The Ironic Tragedy of Albany Dems Rejecting the DA Who Sounded the Alarm on Rising Youth Gun Crime

Last week’s shooting of two teenagers near the Governor’s Mansion led Albany’s mayor to lament that the city is “flooded with guns” — just months after Democrats removed District Attorney David Soares for attributing the gun crisis to deficient criminal-justice reforms.

Talk about poetic justice.

Soares consistently voiced concerns about how the Raise the Age initiative and other state “reforms” had resulted in increasing gun violence among teens, prompting Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan to rally local Democrats to support (and subsequently elect) a different candidate last year.

Soares, a lifelong progressive, argued that teens caught with loaded weapons “should not be able to walk right out of family court after just getting juice and crackers” — yet that’s exactly what Raise the Age enforced.

The DA initially gained office by criticizing the harsh Rockefeller drug laws and their mandatory minimum sentences for drug trafficking, but his ongoing denunciation of criminal-justice reforms that compromised public safety angered the Democratic leadership in the Legislature.

They opted to silence the messenger instead of addressing the flawed reforms that Soares warned had “normalized” violence among youth.

Ultimately, they ousted Soares, while youth gun violence in the Capital District persists without abatement.

What a revelation!

His poignant question remains relevant: “At what point will the body count be sufficiently high to warrant action?” Soares asked following two fatal shootings in 2023.

This year, Gov. Kathy Hochul is attempting to rectify one flawed reform, the 2019 “discovery” rules, which led to the dismissal of thousands of criminal cases due to unrealistic deadlines for prosecutors and other issues.

However, the Raise the Age law is a cherished priority for Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and the majority of the Legislature’s Democrats.

Thus, the death toll will likely continue to rise just outside the Executive Mansion and in impoverished, minority communities across New York.