Tiffany Harris, a Brooklyn woman who was arrested three times within five days for anti-Semitic attacks, has finally been retained in custody after being released twice without bail due to New York's new criminal justice reforms, NY Post reported on Thursday.
Following a criminal trial hearing on Wednesday, Judge Joseph Gubbay ordered Harris to be held for a mandatory psychiatric evaluation.
Harris, 30, was originally arrested last Friday on charges of menace, harassment and attempted assault of three Jewish women in Crown Heights. Although, she admitted to slapping and cursing the women and it wasn't the first time she was arrested for assault, she was released a few hours later without bail.
A day later, on Sunday, she was arrested again for punching another Jewish woman in Brooklyn in front of her two children and was again released without bail the next day.
Harris was arrested a third time on New Year's Eve for failing to comply with court-ordered monitoring and for allegedly pinching a social worker.
Harris's lawyer objected to her being hospitalized, insisting that Harris, who has been arrested more than a dozen times, is mentally sound.
Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, which is representing Harris, said: “We are gratified that she is not on Rikers Island, where she would face violence, potential solitary confinement and sub-par medical treatment,” said Schreibersdorf. “The new bail laws resulted in a much more humane and likely more effective outcome and that is what they were intended to do.”
New York's new criminal justice reforms, which went into effect on January 1, 2020, eliminate cash bail and pretrial detention for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, with violent felonies being defined as assaults that result in physical injury. The reforms have raised much controversy with some saying that bail reform is being applied to perpetrators of crimes who should not be let back on the streets.
A WRGB Albany news report said that a bank robbery suspect qualified for release under the new criminal reforms.
"This is a person who is not only being accused of a violent felony which is robbery but he’s a previously convicted bank robber he has three previous bank robberies to convictions for bank robbery," Lt. Robert Winn of the Colonie Police Department said.
"None of us here are opposed to people getting out of jail as they should. What does bail reform did though is that it took the discretion away from the judges," Winn concluded.