By Rachel Shapiro
Staten Island Advance
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — One year ago today, NYPD Officer Randolph Holder was shot and killed by Tyrone Howard, a career criminal who was on the street instead of in jail.
With Holder’s death as motivation, Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis last session sponsored a bill to prevent criminals from getting out of jail, and on Thursday, repeated her calls for reform in drug sentencing.
The bill sponsored by the Republican assemblywoman would prohibit anyone with two or more felony convictions from entering drug diversion programs instead of serving jail time.
Howard had pleaded guilty to drug possession and should have started a residential drug treatment program instead of serving a two-year prison term. But he didn’t attend the treatment and in October 2015, shot and killed Holder.
With two dozen drug arrests over a 16-year period, Malliotakis argues he should have been in jail.
“This is all because of a loophole in the state law,” Malliotakis said Thursday while standing in front of the new Richmond County Courthouse in St. George.
Drug treatment programs should be used to help addicts, not dealers who have no interest in getting clean and use them as a get-out-of-jail-free card, she said.
The assemblywoman said she believes the increase in overdose deaths in recent years can be partly attributed to judges sending drug dealers to treatment programs -- and back on the streets to deal -- instead of jail.
When rolling back New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws in 2009, judges were given expanded discretion to allow drug treatment as an alternative to prison to certain non-violent addicted offenders without the prosecutor’s approval.
Malliotakis argues that people like Howard, with a history of committing crimes, should not have gotten the treatment option.
Assemblyman Ronald Castorina Jr. is one of 10 Republican co-sponsors of the bill and agrees with his colleague.
“Officer Holder was murdered because someone was given too many chances,” he said.
With them were supporters of the bill -- Michelle Esquenazi, president of New York State Bail Bondsman Association; James Gatto, Staten Island director for Sergeants Benevolent Association; Alicia Palermo-Reddy, a nurse and founder of non-profit Addiction Angel; and Steve Margarella, a recovering addict.
Reddy argued the bill is necessary to make the distinction between an addict who deals drugs to feed their habit and should be in treatment and a career dealer who doesn’t care about getting clean.
Margarella, a lifelong Staten Islander who got sober from his alcohol and drug addiction 29 years ago at age 33, said a 12-step program helped him, but no matter the treatment, dealers shouldn’t be with addicts.
“When you put that guy in a room with people struggling to get clean ... it doesn’t really work too well,” he said. “Everyone has the right to access to treatment, but that’s not to say it should all be in the same place.”
Sen. Marty Golden, a Brooklyn Republican, is the Senate sponsor of the bill.
Since sponsoring the bill last year, it has sat in the Assembly Codes Committee without advancing.
The chairman, Joseph Lentol, a Brooklyn Democrat, signaled to Malliotakis that the bill was doomed because “everyone deserves a second chance” she quoted him saying.
Lentol said he doesn’t remember the word-for-word of the conversation but recalls speaking in the context of the Rockefeller drug laws.
“It’s very hard for people who are drug addicts to recover from their addiction,” he said, and going in and out of the criminal justice system is part of that.
While some with criminal histories may take advantage, addicts who really need help would suffer from a two-strikes rule, he argued.
“It would hurt more than it would help,” Lentol said.
Asked about the prospect of the bill passing, Malliotakis wasn’t optimistic.
“Many in the Assembly just see the world differently than I do,” she said.