Posted on 01/19/2005 1:40:17 AM PST by kattracks
New York truly is the safest big city in America. Still, you might want to watch whom you bump into, for more than 2,000 convicted killers are walking our streets and riding our subways.Between 1994 and 2003, 2,565 people convicted of murder or manslaughter in the first degree were released from prison, state Department of Correctional Services records show.
As a rule, 60% of all state inmates hail from the city, which translates to some 1,539 of these killers.
Add to that the 100-plus released in 2004, as well as the hundreds freed in previous years, and the total number of killers easily exceeds 2,000.
While the cheapest politicians have clamored for a death penalty that is never carried out, hordes of killers have been freed after just a few years thanks to plea bargains and laws that view murder by impulse as not quite murder. The victims are just as dead and the loved ones are left with the knowledge that the killer is walking about.
Some of these killers are celebrities of the worst sort, such as the Preppie Killer Robert Chambers and Daphne Abdela, the little rich girl who helped gut a man in Central Park.
At least two freed killers subsequently were arrested for murdering a police officer.
Leon Smith came out of prison in 1994 after doing eight years for shooting a man in Manhattan, eight years being roughly the average time served for taking a life in New York. In January 1998, Smith gunned down Detective Sean Carrington at a Bronx drug spot and then in turn was killed by cops.
The following July, 17-year-old Shatiek Johnson was arrested for killing Officer Gerard Carter. Johnson had been freed that April after serving two years for battering a homeless man to death.
The freed killers who hit the newspapers more recently include Jesse Nettles, who was arrested this month for stabbing four people in Penn Station, as well as a man who was walking through Times Square with three young children. All five victims survived.
"I'm lucky to be alive," said Rolando Hernandez, one of those stabbed in Penn Station. "People like this shouldn't be out on the streets."
Less lucky was a 21-year-old New Jersey man who chanced on Nettles at the Port Authority Bus Terminal back on May 31, 1974. Nettles stabbed Robert Budd Jr. to death and fled, only to be arrested later after he pushed another man off a subway platform.
Nettles was sentenced to serve five to 15 years for manslaughter. Authorities had no choice but to release him after 12 years due to the "good time" provision, which mandates a prisoner be freed after serving two-thirds the maximum term. Only after the recent stabbing spree did Budd's family learn that Nettles was at liberty.
"Oh, my God! How can he be out?" the victim's sister, Jesse Budd, exclaimed to a Daily News reporter.
Then there is Fred Fulton, who served five years for shooting dead a man named Rowan Chin who sat in a car on Merrick Blvd. in Queens in 1990.
Under city regulations, Fulton would have been barred from becoming a sanitation man after his release if he had any outstanding parking tickets. But the law deems it discriminatory to disqualify an applicant simply because he is a convicted killer.
On Oct. 4, 2004, Fulton officially became a sanitation man. He was assigned to District 7 in Queens.
"If they've served the time, no problem," a Sanitation Department spokeswoman said yesterday.
The police believe Fulton moonlighted as part of a major drug ring that modeled its anti-surveillance tactics after the TV show "The Wire." He was arrested last week for drugs, as well as weapons possession and money laundering.
Meanwhile, the killers who will be rejoining us before too very long include Zenaida Bennett, who slashed a man to death aboard the A train in 1997.
"I pulled out my knife and shanked him," Bennett said after her arrest.
Police believe she also shanked a woman on the same subway line in a similarly unprovoked attack in 1995. She was charged only with the later killing and sentenced to a term of 17 years. She may very well be out by 2012, when another 2,000 or so convicted killers will be walking what we hope is still the safest big city in America.
Thanks for the homeland security briefing.
Thanks to our "no guts" politicians...carry if you got 'em...
Time to wake up people. Our criminal justice system is broken and our entire legal system is groaning with corruption. The entire system is corrupt because of greed and nothing can be done about it. Nothing will be done about our corrupt legal system until it just decays from deep inside and then falls apart totally. "The fish rots from the head," Joseph Stalin. 'Nuff said.
Those violent, recidivist cigare-
(Unable to complete sentence, after being bludgeoned to death by ax-wielding piece of tobacco.)
*Prolonged eye roll*
-good times, G.J.P.(Jr.)
2000 convicted murderers in New Yawk City?
Heh, they should fit right in with all the criminal aliens, slave laborers, and smugglers.
That place is a den of evil and hass been almost from the day it was first built.
Sounds like karma to me.
......2,000,000 'killers' in the streets...........just say,'No'.
Yeah, say 'NO!' to ever letting a convicted murderer outside into society ever.
I dont care if they turn into a saint and I think their best place is in Hell anyway.
NYers got what they asked for. This is what happens when you elect liberals.
I'm in Penna, and I carry everywhere I go. Everywhere. Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. Also, better to be tried by 12, than carried by 6.
Keep rolling those eyes.........there are actually people who believe that.
not to worry Bloomie, I don't visit anyplace I can't carry.
good luck to your chamber of 'commerce'.
LOL! Very true. That reminds me, I have to make an appointment with a therapist to help me control my violent, anti-social tendencies.
I am quite certain, though, that I'll have to upgrade to a psychologist, so I can get drugs, which I'll surely need. (Or is it psychiatrists that can prescribe medication? I forget).
Thanks for the ping...the article was pretty depressing, though.
well put!
Thank you Supreme Court for getting rid of mandatory sentencing. Im sure we can trust bleeding heart liberal judges to punish criminals appropiatley.
Psychiatrists=pill-pushers.
:)
-good times, G.J.P>(Jr.)
Thanks. I can never keep those two straight. :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.