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The cops cuff ’em, and the Bronx DA sets ’em free.
Prosecutors working under District Attorney Robert Johnson routinely decline to pursue cases — at a rate twice as high as the rest of the city, newly released data show.
An internal policy in Johnson’s office dictates that cases should be dropped if a victim doesn’t give a statement within 24 hours, leaving 23.4 percent of all cases unprosecuted last year, law- enforcement officials said.
No other district attorney employs such a policy.
By contrast, district attorneys citywide declined to prosecute just 10.5 percent of cases last year — and the rate was just 12.1 percent on Staten Island, the second highest, and 4.8 percent in Manhattan, the lowest, according to data from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.
“First you have to understand we have to balance protection of citizens against prosecuting people without sufficient evidence. It’s a balancing act,” said Johnson’s spokesman, Steven Reed.
“If someone has been arrested and deprived of liberty, it’s our obligation to determine as soon as possible what evidence we have.”
The high rate of dropped cases, which has been consistently higher than the rest of the city since the seemingly soft-on-crime DA took office in 1989, was first reported by WNYC.
Academics and victims-rights advocates questioned how the Bronx numbers could be so out of whack with the rest of the city.
“It defies common sense that someone who has just been sexually assaulted or robbed can necessarily get it together to come down to the DA’s Office and give a full statement and be in the emotional state of mind to say everything they need to say,” said Mai Fernandez, a former Manhattan prosecutor and executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime.
Likewise, Ramatua Begura, a program director with the Bronx-based Sauti Yetu Center for African Women, says the policy has a chilling effect on sexual-assault victims.
“It takes advocates like ourselves days and weeks to make them understand they have rights and they will be protected,” she said. “Then if the case is dropped, it affirms to the community that maybe they are not telling the truth. It says to people she was lying all along, and then other victims won’t come forward.”
Indeed, during a three-month period in 2012, half of the cases the Bronx DA declined to pursue were dropped because the victim didn’t cooperate within a day.
“This creates an urgency that shouldn’t exist,” said Eugene O’Donnell, an ex-cop and prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College.
Just 10 percent were because of insufficient evidence and two percent were because of paperwork problems.
“I had one case where it was a domestic-violence case where the defendant was accused of choking his girlfriend until she lost consciousness,” said one veteran Bronx defense attorney.
“Because the girlfriend was now a reluctant complainant and told the prosecutor that she wasn’t going to cooperate, the DA’s Office dismissed the charges at arraignment. The judge was very unhappy and gave a tongue-lashing to the [assistant district attorney] and [said] they failed the victim.”
One street cop told The Post that inexperienced prosecutors bristle at having to actively pursue a case.
“They whine about doing the work. They say, ‘I’m not doing it.’ I’m like, ‘Well this is your job. Go and flip burgers at McDonald’s if you don’t like it,’ ” the officer said.
Reed, the Bronx DA spokesman, said his office drops cases earlier rather than having them dismissed months down the road.
But for 2011 The Bronx had 18 percent of all its cases dismissed compared to 17.5 percent citywide, the data show.
Additional reporting by Kirstan Conley