To Bay Ridge State Senator Marty Golden, the release of a cop turned convicted murderer is not only a travesty of justice, but a signpost warning us about Brooklyn’s dangerous future.
Standing with a group of concerned citizens on the steps of City Hall Friday, Golden said that Arnold Kane would be the “first of many” hardened criminals released on our streets as New York State tightens their fiscal belt.
Kane, a Staten Island resident, served 27 years for strangling his mistress, a Wall Street stock analyst, to death in her Bensonhurst home back in 1981. He had resigned from the NYPD and was driving a cab when the murder was committed.
Golden said that residents were stunned to hear about his upcoming release, especially since he had just recently been bounced from a minimal security prison to a maximum security prison.
“Usually it’s the other way around,” Golden explained, adding that Kane was suspected of two other killings before his arrest for the slaying of Joan Becker. Two days after her death, family members found Becker lying in her apartment with a cord tied in a bow around her neck.
“The system itself has a problem when they seem fit to put criminals into communities of hard working people. What signals are we sending? Are we returning to the days of old — to the seventies and eighties when crime was out of control?”
“I would hope that the Governor rethink his plans of releasing inmates and closing prisons to save some money because all he’s doing is giving these criminals the opportunity to commit crimes and impact our lives.”
“The Governor is putting a gun to the head of public safety in this city,” he said. “It was only a matter of time before one of these felons pull the trigger.”
A former cop, Golden said that the current fiscal crisis as well as the recent spike in crime is a bad time to be putting convicted felons back on the street.
While he believes that reformed felons who served their time should be released, he doesn’t believe that Kane fits the bill.
“[Kane] was moved from a minimum security facility to a maxim security facility because of drugs or other issues,” he said. “I think that’s a problem. He’s also never addressed the crime he was convicted of or apologized to the family of the woman he killed.”
“In this case a life sentence should mean just that — life,” Golden said.
Calls to Governor David Paterson’s office for comment were not returned as this paper went to press.
