Its a Tale of Two Rikers. And this pair of true-life stories should frighten and outrage any law-abiding New York City-dweller.
Last week, 19-year-old El Salvadoran immigrant Estivan Rafael Marques Velasquez, an admitted gangbanger cooling his heels in the United States illegally, was quietly spit out onto the streets of Queens.
Hed served a light stretch in the citys notoriously ultraviolent Rikers Island jail after pleading guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct. His criminal rsum also includes convictions for second-degree reckless endangerment and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Solid guy.
Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit ICE in New York requested they be informed when Velasquez was sprung so they might swoop in and deport the potentially dangerous character. It didnt happen.
Velasquez, instead, was set free, welcomed into the bosom of this city by the suicidal Sanctuary Cities Law signed into effect by Mayor de Blasio in 2014. Id be surprised if milk and cookies werent on his generous menu.
Fortunately, federal authorities quickly picked him up and put him in detention pending his booting from our shores. It was a close call.
Too close, in de Blasios above-the-law New York City.
Now, compare this gentle treatment of a possibly vicious foreigner with the Kafkaesque torture inflicted on an American citizen a young man convicted of no crime.
Kalief Browder was locked up on Rikers in 2010 when he was 16 years old, accused of stealing a backpack. Then the authorities threw away the proverbial key.
With his mother initially unable to come up with $3,000 bail, $900 bond, Browder spent about three years in hell, more than two of them in solitary confinement.
He was captured on video getting beaten by correction officers and fellow inmates. Several times, he attempted to kill himself.
Finally, in 2013, the Bronx District Attorneys Office dropped all charges against him. He was free but despondent, paranoid and suicidal. Then he was dead.
Browder hanged himself by the neck in 2015 with an electrical cord flung from a second-floor window of his Bronx house.
He was 22 years old.
The disparate treatment given one of our own versus a man of a protected class hangs heavily on critics of the criminal-justice system.
The mayor is going out of his way to protect this immigrant. Good for him, Paul Prestia, a lawyer representing the Browder family in a $20 million lawsuit against various city agencies, told me bitterly.
But he did not show the backbone in going after those responsible for the tragedy that was Kalief Browder. Juxtapose the sanctuary law with young men and women in the city. Why wasnt more done to protect them?
For a time, it seemed as if anyone with a microphone wanted a piece of Browder. On The View, Rosie ODonnell gushed to him, You really are a hero. Ex-Republican presidential contender Rand Paul evoked his name on the campaign trail. Former President Barack Obama mentioned him while enacting a ban on solitary confinement for youths and low-level offenders in federal prison. Mayor de Blasio even hailed him while instituting jail reforms, including ending solitary for juveniles.
Rap mogul Jay Z elevated Browder to the status of the holy in TIME: The Kalief Browder Story, a six-part documentary series on which he served as an executive producer. It debuts Wednesday on Spike TV.
Sometimes our prophets come in the form of young, undeveloped energy that will teach us grown-ups how to live better and have more compassion, and Kalief Browder was the prophet, he says on the show.
It wasnt enough.
Aggravatingly, city officials continue to defend their kid-glove treatment of an admitted member of the bloodthirsty M-13 gang, while all but ignoring the Kalief Browders of this city.
Velasquez was freed after serving time for an offense that does not qualify as a violent or serious felony under the citys local laws, and his gang affiliation was not supported by evidence that meets even minimal constitutional standards, a City Hall spokeswoman told The Post.
He posed a danger to the public and law-enforcement officers.
Kalief Browder threatened no one.
As long as officials get to choose whom to treasure at the expense of everyone else, were in for grief.
Eyes in New Jersey and beyond should fall on seventh-grader Sydney Phillips this weekend as the 13-year-old competes in a basketball playoff game with her Garden State Catholic school on the boys team. Her father sued St. Theresa School and the Archdiocese of Newark for her right to play, after the girls team was axed.
Instead, Sydney and her younger sister were expelled for two days, before an appeals court ordered them back to class.
On her return, she told me, a bunch of boys tried to block her from entering the school gym, and some parents bullied her online. But last week, a judge ruled that she can play. As she downed two baskets in her teams losing effort Sunday, spectators cheered wildly for her. Whatever happens next, Lady Courage is a winner.
Whod have thought The New York Times would publish a piece headlined Are Liberals Helping Trump?
But there it was Sunday, authored by Sabrina Tavernise, who interviewed moderate conservatives (we exist).
They felt pushed into President Trumps corner in the face of rampant liberal shaming of anyone even remotely to the right of center.
In the interest of diversity of opinion, Ill take whatever crumbs the Newspaper of Record dishes out.
How many more children must die or be permanently maimed? A pit bull being watched by a Brooklyn man mauled his 5-year-old son last weekend to the point where he needed 2,000 stitches. Depressingly, some people in New York City continue to champion this dangerous dog breed.
Too many pits are not safe around humans. Ban them!
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Illegal immigrant gangbanger gets better deal than innocent American - New York Post