Mayor Eric Adams said he was “outraged” that a teenager accused in the shooting of a police officer in the Bronx had been freed on bond.
Mayor Eric Adams escalated his battle against New York’s bail law on Friday, blaming it for the release from custody of a teenager accused in the shooting of a police officer in the Bronx this month.
Shortly after speaking at the funeral of a slain police officer, Mr. Adams, a former police captain, released a statement saying he was “outraged” that the teenager, Camrin Williams, had been released on bond — his most forceful comments yet calling for changes to the law.
“Today of all days, with the city in mourning over the deaths of Detective First-Grade Jason Rivera and Police Officer Wilbert Mora, we all must come together and agree that changes are needed,” Mr. Adams said in the statement. The officers were fatally shot a week earlier.
The bail law, which was passed in 2019, has been the subject of heated dispute since it took effect the following year. Mr. Adams has called for changes that would allow judges, when making decisions on bail, to consider the danger a defendant poses to the community, something state law has barred for decades.
Mr. Adams argued in his statement that Mr. Williams, 16, had gone free “because judges are precluded from even considering danger to the community.” Other elected officials and Mr. Williams’s lawyer said the situation was more nuanced than the mayor was suggesting.
Bronx prosecutors charged Mr. Williams on Jan. 19 with assaulting a police officer and possession of a loaded firearm, after a bullet from a gun he was carrying hit Officer Kaseem Pennant in the leg during a confrontation the previous day, according to court documents.
Mr. Williams’s lawyer, Dawn Florio, said her client had shot himself in the groin as the officer tackled him, and that the bullet passed through his thigh and grazed the officer’s leg. Her description matched one offered the night of the incident by police officials, who said Mr. Williams had refused to take his hands out of his pockets as officers questioned him.
The specific charges against Mr. Williams were not affected by the revision to the bail law that took effect in 2020. Prosecutors were free to ask that Mr. Williams be detained, and the judge hearing the case, Denis Boyle, could have agreed.
But the bail law compels judges to use only the least restrictive means necessary to ensure that a defendant returns to court. A spokesman for the court system, Lucian Chalfen, cited that portion of the statute when asked about Mr. Adams’s comments.
Judge Boyle set bail at $200,000 cash, a $250,000 insurance bond or a $250,000 partially secured bond. Mr. Williams was released on Thursday after a cousin paid $17,500 to secure the bond, according to Ms. Florio. The Bronx district attorney’s office confirmed the amount.
Such arrangements are standard in criminal court, and a hearing was held to ensure that the money was from a legitimate source.
Mr. Adams, who ran on a campaign to improve public safety, is under growing pressure to address violent crime. He released an ambitious public safety plan on Monday that relies on reviving a disbanded anti-crime police unit and also includes several requests of state lawmakers, including the adoption of a dangerousness standard in setting bail — something he has noted exists in every state but New York.
Many left-leaning Democrats and civil rights lawyers have criticized Mr. Adams’s push to amend the bail law, and leaders in Albany have not immediately embraced the idea. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has a good relationship with Mr. Adams, defended the bail law this week and she said that the changes made to it several years ago were needed. She added that she was willing to consider further changes based on data.
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Shontell Smith, the chief of staff to the State Senate’s Democratic majority leader, responded to Mr. Adams’s comments with a message on Twitter, saying the bail law had “NOTHING to do with the suspect being released.”
“The JUDGE set the bail amount,” she wrote, adding, “I support and respect the cops who risk their lives everyday, but bail was applied.”
In response, a spokesman for Mr. Adams, Maxwell Young, said the mayor was referring to Judge Boyle’s having been barred from considering, in determining whether to hold Mr. Williams without bail, whether he was a danger to the community.
Court documents say Mr. Williams was running from the police late on Jan. 18 while carrying a loaded 9-millimeter pistol in the waistband of his pants. As he fled, the gun went off, hitting the Officer Pennant, who was treated at a hospital.
Ms. Florio, Mr. Williams’s lawyer, said her client had been standing in front of a car on the sidewalk with a group of friends when the police approached him. As he began to film the interaction, she said, the officers became aggravated and began to pat him down.
Mr. Williams turned and began to walk away, she said, causing the officers to tackle him and the gun in his waistband to go off.
In May 2020, when he was 14, Mr. Williams was charged with criminal possession of a weapon. His case was delayed by the pandemic, but in December, he was sentenced to six months probation, according to a spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney. Ms. Florio said the gun was not loaded and being used as a prop in a music video shoot.
