A wanted ex-con allegedly stole more than $2,000 worth of merchandise by threatening a drug store worker with a knife — yet had his armed robbery charges downgraded under the controversial, progressive policies of Manhattan’s new district attorney, The Post has learned.
The move followed a similar case — featured on the front page of Sunday’s Post — in which prosecutors reduced a felony robbery charge to misdemeanor petit larceny as per the marching orders DA Alvin Bragg gave them last week.
“Bragg’s policies are an affront to every law-abiding citizen in New York City,” fumed former Manhattan assistant district attorney Daniel Ollen, who’s now a defense lawyer.
“Violent criminals now have carte blanche to re-offend, knowing full well that they will never again sniff the inside of a jail cell.”
Ollen added: “If you thought things couldn’t get any worse, think again. God help us.”
In the latest case, career criminal William Rolon, 43, is accused of filling a plastic trash bag with cold medicine and other items inside a Duane Reade store on the Lower East Side around 12:20 a.m. Saturday.
When Rolon left the store at 100 Delancey St. without paying, a female manager confronted him and saw he was brandishing a pocket knife, according to court papers.
“F–k you, I’m taking everything,” he allegedly said.
Rolon and an unidentified accomplice then headed west with the loot, which was worth $2,209, law enforcement sources familiar with the matter said.
Rolon returned to the store around 5:30 p.m. the same day and allegedly stole more cold medicine, some paper towels and other items, according to court papers.
Another manager recognized Rolon from the earlier incident — which was caught on surveillance video — and called the cops, leading to his arrest, sources said.
While in custody at the nearby 7th Precinct headquarters, a small package of heroin allegedly fell out of Rolon’s sock, according to court papers.
Cops charged Rolon with first-degree robbery and criminal possession of a weapon in the first incident, sources said.
But when he was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court early Sunday morning, the robbery charge was dropped by the Manhattan DA’s Office and he was instead charged with two counts of petit larceny and related low-level offenses, including second-degree menacing, court papers show.
“If you’re a cop, you cannot charge a menacing with a petit larceny. That’s a robbery,” a law enforcement source said.
“This is Police Academy 101.”
The move by prosecutors was in keeping with the orders outlined by Bragg in a “Day One” memo he issued on Jan. 3, his first full day in office.
Under Bragg’s directives, certain robberies of businesses are to be prosecuted as petit larcenies provided that no victim was wounded and there’s no “genuine risk of physical harm.”
The manager who Rolon allegedly threatened told cops she feared for her life and didn’t want to return to work, sources familiar with the matter said, and the criminal complaint notes that Rolon’s alleged conduct “placed her in fear of physical injury, serious physical injury or death.”
“He just ignored the victim,” Manhattan defense lawyer Michael Discioarro said of Bragg.
“He’s telling the victim: You don’t deserve protection from the state.”
Discioarro, a former Bronx prosecutor, added: “If this is how we’re going to prosecute crime — by ignoring crime — we’re in trouble.”
The manager declined to comment.
The incident at the Duane Reade followed a robbery arrest Thursday at a TJ Maxx store in Chelsea, after which the NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association claimed a prosecutor “intentionally omitted” from the criminal complaint an allegation that the suspect threatened workers with a pair of scissors.
The arresting officer refused to sign the complaint until that information was added, but prosecutors still downgraded a third-degree robbery charge to petit larceny, in accordance with Bragg’s orders, sources said.
In his memo, Bragg initially said all cases of commercial robberies with a “deadly weapon” or “dangerous instrument” would be downgraded, but his office walked back that directive the following day amid outrage from Manhattan shopkeepers.
Instead, commercial robberies involving guns will still be prosecuted as felonies, the DA’s office said.
At the time of Rolon’s arrest Saturday, he was wanted in Brooklyn for failing to appear in court in October on charges that include felony assault with a weapon, records show.
That case involves an incident that took place in April, records show.
He was freed on supervised release at his Manhattan arraignment on Sunday and then taken to Brooklyn Criminal Court, where he was released without bail.
Former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Bederow said the decision to charge Rolon “with petit larceny, in essence, assured that bail would not be set and he would be back out on the street after arraignment.”
“Charging him with a misdemeanor also likely meant the court in Brooklyn who saw him after the Manhattan arrest might have been unaware that the allegations were much more serious than a simple petit larceny, which likely led to his release again without bail,” he said.
Bederow, now a defense attorney, also noted that Rolon’s record means that he could “be classified as a violent predicate felon, which would subject him to a substantial and mandatory prison term if he was convicted of a violent robbery on his recent Manhattan arrest.”
Bederow added, “The charging decision made by the Manhattan ADA appears to be in lockstep with the Bragg memo and exactly what many people feared.”
Rolon has a rap sheet that lists more than 20 arrests that date back to 1991 and involve charges of rape, robbery, assault and drug dealing, sources said.
In 1997, Rolon was sentenced to three to six years in prison for robbery in upstate Fulton County, and he was later slapped with a five-year sentence in 2009 for attempted robbery in Brooklyn, records show.
He was released from supervision in the latter case in 2019, records show.
A veteran cop said that while he agreed with Bragg that homeless, mentally ill shoplifters should be diverted to treatment, “the violent guys who have weapons — they need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
“He’s saying all of them should get a break and I can’t concur with that,” the cop said.
Rolon is being represented by the Legal Aid Society, which said in a statement that Rolon “is a prime example of a person in need of treatment and resources, not incarceration.”
“Jail and prison only create a vicious cycle of incarceration and only serve to exacerbate root cause issues and to detract from public safety,” the statement said.
Bragg’s office didn’t return repeated requests for comment and only sent a reporter Rolon’s criminal complaint — a public record under state law — after multiple inquiries.
But during a Monday morning radio interview on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show,” Bragg drew a distinction between robberies committed by someone who “goes into the store” with a gun and “waves it around” and those that involve what the Penal Law calls a “dangerous instrument.”
“They are, you know, cases that, you know, someone attempts and throws something at you like a pork chop,” he said.
“I don’t want to be frivolous about it, but that literally can be a dangerous weapon under the law.”
