Brooklyn DA talks community engagement, restorative justice at NAN conference

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez addressed a packed conference room of attendees – dozens of whom proclaimed their Brooklynite statuses as he approached the podium – on Thursday by first acknowledging his commitment to building trust between his office and the borough’s 2.6 million residents. 

“Trust is essential. And my office seeks to build trust in the courtroom every day, by making sure that people will be treated fairly, and that there's equal justice for people regardless of how much money they have in their pockets [or] what they look like,” he said. 

He and other top lawyers – including U.S. Attorneys Breon Peace and Damian Williams, as well as New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin – convened in Midtown Manhattan this week at the National Action Network’s annual convention to discuss how their offices leverage community partnerships to enhance public safety. 

Rev. Al Sharpton founded the National Action Network in 1991 as a civil rights organization committed largely to social justice issues like criminal justice reform and police accountability. 

“They should not be afraid to uphold the law. That's what we put them there for,” Sharpton prefaced to the audience.

Gonzalez, who often describes himself as a “progressive” prosecutor, focused largely on his office’s efforts to overhaul certain criminal justice processes, like clearing cases and excessive arrests, that result in disproportionate outcomes for residents of color.

In 2019, Brooklyn’s clearance rates consistently hovered above 30% quarter over quarter. Since then, however, the rates have been all over the place, going as low as 20.1% for index crimes during some quarters. 

He described the numbers as some of the lowest he has seen as a law enforcement professional. “I think a lot of that obviously had to do with the conditions on the ground with the pandemic. But a lot of it also had to do with worsening relations between law enforcement and the communities they serve,” he said. 

One of the solutions thus far has been to look inward: the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office has vacated about 500 cases due to law enforcement misconduct since Gonzalez assumed his role, he said. 

The need for prosecutors to allocate their resources toward other actions besides arrests was something all panelists spoke about in detail. U.S. Attorney General for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams, for example, said that he sees his efforts to curb financial corruption as a social justice issue. 

“People don't think it's fair if we're leaning in on gun violence and gang violence, but all of a sudden we're lenient when it comes to white collar crime,” he said. 

In Brooklyn, Gonzalez has been using restorative justice models to mitigate the need to put more of the borough’s residents behind bars. As part of Project Restore Bed-Stuy, a $2.5 million anti-violence program, a number of community organizations partnered with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office to engage dozens of local gang members in cognitive behavioral therapy, trauma-healing circles and job opportunities.

For Gonzalez, one of the most significant results of the program was the members’ resolve to not engage in further violence, even after three of them were shot. 

“We've saved lives during the course of this,” he said. “And we’ve shown that we can prevent gun violence not by locking up people but by providing opportunity.”