On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing in Manhattan to allow those affected by violent crime the chance to tell their stories and discuss whether District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s policies are making their city more dangerous.
The hearing was mired in controversy as Democrats accused the Republicans of holding the hearing in Manhattan for one reason only: to act as a criminal defense counsel for former president Donald J. Trump who has been accused of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments.
Madeline Brame, chairwoman of the Victims Rights Reform Council and the mother of a homicide victim, was among the witnesses called to speak in front of the committee. Sergeant Hassan Korea, Brame’s son, had been assaulted by a gang and stabbed by four people he did not know in an incident caught on video.
Here is her son’s story in her own words:
Madeline Brame, mother of Sgt Hason Correa who was stabbed to death in Harlem in 2018, goes off on Alvin Bragg for dismissing charges and letting murderers go free pic.twitter.com/i3lURvcvXR
— • ᗰISᑕᕼIᗴᖴ ™ • (@4Mischief) April 17, 2023
In her written testimony, Brame claimed the prosecution of the individuals who killed her son was mishandled by district attorney Alvin Bragg and that during his tenure, she had been told by an assistant district attorney that the DA’s office “didn’t have the resources to try all four defendants.”
Brame also waved away crime statistics brought up by some committee members, saying “the average New Yorker doesn’t care about any statistic…We care about the mothers who have to visit the morgue to identify their dead’s child body.”
Brame’s testimony was in stark contrast to the heated political rhetoric that dominated the hearing. She implored the committee members to stop talking politics and start focusing on the victims of crime.
“Victims can care less about anyone’s political ideology or party. Neither do criminals. They don’t roll up to a person and ask them if they’re a Democrat or a Republican before they bust them in the head, or before they push them in front of the train, or before they stab them to death,” she explained.
“We pay you guys,” She noted. “You work for us we do not work for you!”
Ms Madeline Brame: “We pay you guys, our tax dollars pay you. You work for us we do not work for you.” 💯🔥🔥🔥🔥🎤 pic.twitter.com/mdTJ0NCnvw
— 🔥🇺🇸 KC 🇺🇸🔥 (@KCPayTreeIt) April 17, 2023
Republicans on the committee zeroed in on District Attorney Bragg’s Day One Memo, which instructed assistant district attorneys “to make a common-sense difference between two very different types of cases: a person holding a knife to someone’s neck, and someone who, usually struggling with substance use or mental health issues, shoplifts and makes a minimal threat to a store employee while leaving.”
Jennifer Harrison, founder of Victims Rights NY, whose boyfriend was stabbed to death, agreed with Brame that small crimes contribute to a lack of public safety in the city. “We fought so hard in the 90s to stop this crime wave that we had in New York City and we did it,” said Harrison, “but now it’s being rolled back to the good old days.”
The victims-rights advocate also argued that New York’s gun laws are not making the city safer. “New York might have strict gun laws, but it also have conflicting gun laws,” she explained, adding that “all they want to do is talk about gun legislation on the books, but if it’s not enforced, which is what Alvin Bragg is doing, then it’s not going to matter and people are going to die.”
Democrats reiterated their view throughout that the hearing was highly political. “This committee has used every means at its disposal to disrupt, interrupt, and interfere with the prosecution” of Donald Trump, explained Representative Adam Schiff (D., Calif.).
Check Out Brame’s reponce: ‘Don’t insult my intelligence!”
Rep. Daniel Goldman tries to say the violent crime hearing is a "charade" and witness Madeline Brame, whose Army vet son was killed in NYC, tells him "Don't insult my intelligence… This is why I walked away from the plantation of the Democratic Party." pic.twitter.com/2OBrEmvYQY
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 17, 2023
The hearing in Manhattan was only the first in a series of hearings on crime around the country. As Representative Mike Johnson (R., Ohio) clarified, “We’re going to have other hearings. We’re going to go wherever we need to go.”
Overall, the hearing in Manhattan was a reminder that victims of crime should not be forgotten or overlooked. Madeline Brame, whose son was taken too soon, urged the committee members to focus on the victims, not on political rhetoric. “We care about the mothers who have to visit the morgue to identify their dead’s child body,” she said. “This is not a game. This is real life. This is real pain.
