Bayside Pol Takes Heat For Bail Reform Comment After Buffalo Shooting

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — A Bayside Congressman faced backlash this week for saying the state should double down on bail reform laws in response to the deadly racially-motivated mass shooting in Buffalo.

"I think that it’s related to gun laws, but the major issue of bail reform," said Congressman and Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Tom Suozzi, when asked Wednesday what he thinks New York needs to do in the wake of the massacre which left 10 people — almost all of them Black — dead.

"We need to give judges discretion to consider dangerousness and that involves a lot of people with gun crimes," he added, evoking so-called "dangerousness standards" that many say open the door for racial discrimination.

During the virtual news conference, Suozzi also pointed to a list of mental health- and gun-related laws he'd like to see passed and later said that harsher bail reform laws "wouldn't have helped in the Buffalo case." The man arrested in the shooting carried out an attack that police described as racist and the president called an "act of domestic terrorism."

Suozzi's earlier comment about bail reform, though, still sparked backlash.

"Rep. Tom Suozzi’s statement is not only inaccurate and irresponsible, but it’s downright dangerous," said Nyatwa Bullock, statewide organizer at Center for Community Alternatives, a criminal justice non-profit.

"Rather than offering any support for the victims and their families or proposing actual solutions to racist violence, Suozzi has perversely chosen to exploit a mass shooting by a white supremacist to advance policies that will continue to disproportionately jail, harm, and even kill Black and brown New Yorkers," she said.

Representatives for Suozzi did not respond to Patch's request for comment, but one of his spokespeople told the New York Daily News that it was "an outrageous lie by Hochul supporters to suggest that Tom linked bail reform to Saturday’s racist massacre."

Suozzi also used the presser to criticize Governor Kathy Hochul, his opponent in the upcoming primary, for her handling of crime — a line of commentary for which he also faced backlash.

"For Tom Suozzi to politicize this weekend’s racist terrorist attack by blaming the Governor demonstrates both how desperate his campaign is and how shockingly offensive his judgment has become," said Jay Jacobs, chair of the New York State Democratic Committee, in a statement reported by the Daily News.

On her part, Hochul took a similar tack, dismissing a question about Suozzi's comments in a news conference later that day.

"I’m not paying attention to accusations or any other messaging however it’s conveyed by someone running for office. This is not a time for politics," she said. "Everyone else can judge the propriety of having those attacks that are absolutely unrelated to what happened here."