Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, like so many other progressive leftist prosecutors, has a penchant for a soft touch toward alleged criminals, whom he often releases from custody with low or no bail pending charges and trial for their alleged criminal behavior.
Bragg is now furious that his reputation is being used against him by an Arizona prosecutor who is refusing to extradite an alleged murder suspect to New York over her concerns that the alleged career criminal with a history of violence will eventually end up back on the streets, according to ABC News.
Instead, Maricopa County District Attorney Rachel Mitchell intends to fully prosecute the wanted suspect for multiple serious crimes he allegedly committed in the Phoenix area before turning him back over to New York authorities.
At issue here, according to New York's local Fox affiliate WNYW, is an alleged career criminal named Raad Almansoori, 26, who is wanted in New York for allegedly beating and strangling to death a woman named Denisse Oleas-Arancibia, 38, in a SoHo hotel room on Feb. 8.
While police were searching for the suspect in and around NYC, he reportedly turned up in the Phoenix area about a week later, where he is alleged to have committed several other crimes before he was eventually arrested and held in custody.
Those purported crimes include an attempted carjacking and stabbing of a woman in Glendale on Feb. 17, followed one later by the attempted rape and stabbing of a female McDonald's employee in the restaurant's bathroom in the Surprise suburb.
Per law enforcement authorities, Almansoori is also wanted for alleged violent crimes in Florida and Texas, and it was reported that when he was taken into custody on Feb. 18, he admitted to not just the crimes in the Phoenix area but also the murder in New York, and further asserted that he had been looking for another victim when he'd been apprehended.
He is currently being held on a slew of criminal charges and a $250,000 bond at the Maricopa County jail.
The Arizona Republic reported that Maricopa County DA Mitchell held a press conference on Wednesday in which she revealed that she had no intention of extraditing Almansoori back to New York to face accountability for the alleged murder he committed there.
"Having observed the treatment of violent criminals in the New York area by the Manhattan DA," Mitchell said, "I think it's safer to keep him here and keep him in custody so he cannot be out doing this to individuals in our state or county or anywhere else."
The Manhattan DA's office was none too pleased by Mitchell's "deeply disturbing" commentary, which the office attributed to the Arizona prosecutor "playing political games" with a murder suspect in a statement -- only for Mitchell to then fire back on social media, "It’s great to see the @ManhattanDA finally take interest in violent crime. My job is to focus on the victims I was elected to protect."
ABC News reported that DA Bragg held a press conference Thursday to address DA Mitchell's refusal to extradite Almansoori, and said, "Her reasoning? Not because that's what the law dictates. Not because that's what advances justice. Not because of a concern for victims. Not at the request of the NYPD. But rather, plain and simple, old-fashioned grandstanding and politics."
"That should have no place in our profession," he continued. "It is deeply disturbing to me that a member of my profession ... would choose to play political games in a murder case."
Bragg went on to assert that Mitchell should have called him first to discuss the issue but also suggested that he might go above her head and submit an extradition package to Arizona's Democratic governor for her review and possible approval, and added, "This is not the Maricopa County attorney's decision, and I'm hoping that facts, law, justice, and reason will prevail."
