You know the adage, “Don’t shoot yourself in the foot”? That’s exactly what New Yorkers are doing by pouring their tax dollars into the Legal Aid Society. It should be called the Illegal Aid Society. It’s 99% publicly funded — with your state and local tax dollars — and its chief business is litigating and lobbying to force changes in the law that will benefit criminals and handcuff the police. Sadly, it’s been quite successful.

I sat down with Gotham’s longest-serving police commissioner, Ray Kelly, on Monday to get his take on the damage done.

“The Legal Aid Society seems hell-bent on ignoring the plight of the victim while hampering the police at every turn,” says Kelly.

Andrew Cuomo, frontrunner in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, pledged on a candidate questionnaire published on Monday that he will add 5,000 cops to the New York Police Department. Kelly laughs off the pledge.

“With the rules in place, people don’t want the job,” Kelly says. “Experienced cops are telling their sons and daughters not to enter the force.”

Get ready for even more anti-policing ahead. Now Legal Aid is demanding that police stop arresting people for what they call “low-level crimes” like shoplifting. Legal Aid wants offenders merely issued summonses and told to appear in court at a later date rather than hauled into the police station. In 2021, more than half of people accused of petit larceny got off with a mere summons, but now three-quarters are being taken into custody.

That’s a good trend, says Kelly, not something to sue about. “Every arrest should have an investigatory aspect to it,” he says. “Is the suspect wanted for more serious crimes or violating parole? There is no way to find that out except bringing the suspect into the police station.”

Why should someone suspected of stealing $200 worth of goods at CVS be set free without an arrest? The city is in the middle of a theft epidemic. And city data show that suspects handed a summons fail to show up for their court appearance more than half the time.

New Yorkers have had their fill of decriminalizing what the Left calls “petty” acts.

Here’s another doozy Legal Aid goal — outlawing handcuffing the accused for their initial court appearance. Legal Aid calls handcuffing “dehumanizing.” It filed a class-action lawsuit against the NYPD last November to block anyone from being handcuffed “without an individualized judicial finding” that it’s necessary.

Ridiculous, says Kelly. Handcuffing “safeguards everybody, including judges, court personnel and the police. It’s just common sense.”

Legal Aid opposes using weapons scanners to detect guns being carried into the subway, deeming them “invasive.” Ridiculous.

Legal Aid wants the City Council to abolish the NYPD’s gang database, calling it a “racist tool.” Nearly all the gang members ID’d are Black or Latino, but Mayor Eric Adams, who sees the value of the database in solving and even preventing gang shootings, points out that “96% of the victims of shootings in the city are people of color. Let’s keep them in mind.”

Legal Aid had the gall to demand that the NYPD turn over photographs and tax identification numbers for all active-duty officers. It wanted a mug book of cops instead of perps, to make it easier for Legal Aid’s clients to identify and file complaints against cops.

Even Judge Arthur Engoron, famous for presiding over President Donald Trump’s 2024 trial, saw the danger, ruling on March 29 that it would be akin “to having a billboard in Times Square” targeting every police officer.

Ensuring that the poor have adequate legal representation is a noble goal, but Legal Aid goes way beyond that. It’s largely responsible for the no-cash bail laws, the “Raise the Age” law and the 2019 discovery “reforms” that require prosecutors to meet rigid deadlines for sharing reams of largely irrelevant paperwork with the defense.

The discovery rules have enabled thousands of defendants to walk free. “Cops risk their lives making arrests only to have cases dismissed on hyper-technicalities brought by these ridiculous discovery rules,” says Kelly. Even Gov. Kathy Hochul took a stand against them but failed to bring significant change.

The damage has to stop, and now is the time, as Albany lawmakers wrap up the state budget.

Instead of defunding the police — the Left’s favorite cause — Albany should be defunding Legal Aid’s lobbying and class-action litigation. It’s one thing to pay for lawyers for the indigent. But it’s unacceptable for taxpayers to fund Legal Aid and similar pro-crime groups that rig the system to make the rest of us less safe.

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