EDITORIAL: Return to The Bad Old Days, Thanks to Certain Courts

Bad old days
The New York Post -  EDITORIAL  -  August 31, 2011

Younger New Yorkers can be forgiven bemusement when their elders speak of the time, not so long ago, when New York City seemed totally out of control.  Back then, before 1993, criminals and crazies ruled the seedy streets, City Hall was paralyzed and the rights of everyday New Yorkers were subordinate to the whims of psychos and social misfits.  It was a time captured in Tom Wolfe’s justly celebrated novel, “The Bonfire of the Vanities” -- and symbolized by a Post front page that pleaded with the city’s then-mayor: “Dave, Do Something.”  That New York is long gone, thankfully -- but is the pendulum swinging back?  Take Carol Feinman, the Bronx jurist who seems to be channeling the late Judge “Turn-’Em Loose” Bruce Wright by repeatedly setting violent criminals free without bail.  Feinman -- a former Lower East Side community board chair -- sprang one thug accused of robbery and assault because she didn’t believe the victim’s testimony.  She also let walk a serial burglar busted for breaking into a church after his DNA matched a sample from the scene, asserting that the perp was too experienced a criminal to leave DNA.  Mind-boggling.  Like Bruce Wright, Feinman and her defenders cite the Eighth Amendment, which forbids excessive bail.  But, just like Wright, Feinman seems to believe that any bail is excessive.  Then there was yesterday’s New York Times story about Sojourner Hardeman, a vagrant panhandler who’s won a court-approved stipulation in which the NYPD agreed not to arrest her unless she’s otherwise breaking the law -- which may seem reasonable, but which is not.  Hardeman is not a mentally ill drug-abuser, like so many of the deinstitutionalized homeless of the ’80s -- including the notoriously deranged “Billie Boggs,” who became a media darling for successfully challenging a Koch administration policy that mandated treatment for vagrants deemed dangerous.  Unlike “Boggs” -- who used to sit in her own excrement and scream at passersby -- Hardeman’s panhandling is passive: She doesn’t aggresively demand money. But she’s no victim, either; the Times reports that she quit a job as a law-firm assistant to find something “more fulfilling.”  Now she’s busy asserting her First Amendment right to block pedestrian traffic on high-volume streets.  Just as a group called Picture the Homless this month trumpeted the “First Amendment right” of vagrants to sleep anywhere they want -- Penn Station, the subways, Grand Central -- because city shelters don’t offer sufficient “respect.”  Talk about back to the future.  Feinman, elected last year to the Civil Court but transferred to the criminal bench to fill a vacancy, reportedly hates the gig -- though she’s not saying for sure.  “Get the f--k away from me or I’m calling the police,” she growled at a Post reporter yesterday. Nice.  Jonathan Lippman, the state’s top judge and a fellow old enough to remember the bad old days, needs to find Feinman a job that she’s up to, before she lets a killer free.  Traffic court, maybe?