“Everyone stands equal before the law,” Manhattan’s Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg famously said at a 2023 national press conference, as he indicted former President Donald Trump.
With a DA like that, Manhattan is surely as safe as Singapore, Tokyo or Zurich, right?
Don’t all roll on the floor laughing at once.
Bragg is, after all, the district attorney who launched his first day in office with his notorious “Day One Memo” that effectively said that some people will be treated differently for certain crimes, including armed robbery.
Which brings us to the case of Brian Chin, now charged by Bragg with felony assault.
Chin was the landlord of Christina Yuna Lee, the young woman who was brutally stabbed to death in her Chinatown apartment in 2022 by a vagrant shelter resident with a long rap sheet of violent crimes, including robbery — a crime demoted in Bragg’s “Day One Memo.”
Since that murder, and as Chin’s Chinatown neighborhood steadily deteriorated under the onslaught of Democratic soft-on-crime policies emanating not just from Bragg’s office but also from City Hall, the state Capitol and the White House, the landlord became an unpaid community activist trying to keep his block safe.
All because our ideologically obsessed Democratic governments at all levels are failing miserably to fulfill the most fundamental of government responsibilities: that of ensuring basic physical safety for its citizens.
Chin is in trouble because he allegedly “pummeled” a violent vagrant who went at him with a wooden club that had a nail sticking out of it.
Does this remind you of Jose Alba, the bodega worker who was charged by Bragg for defending himself against armed thugs, in the heat of which Alba killed one of his attackers?
Does it remind you of the Ong brothers, who were charged by Bragg for defending themselves in front of their own apartment building against a gang of five violent thugs, slashing one of them in the process?
Bragg may bloviate that “everyone stands equal before the law” against Jose Alba, the Ong brothers and Brian Chin, but where was the law for them when Alba was being robbed?
Where was this law when the Ong brothers called 911 and nobody responded from the police precinct two blocks away?
And where was this law as Brian Chin’s neighborhood became increasingly infested with violent vagrants and junkies, one of whom killed Christina Yuna Lee?
What are these people to do to protect themselves, when the law is dysfunctional?
It could happen to any of us.
Democrats like to say that nobody is above the law — when it suits them.
Then, there are the other times.
Everyone did not stand equal before the law when the four attackers who killed Madeline Brame’s Afghanistan war veteran son had their charges either ridiculously downgraded or completely dismissed by Alvin Bragg.
Everyone did not stand equal before the law when Alvin Bragg dismissed charges against nearly all Columbia, NYU and CUNY rioters — reportedly led by well-trained non-students — who shut down buildings and violently threatened Jewish students there.
And Bragg wields “the law” against store clerks, but not against store criminals, even when video cameras record blatant, organized thefts that lead to store closures, job losses and tax-base collapse.
These are particular examples, but copious statistics on Bragg’s hyper-selective prosecution show that his pretension that everyone stands equal before the law is flat-out ludicrous.
For Bragg, the law is a vehicle for his political agenda, which stands above everyone and everything else.
Incidentally, Alvin Bragg actually professes strong concern for safety in Chinese-American communities.
He is proud to have established a task force specifically dedicated to anti-Asian crimes.
Laughably, that task force is only concerned with “hate” crimes — while we don’t have basic physical safety.
Give us district attorneys who will address that first.
Uphold the ideal of everyone standing equal before the law — with honesty, integrity and impartiality.
Wai Wah Chin is the founding president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York and an adjunct fellow of the Manhattan Institute.