06/03/2023
Ray Tierney for DA
Share if you agree: Some dealers of fentanyl are being released back on the street following their arrests, allowing them to sell more of the highly addictive and dangerous drug, thanks to New York’s lax bail law, a top prosecutor grappling with the crisis claims.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney is calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to make more drug offenses eligible for bail as a way to keep dealers of the lethal synthetic opioid behind bars.
Under New York’s 2019 criminal justice reforms, only class A felony drug offenses are eligible for bail.
“In New York, we have loopholes a mile wide and drug dealers are taking advantage,” Tierney told The Post in a recent interview.
“Our criminal justice laws don’t focus enough on crime victims and the safety of the community.”
Tierney is also requesting that Albany pass a “death by dealer” law to put fentanyl peddlers in prison for a longer period of time.
Tierney, in a March 3 letter to Hochul, submitted a list of recommended changes to stiffen the bail law. His proposed changes would have to be approved by the Democratic-run Assembly and Senate, which have resisted changes to bail reform.
“This would importantly capture the sale of dangerous narcotics such as He**in and Fentanyl (a synthetic opioid that is 100 times stronger than morphine), collectively responsible for the doubling of overdose deaths in the past 4 years,” he wrote.
