New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo spent his last day in office granting clemency to David Gilbert, a Weather Underground member and the father of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Boudin’s mother, Kathy Boudin, was also involved in the crime, convicted, and paroled in 2003.
The 1981 crime had involved members of the Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army attempting to steal $1.6 million from a Brink’s armored truck at a suburban Rockland County mall in upstate New York.
Gilbert’s role in the crime resulted in the deaths of Nyack police Sgt. Edward O’Grady and Officer Waverly Brown, as well as the Brink’s guard Peter Paige. During the trial, Gilbert and two co-defendants emphasized how they were “freedom fighters” and then tried to deem the trial illegitimate. At one point, they even raised their fists in the air and shouted ‘Free the land!’
Gilbert had been convicted of three counts of second-degree murder and four counts of first-degree robbery for his role in the 1981 Brink’s armored car robbery. He had been sentenced to 75 years to life with no possibility of parole until 2056. Or that seemed to be the case until Cuomo let the cop killer out the door.
Gilbert’s son Boudin has complained to the New York Times and put political pressure on his parents’ incarceration for quite some time. He praised his parents for “fighting U.S imperialism around the world” and announced that he is dedicated to the same thing. He said he was sad not only to see what his parents had suffered on a daily basis but what millions of others had to suffer as well. He continued to call his parents’ sentences an “example of criminal justice imbalance.”
New York Republican Assemblymember Mike Lawler called Cuomo’s act a “disgusting betrayal to the people of Rockland County,” adding that this marks the 40th year of the Brink Robbery’s anniversary. He said Cuomo has “once again” stabbed the brave men and women in law enforcement in the back.
District Attorney Boudin has caused a lot of problems in politics besides commenting on his parents’ incarceration. He has constantly called the U.S Immigrations and Customs Enforcement “racist” and accused them of targeting immigrants when “no one in the DA’s office has the resources or the mandate to investigate those interactions.
Boudin even celebrated his father getting his COVID-19 vaccine in prison, adding that he’ll “be able to see him again for the first time in over a year.” Many critics snapped back that there had been elderly people not in prison who still can’t get a shot get.
Cuomo has once again shown that he’s going to stick it to the people of New York and that he really doesn’t care. Pretty typical for him to do on his last day out as well. Just shows that he’s never cared about the safety and nature of New York, only the status and power it can give him. Democrats will continue the trend of demonizing our police officers and opening up prisons. Crime-ridden cities and Democratic leaders go hand-in-hand for a reason.