In a recent public appeal, New York City Mayor Eric Adams urged Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to continue prosecutions against students who were apprehended after invading Columbia University's Butler Library earlier this month.
The incident, which saw two security guards injured, involved student activists supporting Hamas distributing literature to their peers who were attempting to study for their final exams.
Mayor Adams, in a phone interview with The Washington Free Beacon following a cryptocurrency conference in Las Vegas, expressed his strong belief in the necessity of these charges.
"I think the DA going forward with these charges is very important to discourage people from carrying out these actions, when you break into a dorm building, when you destroy property, when you harass students and menace them, we need to move forward in a very aggressive fashion to send a strong, loud message that this is not going to be tolerable," he stated.
Bragg, a far-left progressive with substantial financial support from George Soros's political network, is among a group of big-city prosecutors who predominantly opt not to prosecute except for the most severe crimes, favoring "restorative justice" approaches instead. According to The Washington Free Beacon, Bragg's office in 2024 dismissed numerous cases related to a similar violent takeover of Columbia's Hamilton Hall.
Bragg has openly advocated for limiting the prosecution of youth in adult court. He argued in a 2022 memo that due to ongoing brain development into a person's mid-20s, "prosecuting youth in our adult criminal court system can lead to recidivism."
Mayor Adams, however, has voiced his disagreement with Bragg's approach to crime, expressing his desire to avoid a recurrence of the 2024 Hamilton Hall incident. "I think that with some of the protests here in this city and with some of the repeat offenders, the penalty is not matching the actions," he said. "I want these cases to move forward as they are."
While a lawyer representing the students has asked for the cases to be dismissed, indications from Bragg's office suggest they intend to proceed with the cases, at least for the time being.
Mayor Adams, who has had a close working relationship with President Donald Trump and his team since the Department of Justice dismissed his case, is facing a challenging reelection campaign this year. This comes even after the Trump administration directed prosecutors to drop federal charges of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations, notably in the form of alleged Turkish Airlines upgrades.
In a recent meeting with DOJ civil rights official Leo Terrell, Adams discussed potential areas of cooperation between the municipal and federal governments. The New York City Police Department, according to Adams, is now "cooperating 100 percent" with the DOJ on the issue of anti-Semitism.
"One of the things that's very important is utilizing the power of the federal government and [Terrell's] office to go after those who are committing these levels of anti-Semitism," Adams said. "To look at what cases the federal government can pick up to deal with civil rights violations, and see how do we increase the penalty of such."
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