Queens City Councilman Launches Bid For District Attorney

QUEENS, NY — A Queens city councilman is running to become the borough's top prosecutor on a broad platform of criminal justice reforms.

Rory Lancman is the first Democrat to officially throw his hat in the ring for next year's race to potentially replace Richard Brown, the 85-year-old incumbent who is reportedly expected to call it quits at the end of his current term. Brown was first elected in 1991 and hasn't faced an opponent since, according to a 2015 New York Times article.

Lancman launched his campaign this week with endorsements from the mothers of two black men killed by police. He pledged to make Queens a model for progressive prosecutors by ending cash bail and confronting wrongful convictions.

"Queens is a big, diverse place, filled with people from all over the world, and my pledge to the people of our borough is this: regardless of your race, income, physical abilities, religion, age, immigration status, sexual orientation or gender, I will fight for true justice for everyone," Lancman said in a statement Wednesday.

Previously a state assemblyman, Lancman was first elected in 2013 to represent Fresh Meadows, Jamaica Estates, Kew Gardens Hills and other neighborhoods in the Council's 24th District. He currently chairs the Committee on the Justice System and sponsored a law last year that made revenge porn officially illegal.

A news release announcing his campaign drew a bright line between Lancman's reform-minded policies and the current "complicity" of the DA's office. Lancman himself has created such a distinction by publicly debating a top official in Brown's office on the proposed closure of Rikers Island earlier this month.

"All across the country, progressive district attorneys are making real justice happen in their communities, the kind of justice we deserve here in Queens," Lancman said in a campaign video released Wednesday.

Lancman pledged to stop requesting cash bail so poor defendants aren't unncessarily jailed; stop prosecuting low-level crimes; and finally create a wrongful conviction review unit in Queens, the only office in the city without one.

The councilman's campaign won support from two police-reform advocates: Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who died in 2014 after an NYPD officer choked him; and Valerie Bell, whose son Sean Bell was killed by police in 2006.

"Rory will not tolerate police malfeasance, whether it is violence against law-abiding citizens or perjury in the courtroom," Bell said in a statement.

Lancman likely won't find himself alone in the DA's race, which could prove one of the most competitive in an otherwise sleepy political year. Queens Borough President Melinda Katz is reportedly considering a run, as is James Grasso, the Bronx Criminal Court's supervising judge.

(Lead image: City Councilman Rory Lancman appears at a Sept. 6 Council committee hearing. Photo by Emil Cohen/New York City Council)