{"id":278713,"date":"2025-11-08T05:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T05:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/278713\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T05:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T05:53:09","slug":"after-winning-a-second-term-manhattan-da-alvin-bragg-to-focus-on-mental-illness-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/278713\/","title":{"rendered":"After winning a second term, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg to focus on mental illness crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg\u2019s reelection this week followed a first term that rarely saw him step out of the national spotlight, securing Donald Trump\u2019s hush money conviction on 34 felonies<\/a> and those of the president\u2019s namesake real estate company and its top finance executive, indicting Mayor Adams\u2019 right-hand Ingrid Lewis Martin, and trying a host of other high-profile cases.<\/p>\n

But the DA told the Daily News he believes voters primarily credited him for the decrease in shootings and homicides since he took the helm at the 100 Centre St. prosecutor\u2019s office. Bragg cruised to reelection Tuesday night, <\/a>winning 74% of the vote, easily defeating his Republican contender, Maud Maron, and independent candidate Diana Florence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn certain parts of the island where shootings have historically been high, I get a lot of feedback about the work we\u2019ve done,\u201d the DA said. \u201cThe breadth of the office\u2019s work mirrors the breadth of the vibrancy of Manhattan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ManhattanManhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference related the indictment of Tabitha Bundrick for 36, for allegedly using fentanyl-laced drugs to rob four men, killing three of them Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025 in Manhattan, New York, New York. (Barry Williams \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

Raised in Harlem, Bragg, 52, became Manhattan\u2019s first Black DA in 2022 after serving as the state\u2019s chief deputy attorney general and a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York.<\/p>\n

His stormy first year<\/a> saw the city\u2019s cop unions label him as \u201csoft on crime\u201d and wage war on some of the more lenient prosecutorial policies he outlined in his infamous \u201cday one memo\u201d to staff, including downgrading felonies to misdemeanors for offenses like wielding a toy gun during a robbery. The DA quickly walked some of them back.<\/p>\n

In their unsuccessful bids against Bragg, hardline candidates Maron and Florence pointed to a decline in conviction rates as evidence that the DA was being overly lenient with the accused.<\/p>\n

The DA said his body of work doesn\u2019t bear out fears that he would let petty crime go unpunished; he\u2019s blamed discovery reforms he advocated to roll back for a large number of case dismissals citywide.<\/p>\n

Bragg also rejected the notion that he\u2019d been shy to implement some of his progressive policy ideas, like seeking alternatives to jail wherever possible and never pursuing sentences of life without parole<\/a>, when asked whether he\u2019d reintroduce them after winning reelection.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe north star is public safety \u2014 and I\u2019ve been clear about this throughout \u2014 that starts with prosecutions,\u201d Bragg said. \u201cIt also includes the things that [the Daily News has] covered, whether it\u2019s our navigators and mental health interventions, it all advances public safety, reduces recidivism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bragg\u2019s office has invested millions of dollars seized from banks in a set of outreach programs<\/a> still in their early stages, with the money aiming to connect resources to people who are homeless and people facing low-level charges for crimes of poverty. His Pathways division has assigned prosecutors to each of the office\u2019s Trial bureaus to proactively identify people who would benefit from alternatives to jail or prison.<\/p>\n

The DA doesn\u2019t believe his initiatives have solved the crises of homelessness and mental illness and how the justice system responds to them. He pointed to a bill he\u2019s co-sponsored with state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal<\/a> that would connect people charged with low-level offenses whose cases are dismissed with psychiatric treatment and temporary and long-term housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that has been and will continue to be a significant priority, and I would think about it on a continuum,\u201d Bragg said.<\/p>\n

\"ManhattanManhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg addresses the Media) Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is pictured in Manhattan on Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did 6,400 shoplifting prosecutions last year, so we will continue to bring those cases, but also bring to bear the mental health interventions for those kinds of cases in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bragg said he considers another of his biggest challenges to be ensuring justice for the city\u2019s renters and workers, issues Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani made central to his historically successful campaign for City Hall. The DA pointed to the office\u2019s boost in prosecutions against bad landlords, corrupt developers, and wage-stealing managers following the launch of its housing and worker protection<\/a> units.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest challenge is focusing on the disorder that we see,\u201d the DA said. \u201cIf you\u2019ll allow me to have a compound answer, I also do think our kind of, you might call it an \u2018economic justice practice area\u2019 \u2026 Obviously, there\u2019s been a lot of discussion about affordability and costs, and I think on our docket, we see it manifesting in a number of ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bragg said he wasn\u2019t concerned about his standing with the commander-in-chief, whose conviction he secured for the Stormy Daniels hush money scheme less than two weeks before Trump\u2019s return to power. Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the DA for positioning him as the only president to be convicted of a crime or to use the federal government\u2019s enforcement powers against his perceived political enemies, like the recently indicted state AG Tish James.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just got the privilege of another four years,\u201d the DA said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeventy-four percent of the voters in Manhattan, and they elected me to focus on continuing to drive shootings down from 66% and homicides from 48%. That\u2019s what I\u2019ve been focused on for four years, the work is what I\u2019ve been focused on for a quarter century now, and that\u2019s where I\u2019m gonna continue to focus.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg\u2019s reelection this week followed a first term that rarely saw him step out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,2558,259,260,147713,3,111],"class_list":{"0":"post-278713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-mentalhealth","12":"tag-new-york-politics","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}