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Over 100 inmates who were released from Rikers Island in New York over coronavirus concerns have been arrested again by police, according to a new report.
About 110 inmates accounted for 190 arrests since the pandemic first hit New York City, The New York Post reported.
NYPD data showed that of the 190 arrests, 45 of them were for burglaries, contributing to a 43-percent spike in break-ins over the past month.
One of the offenders was Jerard Iamunno, 37, who was arrested on Sunday night after allegedly robbing a 59-year-old man at a Harlem ATM with a knife, according to The Post. The man ultimately handed over $20 in cash to the robber.
Iamunno was released on March 25 after he pleaded guilty to grand larceny and a separate drug charge.
Over 16,000 inmates were released last month from facilities all over the U.S. due to COVID-19. About 1,500 were from New York City jails.
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Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, chastised those who have thrown away their second chance last month, adding that it now falls to the NYPD to control the chaos they've created.
“I think it's unconscionable just on a human level that folks were shown mercy and this is what some of them have done," he said during a news briefing. "We’re going to keep, just buckling down on it, making sure there is close monitoring and supervision to the maximum extent possible and the NYPD is going to keep doing what they're doing.”
Hollywood actors like Joaquin Phoenix and congressional Democrats have publicly lobbied for the release of prisoners in an attempt to prevent the coronavirus from spreading.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter last month to Attorney General Bill Barr asking him to "release as many prisoners as possible."
Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, sent the letter in response to the death of the first federal prisoner due to COVID-19 and the hospitalization of a guard who worked at the same facility.
Others like San Bernadino County Sheriff John McMahon have argued against such measures and believe these policies will pose a danger to the public.
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In an April interview with Fox 11, he claimed repeat child abusers are able to benefit from California's $0 cash bail emergency mandate and will be released back into circulation. There are 13 exceptions for serious offenses, but child abuse was not one of them.
“Felony child abuse does not fit into that list of 13, so even though this guy had a prior for domestic violence conviction for child abuse, he gets arrested for child abuse again, and then he gets released on zero bail with a court date in July,” McMahon said.
“So that just doesn’t make any sense to me, maybe I’m missing something, but that doesn’t seem to me to be the right thing to do to protect the citizens of our county. If that person is in our custody, we can protect the victim, if he’s not, we can’t.”
Fox News' Talia Kaplan and Tyler Olson contributed to this report