Other elected officials and a lawyer for the teenage defendant disputed Mayor Eric Adams’s characterization of the law’s role in the case.
Mayor Eric Adams escalated his battle against New York’s bail law on Friday, blaming it for the release from custody of a teenager accused in the shooting of a police officer in the Bronx this month. Shortly after speaking at the funeral of a slain police officer, Mr. Adams, a former police captain, released a statement saying he was “outraged” that the teenager, Camrin Williams, had been released on bond — his most forceful comments yet calling for changes to the law. “Today of all days, with the city in mourning over the deaths of Detective First-Grade Jason Rivera and Police Officer Wilbert Mora, we all must come together and agree that changes are needed,” Mr. Adams said in the statement. The officers were fatally shot a week earlier. The bail law, which was passed in 2019, has been the subject of heated dispute since it took effect the following year. Mr. Adams has called for changes that would allow judges, when making decisions on bail, to consider the danger a defendant poses to the community, something state law has barred for decades. Mr. Adams argued in his statement that Mr. Williams,16, had gone free “because judges are precluded from even considering danger to the community.” Other elected officials and Mr. Williams’s lawyer said the situation was more nuanced than the mayor was suggesting, with some arguing that the bail law was not at issue in a judge’s decision to free the teenager. Bronx prosecutors charged Mr. Williams on Jan.19 with assaulting a police officer and possession of a loaded firearm, after a bullet from a gun he was carrying hit Officer Kaseem Pennant in the leg during a confrontation the previous day, according to court documents.
