Crimefighter exodus: Manhattan prosecutors flee DA office after Bragg takes helm
Prosecutors in soft-on-crime Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office are flooding the exits amid his “radical shift in policy,” The Post has learned.
Bragg’s controversial “Day One” memo issued on Jan. 3 told assistant district attorneys to not seek prison sentences for many criminals and to downgrade some felonies to misdemeanors. His leadership has already created a firestorm that has led to an online petition calling for him to be removed.
“I know one [ADA] who was with the office over 20 years who left without a job,” said a law enforcement source. “They didn’t want to work in this kind of office. They wanted to continue prosecuting the law.”
Over the past two weeks, at least a dozen lawyers have quit.
Among the departures is senior trial counsel Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, who successfully prosecuted Harvey Weinstein, and won a 2016 conviction in the infamous 1979 murder of Etan Patz.
Illuzzi-Orbon, a Republican, had been at the office since 1988, taking only a brief leave in 2015 for an unsuccessful run for District Attorney in Staten Island.
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Madeline Brame, the mother of murder victim Hason Correa, said she was worried about what Bragg’s policies — which include not seeking prison sentences of more than 20 years in most cases — would mean for the upcoming trail of her son’s accused killers. Correa, a 35-year-old Army vet, was stabbed to death in Harlem in 2018.
Brame said the prosecutor in the case left last year and she recently reached out to her replacement because she was feeling “Tortured, tormented, stressed out and frustrated not knowing now are these people only going to (get) 20 years for killing my boy.”
“He had no answers for me. None,” she said.
Crimefighter exodus: Manhattan prosecutors flee DA office after Bragg takes helm