More than 100 inmates freed from New York’s Rikers Island prison complex over fears of the Chinese coronavirus spreading have since been rearrested for crimes, new details reveal.
New York City Police Department (NYPD) sources told the New York Post that many inmates freed from Rikers Island following release orders by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) have ended up right back in police custody.
The city’s spike in burglaries, police said, is a direct result of the mass release of nearly 1,700 inmates from prisons and jails, the Post reported:
The roughly 110 inmates have accounted for 190 arrests since the pandemic took hold of the Big Apple, according to police. [Emphasis added]
Of those arrests, 45 — or roughly one-quarter — were for burglaries, helping drive the 43-percent spike in break-ins over the last month, according to NYPD data. [Emphasis added]
Police sources believe the number of recidivists — which accounted for about 7 percent of the 1,500 released in March — doesn’t paint the whole picture, because hundreds more inmates have been released since. [Emphasis added]
One particular case noted by the Post‘s Craig McCarthy is that of Jerard Iamunno who was released on March 25 after pleading guilty to drug crimes and grand larceny.
About a month after his release, Iamunno was arrested for robbing a 59-year-old man in Harlem at knifepoint. In total, Iamunno is a twice-convicted felon and has 11 convictions for misdemeanors.
Another suspect, which the Post reports is responsible for about 18 burglaries in Manhattan South during the city’s coronavirus lockdown, is Terrance Brown. With 20 arrests under his belt, Brown was arrested for the recent break-ins but was immediately released thanks to Cuomo’s bail reform laws.
At the beginning of the year, Cuomo implemented bail reform laws that eliminated bail for suspects accused of second-degree manslaughter, aggravated vehicular assault, third-degree assault, promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child, criminally negligent homicide, aggravated vehicular homicide, and about 100 other crimes.
In March, NYPD officials said that in the first 58 days of the year, close to 500 suspects who would have been kept locked up in jail if not for the new bail reform laws had been rearrested for committing an additional 846 crimes. Nearly 300 of these crimes included murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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