EAST HARLEM — A Manhattan judge used the sentencing of the man accused of killing Officer Randolph Holder as an opportunity to lash out at the mayor and police commissioner, who had criticized her for going too easy on a man with a lengthy rap sheet, according to reports.
Thursday, after giving Tyrone Howard, 30, the maximum 12-year-sentence for the 2014 drug charge, judge Patricia Nunez blasted Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton for presenting a “false narrative” of how and why Howard was on the streets, according to multiple reports.
“Shame on those politicians who now point fingers,” she said, according to the New York Times.
“I would suggest the mayor look in the mirror and ask himself whether it’s his own policies that he’s in favor of — whether it’s those policies that make somebody actually think he can shoot a cop.”
Nunez said that before ordering Howard to the drug treatment program she was told he had a history of drug sales and drug arrests but not about a 2009 shootout in East Harlem, the Daily News reported.
Both de Blasio and Bratton criticized Nunez's decision to enroll Howard in a drug program instead of sentencing him to prison. Bratton said Howard was a “a poster boy for not being diverted.”
Before Holder's murder, Nunez ordered Howard into a rehab program after the 2014 drug conviction. He was bailed out and ordered to start a drug program in September.
On Oct. 20, he shot and killed Randolph, prosecutors charge.
Howard is scheduled to be arraigned for that crime Nov. 24, records show.
