Thomas Kenniff, criminal defense attorney, prosecutor and Iraq war veteran, is running for Manhattan District Attorney because he’s distraught seeing the city he loves rapidly succumb to crime. He is running against Democrat Alvin Bragg, Jr., to replace incumbent Democrat Cyrus Vance, Jr., who is not seeking reelection.
After graduating from The Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University in 2000, Kenniff worked at a corporate law firm. He told The Jewish Press, “I kind of knew it wasn’t where my heart was. I wanted to get in the courtroom, and I also liked the idea of serving the public.” He began working as an assistant D.A. for Fox News host Jeanine Pirro when she was the District Attorney of Westchester County.
After being deployed to Iraq, he and a fellow veteran founded the criminal law firm Raiser & Kenniff. He is the chief military legal officer for the U.S. Army’s 369th sustainment brigade, known as The Harlem Hell Fighters, and has been on the front lines throughout the war on Covid, serving on active military duty at the Javits Center when it was a hospital, and then when it was a vaccination site.
His many honors include the Army Commendation Medal and Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal.
The number one issue Kenniff sees as a threat facing New York City is violent crime. “People don’t want to do business here, people don’t want to commute here,” he said. “Now people have all these options for remote employment…That, obviously, reverberates to the economy right down to the person selling sandwiches on the corner, the restaurants that are relying on a corporate business crowd, tourism. If we don’t have control of the city from a public safety perspective, everything else suffers.”
Kenniff plans to lobby to change the bail reform law, which he believes is responsible for criminals being set free, since bail can no longer be set for many offenses. Hate crimes are not included in the new bail reform law, which is why a vandal who desecrated multiple synagogues and Jewish Centers in Riverdale did not serve any time. He stated, “In 2020, the first year of bail reform, there was a 97 percent increase in shootings and a 45 percent increase in murders. This year we’ve already surpassed last year’s total murders – in early October! …The law was so bad, even by April, even the people in Albany that passed it had to revise it because there was such an immediate rise in crime.”
Kenniff noted that his opponent Alvin Bragg pledged to expand it and end cash bail completely.
Another major factor Kenniff sees as contributing to the surge in New York City’s violence is the disbanding of plainclothes, anti-crime policing units. “As a defense attorney, I handled a lot of cases involving guns and subway crimes that resulted from arrests made by anti-crime police. Those [crimes] spiked starting on or about the summer of 2020 when those units were disbanded, so we need to reinvest in that type of policing.”
He added, “You have violent street gangs in New York City, be it Bloods, Crypts, MS 13, Latin Kings…and they operate clandestinely, that’s what defines organized criminal activities, so the notion that you’re going to be able to combat that without undercover police is just delusional.”
Kenniff described a rally he attended last week to keep public school officers in New York City schools as “heartbreaking.” An African American teen from Harlem spoke about how safety officers at his school saved him many times from being attacked by the same violent gang. Kenniff concluded, “Only a completely ideologically driven person would ever support taking away a uniformed school safety officer there in the school.”
Kenniff is endorsed by the Lieutenants Benevolent Association, the NYPD Captains Endowment Association, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, Republican organizations such as The Metropolitan Republican Club, several prominent Chinese American organizations, The New York Post, PLACE NYC (Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education) and the New York City Residents Alliance.