Innocent New Yorkers pay the price for state’s shoddy bail ‘reforms’
Darrell Johnson had been freed without bail on an earlier assault caseFor years now, the Legislature’s turned a deaf ear to our calls for effective reform of the disastrous no-bail law — meaning, giving judges the power to order remand of perps who pose a clear threat to public safety. Maybe the lawmakers will listen to the husband of one of their victims.
The accused in this case is vagrant Darrell Johnson, 23, who spent Dec. 2 wandering about the city slugging women in the face randomly. He’d already been freed without bail on an earlier assault case, on top of a dozen-plus prior busts dating back to 2014.
The husband of one victim, a 50-year-old woman who got sucker-punched while walking her dog on the Upper West Side, explains it all quite well: “When does it stop? You keep giving him more tries so that he finally kills someone, and then you lock him behind bars?” he told The Post.
“It’s stupid. It’s broad daylight, 9:20 in the morning, and for someone to just come and punch you, it’s insane. It’s absolutely not acceptable. She was just minding her own business. She wasn’t engaging anybody. It was just crazy.”
He says his wife was knocked unconscious for “three to four minutes”; she also suffered a fractured molar, a chipped tooth and several front teeth pushed in.
“She needed stitches on her lips and cheek,” he told The Post. “Her face is swollen and eyes are partially shut. It’s going to be a while before she recovers, but she’s a trouper,” he said. “She’s staying positive. I’m pretty angry that a guy like this was out on the loose.”
The perp is free again with no bail and will soon “do this to somebody else,” the husband fumed. “People can hide under the technicalities of ‘what is the severity of the offense?’ But it’s crazy that you can link all these incidents to one person and say, ‘Hey, this is a seriously disturbed human being who is causing all this harm.’ ”
How about it, Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins? When will you finally fix the law to start protecting New York’s innocents and stop protecting clear menaces to society?
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