Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s stormy first year

Manhattan’s first Black district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has had a historic and wild year.

Bragg has overseen the criminal conviction of Donald Trump’s namesake company along with prosecuting high-profile homicides and a deluge of hate crimes — all while dealing with significant staff upheaval and attacks from critics.

His first 12 months have been tempestuous, to say the least.

“The perfect storm,” is how Bragg described it to the Daily News. “Crime rising nationally, the gubernatorial race, the pandemic, first Black district attorney, the Trump Organization and then, you know, adding the resignations. Certainly, that peculiar, and perhaps unique, perfect storm, I didn’t predict.”

He barely had a chance to tour his new office when the storm clouds started gathering.

Bragg’s “Day One Memo” to staff on his first Monday in office advising prosecutors not to seek jail time or bail for many serious crimes catapulted him into the spotlight, where he would reappear throughout 2022.

The edict ignited a firestorm and prompted NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell to tell officers she was “very concerned.”

“I think the only candid thing to say about the Day One Memo is that it was a big mistake and it was a very bad way to make your debut,” Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission and a former Manhattan prosecutor, told the Daily News.

“Encouragingly, I think he recognized it very quickly and took quick steps to try and clarify it,” added Aborn. “Going from being a high-level supervisor in the AG’s office to being a Manhattan district attorney is a much bigger step than just changing office addresses. I think Alvin needed to make that adjustment.”

Bragg met with Sewell and clarified the memo’s more controversial policies. He insisted that combating gun violence was his top priority. The latest numbers back him up, with a more than doubling of gun prosecutions, with 560 cases by November compared to 258 in pre-pandemic 2019.

The figures show an increase from the last two years as gun crime has soared in the city. Former Manhattan DA Cy Vance’s office brought 377 firearm cases in 2020 and 492 in 2021.

The Day One directive was still a hot topic when in mid-February veteran white-collar attorneys Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne resigned, citing the new DA’s hesitancy to indict former President Donald Trump.

Bragg declined to discuss the probe but has insisted it’s “active and ongoing.” Two sources familiar with the investigation said in the spring Bragg didn’t believe there was sufficient evidence to prove Trump had criminal intent.

The December convictions of Trump Organization entities and the company’s finance chief Allen Weisselberg in August for tax dodging provided new ammo for a possible indictment against the former president.

Charges against Trump adviser Steve Bannon filed in September and the hiring of an ex-Justice Department official has also fueled speculation Bragg’s office is still focused on Trump.

Bragg’s career in New York government started in 2003 at the state attorney general’s office, where he returned in 2013 and headed a unit that investigated police killings of unarmed civilians. In 2017, he was appointed as chief deputy AG.

The career prosecutor’s focus on corrupt cops did not shift when he became DA. He has expanded his office’s police accountability unit, which now reports directly to him. In November, his post-conviction justice unit vacated 188 convictions connected to eight former NYPD officers.

Bragg was grilling police brass on the witness stand at the state judicial inquest into Eric Garner’s killing when he was elected.

“He was an effective lawyer against the NYPD which made the PBA and others put a political target on his back,” said Rev. Al Sharpton. “Frankly, a lot of them can’t get over the fact that a Black attorney is sitting in Robert Morgenthau’s seat.”

The late Morgenthau, the longest serving district attorney in the state’s history, retired in 2009 after 35 years on the job.

Bragg faced criticism over the summer for being a hardliner in the murder cases against nurse Tracy McCarter and deli worker Jose Alba.

But then in November, he moved to dismiss the case against McCarter, who claims she acted in self-defense when she fatally stabbed her husband, James Murray, whom she said was abusive.

And he dropped charges against Alba in July after footage of the Hamilton Heights bodega worker knifing Austin Simon as he attacked Alba prompted a flood of sympathy for the suspect.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin called for Bragg to be fired for bringing charges against Alba, highlighting the controversy in campaign ads, elevating criticisms against Bragg to a fever pitch. Police unions at protests amplified Zeldin’s calls for the DA’s removal.

Detectives’ Endowment Association President Paul DiGiacomo told the Daily News he still believes Bragg has overly lenient prosecution policies.

“It’s not only in the borough of Manhattan,” DiGiacomo said. “Every district attorney in this city and in this state should be out verbally protesting against these bail reform laws.”

A lifelong Manhattanite, Bragg teaches Sunday school at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. He vehemently disputes claims that he doesn’t prioritize public safety.

“It’s very different when I engage with victims and survivors because I’ve had a knife at my neck. I’ve been shot at,” Bragg said. “I’ve had a semiautomatic weapon pointed at me. I’ve had to walk my kids through a crime scene — recently.”

For all the complaints he’s “soft on crime,” progressives have accused Bragg of the opposite, saying he abandoned policies he ran on to reduce incarceration.

Bob Gangi, director of the Police Reform Organizing Project and longtime court watcher, says he’s seen little change from his perspective in the back row of Manhattan arraignments.

“They were still prosecuting low-level broken-windows type cases, it seemed to us, as often as Vance’s office would do,” Gangi said, referring to Bragg’s immediate predecessor as Manhattan Attorney General, Cy Vance Jr.

The DA stepped up intervention efforts to divert repeat offenders charged with crimes that are no longer bail-eligible to social services and to specialized lawyers via the creation of the Pathways to Public Safety Division in March. In December, Bragg invested $9 million toward courtroom- and neighborhood-based social workers.

Bragg is trying to address the city’s housing crisis with a new unit investigating corrupt landlords and developers. He has brought several cases against the construction industry.

As for the new year, the DA said he’ll be focused on fostering trust in Manhattan’s communities.

“The sort of travesty of the discussion is the political focus on me,” he said. “We should be talking about the people who survive real trauma and harm — or don’t survive it in our homicide cases.”

In January, Sharpton will host Bragg and other Black leaders for a meeting about crime. Criticisms from both sides of the political aisle, Sharpton said, signal that the DA is not trying to please either.

“I think that the fact that he’s attacked by the right and the left means he’s not soft on crime — because he does not go as far as some on the left want him to go,” said Sharpton.

“I’ve always told him that if you’ve got the Jackie Robinson Syndrome — when you’re the first — you’re gonna get hit by traffic coming both ways.”