 [NYPOST] A notoriously lenient Manhattan judge cut loose a teen gangbanger on an attempted murder case — despite admitting he could go on the lam, The Post has learned.
Kalifa Quattara, 18, had already caught a break on a botched Brooklyn gun case where he was wrongly treated as a minor, even before he got yet another break from soft-on-crime Manhattan Judge Valentina Morales last week.
Now Quattara, with two open felonies in two boroughs, is back on the streets with electronic monitoring, according to court records.
"The ankle bracelet isn’t foolproof... [Morales] is overestimating what the bracelet does and doesn’t do," one law enforcement source said Thursday.
"On a second gun arrest, it doesn’t appear restrictive enough."
Quattara, a reputed member of the "Up the Hill" street gang, was last nabbed by cops with a loaded gun on April 19 and admitted that he used the same gun in a caught-on-video shootout with rival gangs members nine days earlier, court records show.
No one was struck by the bullets, the records show.
He was hauled before Morales on April 21 on attempted murder, reckless endangerment, and gun charges, with prosecutors asking that the troublesome teen be held without bail at Rikers Island.
"The defendant is no stranger to firearms," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney William Salter told the judge, according to a transcript of Quattara’s arraignment before Morales. "It is clear from the video evidence that the exchange of gunfire by the defendant was in retaliation for the previous encounter on Madison and Rutgers Street on April 11."
He noted that Quattara was already out without bail on the Brooklyn gun case.
|
