The Five Borough Defender graph of Manhattan DA candidates (full version below)

A coalition of New York City's public defenders has released a report analyzing the campaign policies of the Manhattan District Attorney candidates vying to replace incumbent Cy Vance, Jr., and their plans to implement those policies. Vance is unlikely to seek reelection and eight Democrats are running in the June primary.

The new analysis from Five Boro Defenders was conducted through the group's decarceral lens and based

Top (l-r): Tahanie Aboushi, Alvin Bragg, Eliza Orlins, Tali Farhadian Weinstein Bottom (l-r): Liz Crotty, Dan Quart, Diana Florence, Lucy Lang

The eight candidates running in the 2021 Democratic primary for Manhattan District Attorney convened virtually on Thursday for a panel discussion to offer their plans for a reimagined District Attorney's office. While all the candidates are talking about extensive reform, some want to go far further than others, and the candidates’ resumes inform those distinctions and, in combination, offer significant differences for voters to choose from in the

Top (l-r): Tahanie Aboushi, Alvin Bragg, Eliza Orlins, Tali Farhadian Weinstein
Bottom (l-r): Liz Crotty, Dan Quart, Diana Florence, Lucy Lang

It seems more and more likely that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance will not run for reelection as he has not fundraised for his campaign even as a crowded field of Democrats is seeking the party’s nomination in the June primary. The eight candidates running active campaigns and Vance all just filed their latest mandatory campaign finance disclosures, showing their fundraising and spending for

Top (l-r): Tahanie Aboushi, Alvin Bragg, Eliza Orlins, Janos Marton, Tali Farhadian Weinstein
Bottom (l-r): Liz Crotty, Dan Quart, Diana Florence, Lucy Lang

Tuesday night, the Chelsea Reform Democrats and Hell’s Kitchen Democrats co-hosted a candidate forum for the nine candidates running in the 2021 Democratic primary for Manhattan District Attorney. Incumbent Cy Vance has not declared whether or not he plans to run for reelection, but he has not been actively fundraising for another run and has not appeared at any of the early forums, where candidates have

Top (l-r): Tahanie Aboushi, Alvin Bragg, Eliza Orlins, Janos Marton, Tali Farhadian Weinstein
Bottom (l-r): Liz Crotty, Dan Quart, Diana Florence, Lucy Lang

The nine Democratic candidates currently running for Manhattan District Attorney in next year’s June primary shared the Zoom debate stage for the first time Tuesday night at a three-hour forum hosted by the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, an LGBTQ-focused political organization.

(l-r) Dan Quart, Alvin Bragg, Tahanie Aboushi, Janos Marton, Eliza Orlins

With the 2021 Democratic primary for Manhattan District Attorney now under a year away, five candidates for the office participated in a forum hosted by the New York City Program Council and Columbia Law School’s Black Law Students Association. Manhattan’s current District Attorney, Cy Vance, has not yet said if he will seek reelection next year as the borough’s top prosecutor and law enforcement officer, but he was a frequent target of his potential opponents during the event.

The

Cy Vance (photo: @ManhattanDA)

Five candidates vying to become the next Manhattan District Attorney will participate in a forum on Tuesday, just under a year before the primary election and over a year after the first candidate in the race announced his campaign. The event, featuring all Democrats, is being hosted by the NYC Programming Council and Columbia Law School. Current District Attorney Cy Vance hasn’t said whether or not he will seek reelection in 2021 and is not participating in the first debate of the race.

The event comes a week after Vance

(photo: Bard Prison Initiative)

In February 2014, early in his first reelection year, Governor Andrew Cuomo made what proved to be a bold proposal to reduce recidivism by creating opportunities for higher education in state prisons, seizing on an enduring problem at the intersection of social and criminal justice reform efforts. But he had misjudged the political landscape and the announcement was met with significant backlash followed by an uncharacteristic reversal for the seasoned New York powerbroker.

It took nearly four more years, and litigation with the world’s largest

(photo: NYPD)

The MTA’s crackdown on fare evasion and homelessness in the city’s subway system, at the behest of Governor Andrew Cuomo and with support from Mayor Bill de Blasio, is facing a chorus of criticism over the criminalization of poverty and targeting largely of New Yorkers of color. Rather than a police response, these issues can be better handled by stronger safety net programs, including discounted Metrocards, and outreach from social workers, some critics say, while others also point out the MTA is in no fiscal position to hire the planned 500 new

(photo: the governor's office)

At the end of August, NBC New York ran a story about a young woman who was raped after going out to a Manhattan bar. Despite the fact that she came forward, wanting justice to be done, the Manhattan District Attorney refused to prosecute the case.

When a reporter questioned his decision not to pursue charges, DA Cyrus Vance’s staff shared a letter he wrote

Manhattan DA Cy Vance (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)

I don’t buy Cy Vance’s defense that his Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Gaffney “made a mistake” in interpreting the law when she asked for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex offender status to be downgraded in 2011. Five years later, as Deputy Chief of the DA’s Sex Crimes Unit, she asked for and got a

Manhattan DA Cy Vance (photo: @ManhattanDA)

District attorneys wield nearly unfettered discretion as to whether to prosecute potential defendants, but nothing in the law prevents lawyers for the accused from donating to a district attorney’s election campaign. Most New Yorkers became aware of this glaring blindspot in the state’s campaign finance law in 2017, following news that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s campaign had accepted thousands of dollars from an attorney for Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood mogul who Vance’s office had

AG Tish James (photo: New York Attorney General website)

In 2018 Letitia James won a historic election to become the first woman of color to hold statewide office in New York and the first woman to be elected Attorney General. Filling a seat vacated by Eric Schneiderman (a misogynist playing women’s champion by day), James pledged to be a new kind of people’s lawyer, “unbossed and unbought” by Governor Andrew Cuomo

Manhattan DA Vance leads a press conference (photo: @NYPDnews)

As an elected member of the state Assembly, one of my main priorities is to ensure New Yorkers have a government that works with them to protect their rights and their safety. That’s why I’ve become increasingly concerned by the steps Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has taken to undermine digital privacy through his weak position on encryption protection.

Americans are rightfully worried about the confidentiality of their electronic information, from financial documents

Four NYC DAs  (photo: @ManhattanDA)

For the past four months, the people of Manhattan have grappled with accusations of their District Attorney cultivating a pay-to-play culture in which the rich and powerful skate by serious criminal charges -- if their lawyers contribute sizable donations to DA Vance’s campaign. In a public display of penance for allowing the appearance of corruption to permeate, Vance requested The Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School to investigate ways to better insulate our elected prosecutors

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance (photo: Manhattan DA facebook)

District attorneys should separate themselves from fundraising efforts and implement tighter vetting procedures for donors to reduce the appearance of bias, says a new report by the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (CAPI) at Columbia Law School.

The recommendations were requested by Manhattan District Attorney Cy

Comptroller Tom DiNapoli (@NYSComptroller)

As the office and campaign of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance reexamine internal policies regarding the acceptance of campaign contributions, they may want to reference the guidebook of the office of the State Comptroller or Attorney General, both of which have implemented their own donor-vetting systems and guidelines in the wake of controversies involving fundraising practices. These checks far exceed what is required by ...

Manhattan DA Cy Vance (photo: @ManhattanDA)

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., was recently dragged into an unflattering spotlight over his decision not to prosecute disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein for a forcible touching incident in 2015 and for dropping a fraud investigation into members of the Trump family in a 2012, while apparently receiving campaign contributions from lawyers associated with both parties.

While it is not illegal - or uncommon - for district attorneys to accept contributions from

(photo: @NYPDnews)

In June 2016, the Policing Project at the NYU School of Law co-sponsored a study with the NYPD to assess sentiments regarding police body cameras, part of an effort to influence department policy as body cameras become worn by an increasing number of patrol officers. The NYPD has been gradually outfitting its officers with body

Mayor de Blasio (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance recently concluded his investigation into the effort by Mayor Bill de Blasio and his aides to funnel campaign funds to Democratic state Senate candidates in 2014. Vance did not bring any charges in the case, writing in a ten-page letter to the state Board of Elections enforcement counsel Risa Sugarman, who had referred the case for prosecution, that “the parties involved cannot be appropriately prosecuted, given their reliance on

Gov. Cuomo (photo: The Governor's Office on flickr)

In the wake of the financial collapse and the Great Recession, New York City and State officials began to rake in enormous sums of money from settlements with major banking institutions.

Because New York is the major financial industry hub of the world, local officials have jurisdiction over these institutions, and thus related fines, forfeitures, and restitutions. In deals made outside of the budgetary process, New York officials like the Attorney General, and Manhattan District

The five District Attorneys at a March hearing (photo: William Alatriste)

The district attorneys of the five boroughs reasserted their need for increased funding in the 2017 fiscal year at a City Council executive budget hearing Monday at City Hall. Council members—opting to forego heavy questioning of the necessity of this funding—framed fulfilling the district attorney requests as a crucial step towards criminal justice reform.

The public safety committee hearing was the penultimate executive budget hearing, with

Cy Vance (front) and Bill de Blasio (photo via The Mayor's Office on flickr)

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance finds himself in a unique situation as he takes on the investigation of efforts led by Mayor Bill de Blasio to win control of the state Senate for Democrats in 2014.

Vance has a longstanding political relationship with de Blasio and both share a number of donors. Like de Blasio, Vance is an elected Democrat. They’ve stood together for several policy announcements over the past two-plus years since de Blasio took office as

New York City Hall

What to watch for this week in New York politics:

This week will be another busy one when it comes to budgets: the City Council continues its preliminary budget hearings and state budget negotiations enter their final ten days - a state budget is due by April 1 and some say a deal could be announced before the end of this week. Don't count on it, though, state budgets usually come in just before (or, as was the case last year, just after) the March 31 midnight

Gov. Cuomo delivers his State of the State

In his recently-released policy agenda for 2016, Gov. Andrew Cuomo included a plan to reform the state's bail system. While it has not been fully fleshed out yet, Cuomo's proposal dictates that judges would use a scientific assessment tool to determine an individual's "risk to public safety" while setting bail, a proposal similar to one Mayor Bill de Blasio recently made, with both coming under fire from criminal justice reformers.

De Blasio made ...