Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Crime & Punishment: Criminal Justice through Progressive Prosecutors

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

LegalAF x MeidasTouch, the top-rated weekend global news podcast covering US law and politics anchored by Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok, has launched a special weekly Wednesday short-form edition providing a piercing but entertaining look at one or two topics ripped from today’s headlines, this one co-anchored by veteran prosecutor, policy analyst and defense counsel, Karen Friedman Agnifilo (“KFA”). On this inaugural episode, the anchors cover KFA’s “origin story” that brought her to the podcast, including over 20 years in the Manhattan DA’s office (the inspiration for every “Law and Order”), and then Popok and KFA take a hard look at the need for criminal justice reform led by progressive prosecutors around the country, and in KFA’s and Popok’s backyard, NYC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to LegalA F first cut Wednesdays. I am Michael Popock and for the legal F is out there. Who know me from the regular show on Saturdays and Sundays. We are joined with a new co-host on Wednesdays former prosecutor and friend. I'm gonna make this like a we're introducing a boxing match Karen. Karen, the freedman, Agniflo. Also known as KFA. I feel like I'm like ready to rumble now now that I've introduced you that way. We are thrilled to have Karen join our show.

I'm gonna call her KFA. The way Ben calls me Popok. I made out do it as many times as he calls me Popok, but I will. That'll be respectful of the fact that she's earned a nickname. She'll tell us more about that in the origin story portion of today's show. We're going to be doing a 30-minute weekly magazine style drill down. Same brand of legal AF that you've come to know and love. It's going to be piercing. It's going to be lively. It's going to be hard hitting, but instead of doing stump, stump, Ben and Michael over 11 topics on a Saturday and Sunday, Karen and I are going to

drill down on one or two really interesting things from the week or maybe from the month. We may have a guest or two, not today, but these will be ripped from the headlines, stories, but the same special brand of litigated politics that you know and love. I am overwhelmed with joy to have Karen join me each Wednesday. She'll be bringing her unique perspective of being an over 30 year prosecutor in one of the elite, if not the elite prosecutor unit in the country, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, the model for every law and order episode you've ever watched over the last 30 years is Robert Morgan Thaw who Karen worked for and that office and she was a senior leader in that office. Welcome, Karen. Thank you.

It's wonderful to be here. We're so pleased to have you. I thought it would be good. Ben and I kicked off 42 episodes again. My co-anchor Ben Micellus on Legal AF. We kicked off with an origin story of why Legal AF and how he and I got together and decided to be co-anchors. And why we thought there was a need for this type of podcast.

I want to talk about your origin story and how you got behind this microphone today. I know Ben's already. It's something about parents and exploding planet, rocket ship, something landed in Kansas, something like that. It's either that or Superman. I always get his origin story wrong. But let's hear about your origin story and how did you end up being my co-anchor today? So I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I went to Venice High School and UCLA undergrad and I was very much a

product of growing up in LA back in the 70s and 80s, which was sort of an interesting time. And I wanted more for my life, and I wanted to do something with my life other than Hollywood and celebrities and back then. That was really all you had in the LA scene. And so I moved to Washington. Everybody was in the business, right? And the business was entertainment. Exactly. But I was a different person. I didn't really fit in in that environment. I wasn't interested in that.

I wanted to save the world. That's what I used to say when I was young and starry-eyed. And I think so. Was your family in the business? No. My family was not in the business. And who I am is very much like most people in large part influenced by their family

and by their parents. And my mom and my dad were very instrumental in sort of my career, especially my dad, who he's a Holocaust survivor. My grandparents were. And he had a furniture store, a Friedman furniture store in downtown Los Angeles. Yes, shout out to Friedman's furniture. It's, you know, it was, it was the typical immigrant, middle class,

sort of upbringing and we were very lucky to have that obviously. But my grandfather, who was in a concentration camp in the Holocaust, came to this country and was so grateful he wanted to give back. And so he joined the California National Guard. And I have the letter framed when he was in the National Guard and my father was very much wanted to give back and not just be a furniture salesman. And so he worked for the Los Angeles Police Department

back in the day. LAPD has these things called reserved officers. So it's like a part time, but you're a full-fetched police officer. And this sounds like LA confidential. Furniture salesman by day. I know. LA cop on the beat by night. This is awesome. It was interesting. He was he was in this unit called the crash unit, which is infamous, and a movie was made about the crash unit. What were they crashing? What were they crashing? It was called community, stood for community resources against street hoodlums. So not politically correct. But back then, that was the gang unit of LAPD. And they made a Sean Penn made a movie about it, called the colors.

It was, it was, anyway, so that was a big part of what I thought was important. And, and again, growing up in LAP back then, crime was, was very high. There's a lot of gangs and a lot of shootings. And I wanted to go out and I really wanted to be a part of the solution and be a crime fighter. And my dad said not as a police officer. He felt so strongly about it. He, yeah, he, he also saw some things that were very upsetting to him. And he saw some things on the force and saw police officers do things that weren't in line with his values. Did you think about that did you think about at one point?

I did. That side of law enforcement. I did. I absolutely did. And I sometimes still think about how great it could have been, but I didn't. And I moved to Washington. I moved to Washington instead Washington, DC, because that's where if you want to save the world and you like politics, that's where one goes. Oh, yeah. And so I went to law

school in Washington. I loved it. And I never went back west. And I always say I became an accidental prosecutor because while I was in law school, while many people were working at fancy law firms, I was working at the District of Columbia Prison System, the Lorton Correctional Facility, where I wanted to help prisoners. I wanted to help people, I felt like you have people 24-7, and hopefully we can help them so that when they come out,

there is something that they can do and become a productive member of society. And that's what I wanted to do. That's gonna be a very good segue in a couple of minutes when we get into the actual segment that we're gonna discuss on this first kickoff podcast for Legal AF Wednesdays, which is gonna be progressive criminal justice reform

and campaigns to put a certain type of prosecutor in their chairs. And we're going to talk about that next. But let's just, I just want to, I am intrigued. I could go all day on your origin story because even though you and I know each other and it worked together, you know, some of this is new to me and I like it. And it actually matches as people know my own, you know, we all have unique origin stories. But you know, my grandparents came over, they avoided the Holocaust because my great grandfather came here earlier

than and got his family out of Europe. And you know, my great grandfather, my grandfather were Seltzer men. They were beer runners during the prohibition. You know, boardwalk empire looked a lot like stories. My grandfather it told me growing up. So I really wasn't interested in law enforcement the way you were. But you and I kind of parallel we didn't realize that we orbited each other. We're sort of the same vintage came out of law school around the same time. I did go to one of those fancy law firms that get started, but I thought about going to the US attorney's office for the Southern District and to be a prosecutor, it was foreclosed to people like you and I. There was a hiring freeze in the in the early 90s and you couldn't get in. But you

went, I'm not even going to say to the next best thing for me. And I'll tell you why I feel that way. You went to the best thing. You went to work for Robert Morgan thought in the Manhattan DA's office, and we're there for an extraordinary long time. Tell our viewers and listeners about that. So when I interviewed for the Manhattan DA's office, I'd never been to New York. I thought all prosecutors were fascists and I had no interest in being a prosecutor. I was by accident that I got the job. And I interviewed because there was an interview spot

and I was honest and I told them my opinions about prisons and prisoners in reform and progressive prosecution and they somehow hired me anyway. And I found that to be telling because that says a lot about what the Manhattan DA's office is about. And it couldn't have been more wrong about what prosecutors were. And I thought, did you interview with Morgan thought? I did. I did. Wow. And yeah, I did interview with him and he offered me the job. And when I started working there, I thought, okay, this will be fun. I'll go live in New York for

a few years. I'll work there for a few years. And that's it. And of course, three decades later, I ended up leaving about six or seven months ago. And when I left, the ultimate position I held was I was the chief assistant, DA, which is the number two under the district attorney. So that's why I joke that you brought the law to law and order, at least, or order in the law and order, at least to the office. And yeah, when I heard you came out and that one of my, one of my colleagues that hired you for his firm, I was like, wow, what a great pick up.

You don't pick up KFA's every day. They're not making anymore KFA's. I can only think of two of them and I happen to be friends with both of them. One of them being Lucy Lang, who's a mutual friend, who's now the inspector general for the state of New York, but ran for the top job in Manhattan and came in a very valiant fourth. That sounds like it's faint praise, but in that competitive race with eight or nine people, she did exceedingly well for a young, a young prosecutor. And we haven't heard the last of her. Just as we haven't heard the last of KFA, not just every Wednesday, but in her career. So, but let me ask you, so you, you worked for Margaret Thaw for what was it? 20 years. So I actually worked for Margaret Thaw for about 15 years.

And then I left and I worked for Mike Bloomberg when he was mayor of New York. I've heard of him. What is he doing these days? He's he's being the awesome Mike Bloomberg that he is actually. And what you do what you do for mayor Bloomberg. So I true to who I was when I started at the DA's office. I really wanted to do policy. I wanted to, again, save the world as I used to say. I wanted to help people. And I saw a lot of systemic problems in the criminal justice system as a prosecutor. And I thought, I want to go work for the mayor

and work on criminal justice policy. So I worked for, on criminal justice policy for the mayor. And I think that's where I learned a tremendous amount about how to work on issues at a very high level. He was an extraordinary mayor and he hired extraordinary people to work for him. and it was an incredible professional experience for me to work there. And then Sive Vance was elected and he started in January of 2010 and I didn't know Sive Vance and I thought I was gone. I thought I'm done with being a prosecutor and I met Sive Vance, we hit it off. And I thought he had some incredible ideas, really progressive and new at the time. There really weren't many people talking about

the things he was talking about, things like conviction integrity units and deferring many, many cases and reimagining the criminal justice system. And he wanted the racial inequities in the criminal justice system. He brought the Vera Institute of Justice to review the office and help advise us on how we can, how we can, hopefully again, re reimagine the criminal justice system in Manhattan. And I was really excited by what he had to say. So he brought me in and I worked for him for 12 year, 11 and a half years.

And- Well, what I like about that, and we're in, and just to tell our listeners and followers now, the good news is that Karen's gonna be able to talk with me about things that happened in the Manhattan DA's office as long as she didn't actually work on the case. So there's going to be things you're like, God, I wish that Karen would give an opinion about the Trump investigations.

We're not going there on Wednesdays. Ben and I will do it on Friday on Saturdays and Sundays. So you might see a little bit of a hole in our swing about things. We're not covering, but it doesn't mean that she's she's banned or barred or gagged from talking about everything in her 30 years experience and her long experience in Manhattan, a days office. And she'll be bringing that special flavor to her. I'll tell you why I like the Manhattan, a days office.

I actually modeled my own in house trial team team that I built at Wall Street firm, which we did something very unique, because people know I actually hired frontline litigators, train them. And then we tried our own cases in house, as opposed to farming them outside law firms. So I had 23 people in a four year period, we tried over 40 for zero matters, arbitrations, federal trials, jury trials, you know, where it was a jury trial.

I was usually the lead jury, the jury person. But when I was selecting people, I, without knowing that one day I would meet you, I actually said to them, I want this office modeled after not the U.S. Attorney's office. I want it modeled after Morgan Thauss, Manhattan, D.A.'s office office, because he recruited the elite, the Kremlin to the Kremlin, and he trained them that way. And some of the finest litigators and prosecutors, litigators after they were prosecutors came out of his office. I would actually say that in the recruiting pitch. And if their eyes lit up and they got excited, I was like, okay, you're hired. And if they were like, I don't really understand. I don't know what you're

talking about, then that person wasn't for me. So it must have been really heavy stuff to be working with the echelon of prosecutors that you were surrounded by and that you contributed to. It was incredible. It was obviously an incredible experience. And the people who work there are truly the best lawyers. I've ever experienced. And they are just smart, thoughtful, caring people

who really, really care about doing the right thing. And that's who they are, not just what they do. That being said, just finishing sort of how I ended up where I am now, I knew before a lot of other people knew that Sivance was retiring and not running and as is common practice and every I think every elected person does when they come in they want their own people. So I knew I was going to be out of a job one way or another and I thought long and hard about whether I would run for a district attorney. And part of me wanted to, because obviously,

I love the office, I love the people there. And the opportunity to do great work and continue to make the changes that Sive Ants was making was something that I really wanted to do, just like Lucy Lang who you mentioned, who I worked with there. It was something to think about and consider. And when Alvin Bragg tossed his hat in the ring,

I looked at him and I looked at sort of what he stood for and what he said. And I thought to myself, what would I say? Because you know, you do these debates. And what would I say if someone asked me what I thought of him and whether I would be better than him as district attorney. And at the end of the day, although I think I would have been an excellent DA, I felt that, and I feel that the time now is to have a person of color with the life experiences of a person of color like Alvin. And of course, he also has incredible credentials.

Yeah. State and federal prosecutors. He has everything. He has all the qualifications. He has, you know, he's the real deal. But on top of that, what he has is what I don't have. And it's time for that. This is the time for that. And I'm always struck by the image of when when when President Trump was making abortion laws and it was a table full of white men making sort of policy and laws around abortion.

And I thought, you know, man, man, man, explaining abortion is all as only they can from personal experience. And obviously that's, that's an obvious example of sort of what I'm about to say. When you look at the criminal, when you look at state court criminal justice and you look at who's arrested and you go down to a rainman's, you can go to a rainman's anytime, day or night. And this is back when I started in the 90s and true today.

So for 30 years, it's people of color. I've found myself recognizing names that were coming through the system where we have now prosecuted a grandfather, a father, a child, in the same family, clearly what we're doing and an old school criminal justice as well meaning as we at war and are, isn't, it's time for change. It's not that it doesn't work, it's time for a change. And it was time for a change, someone like Alvin. And so to me, in the same way that a whole table full of white men shouldn't be making

abortion policy without that voice, it's time for a person of color. And it was Alvin's time. You know what I just learned about you? I'm sure I knew, but I want our listeners and followers to know. You are too honest for politics and you're too authentic for politics because other people in your same position did not reach the same calculus as you did. And there's other voices that need to be represented. So now I want to transition. This is a perfect, perfect segue, KFA. You probably didn't realize it when you were

doing it into what we're going to drill down on today, which is criminal justice reform and the where Democrats, like George Soros and huge fundraisers, have been spitting their money to try to reform criminal justice by getting like-minded prosecutors elected, because prosecutors are by and large elected, getting them elected around the country and reforming criminal justice from the inside. And I want to give a statistic that people have known, a popokian statistic to launch our discussion. And I'm sure you'll agree with every part of this from your own experience. 95% of prosecutors around the country are white.

75% are men. So the vast majority of pros, you are unusual. The vast majority of prosecutors are white men and what is missing is people of color and people of different gender and sexual orientation. And that's missing. So whereas the Republicans, just to get a little political,

little policy, have focused that an ordinance amount of their attention on the BS of critical race theory to try to grab school board elections and they're trying to run and grab state houses to change voting laws, which we call voter suppression laws, and gerrymandering in order to cut out people of color from elected office. The Democrats, led by George Soros of the world, have been going into the underbelly of the criminal justice system to try to get like-minded prosecutors and progressive prosecutors elected. So he's put upwards of three million, not just him alone, but George Soros alone has put three million dollars into individual races around the country, which is a shitload

of money and a prosecutor race. You know, it's a lot from Manhattan. It's a ton of money for places like in Alabama and Texas and Georgia. So he can really swing the race. And he does it through a safety and justice pack of his. He names everything, safety and justice. But I want to talk about what is, what is the criminal justice system that needs to be reformed? Why does it need to be reformed? And we'll electing these kind of prosecutors, including Alvin Bragg. Before we end today,

we're going to talk about his now controversial first day memo, literally a memo that he wrote to try to reorientate the policy of the office. Let's talk about what are we trying to do with progressive reform? I think there's a lot of things. I think, first of all, in the 70s, when the big reform was to, for the people who have are mentally ill, were institutionalized. It was to de-institutionalized people, which was a smart thing to do,

but everyone was hoping that there'd be a social safety net to catch them. And unfortunately, the social safety net has been the criminal justice system. And whether you're somebody who's a substance abuser or somebody with behavioral health issue or mental health issue, whatever it is, the de facto default response is someone's in crisis

and you call 911 and you end up in the criminal justice system. And that's, I would argue worse than a a psychiatric institution, frankly, to be in prison or in jail. So I think number one, that's what has, that has to be reformed. And I think also just the inequities in policing, you know, police go where the crime is, but there doesn't have, and so what they do, what happens is they they they see people doing things because they happen to be there and then they arrest them for those things. So marijuana usage, you know, you look at statistics and and white people smoke marijuana just as much. If not more than people of color more more. And you but yet you look at marijuana arrests and it's 98% people of

proportion. It's disproportionate. So we're talking about racial disparity in arrest and then racial disparity in the ultimate sentencing after a rainment, right? Absolutely. And so the thought is that instead of prosecuting your way out of these problems, instead, let's do things like try and invest in our communities so to eliminate the inequities in the first place. And so that things like housing instability

or financial instability or all the things that can lead people to do things out of whether it's desperation or despair or for whatever reason people do things that wind up in the criminal justice system, try to address the root cause of those issues. And I think that's where the reform, where people are talking about reform the most and what's what's sort of interesting, but the thing is and and and what I think is is is where there's growing pains is there's sort of a sweet spot, right? You talk about safety and fairness and a lot of people talk about it in terms of numbers and I would push back on that I would push back so so some of the numbers for example, so so when you are arrested in New York City, for example, before you, if bail is set and you are detained, you are detained in a jail called Rikers Island. It's sort of a notorious facility that is infamous and it is-

It's like the Alcatraz of New York City. Exactly. But it's all over the news these days because the violence and just, it's just absolutely dysfunctional needs to be closed and replaced with, with local jails. So, so, so, so let me break it down. You're innocent until proven guilty, but you've been, you've been detained pre-arrayment or pre-trial. And you're put in this Lord of the Flies, a place of complete despair out of control violence. So if you weren't a criminal when you went in and you're innocent,

you're gonna be surrounded and pressurized by a lot of criminal elements. You may well be a criminal when you come out of pre-trial, pre-arrainment, detainment. Exactly. So Rikers Island in the 90s had a daily population of about 20,000 people. It's a lot of people. But also in the 90s, New York City, which has a population of about eight million, had about 2,000 homicides per year.

of about eight million had about 2,000 homicides per year. And the way law enforcement responded to the crime problem that was in New York City was to arrest and incarcerate. It was tough on crime, tough on crime. It was the Giuliani era. He was a mayor in New York City back in the day before he sort of, you know, became the person that he is today.

But he, so he, so it's, but today there's about 4,800 people in Rikers Island. So the population has shrunk considerably and and undersized the murder rate. So just backing up, in 1990, there was over 500 murders in Manhattan. I'm just gonna talk about Manhattan or not. For what, for the year? For the year, yes, sorry, for the year. And now what's the number? So now the numbers in the, this year,

well, last year we ended a little higher, we were about 70 or 80, but three years ago, we were at 43. I mean, we got down so low. So stop right there. Everybody says New York, and COVID, New York post COVID, New York is a super dangerous place. And look, I'm not minimizing it.

We had a terrible tragedy three days ago, which I've tweeted about with a female executive at a accounting firm who was pushed to her death at nine o'clock in the morning in times square with police presence by a homeless man, obviously mentally unstable and deranged. Literally, he picked her out of a crowd, pushed her into an oncoming train and she died. Michelle Ho, terrible. And I tweeted today, there are 400 and 450 plus subway stations around New York City. Mayor Adams put a cop in every station, even if you have to hire to do it, if you're going to return public safety. But your numbers are interesting because when I went to college in New York in the 1980s,

which is right after Bernie, literally the year after Bernie gets a white nerd on a subway with a gun pulled it out and shot four black youths because he felt threatened by them. The murder rate was 10 times higher in the 1980s under Giuliani that it was under the Democratic mayors or otherwise. And so by statistically, the city is not more dangerous now than it was when you and I were young professionals in New York. Oh, not even close. So for those of you not from New York, just really quick, New York City consists of five burrows, Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn,

Queens, and Staten Island. So sometimes when we talk about numbers, we talk about New York City numbers, sometimes we talk about Manhattan numbers. So I'm just going to talk about Manhattan right now. So it's one of the boroughs. And Manhattan, as I said, had over 500 murders in the early 90s. And a couple of years ago, we got down into the 40s. We're creeping back up into the 40s. We're creeping

back up into the 70s. On top of that, shootings are up significantly. And the difference between a gunshot victim who's just a shooting victim versus a homicide sometimes has to do with your medical care more than or the aim of the person, not the intent of the person. So there are, crime is feeling, people are feeling less safe because many of those numbers are starting to creep up. Excuse me. So what I wanted to say was, it's not, to me, when I look at it, a lot of people talk about numbers and we're safer, you know, we, we,

Rikers Island has fewer people. We went from 20,000 to 4,800 and all the numbers have gone down. And that is true. But some of that has to do with prosecuting the right people. It's not just about the numbers. And it's about getting the right people. And that's where the nuance comes in and where the professionalism of prosecutors and defense attorneys and judges all working together to figure

out who are the people who can be diverted to a program safely and helped. Maybe somebody who who suffers struggles with a mental health problem or somebody who just needs job training or somebody, you know, those types of things. So you're talking about diversion programs that divert the person away from the classic jail cell and put them into a different type of program for them to get the help that they need. Now, let me, let me, because we got about five minutes left.

And I do want to cover, and I think you're the right person to talk about it is Alvin Bragg's, the new Manhattan DA's first day memo and to kind of end our segment on. There's two things that you said today about side dance that are very, very interesting and I'm sure unknown by most of the people that will be watching this podcast. One of them you said, I left because I saw the writing on the wall. If Alvin's coming in, he's probably going to want to pick his own people. But when Si came in and you were there from the Morgan thought, you're, uh, he picked

you. I thought that was a testament to Si Vance. And I had, but I had left. I was sure. Brunch. Oh, I see. So you think that he was a, you were able to be a Si Vance person because you left. All right.

Okay. So I won't give him as much credit. And if he ever is a guest on our show and we invite him to be, I will leave that out. The second one though is you outline and we don't have enough time on this show, but we will do it over time. Maybe when he's a guest here, you did outline all of the progressive prosecutorial policies

that psi implemented and continued in a way for Morgan thought but made it his own office and put his own imprint on it. And he doesn't get enough credit for that. And he gets a lot of flack from people in the Twitter verse who don't understand the job or the man or the person. And we're gonna talk more about that but he was much more progressive

than people give him credit for. Don't you agree? Completely. I hope we spend a whole episode talking about that. I have a lot of feelings about that and what all of the accomplishments that he did and how extraordinary they are. Yeah. good. We're going to talk about it. And maybe half getting late, maybe with him as a guest, a guest one day. But let's end the episode, our first episode. I'm really excited. KFA on legal AF on LAF.

Wow, this is awesome. I'm sure there's going to be a meme out of this now. With you, me, the initials, it's going to be fun. But let's do day one, Alvin Bragg gets sworn in Jan one along with the mayor. He won in a hard fought elected. It was a campaign there were eight people in it and he prevailed not by a little. He didn't just speak by he had a very nice outcome in terms of his election. And then he decides he wants to put his imprint on the position.

He spent a lifetime preparing to be the Manhattan DA. He got the job of his dreams. So he puts out a memo that's going to set the course for the office. How did that go? And what was the memo and how did that go? Okay, so the memo, I have it right here. It's 10 pages.

It's dated January 3rd, 2022. And by the way, this have it right here, it's 10 pages, it's dated January 3, 2022. And by the way, this shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone because he talked about the day one memo during his campaign. So, but he put this memo out, it's 10 pages long and it starts with a letter to all staff kind of describing his philosophy and then linking to various studies that back up his philosophy. Things like we should invest more in alternatives to incarceration. We should reduce pre-trial incarceration and focus on keeping, holding people accountable, not the length of the sentence, things like that. And so that was sort of setting forth his philosophy in this

R.A.K.F.A. will you do everybody a favor when we're when we're done? Will you post this and pin this to a tweet of yours so people can go find it? Absolutely. I'm happy to do that. And he talked about things like also actively supporting those who are reentering and all of the things he wanted to do were to make us safer and free up prosecutorial resources on those who are going to focus on violent crime. So honestly, I don't think anyone could disagree with with any of the principles that he set forth in his memo. He was elected to achieve those principles. And frankly, I would argue much of our philosophy, I say hour, but I no longer work there.

Much of the Manhattan D.A.'s office philosophy already is to do many of those things. However, I do agree with him that it's time to do more and now is the time to do more. And so he put forth the memo and the memo, which is seven pages long, is the one that most people are, is very controversial. And and when I read it, I thought to myself, okay, why was this so controversial? And I think it's because when you're doing change, when you're trying to make change, even if he's

doing the right thing. And I know this because we did it with Sivance. I know this from experience. There's two ways you can make change in an office like the Manhattan D.A.'s office that has a storied history and storied reputation and excellent, extraordinary career prosecutors who have devoted their lives to doing this and who are the top at the top of their field, right? How are you going to change things? You can do it one of two ways. You can do it by fiat and say, this is how we're going to do it. Or you can do it by trying to win over the hearts and minds of the people there. And if I had one criticism for myself under Sivance was that I wanted to rule, I wanted to win over the hearts and minds. I didn't want to rule by fiat. And the reason I would criticize myself

for that is because we didn't get done as much as I would have liked to have gotten done. I think sometimes you have to be a little more my way or the highway. That being said, I would argue that the DA brag perhaps could have spent a little more time, not just winning over the hearts and minds internally in the office, but also externally. He's getting a lot of pushback externally from, from the community and from the people in New York who feel that he's going to make them less safe. And the mayor of New York who, who, can't, and the police, yeah, the mayor of the police commission. A 20 year captain and the police force who campaigned on law and order and on returning public safety to a city that perceptually looked like it was run amuck, especially after the riots that

happened as a tangent of the BLM, it wasn't the BLM protesters. It was rioters and looters who got inside the protest in order to go rob Gucci's and use it as a cover then properly. But the new mayor is a person, the new mayor is a person of color. The police commission was a person of color. It's just very interesting. And he really should have taken the time, I think, to get buy-in from people. And that takes time. And that was a frustration under advance.

So sometimes we would want to do things. And but you have to take the time to do that. That process is important. So in your view, it shouldn't necessarily. It didn't have to be the first day memo. It could have been the first month memo. And that would have given him more time to go meet with Mayor Adams to meet with the new police commissioner to kind of float this trial balloon out. It doesn't mean he wasn't going to stand by his convictions, but it means he would have

gotten more support. So now, and meet with the prosecutors inside the office. Who would have told them and who would have took because there are a few things in the memo, much of the memo. It's a little sloppy. It's a little sloppy. I'll give you two things that I'll tell you two things I found sloppy as a civilian in reading it because I read it second day, the first day memo, I read the next day. And there are two things I took away from it and I'm a lawyer and I do this for a living. One was he's rarely going gonna prosecute resisting arrest.

Now, if you really read deeper, it's not exactly that, but that's what it looks like. So that looks like a license to the street that don't worry you can resist arrest and which puts cops in jeopardy, that's a problem. And the second was how few crimes, how few crimes he really was going to end up prosecuting. Now, maybe that's because he was going to be diverting more of the diversion programs. But it looked like a license to lawlessness, which is exactly the wrong message. You for progressives

who are trying to reform criminal justice, you don't want to say to the people, hey, you're going to be less safe with this social experiment. You want to say you're going to be more safe and for a longer institutional period of time. But we're not going to do the stop and frisk. We're not going to do all the things that like Giuliani did. We're not going to care as much about broken windows and graffiti on subways. But we have a plan and we have a program and at the end of it, you will be safer. Where was that messaging? Well, so the problem is what was lost is so much of what is in this memo is already being done. We're not going to prosecute marijuana. We're not going to prosecute theft of services. Guess what? Sivans did that already. So much of what's in here didn't need to come back

at him as a backlash. So, and that's what's frustrating for me is, it feels like an unforced error. There are a couple of things in here though that I frankly think are troublesome and that I think he's walking back, like gunpoint robbery, gunpoint robbery, that you're going to charge

that as as a pet it larceny. Petit larceny is the same thing is is literally stealing a pack of gum from the store. So just for our just for our legal efforts out there, you have the difference between cland larceny, which is at a certain level of value or or crime and then pet it or petite larceny, which is what KFA is talking about now, which is at a lower level, but you could do a pet, you could do a pet it, you, you call it pet it, pet it larceny with a gun. And that sounds like that person should be taking away and handcuffs.

That's a gunpoint robbery, right? That's a, that's a robbery in the first degree. That's a B violent felony, which is the almost, you know, it's a violent felony, is murderers and B violence are things like gunpoint robberies. It's a serious crime. And he's already walking that back. He didn't mean that, but the way that he's written is it makes people think, are you kidding me? And so there are things in there. I think the sentiment in there is mostly good,

but there are certain things in there that I think the sentiment in there is mostly good, but there are certain things in there that I think could have been, I think he needs to be given a chance. And I think people need to support him. And I think he's going to do great things. Well, that was the topic of the Midas Touch Brothers podcast this last couple of episodes, which is progressive Democrats do a lousy job of communicating how well they're doing. And a lot of, as you say, unforced errors and backbiting and cannibalizing among Democrats when things in hand-ringing, which the Republicans don't have.

Maybe it has to do with moral conscience. I don't know. There were Republicans circle the wagons when one of them is in trouble. The Democrats. Yeah, the Democrats that, you know, we eat our ears. We eat our, we eat our, that's good. That'll be our new subject. Legal AF Wednesdays, we don't eat our young. So I'm gonna say things like that, but no, but that's really how I see it. You just, you just did, but you have to make me a promise to make a promise to our legal AF audience, which is you, that you're gonna continue to bring this perspective

and this kind of inside baseball detail about your former life as a prosecutor to things that we cover on this Wednesday. Will you do that for us? Absolutely. All right, so unfortunately we have to end it. I made a promise to the audience and to Ben and to the brothers that we would try to keep this in

nice fights. You and I talked about the perfect length of a podcast of this type is about 30 minutes. So you can you can get it into a commute, you can get it into a workout, you can get it in when you got a walk away from your family and we're going to do just that. So if it's Wednesdays, it is legal AF first cut Wednesdays. If it is Friday, Saturday, Sunday or the rest, it's legal. I left with Michael Popeok and Ben Mysalis. And of course, we're produced by the Midas Touch Network. And it shout out, I get to say this and ever say it

usually shout out to the Midas Mighty and to the legal AF first Karen. Any last departing words? Just I'm so just delighted that you're having me here and Hopefully I'm thrilled that you want me to bring this perspective because is because I think it is misunderstood I think there are such phenomenal people who are doing good things especially the progressive prosecutors around the country And we need to we need to support them and lift them up and help them succeed because we all will benefit from that to support them and lift them up and help them succeed because we all will benefit from that. KFA and Popock in the house every Wednesday for Legal AF. And we'll see everybody next week.