Meet the victims, kin and advocates who testified before the Alvin Bragg House panel

Former bodega clerk Jose Alba joined the families of other crime victims and their supporters Monday in railing against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg at a contentious GOP-led House Judiciary Committee hearing targeting the lefty prosecutor.

The group testified at a special congressional “field hearing” at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, putting Bragg on the hot seat in front of a national audience.

The DA was not at the hearing.

The eight people who spoke or provided statements decried Big Apple crime and Bragg’s controversial alleged lax policies, which critics say favor criminals over law and order.

Those testifying ran the gamut — from victims, their families and advocates to law-enforcement officials:

Alba, who is in his early 60s, was initially charged with murder by Bragg’s office for fatally stabbing a man who attacked him behind the counter at the store where he worked in July. Alba spent a week on Rikers Island before the charges against him were dropped after widespread outcry.

“I took pride in the hard work I put in every day at the store to earn my own money and support myself and my family,” Alba, who was at Monday’s hearing, testified through his lawyer. “That is when I encountered a true and real threat to my life after I simply told a woman that she could not have potato chips because her payment was declined.

“I was face to face with her boyfriend who seemed ready to kill me,” he said. “He attacked me violently, threw me around the store. The woman stabbed me herself. I truly believe they were there to kill me.”

Jennifer Harrison, the founder of Victims Rights NY, suffered through her boyfriend and his pal being murdered in New Jersey in 2005. Three brothers were arrested and charged with the slayings, but only one of them ended up serving time in prison. Harrison has been an advocate for crime victims ever since.

“Nobody wanted to listen to us, the victims who have to live with the consequences of these decisions for the rest of our lives, when we warned of the harm this would cause,” she said of soft-on-crime policies. “Victims have no voice in politics or government.”

Madeline Brame is the chairwoman of the Victims Rights Reform Council and the mother of former US Army vet Hason Corea, who was beaten and stabbed to death in Harlem in 2018. Bragg inherited the case after taking office in 2022 — and cut deals with three of the four suspects, all siblings.

“He dismissed — completely dismissed — gang assault and murder indictments against two of the defendants clearly on video participating in the brutal, savage slaughter of my son,” Brame said of the DA. “And as far as the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, if he’s receiving one penny of federal dollars, you need to pull that funding until he starts doing his damn job and prosecuting crime.”

Robert Holden, a Democratic New York City councilman representing District 30 in Queens and a member of the council’s bipartisan “Common Sense Caucus, is a proponent of rolling back aspects of New York’s controversial bail statute and supports granting judges additional powers to set bail.

“We have repeat offenders receiving lenient sentences and committing multiple crimes shortly after being released,” Holden said “From the day he took office, it seems Alvin Bragg’s top priority was to keep criminals out of jail and free to roam the streets.”

Rebecca Fischer, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, a group that advocates for stricter gun laws including background checks, intervention and prevention services, told the committee that New York ranks 47th out of the 50 states in gun-violence rates.

“Traffickers go elsewhere to source guns quickly and illegally because gun purchasers are required to go through a background check and licensing process in New York,” she noted. “The national gun-trafficking crisis is largely the result of weak gun laws in other states and the fact that Congress has not enacted comprehensive federal gun-reform laws.”

Paul DiGiacomo, president of the New York City’s Detectives’ Endowment Association, has been among the most vocal critics of state bail-reform measures that critics say allow more dangerous criminals back onto the streets, where the NYPD is forced to deal with them.

“The same people are being arrested over and over again for violent crime,” he told the committee. “They need to be held in jail. There has been a reckless disregard for the law that has led to unprecedented gun violence, robberies, car-jacking, home invasions, burglaries, shoplifting and disturbances by the mentally ill.”

Barry Borgen is the father of Joseph Borgen, who was attacked and brutally beaten in an anti-Semitic attack near Times Square in 2021. Joseph Borgen’s attackers later cut plea deals with Bragg’s office.

“I sit here in front of the committee with the two-year anniversary of the attack rapidly approaching to speak of the ongoing struggle with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg,” the elder Borgen said.

“While the delays and continued hold-ups in the legal case are discouraging, it is the sweetheart slap-on-the-wrist deal offered to one of the attackers in my son’s case that is exemplary of DA Bragg’s incompetence when it comes to carrying out justice,” he told the committee.

Jim Kessler is co-founder and senior vice president for policy of Third Way, a progressive policy think tank which has addressed national gun policy and trends. He argued that New York gun and crime rates are favorable compared to other states, including many red states.

“If we wanted a hearing about the ravages of crime, why aren’t we in Baton Rouge or Louisville, where five people were murdered in the blink of an eye in a mass shooting at a downtown bank?” he said.

Or in the murder capital of California,” Kessler said. “Which is not Los Angeles or San Francisco or Oakland … but in [House] Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy’s district of Kern County, with its county seat of Bakersfield.”