Quick release of suspects raises bail questions

In the past two weeks in New York City, two men were arrested after making anti-Asian threats and comments to Asian American police officers working undercover.

One man was charged Saturday with trying to shove the NYPD officer onto subway tracks in Queens, according to police.

On April 9, another suspect told an officer to "go back to China".

Both men were set free within 24 hours, the New York Post reported.

Because of bail reform measures that went into effect last year, incidents in which there is not bodily harm are exempt from cash bail in New York.

Ricardo Hernandez, 32, faces three hate-crime charges in an attack on an officer on a Long Island City train platform around 5:30 pm Saturday. He has had at least 12 prior arrests.

At Hernandez's arraignment, Queens Supreme Court Justice Louis Nock said the bail guidelines passed by the state Legislature in Albany prevented him from holding the suspect in jail.

"My hands are tied because under the new bail rules, I have absolutely no authority or power to set bail on this defendant for this alleged offense," the judge said.

Hernandez, who lives near the subway station where the latest shoving attempt took place, told the Post after he left court, "I don't want to talk about this."

The suspect allegedly approached the undercover cop on the N train platform at 31st Street and 39th Avenue in Dutch Kills and tried to push him onto the tracks, police said.

"That's why you people are getting beat up," Hernandez allegedly said. "I got nothing to lose. I will f–k you up! This is my house."

He was arrested on the platform and charged with harassment, aggravated harassment and menacing, all as hate crimes.

On April 9, police said Juvian Rodriguez, 35, was arrested outside Madison Square Garden near Penn Station after he told another Asian officer, "Go back to China before you end up in a graveyard. I'm gonna slap the holy p--- out of you and stab you in the face."

Rodriguez was released less than 12 hours later.

"While New Jersey, California, Illinois and other states have limited the use of bail, New York is one of the few states to abolish bail for many crimes without also giving state judges the discretion to consider whether a person poses a threat to public safety in deciding whether to hold them," The New York Times reported in December 2019.

The original drive behind bail reform in New York was to reduce the number of people in holding cells waiting for trial because they couldn't pay their bail, which reform advocates saw as economic discrimination. A couple of high-profile cases in which defendants were injured while at the city's Rikers Island jail for minor offenses when they couldn't post bail also were reform drivers.

In 2010, Kalief Browder, 16, was arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack. He maintained his innocence but could not meet the $3,000 bail, so he ended up at Rikers for three years. He told The New Yorker in an October 2014 interview that he was beaten by officers and inmates and spent hundreds of days in solitary confinement.

Browder was released from Rikers in 2013, but the trauma of the experience was believed to have led to his suicide at age 22 in 2015.

The bail reforms were passed in Albany in April 2019 and went into effect on Jan 1, 2020. After public opposition, they were amended in April 2020 to make offenses such as second-degree burglary and "harm to an identifiable person or property" as ineligible for no-cash bail.

A May 2020 analysis by the Center for Court Innovation in New York concluded that "when compared to the original reforms passed in 2019, the amendments will produce a 16 percent relative increase in the use of money bail and pretrial detention among New York City criminal cases and a 16 percent increase in the pretrial jail population. Similar effects are likely across the rest of the state.

"That said, even amended, the bail law will continue to sharply reduce pretrial detention when compared to the pre-reform era. Approximately 84 percent of New York City criminal cases arraigned in 2019 would have been ineligible for bail under the amended statute; and the amendments still allow for an estimated 30 percent reduction in the city's jail population when compared to the absence of any reform," wrote study authors Michael Rempel and Krystal Rodriguez.

In addition to bail reform, there also is the issue of when hate crime charges are filed.

On Monday, the NYPD introduced the five members of a new Hate Crime Review Panel at One Police Plaza.

"Today we are facing nearly daily reports of hate crimes. We need to help stop this," said Devorah Halberstam, a panel member.

In attacks where the suspect's motivation is unclear, the panelists will review the circumstances and send recommendations to the police and district attorney, CBS New York reported.

The panel represents New York City's black, Asian, Jewish, LGBTQ and Muslim communities and will help police determine which cases should be investigated as hate crimes.

"We hope, as a review process, we can throw nuances in terms of looking at language, cultures and other aspects," said Fred Teng, a panel member.

So far this year in New York City, there have been 66 suspected anti-Asian bias crimes, compared with 12 during the same time in 2020.

The NYPD deployed several undercover Asian officers starting last month to deter attacks against Asians.

The Asian American community also has expressed outrage when charges are not filed in certain cases.

In March, protesters rallied when a man was not charged with a hate crime after he allegedly stabbed an Asian man in Chinatown because, "he didn't like the way the victim looked at him".

"There's a gap because some people are left wondering, 'Was that the right thing?'… This is an opportunity to have an independent, outside panel," New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Monday.