This Mothers Day, the best gift would be to get violent criminals off NYC streets

This Mother’s Day, Harlem is missing a very beloved mama.On April 22, “Momma Zee,” the neighborhood’s pet name for Excenia Mette, was killed trying to protect her grandson, Jarian Jordan Jr.Hearing gunshots from a nearby shoot-out, Momma Zee ran outside to make sure that Jarian was not in harm’s way — only to be struck by a fatal bullet.Such maternal care was one of this local legend’s defining characteristics, and something she bestowed on her whole community.

This included inspiring others: She was the first black woman to open a NYC bodega back in the 1980s.“That’s the person that she is,” said mourner Makeba Reece.

“She died doing what she does: loving and protecting.” But even a super mama can’t protect loved ones from peril without the criminal justice system backing her up.Momma Zee might still be alive if New York’s laws didn’t make it uniquely difficult to protect the community from dangerous criminals.Indeed, the Empire State remains the only one in the union where judges are not permitted to consider dangerousness in detaining an offender pre-trial, thanks largely to its extreme 2020 bail law.

And under 2018’s “Raise the Age” statute, New York’s rules for 16- and 17-year-olds who commit crimes are so irresponsibly lax that 75% of those who perpetrate even a violent felony are never prosecuted in criminal court. Further, even with Gov.Hochul’s teensy-weensy improvements to the state’s radical 2020 discovery law, the amended law will still mandate the nation’s most impossibly onerous compliance burden on prosecutors.

No wonder, as Hochul pointed out, 94% of these domestic violence cases (many against mothers or children) are now declined or dismissed.Indeed, as we learn more details, it is shamefully clear that NY’s criminal justice system failed to properly protect Harlem from the two dangerous young men who took Momma Zee’s life, even though both had been in custody before. Twenty-three-year-old Dario...