We need a law to make sure laws are enforced

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All prosecutors have what’s known as prosecutorial discretion. This gives them the power to decide whether or not to charge an individual for a crime, and which crime to charge them with.

As any prosecutor would admit, they couldn’t do their job without this. It allows them to offer plea deals with defendants and choose what to charge the defendant with, i.e. murder or manslaughter.

This also allows them to secure the cooperation of witness defendants by allowing them to offer reduced charges in exchange for testimony against another defendant.

The disadvantage is that prosecutorial discretion creates the potential for prosecutorial misconduct.

This is happening across America in big cities with the help of billionaire George Soros. He has given millions to help elect soft-on-crime prosecutors.

The latest example is the new Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. A memo to his staff surfaced where he said he would not prosecute the following crimes; marijuana possession, turnstile jumping, trespassing, resisting arrest, interfering with an arrest and prostitution. 

In essence, Bragg has decided that the offenses he has listed are no longer crimes.

In his defense, Bragg said, “We’ve laid out a path that is going to reduce incarceration, reduce violent crime, get people services, our neighborhoods safer, get New York City back up on his feet. It’s the road forward and the pathway to safety and justice.”

Others, like former assistant district attorney Daniel Bibb call it “the definition of insanity.”

In my opinion, this is the perfect example of prosecutorial misconduct. It is not up to him, or any other prosecutor or district attorney to determine what is criminal, that is decided by each individual state’s legislator.

Of course, he is going to reduce incarceration. If you stop prosecuting individuals, they don’t go to jail. If they don’t go to jail, they are free to commit more crimes.

One of the laws Bragg is supposedly going to ignore is resisting or interfering with an arrest.

In Missouri, chapter 570, section 150 of the statute makes it against the law to resist or interfere with an arrest. According to FindLaw.com an individual breaks this law by fleeing from an officer, using or threatening to use violence or physical force, or interfering with an arrest, stop, or detention.

Resisting or interfering with an arrest is a class D felony for an arrest for a felony or when it creates a substantial risk of severe physical injury or death to any person. Otherwise, resisting or interfering with an arrest is charged as a class A misdemeanor.

This statue was last revised in 2013. 

If a prosecutor refuses to prosecute anyone for resisting arrest, they have essentially repealed the law in their jurisdiction. They repealed a law put into place by duly elected representatives and senators.

I wonder: do rural Missouri Democrats agree with far-left progressive policies like this?

A progressive in St. Louis, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has also gone soft-on-crime. Her department’s refusal to prosecute felony cases as of July 2021 was 34.4 percent. That means only 65.6 percent of those charged with felonies in St. Louis were prosecuted in court. This is more than triple the rate from 2013, when 9.8 percent of cases were dropped.

Progressives make their cities more dangerous by not going after criminals and demanding harsh sentencing.

At least 16 cities in America hit new records for homicides last year after many of them reached new records the previous year.

According to a CNN report from September, 2021 was “on pace to be the worst year for gun violence in decades, surpassing even the high levels last year.”

On Saturday, Bragg admitted that gun crime and domestic violence is on the rise.

In the mid-’90s, then New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani reduced crime by adopting an aggressive enforcement and deterrence strategy involving crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti and turnstile jumping. Because of this, crime went down.

These new soft-on-crime prosecutors have two things in common: they are progressive Democrats that Soros has funded.

We are a nation of laws. It appears that we now need a statute that requires prosecutors to enforce those laws.