NYPD Commish Bill Bratton to Obama: We Have to Be ‘Very Concerned’ About Who We Let Out of Prison

On Sunday, New York City’s AM 970 host John Catsimatidis had New York City Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton on his “The Cats Roundtable” program and discussed the danger of reducing mass incarceration a month after President Obama announced the early release of about 6,000 non-violent offenders.

Bratton warned that those in charge should be “very concerned” about which criminals they release, because some may have “negotiated charges” on their record.

“We have the issue of the moment, incarceration, the belief that over the years there were too many people put in jail,” he said. “There’s a major effort underway to let a lot of people out of jail, ostensibly less violent offenders. But one of the issues of concern is when people go to jail, oftentimes they go to jail with negotiated charges. So somebody that is in jail that seems that they’re a non-violent drug offender may in fact have crimes of violence in their record. We have to be very concerned about who we’re letting out.”

He later added, “Some people are bad people. And we need to separate the bad people from the good people.”