Too bad they won't stay and resist, but their decision is understandable: you can’t fight City Hall

Veteran prosecutors are heading for the door rather than work under NYC’s new DA Bragg

NYC new Squirt Gun Patrol practices admonishing rapists and murderers

Prosecutors in soft-on-crime Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office are flooding the exits amid his “radical shift in policy,” The Post has learned.

Bragg’s controversial “Day One” memo issued on Jan. 3 told assistant district attorneys to not seek prison sentences for many criminals and to downgrade some felonies to misdemeanors. His leadership has already created a firestorm that has led to an online petition calling for him to be removed.

“I know one [ADA] who was with the office over 20 years who left without a job,” said a law enforcement source. “They didn’t want to work in this kind of office. They wanted to continue prosecuting the law.”

Over the past three weeks, at least a dozen lawyers have quit.

Among the departures is senior trial counsel Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, who successfully prosecuted Harvey Weinstein, and won a 2016 conviction in the infamous 1979 murder of Etan Patz.

Illuzzi-Orbon, a Republican, had been at the office since 1988, taking only a brief leave in 2015 for an unsuccessful run for District Attorney in Staten Island.

Also gone is John Irwin, a one-time trial division chief.

Another veteran prosecutor lost her title and was told she would have to work for someone Bragg brought over from the Legal Aid Society, a source said.

“He wants to get rid of all the senior people who prosecuted high-profile cases and replace them with young inexperienced people who think like him and don’t want to uphold the law,” said a former prosecutor.

A source familiar with the office said none of the departing lawyers had been fired.

Mark Bederow, who worked in the Manhattan DA’s office, said some turnover was to be expected with a new boss, but that Bragg’s arrival will “likely” lead to more departures since “It appears to be such a cultural and radical shift in policy.”

“I would anticipate that many people within the office who have been there for years, who perhaps do not share the same philosophy as the incoming DA, will most likely leave,” he said. “I would expect that the incoming classes of DAs in the next couple of years will entirely share the policies of Mr. Bragg.”

I’ll confess to having a prosecutorial inclination myself: For many years I hunted wicked stock brokers down on Wall Street, and before that, while living in Maine, I was offered the job of Assistant State’s Attorney for Penobstock and Aroostook Counties — it would have been me and perhaps 2 dozen state troopers enforcing the law from north of Ellsworth to Machias, prosecuting potato thieves and lobstermen caught with shorts, mostly, but it sounded like fun. Pal Nancy was looking to move south from Bangor, not north, and we ended up all the way back in Greenwich — damn.

All of which is to say that someone drawn to the prosecutorial side of the criminal law system would probably be uncomfortable in the role of kissing thugs on the cheek and urging them to enroll in a restorative justice program. Bragg’s chasing them out and replacing them with Legal Aid lawyers, which should be … interesting.

Then again, I think I read that just 12% of New York City residents turned out for the latest election, so they all: that 12%, and the millions who stayed home, are getting what they asked for.