Bronx DA’s Office Declines to Prosecute Alarming Number of Cases, Probe Finds

The best place to get arrested in the city is the Bronx.

Hands down.

That’s because the Bronx district attorney’s office declines to prosecute an alarming number of cases, a Daily News probe found.

Prosecutors toss cases at twice the rate of the citywide average–and more than three times the rate of their counterparts in Manhattan and Brooklyn, stats show.

Cops who make the collars are fed up with the trend.

“You can get away with anything in the Bronx,” fumed one cop. “They’re letting dangerous people back out on the street again and again, instead of making even the slightest effort to build a case against them.”

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson’s office threw out 17.3% of the 43,520 arrests between Jan. 1 and July 22 of this year, state Division of Criminal Justice Services records show.

His prosecutors have led the city in rejected cases every year since 2006, despite handling fewer arrests than Manhattan and Brooklyn, records show.

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The overall 17.3% rejection rate is more than twice the citywide average of 8.4%.

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“If your case isn’t something close to a slam dunk, you can’t hold onto it,” one assistant district attorney said. “It makes it a frustrating place to work.”

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In the past month, the Bronx district attorney’s office declined to prosecute a number of disturbing crimes.

Among them:

– A crazed woman slashed a man in his stomach, but dodged attempted murder charges because of an uncooperative victim. A cop source said prosecutors did “less than nothing” to gain his trust.

– Officers found two men sitting on a park bench reeking of pot with a large bag of crack cocaine at their feet. Prosecutors deemed there was not enough evidence to prove the drugs belonged to them, records show.

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