A 21-year-old gun-toting thug has been terrorizing Staten Island for years thanks to the state’s Raise the Age Law — notching even attempted-slay raps before netting anything close to real punishment, law-enforcement sources say.
Lloyd Francis was first busted at age 14 and has now been arrested a half-dozen times on attempted-murder, robbery, assault and felony gun-possession charges.
Yet before being convicted of his sixth serious crime last month, Francis — a suspected member of the local Town Savages Only gang — had served a total of about two years behind bars because of the Empire State’s lax juvenile justice statutes, according to records and sources.
The same coddling laws ensure that half of his arrests are sealed, too, meaning their details and dispositions are kept from public scrutiny.
Francis was finally hit with a 10-year prison term after being convicted of his second attempted-murder charge earlier this year.
But even then, the sentence was just a fraction of the 25 years he could have faced if he hadn’t been considered a juvenile in the earlier cases.
“He has the criminal history of someone three times his age before he’s even 21,” a disgusted law-enforcement sources said.
“Are we trying to rehabilitate or walk them off the side of a cliff?” the source said of the loopy Raise the Age Law.
“There’s no hope for this kid. If you’re picking up your first attempted-murder at 14 and you’re doing 10 years for your second at 19, you’re on your way to life.”
The New York youth statute, which was implemented in two stages in 2017 and 2018, raised the age of criminal responsibility in the state to 18 and allowed defendants as old as 21 to be held at juvenile facilities.
Before, suspects as young as 16 could be automatically tried in adult criminal court.
On the heels of Raise the Age, state lawmakers also adopted measures that prohibited judges from setting bail on nearly all criminal cases, save for the most violent felonies.
Despite several tweaks spearheaded by Gov. Kathy Hochul, most crimes remain ineligible for bail.
Francis has benefited from the statute since his first arrest in 2019, when at age 14 he was charged with attempted murder for a stabbing on Staten Island, law enforcement sources said. He was convicted and served just over a year behind bars.
He was then later charged with felony gun possession in a separate case, sources said.
Francis was able to plead down to attempted weapons possession and netted another roughly a year in a juvenile facility, sources said.
Once back on the streets, after at least two more sealed arrests, he was charged with second degree criminal possession of a weapon but released because the charge is not eligible for bail under the state’s criminal justice reforms.
While that case was still pending, Francis shot a man in the chest at a local park and was convicted of his second attempted-murder rap.
Both the weapons charge and second attempted-murder charge could have put him away for up to 25 years.
The district attorney’s office prosecuted the gun case in the Youth Part of Supreme Court — which would count toward his record and make him a predicate felon if he’s busted again.
But his lawyers appealed the gun prosecution — and won.
The Appellate Division court, citing the state youth statute, said the facts of the gun case did not meet the “extraordinary circumstances” that legislators required to keep the case out of the more lenient Family Court.
“In effect, the Youth Part treated a single re-arrest — absent a conviction — as dispositive of the defendant’s future potential,” the ruling said. “That reasoning, if broadly applied, would undermine the core purpose of the Raise the Age legislation.
“The mere fact that an adolescent engaged in rehabilitative services and was later arrested, without more, does not constitute ‘strong proof’ that he or she is beyond the reach if the Family Court system,” the judicial panel wrote.
The ruling signaled that the gun case essentially disappeared from Francis’s record, paving the way for him to get less prison time on the attempted-murder charge.
Francis’ public-defender lawyers declined to comment, referring questions about the case to the Appellate Advocates of the New York State Defenders Association, which did not respond to a request, either.
In addition, the state Office of Court Administration, which oversees the court system, did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.
Francis is serving his 10-year sentence at the upstate Elmira Correctional Facility.
In an op-ed piece in The Post Saturday, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch railed against “the tragic unintended consequences” that the state’s youth law has had on crime.
Between 2018, when the law was enacted, and last year, the number of youths arrested with guns in the Big Apple have spiked by 136%, and the number of juvenile gunshot victims has jumped 81%, the commissioner said.
“With no actual repercussions or adult authority, young offenders aren’t using repeated forgiveness for their crimes to learn mature judgment,” Tisch wrote. “They’re escalating to more reckless violence — perpetuating feuds to enhance their own status.”
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