Crime victims and grieving relatives blasted Attorney General Letitia James outside her Manhattan office Tuesday, saying she dropped the ball on New Yorkers as they backed her GOP challenger.

Six New Yorkers hit by violence and drugs stood with Republican candidate Sarita Komatireddy outside James’ Lower Manhattan office and charged that the two-term incumbent has failed to put victims first. The New York Post reported the group said James “dropped the ball on protecting New Yorkers” while Komatireddy unveiled a plan for a Victims Advisory Council inside the attorney general’s office.

Komatireddy, a former federal prosecutor running as an underdog, told the crowd criminals now get more attention from elected officials than the people they harm. The November 3 election is weeks away. A recent Republican internal poll put James at 50.7 percent and Komatireddy at 44.7 percent, a six-point gap.

The former prosecutor vowed that if voters put her in office, victims and families would finally have a direct line to the attorney general. She also said she would re-dedicate half of the office’s 700 prosecutors to criminal cases and send AG prosecutors into local district attorney offices when victims complain that cases are falling through the cracks.

“In New York today, the reality is, criminals have more of an audience with our elected officials than crime victims,” Komatireddy said.

“They’re all angry. They’re all tired of being ignored. Each one of them is a victim of lawlessness.”

“For the first time... those victims will have a direct line to the attorney general,” she added. “We will place victims at the center of what we do, and give them the respect and dignity that they deserve.”

Mothers who buried children say the system shut them out

Tatiana Brahimi, a Putnam County mother, stood with the candidate and rejected politics as usual. Her 18-year-old son was struck and killed by a car during a 2016 Dutchess County brawl.

“I’m not a politician. This is why I believe in Saritha. She is not a politician,” Brahimi said. “Letitia James and all those cronies before her do not care about us. I buried a child. How many of us are burying our loved ones? The government doesn’t care. We need people like Saritha, who cares.”

Madeline Brame lost two sons. Army veteran Sgt. Hason Correa was stabbed to death in Harlem in 2018. Her other son, Rayvon Brame, overdosed on fentanyl-laced cocaine. She said victims and their families “need a seat at the table.”

Long Island mom Teresa Bliss described a string of failures after her 25-year-old son David was shot to death in broad daylight in Port Jefferson in 2021 by a career criminal who was on probation. She learned of the killing over the radio after officers told her to wait in the car outside the precinct.

“These cascading failures, from the judicial disposition of probation, in lieu of incarceration, to lax probation enforcement, to the absence of proper, dignified family notification protocols, demonstrate a complete system breakdown.”

“This is exactly why victims and surviving families need a permanent voice,” Bliss said. “Because after the most painful, life altering nightmare of our lives, we are asking for one simple thing: to be heard.”

Bail rules and soft policies draw direct fire

Jennifer Harrison, a Long Islander who founded Victims Rights NY after her boyfriend was murdered outside a New Jersey nightclub in 2005, tied the pain to state policy choices under Gov. Kathy Hochul and James. New York’s 2019 criminal justice reforms bar judges from setting bail on most crimes.

“In Kathy Hochul and Letitia James in New York, we’ve seen the consequences of criminal justice policies that, in my view, far too often put offenders ahead of the victims,” Harrison said. That same soft-on-crime climate has surfaced in other high-profile fights, including when Hochul handed a Cornell gang-rape case to the embattled attorney general.

“When the criminal justice system fails a victim, where are we supposed to go if not for people like Saritha?” Harrison asked. She pointed to activist judges, prosecutors whose decisions raise public-safety questions, bail reform, a parole board that families believe too often disregards the severity of violent crime, and failures to enforce parole and probation violations.

Jennifer Driver, sister of 21-year-old Long Island woman Sarah Patricia Goode, who was raped and murdered in 2014 after rejecting a man’s sexual advances, backed the call for a permanent voice. “Victims and survivors deserve a permanent voice in the laws, policies, and services that affect their lives,” Driver said. “It would help turn our pain into purpose and ensure victims are treated with dignity, compassion, and the support they deserve.”

“Not an afterthought,” she added. “We cannot change what happened to our loved ones, but we can work to improve the system so that future victims and their families are heard, supported, and treated with the respect that they deserve.”

James office answers with process claims while crime numbers climb

A spokesperson for Letitia James rejected the criticism and cast the rally as politics. The office has faced separate scrutiny over how it handles major cases, including when Trump lawyers pressed James on missing evidence in the $450 million New York civil case.

“Survivors deserve results, not politics,” the spokesperson said. “Attorney General Letitia James has always fought for them, including suing the federal government to protect more than $212 million in services for survivors of violent crime. While our opponent stages political events, Attorney General James is at work delivering for every New Yorker.”

Komatireddy had blamed James earlier in the week for subway “chaos.” The city has already recorded its seventh transit homicide so far this year, nearly double the four murders over the same span in 2025. Those numbers land against a backdrop of other questions about the attorney general’s priorities, including a whistleblower inside James’ office who alleged staff were told to target Trump and his allies.

Komatireddy has also said she would keep an open line so that if a crime victim is dissatisfied with a local district attorney, “they have someone to call.” She laid out that approach in a Substack interview with The New York Editorial Board. James, meanwhile, continues to draw assignments in sensitive prosecutions, as when she opened a criminal probe into Cornell rape claims after a Hochul order.

The victims who spoke Tuesday did not claim the attorney general caused every tragedy. They said the people who lost family members keep getting pushed to the side while bail rules, probation decisions, and political incentives leave repeat offenders on the street and survivors without a real voice.

New Yorkers burying sons and daughters are done waiting for Albany to notice. Law-and-order voters now have a clear choice between another term of the same priorities and a prosecutor who says victims finally get the seat at the table.