New York City Mayor Eric Adams, facing mounting pressure as subway crime mounts despite his new safety initiative, responded to one in a series of particular outrageous cases in recent weeks: The feces attack on a woman in the Bronx.
But this one isn't just about the subway.
The man arrested and charged in that case, 37-year-old Frank Abrokwa of the Bronx, was arraigned and promptly rearrested on hate crime charges in a previous incident in Brooklyn. Then he was released again. In that September 2021 case, he allegedly accosted a Jewish man and cursed at him, threatening to kill him and trying to punch him before chasing him on the street.
Abrokwa is also accused in an alleged screwdriver theft in the Bronx from last month and has two pending cases in Manhattan -- and yet he was released after his arraignment Wednesday on his own recognizance. That means he only has to check in periodically with a supervised release office as his court cases proceed.
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Why is that, given he is allegedly a repeat offender? None of the charges Abrokwa has faced qualify for him to be held on bail under the state's bail reform laws.
New Yorkers have been up in arms about that. Answering to them on Thursday, Adams said Abrokwa shouldn't have been on the street and his release "shows the scope of changes that we need to make in order to keep New Yorkers safe."
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"It is the result of a failed mental health system, a failed housing and support system, and failing criminal justice laws that allow someone with a history of violence who poses a clear threat to public safety to just walk out of court," the mayor continued. "We can’t allow this horrific situation to be the status quo and must make changes to our laws to both prevent these sort of attacks, through intervention and support, and, when they happen, to subsequently keep people who are clearly a danger to others off the street."
MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber had also criticized the decision to release Abrokwa, saying that it "defies common sense" that he was allowed to go free.
"I'm not a criminal justice expert but I don’t understand how someone who commits this kind of assault – which was violent, horribly victimizing a transit rider – can just walk free even when he has four other open cases against him, including two other transit assaults and a hate crime charge," Lieber said in a statement.
Lieber continued to vent his frustration on Thursday.
"I’m going to keep speaking out on our riders behalf and when our our riders and employees are viciously attacked like this vicious episode that happened a couple days ago when someone is using their own excrement to attack a rider," Lieber said. "I do not understand why the MTA can not ban people. Like that guy who had three priors of attacks in the subway system, from using our system. We take away drivers licenses for one drunk driving episode."
Perhaps most importantly, the alleged victim of the vile attack on the Bronx subway platform is livid that Abrokwa is allowed to walk free after what he has done.
"I don't feel safe. I have to work everyday and take the train, and to know this person is out there, it's even worse," she said in Spanish, adding that she believes the justice system failed her.
While Adams in no uncertain terms declared the need for immediate change, it's not immediately clear what might happen next in that regard. His subway safety initiative, which is paired with a homeless outreach initiative and being operated jointly by the city and the state, is still in its relative infancy.
Major transit crimes are up 30% week over week since it rolled out and up about 200% over the same week last year. And bail reform has been a constant, and oft-vocalized thorn in leading Democratic elected officials' sides for some time.
The reform laws that secured the supervised release of Abrokwa are the same that secured the release of Assamad Nash. Nash was out on supervised release when he allegedly killed Christina Lee after following her into her Chinatown apartment and stabbing her more than 40 times, a crime that rocked the city to its core.
