NYC Prosecutors To Dismiss 700,000 Open Warrants In 'Unprecedented' Step

NEW YORK CITY, NY - The city’s top prosecutors are going to forgive and forget. The district attorneys for the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens announced this week they are dismissing nearly 700,000 warrants for low-level crimes committed more than 10 years ago.

The prosecutors said in a press release the move will let the suspects move on with their lives and relieve burdens on the court system. The attorneys insisted their "unprecedented step" "poses no threat to public safety" since the warrants were for failure to pay tickets for minor crimes.

The district attorneys in the release cited a range of benefits in dismissing the warrants.

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Acting Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez said the move will build trust between residents and law enforcement and allow authorities to focus on violent crime.

Calling her borough "ground zero for summonses emanating from questionable stop-and-frisks," Bronx DA Darcel Clark said dismissing the warrants will "improve the lives of tens of thousands of Bronx residents."

She noted that when she was a judge working in the Bronx’s overwhelmed courts, she dismissed many low-level cases because they were "legally insufficient."

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. estimated 240,000 warrants will be dismissed in his borough alone, "giving those New Yorkers a fresh start and a new chance to engage more fully in their communities."

And Queens DA Richard Brown noted the NYPD has vetted the list of warrants and excluded the most flagrant violations so the suspects can still be brought to justice.

Staten Island DA Michael McMahon said he would not participate since giving amnesty for the old offenses is "unfair" to people who do respond to warrants, according to silive.com.

The New York Civil Liberties Union welcomed the four other DAs' move.

"It's about time the city does something to mitigate the harm that has been perpetrated on communities of color," the civil rights group’s Executive Director Donna Lieberman told NY1. "The hundreds of thousands of open warrants for minor offenses are the legacy of decades of broken windows policing."

Recent years have seen the NYPD reduce the number of street stops made by officers, a practice that critics said unfairly targeted black and Latino New Yorkers.

Lead image of Cyrus Vance, Jr. by AP.