Reacting to the award presentation, Clark said, “I am so blessed to run an office full of attorneys and professional staff who really love the work that we do for the people of the Bronx. [They] strive every day to do what is right for public safety and for a fair justice system.”

Clark was a vocal supporter of the former and late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and spoke, along with other members of the legal profession, at an event in The Bronx, honoring the late justice in 2021. The Office of the Bronx District Attorneys has successfully prosecuted a number of significant cases in recent years, including a sex trafficking case involving Bloods gang members, multiple charges brought against Trinitario gang members for slashings carried out at Rikers Island, a $7 million drug takedown with links to the Sinaloa cartel formerly headed by the now convicted drug lord, “El Chapo” as well as a successful prosecution in a decades old cold case of the murder of a Bronx teenager in 1999.

 

More recently, the Office also successfully charged a Tennessee college student from The Bronx with trafficking 73 guns and high capacity magazines to an undercover officer, a situation which preceded the now laser-focused efforts to curb the proliferation of ghost guns in the country. In October 2020, the Office of the Bronx District Attorney announced the hiring of 61 new assistant district attorneys. Earlier that year, following a controversial “kettling” of protestors during a Black Lives Matter rally in Mott Haven, Clark moved to dismiss over 300 summonses for violating curfew.

 

“Our priority has always been to make sure we give a voice to our victims and their families,” said Clark, whose office, as reported, in addition to carrying out their prosecutorial work, has also been active in organizing events to promote awareness of domestic violence, child safety, gun crime prevention through various gun buyback events and numerous anti-gun violence rallies, as well as job fairs which help the formerly incarcerated re-enter employment. Her office also regularly organizes prom drives to assist young Bronxites present themselves in style, when celebrating their respective school proms.

 

Along with the other City’s district attorneys, Clark recently joined a round table discussion with Mayor Eric Adams ahead of the release of his blueprint to end gun violence. The topic of bail reform is highly divisive and progressives and moderates have long disputed whether or not there is a correlation between recidivism rates among those released on bail. Progressives argue that anomalies make headlines whereas those in the center argue that tweaks to the 2019 bail reform laws are justified especially when it comes to violent crime.

 

Norwood News queried with the Bronx District Attorneys’ office an incident at Wakefield subway station where a woman had been smeared in the face with human excrement by a man who had been released on bail for another crime. We were informed at the time that the prosecution made its case to the judge at the time but that the judge in question did not consider the evidence presented to be sufficient to warrant holding the defendant in custody.

 

More recently, we reported how a Bronx man charged with sex trafficking, rape and attempted strangulation of a young girl had been previously released on bail. We were initially unsuccessful in our attempts to obtain the name of the judge who presided over the applicable bail hearing for the defendant in January 2021 via the e-courts system, but the Bronx Criminal Court administration team later confirmed that the judge’s name was Judge Efrain Alvarado.

 

We reached out to the Office of Court Administration, once more, a couple of times to ask why the judge granted bail in January 2021 to someone who, four months earlier, had been arrested and hit, as a co-defendant, with 22 charges, including sex trafficking of a child, promoting prostitution, and separately for rape, a criminal sex act, unlawful imprisonment, and assault [attempted strangulation], even if, at that point, he had not yet been convicted. We did not receive an immediate response.

Clark began her role as district attorney in 2016. Prior to her appointment, she had defended her role as a judge in the Kalief Browder case. As reported, Browder was a Bronx youth who died by suicide in 2015 after he was held at Rikers Island for three years without trial. As reported by NY1, charges were ultimately dropped against him and his court record sealed, but documents obtained by the NY1 show, “Inside City Hall,” reportedly showed Clark was the presiding judge for six of Browder’s court dates.

 

The district attorney told NY1 political anchor, Errol Louis, at the time that she couldn’t recall presiding over Browder’s case but said she believed that lessons could be learned from it. “Honestly, I cannot say that I remember it,” Clark said at the time. “I mean, I was there for 13 years. I sat on a lot of cases. But look, the Kalief Browder case is a tragedy, and no one should have to sit in jail for three years on a robbery case, or any type of case,”

 

“We know we have to be tough on those who are causing the harm in our community,” added Clark. “But we also seek alternatives for those who suffer from afflictions that cause them to come into the criminal justice system and give second chances to those who really need them.”