventually dropped the charges, but only after the public and Mayor Adams expressed outrage at the prospect of Alba’s prosecution.

Bragg wasted public resources in pursuing absurd criminal charges against Donald Trump, calling a minor notation in non-public files a falsification of business records.

There’s a solid case to be made that Bragg violated Trump’s rights “under color of law,” which is a federal crime.

Alvin Bragg is an ideologue who thinks that public safety equals injustice, and that his job is to promote “equity.”

Manhattan deserves a chief prosecutor who prioritizes safe streets and subways, and who doesn’t waste the people’s time going after politically convenient enemies.

The unfair prosecution of Daniel Penny is the last straw.

Gov. Hochul should exercise the power she has to remove Bragg from office.

If she doesn’t, then voters should remove him when he comes up for re-election next year.

It’s time to return “justice” to New York’s criminal-justice system.

Seth Barron’s next book, “Weaponized,” will come out in 2025.