A Day in the Life of a Crime Reporter (with the New York Post's Joe Marino)

Summary

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City Journal Audio

Episode: A Day in the Life of a Crime Reporter (with the New York Post's Joe Marino)

Host: Rafael Mangual, Manhattan Institute
Guest: Joe Marino, Senior Crime Reporter, New York Post
Date: May 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features a candid conversation between host Rafael Mangual and New York Post senior crime reporter Joe Marino. The discussion delves into the realities of covering crime in New York City, the shifting landscape of criminal justice policy, the complexity behind the “soft on crime vs. tough on crime” debate, and how policy reforms, public perception, and the wider culture interact with police work and journalism. Marino offers an insider’s view on what it’s like to cover breaking incidents, build sources, and report on the people—as well as the policies—shaping public safety in New York.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Criminal Justice System: What Does It Actually Do?

• Incarnation as Incapacitation:
  • Mangual argues the central reliable purpose of the criminal justice system is to physically incapacitate repeat offenders, thus preventing further harm to the community ([00:24]):

    “When I think of what the criminal justice system exists to accomplish... it can reliably do, is physically incapacitate people. By putting them in a cell, you stop them from injuring the community . . .” — Rafael Mangual [00:24]

• Costs of Incarceration:
  • Marino notes the financial and deferred costs of incarceration, along with the reality that not every recidivist is the same ([03:14])

    “Incarceration is expensive . . . There are deferred costs to incarceration unless you’re going to indefinitely incarcerate everybody.” — Joe Marino [03:14]

2. Crime in Everyday New York: Ground-Level Reporting

• Chaos of Daily Crime:
  • Marino shares firsthand experiences with everyday urban crime (shoplifting, petty larcenies) and how they can quickly escalate ([02:21]):

    “And now it’s a struggle...there’s a whole scene standing there...I think what you are really speaking to is that particular sort of chaos.” — Joe Marino [02:21]

• Complex Motivation Behind Offenses:
  • Not all recidivists are the same: some steal for resale, others due to mental health ([04:04]).

    “There are people that shoplift simply to resell...and other people...because they have some kind of underlying mental health issue . . .” — Joe Marino [04:04]

3. Policy, Reform & Their Real-World Impacts

• System Misalignment:
  • Mangual observes a fracture in the alignment between police, prosecutors, and legislators, stemming from a wave of reforms such as bail reform and discovery reform ([11:43]):

    “It’s almost as if everyone in the system is kind of doing their own thing. They’re not necessarily on the same mission.” — Rafael Mangual [11:43]

• Fact-Finding vs. Advocacy:
  • Marino positions himself as a “fact finder”, noting that attitudes toward public safety and accountability have shifted significantly, especially for those outside New York ([12:59]).
• Healthcare Analogy:
  • Marino suggests the “desire right now...for public safety to behave more like a healthcare system” ([15:13]), blending enforcement with supportive interventions.
• Limits of Reform:
  • Both discuss structural obstacles to rolling back reforms and the myth that pretrial detention was widespread before bail reform:

    “There was a misperception...that the sort of median outcome ... was that they were going to spend the entirety of the pretrial period locked up. But the vast majority... are out within two days.” — Rafael Mangual [21:03]

4. The Role of Mental Health

• Both note how often individuals committing high-profile or violent crime are grappling with untreated mental illness.
• Courts as Last Resort:
  • Marino emphasizes the courts as the “last backstop”—and often the only intervention point—for those facing mental health crises ([23:44]):
• Reluctance for Forced Treatment:
  • Mangual reflects on advocacy groups’ opposition to mandated mental health care ([27:03]).

5. Race, Prosecution, and Public Sentiment

• Victim Non-Cooperation:
  • Discussion of a notable story where a victim refused to cooperate so as not to “put another black man in jail”:

    “She did not want to be responsible for...putting another African American person in jail.” — Joe Marino [28:19]

• Race as a Motivator for Reform:
  • Mangual suggests racial disparities are core motivations for many New York reform efforts ([28:03]).

6. Challenges in Risk Assessment & Data Sharing

• Algorithms and Limitations:
  • The system’s current use of algorithmic risk assessment focuses on flight risk, not dangerousness, due to statutory prohibitions ([31:11]).

    “We’re the only state...that categorically prohibits judges from considering dangerousness in pretrial detention.” — Rafael Mangual [31:57]

• Gaps in Data Transparency:
  • Sealed records and non-communicating agencies often prevent informed decisions. Marino underscores the resulting inefficiency:

    “These systems do not behave in lockstep...they’re not talking to each other in real time, which is a huge problem.” — Joe Marino [40:52]

7. Policing Innovations and Precision

• From Casting a Wide Net to Data-Driven Precision:
  • NYPD’s embrace of “precision policing” — focusing resources on micro-units and repeat offenders ([37:20]).

    “Maybe it went from just being like a wide net...to now making an intelligent thesis for why we now have to be more aggressive with this.” — Joe Marino [37:04]

• Effectiveness Despite Restrictions:
  • Marino credits NYPD’s adaptability even as legislation restricts traditional tactics, with crime stats improving ([34:42]).

8. Reporting on Crime: Method, Relationship Building, and Journalism’s Value

• Day-to-Day Realities:
  • Marino outlines how crime reporting is less a specialized beat and more a product of general assignment training, curiosity, local connections, and methodical self-education ([08:32]).
• Source Building:
  • The key is long-term relationship building—learning how institutions function and earning people’s trust by asking about process, not just demanding scoops ([58:28]):

    “If you’re willing to start the conversation with asking how things work...that builds a very sincere rapport.” — Joe Marino [58:28]

• Reporting Methodology:
  • Marino stresses reporting “case studies” to illustrate impacts of reforms and real-life consequences—not just abstract statistics ([04:04]).

9. Notable and Sensational Cases

• Mangione Case (“The Manginistas”):
  • Marino details how certain cases break the mold—like the high-profile assassination of a healthcare CEO in a “good address,” and how relationships and reputation enable reporters to get scoops ([60:29]).
• Public Reaction, Jury Nullification, and Double Standards:
  • The discussion highlights how different cases produce wildly different public and jury responses (e.g., Luigi Mangione vs. Daniel Penny), and how intersectionality and power dynamics shape public outrage and support ([65:47]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “How do we enforce the rules without hurting people’s feelings? That is the question.”
  — Joe Marino [04:04]

• “There’s a misperception...the story of Kalief Browder...became representative, but missing the legal nuance.”
  — Rafael Mangual [21:03]

• “For the 99% who really wants to see somebody...I don't know if there is a tremendous amount of value in just writ large saying this person has got to be... we have to set a prohibitively high restrictive bail on something.”
  — Joe Marino [45:07]

• “Your biggest asset, if you’re going to be a reporter...is you are going to be someone who is affable and you’re going to ask them intelligent questions.”
  — Joe Marino [61:49]

• “We are simply very bad at building bridge services for people that do not benefit from incarceration, could benefit from treatment, but we lack a substantial bridge to making it compliant in a meaningful way.”
  — Joe Marino [67:49]

• “Political violence right now is no longer going to be the anomaly. I think...it is something that people feel comfortable touching on...Mangione is, you know, it is a form of...political violence based on a perceived economic injustice.”
  — Joe Marino [71:36]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Opening debate: Purpose and limits of the justice system: [00:08–04:04]
• Crime reporting on the ground; types of recidivism: [02:21–06:21]
• Joe Marino’s introduction & career arc: [07:10–08:32]
• Discussion of policy and cultural shifts in New York justice: [11:43–15:47]
• Mental health intervention & the limits of reform: [23:12–28:03]
• Race, reform, and narrative—non-cooperating witness story: [28:19]
• Algorithmic justice, bail, and data limitations: [31:11–34:42]
• NYPD’s adaptation to new legislative landscape: [34:42–37:20]
• Crime reporting methodology and building trust: [58:28–61:28]
• Sensational cases—Mangione, Daniel Penny, public perception: [60:26–68:13]
• Closing reflections on political violence and the future of reporting: [70:44–72:29]

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Tone & Takeaways

True to City Journal’s rigor and unflinching inquiry, this episode is a rich, highly informed, and critical conversation—neither alarmist nor naive, balancing data and human stories. Marino’s insights highlight the indispensable, underappreciated role that ground-level reporters play in understanding and explaining the real impact of policy, while Mangual brings a depth of policy knowledge and skepticism of simplistic narratives.

For listeners:

• The criminal justice system is more than a binary of “soft” or “tough” on crime; daily safety depends on complex, evolving strategies, human factors, and policy debates.
• Crime reporting relies on relationship-building and integrity to bridge the public’s gap in understanding.
• The future of public safety will likely depend on better data sharing, more sophisticated risk assessment, and new models that blend enforcement with care for underlying conditions.
• Real reform is hard, there are always trade-offs, and the human costs reach beyond statistics.

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Transcript

[Joe Marino]

Soft on crime and tough on crime. They are two sides of the same coin. You accomplish nothing without at least identifying what the underlying condition is.

[Rafael Mangual]

See, I disagree. Yeah, I disagree. All right, so here's where I disagree, which is when you say accomplish, I think you have something specific in your head. When I think of what the criminal justice system exists to accomplish, the primary aim, the thing that it's best at, the thing that it can reliably do, is physically incapacitate people. By putting them in a cell, you stop them from injuring the community. They may commit crimes within the facility, but they can no longer injure the community when they are inside taking people out of operation. Right. And so the question is, is what's the payoff? And the way that you figure that out is you have to have a sense of the degree to which these individuals are offending or would be offending if they were free. Now, we have lots of studies on this that have sort of estimated the propensity of the median prisoner to offend. And right now, the prevailing estimate in the criminological literature is about 8 index felonies a year for the median person in state prison. Some of the older estimates that I think were probably better because they were using better survey data, and they weren't relying solely on reports because most crime doesn't get reported. Put that number at about 15 to 25, and I think that's probably more accurate. So if you're talking about someone who's committing more than a dozen criminal offenses a year, locking them up for a year saves the community a pretty decent amount when you consider the social cost of crime, depending on the crime, but also the broader ripple effects on society. Right. It's like now everything's locked up behind plexiglass and cvs. There's a cost associated with that that we all have to bear, because a single person or a handful of people or a small slice of the population can't bring themselves to follow the rules. And we can stop them by physically putting them in a box.

[Joe Marino]

I was walking into a Rite Aid or Duane Read in Fidi, and as I'm walking in, there's a guy who was probably shoplifting, and he was being pushed out by two cops because they probably caught him or they got a call for shoplifting or whatever, and now it's a struggle. And now they're on the floor, his shoes flew off, and they're trying to arrest this guy, whatever. You know, these people, you know, they're just working a regular job in a store. They Have a shoplifter, they call the cops. And it's this whole scene standing there. I think I'm buying a water or something, and they're in the checkout aisle. And I think what you are really speaking to is that particular sort of chaos.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

And I don't know what the answer is to that. I could tell you right now, incarceration is expensive.

[Rafael Mangual]

Sure.

[Joe Marino]

And there are deferred costs to incarceration unless you're going to indefinitely incarcerate everybody. And by the way, I'm agnostic on this. I'm not a parentologist. I'm not, you know, I don't have a degree from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Yes. I can tell you probably a good

[Rafael Mangual]

thing, no offense to Peter Moscos or any of my friends over at John J.

[Joe Marino]

There are people way more qualified to talk about the, you know, the.

[Rafael Mangual]

Sure.

[Joe Marino]

The effectiveness of incarceration. Now what I can say is that when it comes to violent crime and a shoplift, a robbery, a burglary, a petty larceny can turn anything into something that escalates into something a hundred percent,

[Rafael Mangual]

which is like, so what I think

[Joe Marino]

that the answer is that everyone is trying to come up with in law enforcement, in the public safety sector is this. How do we enforce the rules without hurting people's feelings? That is the question. Nobody likes shoplifting. Nobody wants to walk into a Duane Reade, have to ask somebody to unlock like some deodorant or something. It's inconvenient. Recidivism is a problem, but not all recidivism is the same. There are people that shoplift simply to resell that stuff on a secondary market. And there are other people that you shoplift because they have some kind of underlying mental health issue or whatever. There's a lot of different stuff going on. And I think when you look at it, and we do actively search for case studies with the sole purpose of, okay, here is the policy, here is the reform, here is the law that was passed. Can we, through case studies, educate people on the practical steps and implications of this reform, whatever that is, whether it be raise the age. Right. You know, whether it be bail reform. And yes, as we look at those case studies and we look at very specific individuals who offend and reoffend, and with some consequence that is sometimes even fatal. You know, listen, somebody pickpockets, they got 150 arrests for pickpocketing and. Or jostling or whatever. You're not really worried about that person. Right. You know, but you are Worried about somebody who has a persistent history where you start to see a rubric of not just petty larceny, but there is assault right now there's dv, right, or now there's robbery on top of cpw. There's a bench warrant history, there is an I card, there are wanted cards for this person for a pattern of other things in other boroughs. And that is a rubric of individual that you need to pay special attention to.

[Rafael Mangual]

And my big beef is that there are gonna be those individuals who satisfy that rubric that indicate a significant degree of risk who are gonna come before an office like Alvin Braggs on a shoplifting charge. And because he has a blanket policy, we lose out on the potential benefits of pursuing that case, despite the fact that that guy poses just as much danger as he would if he were in on a more serious charge. But before we keep going, I wanna just acknowledge our listeners. Cause we've started our. Which indicates the degree to which. I'm so excited to talk to you. I'm really, really happy that you're here. So for those of you who have been listening in on our sort of pre recorded conversation, I am Rafael Mangual, your host of the City Journal podcast. I am delighted to be joined today by Joe Marino of the New York Post, senior crime reporter. Joe, how long have you been with the New York post?

[Joe Marino]

Since like 2015.

[Rafael Mangual]

Okay, so, and how long have you been a journalist?

[Joe Marino]

I started at the Daily News, Interestingly enough, in 2007, but I started there as a news photographer and left in 2015.

[Rafael Mangual]

You know, I'm really excited to talk to you because, I mean, as everyone who listens to the show knows that I primarily cover crime here at the Manhattan Institute and at City Journal. And I think one of the most underappreciated perspectives that is just almost nowhere to be found in these broader conversations about, you know, crime and criminal justice and policing policy is the perspective of the people who write about it every day, who tell the stories every day, who are in the mix and actually getting on the ground and following the trends of crime in a city like New York. And so I really wanted to bring you in just to kind of get your takes, your insights as somebody who's in the muck on this every day. So I just, I really appreciate you coming in to. Thanks for having me to talk to us today. So as you can tell, I'm just super excited to pick your brain today. But I want to start off just by giving our listeners a little bit of, of just insight into what your life is like as a crime reporter in a city like New York. I highly doubt that. I highly doubt that. Tell us.

[Joe Marino]

It's so. I think that there are a lot of different types of reporters. I don't think crime reporter is like a real. It's not, it doesn't really tell the story. You know, I think that most crime reporters are really good general assignment reporters. And that's what I started doing when I started at the Post. Everybody starts the same way. You're a general, a general assignment reporter. You might cover a press conference for, you know, city hall one day. You might cover a press conference for some other random thing. But your primary job is to run on spot news and critical incidents. And you go to those things and you learn the soft skills of how to just talk to people, witnesses, you know, you'll cover a press conference if it's a police involved shooting, let's say, or some other type of, you know, really major critical incident. And eventually some people like myself, you just sort of make that your. You make that the job that you kind of decide you want. Yeah. And I think that I just had like a natural curiosity. I had some built in advantages because I just organically I knew people who were able to sort of help me out and give me leads and things like that. And it wasn't really a conscious decision. I didn't say, you know, I really want to do this. It was just a product of me being from New York knowing people, knowing people who were in law enforcement, you know, and I, I had a real interest in how operations. And then subsequently, when we started really getting into a lot of the state criminal justice reforms, I had an interest in learning about the intersection of not only public safety operations, but also the legislative side and how, how the court system worked. And, you know, we were sort of in a moment where we had all of these new laws and everybody was apoplectic about. And I just sort of took it upon myself to try to find case studies that articulated what we were dealing with. Yeah, you know, there wasn't enough data at the time. There wasn't a lot of information, but everybody was kind of freaking out. You know, we're gonna have these laws, nobody's gonna be held accountable, Nobody's gonna be able to go to jail. Nobody's. Everybody's just gonna be out. Right. And so. Okay. And you know, I sort of established a, a sort of methodology for identifying an issue, learning as much as issue, understanding what I knew about how the front end of the system worked. Which is the, the police side. So I, I learned a lot about response investigations and things like that. And now I was really learning the back end of that system. And I was watching how these two things sort of were, you know, intersecting, but not always sort of gelling.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right. You know, they're almost at odds. Right. I mean, we were talking earlier and you mentioned something that I thought was exactly right and spot on, which is that I think New Yorkers have been spoiled over the last couple of generations. And so far as we've lived at a time in which the different elements of the criminal justice system were largely aligned. And you could take that alignment for granted. Right. The prosecutors wanted to put bad guys in jail. The police wanted to put bad guys in jail. The justice, the judges and the correction system wanted to put and keep bad guys in jail. There was general agreement about that premise. And then right around 2014, 2015, things really started to shift. And you saw on the legislative side, things like bail reform, discovery reform, raise the age less is more, which is parole reform. You had the rewrite of the Rockefeller drug laws that basically defanged them, which were mandatory minimum sentences for different drug offenses. It was like. And then you had progressive prosecutors like Alvin Bragg and Eric Gonzalez start promoting the idea that they weren't going to prosecute certain categories of offenses. You know, it's almost as if everyone in the system is kind of doing their own thing. They're not necessarily on the same mission.

[Joe Marino]

Well, I think that, you know, I'm a fact finder. I don't generally have an opinion one way or the other about how prosecutors use their discretion. What I observe, you know, is a cultural shift by people who are not from New York. And we have to accept that, you know, the general attitudes towards public safety, policing, and, you know, accountability have changed. Like the, you know. Yeah. When I grew up here and you know, like at my, my commencement, one of my commencement speakers at NYU is Ray Kelly. And I don't think that he would necessarily be on the short list. Yeah. To be a commencement speaker, I don't

[Rafael Mangual]

think he'd be able to get through his speech. I mean, we know. Right. I mean, he tried to speak at Brown University. What was it at 2013, 2014.

[Joe Marino]

And I'm going back to 2002, was him and I think Harold Prince. And you know, you have to accept that the attitudes towards the systems of accountability have changed. And you know, to the credit of the, the police department, they've been living with bail reform, raise the age and all these criminal justice reforms now for six years and they've still made substantial progress in crime reduction. You know, people will tell you, even privately, they will say, you know, people who are like real police, they'll say, listen, you know, you make it work. But there's a whole midstream and sort of back end to this system. So when people talk about recidivism and they see repeat offenders and it is a problem, you know, it is because the system is making choices and there is a desire right now for both the front end and sort of the midstream and the back end of this portfolio of public safety to behave more like, more like a healthcare system.

[Rafael Mangual]

It's a good analogy.

[Joe Marino]

I mean, that's what they want. They want something that is frictionless. And, you know, maybe it should be, you know, maybe, you know, there are ways to look at the accountability side, the prosecutorial side of this system and say, are there alternatives that we are not exploring where we can get as good or better an outcome without it being excessively punitive or, you know, without making the process the punishment?

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

And I think that is right now, what is in the conversation. It's, we have this process, it's been extraordinarily, you know, you know, heavy handed. And there is a cultural shift right now for people to look at it and say, what can we do to make it fair? But what could we do to make it just kindler and gentler? I don't know if that exists. I don't know what those answers are. But they wanted to behave more like a sort of like a hybrid law enforcement, but with a healthcare component to it.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah, no, I think that's right. And I do think that people are grasping for some alternative, and I've always hated that word because I don't think that it applies to the criminal justice system in part because I think there's a lot of hubris undergirding the criminal justice reform movement insofar as it reflects this idea that we can sort of, we can make humans do what we want. And I'm of the belief that humans are incredibly complex. They're not these malleable beings that are, you know, with strings that we can pull and reliably get them to behave in such a way. Right. I think human behavior is largely out of society's hands to dictate. By and large, there are some things that we can do to, you know, build a general fence that will deter people to go beyond it. But I think by and large, what the criminal justice system does well Is it physically stops people from doing bad things. Right. The guy, once he's in handcuffs, he can't hit you anymore. Right. Once he's in a cell, he can't rob the liquor store around the corner, or he can't rape a woman in the stairwell of the housing projects. Right. I think there's a sort of sense that we've overcomplicated the idea of criminal justice. I think in part because of what you identified, which is there's this discomfort with the sort of punitive aspect of it. Right. No one wants to be the person who pulls the lever that takes this guy off the street for the next 10 years. I mean, after all, he has a life, he has a family that's gonna miss him. And I think what I've seen as someone who reads a ton of the reporting, including almost everything you've written in the last 10 years, is that there's a risk associated with not pulling the lever often. And that risk is not evenly distributed. It's paid for by people who are stuck living in these neighborhoods that have crime rates 2, 3, 10, 20 times the rate of some of the safest neighborhoods in the city and have to deal with a guy who's got 20, 30, 40 priors. And we see how that plays out so often.

[Joe Marino]

Yeah, it's a symptom. And people that live in neighborhoods, by the way, it could be at the upper or lower end of the economic spectrum. Right. Everyone has a condition that they want, you know, they want taken care of. It could be narcotics, it could be noise, it could be a variety of things that fall in between, like the, the seven majors. Right. And they look to the police department for solutions to, you know, finding a remedy for whatever that, that condition is that they don't want. And the reality is that it is not a, it's not an easy fix and it's not a quick fix. So the police are in the business of, as you articulated, which is getting the guy or that condition resolved.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

Arrested, restoring order. Yeah. And, you know, taken out of operation. And previously, if you go back 20, 30 years, you would take the guy out of operation. You would see a judge, judge would probably set some form of bail and that person was out of operation for probably whatever that thing was, which may have been drugs or whatever for two to five years or whatever. By the time, you know, he was in city custody or went to state custody. And, you know, we were in a moment where that's just not acceptable to people for pre trial detention. And the reality is we have this, you know, we have due process. And the consensus of the state legislature was due process should absolutely favor the defendant.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

No matter what he did. So we're in a moment where that discretionary has been highly curtailed. And the narrative has been that, okay, but these people represent these defendants or this subset of the defending class represent a persistent nuisance to a certain community or the city. And that may be true, but

[Rafael Mangual]

I

[Joe Marino]

don't see these reforms being rolled back.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah, I think that's right. I think part of it though is that there's. There was a misperception undergirding the reforms in the first place about how severe the system was. I mean, you kind of alluded to it just now. Right. I mean, there was this idea that the sort of median outcome for somebody who had bail set in their case was that they were going to spend the entirety of the pretrial period locked up. But the vast majority, more than 70% of people who had bail set and couldn't make bail at their initial hearing, which is only a small minority people, I think it was only like 13% of offenders, according to the city, the vast majority of them are out within two days. They eventually come up with the money. It just takes them a couple of days. Then there's the very, very small subset of people who couldn't come up with the money. And those guys were spending a couple years. But I think part of what really drove this was this effective storytelling about these one off cases that were seen as representative. And one of the stories that comes to mind is Kalief Browder. So everyone who has heard that name, you ask them and they'll tell you, well, this was a guy who spent three years on Rikers island because he couldn't make bail for stealing a backpack. Right. And I tell people, it's like, well, did you know that bail was set at, I believe at $3,000 in that case and his family? He couldn't make bail at the initial hearing, but his family, within like a week, I think, was able to make bail, but bail was revoked. He was held, not on pretrial detention. He was held on a probation violation because he was already out on probation for a separate case. So he was never actually eligible for release. That's why he spent so long inside.

[Joe Marino]

Well, and there was, there were other issues too. I think the complainant, if I remember

[Rafael Mangual]

correct, moved back to Mexico, I think.

[Joe Marino]

Yeah, the complaint, it was uncooperative. There was no case. Yeah, there was no case. But, you know, alternatively, the argument, criminal justice Reform advocates would say is why is this even an issue? Right. He's a kid, it's a backpack. The complaining is no longer available. The case is not prosecutable.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

So their argument is, what are we doing now? It's never one size fits all. If you remember last week, there were, there was a horrible, horrible incident of a 72 year old gentleman who was pushed down the stairs. Yeah. And the fall was fatal, was unprovoked and random. And the, the, the individual they arrested

[Rafael Mangual]

had just been released. Right.

[Joe Marino]

Well, he had just walked out of court of court that morning.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

But he had prior arrests, but not a, not a long list of prior arrest. It was a cluster of incidents for assault and I believe there was like a burglary because he broke into like a, a transit cleaning station or something like that. And one of the victims of a prior assault of his spoke to me briefly over the phone and you know, she was just despondent over what happened and she indicated that, you know, she did not really want to proceed as a witness in the prosecution of the assault on her and her friend. Which by the way, happens a lot. Right. You know, prosecutors lose the cooperation of victims all the time or for other reasons. The case are just not prosecutable. They're not going to stand, you know, they're not going to pass the sniff test in the courtroom, which is why deals are offered so on and so forth. But the case was not closed. He had actually had an appearance on this person's assault case the morning he was apprehended. Right. So with or without her cooperation, he would have been at liberty, he would have been out in the world, he would have been in the community and he would have, you know, done whatever it is he was going to do. And I don't know what the answer is. Everybody is trying to solve for how do we narrow the probability that somebody is going to do something bad right now? Maybe a better question is we have a tremendous amount of information about these people when they appear before a judge. And it's a lot of the information that I see and my colleagues see. And you cannot realistically look outside the four corners of the complaint of whatever they're there for. However, when it comes to matters of mental health, the city has robust mental health and hygiene laws that have very good due process attached to them. And so the question is if you really want to incorporate this healthcare aspect to public safety and maybe it makes sense. You know, I hate to say it, but it seems to be that the most common point of intervention for people that are going through some kind of mental health crisis or some other kind of issue seems to be the courts. Right. So if that's sort of like the very last backstop and you want to make this system this, you know, sort of gentler, more intuitive, you know, service provider, then you have to take a look at the mental health and hygiene laws you have. Yeah. You have to ask yourself, how can they be deployed when you have somebody in front of you that you have reason to believe might be going through some kind of mental health issue or pose a risk right to the community? And there is due process there. It's different than criminal due process, New York City administrative law. But I think that's a conversation worth having.

[Rafael Mangual]

Absolutely. But it's also one that I think a lot of the same people in the criminal justice reform movement, these advocates, are against the idea of coercing somebody into treatment, which is one of the reasons I think you've seen a pullback away from compelled inpatient mental health treatment over the last several decades. New York state has cut its capacity in these long term hospital beds. New York City has cut its capacity. So there's always going to be a question of where do we even put them, assuming that we can get people to the point where they'd be willing to accept it. But I want to go back to this non cooperating witness who you spoke to, because that story just made a ton of waves when it broke. A lot of people reacted to it. And I think the main point of reaction was one of the things that she told you, which was part of her rationale for not cooperating, which was this idea that, well, I don't want to contribute to putting another black man in prison.

[Joe Marino]

I get it.

[Rafael Mangual]

Which triggers the race issue that I think really is behind a lot of the reform movement that we've seen over the last decade. Plus it's that particular sensitivity about the racial disparities in our criminal justice system.

[Joe Marino]

Well, she indicated to me that she did not want to. She is also African American and she did not want to be responsible for, you know, putting another, you know, another African American person in jail. And I think she also felt simultaneously terrible about the outcome. But non cooperation, I think happens for primarily the person does not want to be involved in a complicated ongoing criminal matter where it's forced to. It's a convenience thing.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

And she did indicate to me that her injuries at the time were not substantial. She didn't need medical attention. She did what probably 99% of people do when they get on a subway and somebody bumps into them or pushes them or, you know, somebody's just on the street and, you know, they get into it with somebody, it's. It. There's no predictive measure for will somebody do something this heinous.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

And when you look at this person's, Their. Their. Their history of contact with law enforcement, it's not extensive. It's just very condensed. And it's condensed around these sort of violent, emotionally disturbed outbursts.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah. This guy had how many priors?

[Joe Marino]

I think four since last year, Maybe six.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right. Yeah, that's the part that I think people were concerned because it's not a big number, but it's in a small period of time. Getting arrested six times a year is hard to do.

[Joe Marino]

Everything is in the details. Listen, you're writing stories every day, and the top line is recidivism. The top line is junk justice. And some of it is. You could definitely point to areas of responsibility, whether it's in the charging decisions that are made, the plea decisions that are made, the sentencing decisions that are made. There are multiple points of potential failure when you see the outcome as what it is. But I've also seen people who have serve time in state prison, they've been released, they're on parole, they do something devastating anyway. There is. Everybody's trying to solve for the same thing, which is how do we sort of narrow the field, identify, you know, policing? Everybody likes to say laser focus. Precision. What is the precision? What are these predictive tools that you're going to use in the framework of due process and civil liberties?

[Rafael Mangual]

Well, I think the city already kind of uses one. I mean, one of the things that. That a lot of people talk about in the sort of criminology world, at least with respect to pretrial detention, is algorithmic risk assessment. Right. So there are different factors that the system has information about. How many prior arrests, how many prior convictions, how many prior jail and prison stays, over what period of time? What's the nature of the prior arrests and charges? Age, education level, employment history, where you were arrested, where you live. All of that that, you know, can be put into a matrix where these factors are given different weights and will spit out.

[Joe Marino]

Yeah, CJA will score you.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right, exactly.

[Joe Marino]

But the state criminal justice reforms have basically rendered that right.

[Rafael Mangual]

Well, C.J. still does it for flight risk. And what's interesting is that the center for Cord Innovation a few years back actually did a study to assess whether it would. The same algorithmic risk assessment tool that they use for Flight risk could also predict rearrest risk. And they found that it was very accurately predictive of rearrest. The problem in New York, of course, is where the only state in the union that categorically prohibits judges from considering dangerousness in pretrial detention.

[Joe Marino]

You know, they, they, they do. So we have this, you know, the state legislature decided that they wanted to create a carve out for a subsect of the, you know, the, the penal code for, for pretrial detention.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right. Well, for bail eligibility.

[Joe Marino]

For bail eligibility.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

So you know, it, there is a, a carve out that some prosecutors will use, which is harm on harm theory. You have to argue it, you have to get a judge to buy into it. You have to.

[Rafael Mangual]

And just for the listeners who don't know what that means, like harm on harm means the person has a pending case, they've been rearrested for an offense that causes harm to another with that pending case, and now they can be held on bail or remand even if the original underlying charge is not bail eligible on the statute.

[Joe Marino]

Right. And the, you know, the, I think the top line is it's, it's very difficult to quantify because the old methodology for sort of quality, everything from quality of life crime to, you know, serious felony crime was you arrested somebody, they were likely going to be incarcerated pre trial or predisposition, and you weren't going to see that person probably for another two, four, five years. Right. The, the old methodology for doing things is we were able to take people out of operation for longer. And you know, the new world we live in is that there is more oversight, there is more legislation that narrows the parameters for us to do that. And I have to that even with all of those restrictions, even with some very counterintuitive legislation for the purposes of, you know, doing proactive policing and things like that, the legislation has gotten more restrictive. But the results, if you are tracking the police department's own crime statistics, are very, very good.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

They have figured out how to police and you know, to their credit, you know, they've taken something that was a substantial headwind only because they didn't know how the, they didn't know how, they didn't know how they were going to respond to it.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

With not being able to take people out of operation the way they had in the past, where now some subsets of crimes warranted a dat. Right. They were going to see a higher

[Rafael Mangual]

volume DAT being desk appearance ticket. Right. So you're just released for the precinct.

[Joe Marino]

Yeah. And you know, they, you Know, they weren't, they weren't used to seeing what they might call like frequent flyers. Right, right. A higher volume of the same person doing the same thing. But to their credit, I think what they did very intelligently was really sit down with prosecutors, sit down with the private sector, small businesses particularly, and they understood how to get cooperation. And maybe not on every arrest, maybe not on every individual, but they were able to very intelligently, with their own Data and the NYPD's data collection, their crime control strategies, they produce a quality product and they can articulate whether it's retail theft, grand larceny, auto shootings. They are able to articulate to prosecutors, listen, this is where we are seeing the most persistent threat, whether it be grand larceny, auto, retail theft. And they can make an intelligent argument for why prosecution here is necessary and cooperation is necessary. So it's not just some one off.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

You know, and I think that the police department, to its credit, has taken a lot of the guesswork out of the. They call them violence reduction zones. Violence drivers, though, the people.

[Rafael Mangual]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Joe Marino]

You know, who are causing the most persistent amount of crime in particular, subset. And so they've taken a very intelligent approach where they get the buy in they need from prosecutors, no matter what county they're in.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

You know, and me, maybe that's the way going forward that policing is done. Maybe it went from sort of just being like a wide net being cast to now making an intelligent thesis for why we now have to be more aggressive with this.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right. No, I think that's exactly right. And I'm a big fan of the way that the NYPD has been approaching its precision policing strategy, really focusing on high crime areas and not big high crime areas. Right. Like really microgeographic units of the city where crime. Crime risks are more pronounced and then identifying the problem people within there. You know, this is something that we've known in criminology for a while. Right. I mean, like, you know, one of the most famous studies on this came out of Sweden finding that 1% of the. Of the country's population was responsible for more than 60% of all the violence. And so we see that pattern play out in society after society. And, you know, throughout history, it's relatively consistent both the concentration of crime demographically within a small subset of the population, but also geographically. Right. It's consistently in New York, about 1% of our street segments. So corner to corner, both sidewalks account for 25% of the violence. About 5% of the street segments see about 50% of all the violence in the city every single year, and about 40% of the street segments don't see any crime whatsoever. Right. So we can be intelligent about how we deploy resources. And I think the department, the police department has been incredibly good at that, especially over the last 10 years. And the current commissioner, Jessica Tisch, I think, is really taken that to a new level, which has been very encouraging. But for people who read the stories that the Post prints, many of which you're an author or co author on, it's like whenever there's a heinous crime, it's almost always the case that this person's got a troubling criminal history. Right. They've got either a massive number of prior arrests, they've got an act of criminal justice acts like they're out on parole or they're out on pretrial release or they're out on probation. And it leaves people asking the question, it's like, why is this guy out on the street?

[Joe Marino]

Well, there's two answers to that. I've seen it both ways. I've seen people that have the. All of the markers, somebody who has had persistent contact with criminal justice. And sometimes if it's a violent crime, you will see contact with police for violent crime, armed robbery, whatever. That's not uncommon. But I've seen it the other way too, where, you know, a person does not have an extensive history.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

They may not have any discernible history at all. You know, so it's the. But yes, the question is, there's a horrible thing that happened. We've identified the person that's done this horrible thing, and everybody asked the same question, well, why didn't anybody do anything to stop it?

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

And sometimes it's one or two answers. Yes. They were probably previously incarcerated. Yeah. They were released when they were supposed to be released. Or they may be on parole. Right. They may have served parole. Now that person has fulfilled their obligation and something terrible happened.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

Sometimes that's not a satisfying answer because people are looking for. Everybody's looking for the same thing. Right. Which is what went wrong. How could this possibly happen? And sometimes there are many legitimate things that could have gone differently.

[Rafael Mangual]

Sentence, no parole, being denied sentencing, parole,

[Joe Marino]

revocation, or certainly have seen individuals where they qualified for parole revocation. But it speaks to the fact that these systems do not behave necessarily in lockstep with each other. It is a complicated, connected systems, but not really interconnected, and they're not talking to each other in real time, which is a huge.

[Rafael Mangual]

It's A huge problem. Right. Because it basically leads us to a situation in which we're leaving a lot of money on the table. You know, you've got a police department that is obviously doing the right thing. Right. When you see an alleged murderer who's got, you know, 50 prior arrests, it tells you the police are concentrating their resources on high risk people.

[Joe Marino]

Yeah. I mean, it tells you that, you know, the wise thing that the police department does is they do embrace data and technology because the, you know, intuition is always going to be a certain, it's always going to play a certain role. But I think that in the old days, intuition casting a wide net was sort of just the way you did

[Rafael Mangual]

policing out of necessity in part.

[Joe Marino]

Right.

[Rafael Mangual]

I mean, they just didn't have integrated

[Joe Marino]

data and they, you know, now sort of the modern way of doing policing is understanding what the underlying conditions are that you're dealing with. Right. And underneath that, who is responsible. And they are very good at data collection and sort of parsing out where the resources need to be deployed. And they do it. I think they're really second to none in deploying data and incorporating it into investigations and enforcement. They're very good at it.

[Rafael Mangual]

I think that's exactly.

[Joe Marino]

But there's no perfect. You know, everyone, inevitably you write a story about a terrible thing that happened to somebody and inevitably, you know, it's. Because it's human nature. People are, are aghast and they, they look to assign responsibility. At the end of the day, the responsibility is that person. Sure, there are. Do I think that there are certain efficiencies? Do I see certain opportunities for efficiency? Yeah. And I think that it actually does come back to making the system frictionless by making it more efficient. And the reality is that you have many different stakeholders that are not, they're not in sync. You know, parole, the nypd, the courts, if somebody is out pending disposition of a case, but they're out and they're in a program and that program is not a secure facility. Right. Who is being notified of compliance? Right. How long does it take to notify the court of non compliance?

[Rafael Mangual]

Right. Yeah. I think a lot of people have sort of come to understand the idea of supervised release as a bad euphemism

[Joe Marino]

because there's no real supervision. But, you know, the. I would say the one thing that should be of concern with supervised release is is it an appropriate fit. Right. For every defendant.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

What if you're on. What if you don't have a phone? Right. So should the person not be given supervised release? Simply because they may not have also.

[Rafael Mangual]

I mean, what does it mean to be supervised? Right. I mean, it was just a fatal stabbing in the Bronx of a kid who had an ankle monitor on.

[Joe Marino]

So.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

So interestingly enough about the ankle monitors, which are. The New York City Sheriff's office runs that program. They say that the ankle monitor, when it comes to. To adult individuals, they find very high compliance. Yeah. Because cognitively their brains understand the gravity of the situation they're in.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right. I think this perp is 22.

[Joe Marino]

So at. At 22 years old, it. It. You're right on the edge.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

It is not a one size fits all tool. And supervised Release. Listen, for 99%, who really wants to see somebody.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

I'll never forget this was. I. I can't remember how long there was somebody who was like, in arraignment court in Brooklyn because they bought like, a $25 percocet off an undercover. And I'm looking at this and I'm wondering what the actual value of like, yeah, he bought a Percocet. The guy was, like, extremely infirm. He came into court with a walker. He could barely sit, and he bought a $25 Percocet off undercover. I don't know if there is a tremendous amount of value in just sort of writ large saying this person has got to be. We have to set a prohibitively high restrictive bail on something.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah. I don't think. Yeah, I think that's where most people are.

[Joe Marino]

Right.

[Rafael Mangual]

That's the reasonable position. It's also, I think the default prior to the bail reform, that guy was not going in. Right. The vast majority of people were not getting bail set in their case. The vast majority of people who got bail set in their case were making bail at arraignment. Right.

[Joe Marino]

But the state legislature felt. Because as you said, the narrative was that if there is even one possibility that a child.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah. I think it's this tension between people who are more comfortable with type one versus type two errors. Right. Like, there's the risk of locking somebody up who doesn't need to be locked up. And that's a risk that you should be concerned about. But then there's the risk of not locking up somebody who needs to be locked up. And there are some people like myself, who are much more concerned about that second risk. Right. I think you've committed a crime, you put yourself in jeopardy. You know, you have the responsibility to deal with the consequences of that, of which potential jail time is one. Right. I feel less bad for you. If we put you in jail and you didn't need to be there, then I, I feel less bad for that defendant than I do for the 76 year old guy who gets shoved down the stairs because the two dude got, was able to walk out of court a few hours earlier. Despite six arrests in the last year, many of which were violent.

[Joe Marino]

He was there on a return appearance on an open case. Right. So you know, and the argument is, well, you know, if he, if there wasn't a state law that prohibited a judge from holding him on his prior assault arrest. Right. Would he have been at liberty to, to murder this individual? And the answer is we don't know.

[Rafael Mangual]

We don't know.

[Joe Marino]

We don't know. I have seen families come up with substantial bail for a defendant, tens of thousands of dollars, but now partially secured bond makes it more accessible.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah, that's another thing.

[Joe Marino]

I get it.

[Rafael Mangual]

I don't want you to misunderstand me and I think a lot of people who are engaged in this debate misunderstand the sort of anti crime side because people like me are not saying I prefer a judge to set a high bail, that I think that that is, you know, the, the most efficient or the right way to go about it. I think that I am perfectly happy to take cash bail virtually off the table universally. I would much rather see judges reorient the pretrial release inquiry around risk so that if you are a high risk person, you're going in irrespective of how much money you.

[Joe Marino]

I would go a step further. I think that you should reorient the pre arraignment process to include conferrals with the district attorney, the defense Defense council, health and hospitals when necessary and DHS and come up with an abstract for this person if their crime, if they are there for something that is non bail eligible. I think you have an opportunity to take an intelligent look at where they're at in their life and maybe connect them with a supervised release that is a little bit more sophisticated than what there is now. Listen, supervised release right now is mandatory in person or phone check in and okay, you're getting a level of compliance from someone who is able to comply for someone who has agency over their life. But as we know and, and as we've seen, particularly with vital, with violent or, or fatal implications. There is a subset of the defending class that is there at arraignment that have sometimes documented, even on their, on their, on their desk snapshot documented issues of where there have been EDP calls.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

Domestic incident Reports where they are either the victim or the complainant or the perpetrator. And in. In so far as you have valuable information about this person, if the state laws do don't allow you to hold that person on that. On that charge, there is something else you can do that might be more productive. But the problem is we simply don't have the infrastructure for.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah, no, I think that. I think that's right. I mean, one of the other barriers to getting the good information to make these decisions, and a recent story of yours inspired me to write about this, is the practice of sealing more and more of these prior arrests, which could be, you know, clouding our ability to make sound judgments about the risks that somebody poses. Right. So what brought this to mind was there was a piece covering in the Post the triple machete attack at Grand Central Station. And what stood out to me was that I watched the police press conference after that attack, and they noted that the alleged offender's criminal history included three unsealed arrests. And I caught onto the unsealed qualification there because it indicated to me that there was some other history that they couldn't acknowledge. And then the Post reported that that person had, I think, more than a dozen prior arrests. And I. Okay, well, like, clearly there's a disconnect. I don't think that it is, you know, confined to a single case. And I started reaching out to prosecutors, and they said, like, yeah, a lot of times we get defendants who we can't see their sealed criminal history. It doesn't come in our packets. And we'll, you know, we won't ask for bail or, you know, we'll, you know, give them maybe a lighter plea than we would have had we known. And then we'll get a call, you know, from the arresting officer saying, why'd you give this guy, you know, such a light touch when he's got, you know, 14 priors? And they're like, well, we only see two or we only see three.

[Joe Marino]

I mean, the reality is that with a lot of these, quote, you know, the. The recidivists.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right. Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

There might be, you know, a third, maybe more of you see a substantial, especially the more persistent contact the person has with law enforcement.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

You tend to see, especially if it's ridiculously long, you tend to see a high ratio of sealed arrests or voided arrests. And there's a variety of reasons why an arrest could be sealed. The case was just not prosecutable or wasn't credible. So an arrest was made. Prosecutor determined the case wasn't prosecutable or credible.

[Rafael Mangual]

Or it just fell onto the list of cases that a particular prosecutor is not going to pursue. Right.

[Joe Marino]

Yeah. Or. Or there was a plea that upon successful completion of those conditions, the case is sealed and you go out. So the basket of reasons as to why an arrest will be sealed is wide and varied. But is it a feature of someone's profile who is a subject or a defendant of violent crime? Crime? It can be, yeah. You know, it's. I think it's all data points. Right. At the end of the day. So when you look at, you know, the average person is going to watch something on the news, they're going to read about something in the newspaper, and the. The reaction is always the same. Here's this horrible thing that happened, here's the person who did it. This is how many times he's been arrested.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

Why is this happening? And the answer is, realistically, we really don't know. Sure. Because if. Unless you want to live in a city that takes a maximalist approach to enforcement and incarceration.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

That is the only way you are going to get to that. Yeah. Baseline.

[Rafael Mangual]

I think that's right. Right.

[Joe Marino]

And nobody wants to live in that city because less than 20% of the people in the city really are worried about public safety as an issue.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right. But there's a. I think there's a middle ground between the maximalist approach and the minimalist approach.

[Joe Marino]

You know what I think it is? I think it's technology. I think it's technology. I think it is. If you really want to see outcomes that make sense and minimize the opportunities, you want to maximize your outcomes and you want to minimize your opportunities for things to fall through the cracks. I do think that it is about incorporating technology and coming up with more sophisticated data runs and like, the way information is shared right now between parole, probation, the courts, the nypd, you need something that is a little bit more interconnected, where everybody is sort of communicating instantaneously. And I think that information and data is key to coming up with outcomes that make sense.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And one of the things that I think you and your colleagues at the Post are really good at is getting your hands on that information. Right. I mean, you know, being able to get to a point where you can print the actual amount of prior arrested and individual.

[Joe Marino]

I mean, it's definitely a data point. You know, does it tell the whole story?

[Rafael Mangual]

Sure.

[Joe Marino]

You know, probably not. You know, the reality is we're living in a city right now. Really, the drivers the underlying issues and drivers of crime that seem to be of concern to the public are people who are suffering with a underlying mental health issue.

[Rafael Mangual]

Well, I think part of the reason that everyone's so concerned about those folks is that their offending is less predictive.

[Joe Marino]

You can't, it's unpredictable.

[Rafael Mangual]

You can't take. Right. Like if I don't want to get caught in a gang shooting, I know what neighborhoods to stay out of at what times. Right.

[Joe Marino]

Well, the gang, you know, the thing about gangs are. And the nypd, it does gang takedowns constantly.

[Rafael Mangual]

Value.

[Joe Marino]

Yeah, it's a high value thing that they do. And it's. That type of violence falls under a rubric of proceeds property and even like these more abstract social media respect beefs.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

That sort of bleed into like the whole drill rap thing. But they have, they satisfy a rubric that is, it's understandable and it allows for investigative leads. When you're dealing with somebody who has an undiagnosed mental health problem where maybe there's been zero contact with the criminal justice system, zero contact with police, no domestic incident reports, no calls for an emotionally disturbed person. That person is an know. Right. And the, the reality is as, as it stands now, there is no predictive measure you have for somebody with. Is where you have zero store information on them to do something catastrophic. And that I think for the subset of the city, the city's population that is concerned about crime, that is the type of individual that they are likely to be concerned by because they travel around the city, they use the trans system, they, you know, it's. And, and I don't know what enforcement tools you have to address that.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah, well, one, one thing I want to ask you about is just how it is that you have been able to sort of. Because I imagine it takes some kind of relationship building to get somebody to go into a system and tell you, like, hey, actually he's got more than three prior arrests.

[Joe Marino]

Right.

[Rafael Mangual]

How do you.

[Joe Marino]

Nobody tells me that.

[Rafael Mangual]

How do you figure it out?

[Joe Marino]

No, nobody, Nobody tells me that.

[Rafael Mangual]

How, how, how do we get our hands on that information?

[Joe Marino]

I don't know. You figure it out and tell me.

[Rafael Mangual]

I don't know, because I think the public.

[Joe Marino]

I have no idea.

[Rafael Mangual]

I think the public could really. I mean, that, that to me is like one of the most valuable services that, you know, sort of traditional city crime reporters provide.

[Joe Marino]

It is, I think that the goal generally, I think that the goal generally speaking is you want to try to be able to form relationships with people who have Very good intentions and who are knowledgeable and who they themselves are subject matter experts. And they believe there's a value in talking to somebody in media and having candid conversations about whether it be incidents, whether it be subjects of interest, whether it be policy. See, and I think more important than asking people for information, as in, what can you give me right now? I think that if you're willing to start the conversation with asking how things work, not I need this, can I have this? Right. But can you share with me how you, your job works and explain to me how you arrive at certain policies and certain decisions? And I think that that builds a very sincere rapport and eventually you just have one earnest conversation after another and that's how you get information.

[Rafael Mangual]

One of the other things that New York City has is because we are sort of the center of the globe's attention. We are also to, I think some of the more outrageous crime stories. You have obviously your sort of regular urban stuff. Right. The crazy person who shoves somebody in front of a subway train. But I'd love to get a sense of like, what are some of the other like, insane stories that you've covered. One that I really want to ask you about is Luigi Mangione, who's back in the news because of terrible.

[Joe Marino]

The Manginistas.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yes, the Manginistas these days, those are crazy.

[Joe Marino]

You know, the thing about Mangio own is it started out as just a shooting in a very. What. What we would colloquially call just a good address. Right. It was a shooting in a high traffic tourist area. Yeah. In midtown. So that as a, as a crime reporter, you're automatically going to be raised up on that. You can be like, I need to find out what's going on here. Because there's not supposed to be a shooting. Right. And if there is, you're. You're thinking it's gotta be robbery, domestic.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

You're not thinking assassination of a healthcare CEO.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

So I think that as a crime reporter, one of the, your first jobs is you're tracking all day. Like even right now that I'm not looking at my phone, I'm not really tracking what's going on on, you know.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

And I'm a little worried you're missing something. But I think, I think the important thing is to be paying attention to what's going on. Having a natural curiosity about things, having people that are receptive to answering your questions as to if something is going on, what is going on.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

And I think that your biggest asset, if you're going to be a reporter, particularly one particularly reporter that deals with the police. Right. Is you are going to be someone who is affable and you're going to ask them intelligent questions. And by expressing a sincere interest in what they do, they will be inclined to share information with you about critical incidents. I know that sounds very vague, but I, I don't think that being more specific than that is necess necessary because that's literally how it works.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right, Right.

[Joe Marino]

And so when, when, when Brian Thompson was murdered, we, we found out. I mean, I, I found out immediately who it was by someone who wanted to share that with me, and we were able to put a story up relatively quickly. I actually was working with a very good editor that morning, and we were actually. The wires were citing the New York Post Post, which is a good feeling, but I would rather be right than first.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

I don't think there's a lot of value in being first if you're not right. So we were able to really build the story out throughout the day and we, you know, we were able to drive the coverage. And, you know, obviously, you know, the public, for a story like that is not just a New York audience. It's national, it's international. And that was a very busy, busy time. I can imagine, because it was a. It was a cat and mouse game, was a manhunt. Right. And so being able to, I guess to your earlier question, how do you, how do you access. How do you get details about what's going on and keep a pace with things? And the answer is luck. You have to be lucky enough to have relationships that far predate anything you're working on that day and be able to call upon people's sense of, their sense of charity to help you, because they believe that the mission of dealing with the media is to put out the right information. A lot of the people I talk to all share the same belief, which is that it's better to have the right information out there first than have to unwind wrong information.

[Rafael Mangual]

It's every writer's worst nightmare. Right. Having the correction.

[Joe Marino]

Well, it's bad for the public. It's bad for the public. I don't particularly want to deal with anybody who wants something. I can't say that I've ever dealt with anybody that is looking for something in return. They feel that there is an intrinsic value to speaking to people in the media because they want the correct information out there, because they believe it helps law enforcement and it helps the public.

[Rafael Mangual]

You know, I can't. We Were just talking about the Mangione case, and I just can't help but contrast the aftermath of that case with the aftermath of another case that I know you covered, which is the Daniel Penney trial. I'm just looking outside the courthouse at these two periods in time, and when Daniel Penney was facing trial, outside were angry protesters calling for his head. And with Mangione, where there seems to be much less ambiguity about the legality of what. Of what he's alleged to have done, you have fangirls outside and people calling for his release.

[Joe Marino]

Yeah, he is.

[Rafael Mangual]

And yet you have.

[Joe Marino]

He may very well get jury nullification. It is well within that jury's right to vote their conscience.

[Rafael Mangual]

I mean, and how did we get here? How did we get to a place where somebody who is.

[Joe Marino]

Intersectionalism. It's power dynamics. And, you know, Jordan Neely, the. The very sad story.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yes.

[Joe Marino]

Of Jordan Neely is he was supposed to be. Not on that train. He was supposed to be in a treatment program.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

And he was in the pendency of a kid case.

[Rafael Mangual]

He had walked out of that treatment program.

[Joe Marino]

He had. He had ch. He had elected to leave that treatment program, and he. With the. The. His various issues that he was dealing with, ended up on that train.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

And obviously what happened was it says, look, it's. It's tragic. You know, there's no winner. Everyone is like, you know, everyone here is. Is losing.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

You know, I. I spoke to somebody who was intimately involved with Jordan Neely's pending case, and they were despondent, much like. Much like the young woman who declined to cooperate with the prosecution of. Of the. The suspect's case and the. The murder. Yeah. They were. They were despondent then. They were inconsolable that Jordan Neely had died because they knew why they were in that program. They were adamant that putting them in that program was the right thing to do, and they were inconsolable that this happened. And the one thing they said to me that carries me through this day is that we are simply very bad at building bridge services for people that do not benefit from incarceration, could benefit from treatment, but we lack a substantial bridge to making it compliant in a meaningful way. Right.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

And when I think about Jordan Neely, I think about someone that should be alive, someone else who peripherally had their life ruined completely off touch.

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah.

[Joe Marino]

Who are the winners here? Nobody.

[Rafael Mangual]

And yet I don't think that Daniel Penny is a defendant.

[Joe Marino]

So as to why people pick and choose who are their heroes and who are their villains. Yeah. You know, listen, if Luigi Mangione looked like Richard Jewel, do you think anybody would be out there?

[Rafael Mangual]

I guess not. Maybe.

[Joe Marino]

I don't know. There is a charisma, there is an allore. It's certainly the issue certainly is a sympathetic one. You know, I, I, I, I can't account for why people, you know, I'm agnostic on it but you know, I did, I said this in another podcast on man. I said, well, if you can assassinate healthcare CEOs, I don't know. Do you stop at journalists? Do you stop at reporters? You don't like that. Write things that you disagree with and you could find some, you could put together a sophisticated thesis for why they should be gone.

[Rafael Mangual]

Right.

[Joe Marino]

I mean where does it stop? Who decides?

[Rafael Mangual]

You?

[Joe Marino]

Somebody else, Right?

[Rafael Mangual]

Yeah, I mean that's a weird road

[Joe Marino]

to go down, right?

[Rafael Mangual]

It's a very, very weird. I was listening to these Manginistas outside the courthouse just the other day who were saying well he did terrible things. You know, he's, he, he lived immorally, he made blood money. It's like, well, it seems to never have occurred to them that somebody could draw the same conclusions about them. That they live a morally that the world's better off without them. And yet like you know, there's this sort of unwillingness to investigate the implications of one's own ideas and to see whether they could be applied to them.

[Joe Marino]

I saw it, it's, you know, I don't listen, I, whether or not I find what they said objectionable or not, it's irrelevant. You know, they're press card holders. Like there's a whole to do now about right. You know, should they have press cards? Federal judge in southern district decided that there's subs that there's due process for who gets issued or revoked press cards. Right. There really isn't like too much discretion. There's a very loose criteria. Clearly they satisfied it or at some point unless somebody just like rubber stamped it. Right. You know, they satisfied it. They have a press card. I guess, you know, we just sort of, it's the interesting drama of, of the day. But yeah, he is a hero to. He has a contingent of people that unconditionally support him.

[Rafael Mangual]

Which is nuts to me.

[Joe Marino]

Yeah, it's, it actually makes me sick.

[Rafael Mangual]

You know, it actually makes me sick.

[Joe Marino]

I, I, you know, I live in a world I, I live in both worlds. I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm friends with people who are quite conservative. I'm friends with people. People who are very progressive and liberal. And it does give me a fair amount of perspective on both sides. And the. The one commonality seems to be power and who has it and who doesn't. And we're wrestling with it, I think, more disturbingly, in. In a. In a national way, with homegrown own extremism. And I think that political violence right now is no longer going to be the anomaly. I think that it is something that people feel comfortable touching on, and I think it should be a concern to everybody. And Mangion is, you know, it is a form of. Of political violence based on a perceived economic, you know, injustice. And whatever his rationale is, I don't think that legally it provides justification for murder, but certainly people have found that there is moral justification, and that is something that we should be paying attention to.

[Rafael Mangual]

I agree.

[Joe Marino]

My opinion.

[Rafael Mangual]

Well, I wish we could continue the conversation and not end on that unhappy note, but I really appreciate you taking the time.

[Joe Marino]

Thanks for having me.

[Rafael Mangual]

I appreciate it. I hope you'll come back, because I think what you do is so interesting. Interesting. It's so valuable to the city of New York. It's so valuable to the country. No, it really is. It really is. You know, it's important work, and I don't think people in your line of work get enough recognition. So I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you so much.

[Joe Marino]

It's fun. We're not saving lives. Thanks. Appreciate it.