NEW YORK, NY - In New York City, the litany of cases and convictions against serial car-thief 58-year-old Halbert Burke, a man arrested sixty times since 1990, has law enforcement sources frustrated with “exhausted” District Attorneys. Shockingly despite 11 convictions since 2017 and another 24 felony arrests since then, Burke is still free to roam the streets after his most recent “joy ride” in December.
According to reporting from The New York Post, law enforcement sources familiar with Burke’s 35-year crime spree told the outlet, “The DAs at this point are so exhausted that after that many convictions, they just charge him with misdemeanors.”
Burke’s targets of choice are reportedly work vans having stolen a dozen since December 2024. He brazenly told officers after a recent arrest, “I took it for a joyride." Sources say that Burke’s freedom since his most recent arrest in February is thanks to New York State’s lax bail laws, under which he walked straight out of lockup after his last arraignment.
The bail reforms passed in 2019 set the bar for bail higher than the grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property charges that Burke keeps racking up. He currently has five open cases in two of the city’s five boroughs, two in Manhattan and three in the Bronx.
In his latest spree of thefts, Burke allegedly walked into a Bronx parking lot and drove away with a truck parked there according to prosecutors. The next morning he was arrested in East Harlem for stealing another van. He was arrested in January for another string of van thefts and was back in handcuffs on Feb. 4th but was back on the streets of New York two weeks later.
One source told the Post, “This is what 35 years of being a perp looks like.”
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who currently leads the Democrat effort to oust Mayor Eric Adams, created controversy Sunday when he doubled down on the 2019 reforms he signed into law at a Harlem church claiming “It righted a terrible social wrong,” according to the Post.
The disgraced former Governor, felled by a series of COVID-related scandals and sexual harassment allegations in 2021 punted the issue to judges and prosecutors telling Mount Neboh Baptist Church, “Some people raised issues about not having enough judicial discretion in that bill. That has been changed, that has been remedied. So now it’s up to the judges, it’s up to the prosecutors, to actually use their discretion and bring the appropriate charges.”
“And remember, bail reform righted a terrible wrong. We were putting people in Riker’s, in jail, who hadn’t been found guilty of anything just because they couldn’t make bail,” he added. “It shouldn’t be that because you’re wealthy, then you can make bail and you’re released, but if you can’t make bail, then you stay in jail, even though you haven’t been found guilty of anything yet.”
