Quinn: Restore DA Budgets

District Attorney Richard A. Brown has praised New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn for proposing restoration of the budgets of the city’s five District Attorneys’ offices to their pre-9/11 levels and the expansion of child abuse programs.
In her response to Mayor Bloomberg’s preliminary budget, Speaker Quinn called for the restoration of the district attorneys’ budgets to deal with increasing caseloads and arrest to arraignment times. Speaker Quinn noted that after the city’s fiscal downturn in 2001, district attorney’s offices faced $40 million in cuts.
“I want to thank Speaker Quinn for her public commitment to work toward full restoration of the budget cuts that the District Attorneys’ offices have suffered the last several years,” said Brown. “As the Speaker correctly recognizes, these repeated and substantial cuts to our offices’ budgets have impacted greatly on our ability to provide the level of prosecutorial services to which the people of our city are entitled. Prosecutors are an integral part of our criminal justice system. It makes little sense to add funding to enable the police to hire more officers and make more arrests without ensuring that district attorneys can process those arrests in a timely manner.”
In addition to her call for funding restorations, Speaker Quinn proposed additional funding for the city’s district attorneys to investigate child abuse cases and to bring abusers to justice. District Attorney Brown said, “The efforts of Speaker Quinn to make certain that I and my fellow prosecutors have the resources that we need to fight crime effectively are greatly appreciated. We look forward to working closely with Speaker Quinn and her fellow Councilmembers to continue to keep this city safe and to improve the quality of the lives of all who live and work here.”