Judge Valentina Morales Faces Scrutiny After Discovering Bullet Holes in Home, Failing to Notify Police

Judge Morales Finds Bullet Holes in Her Apartment

In a trou­bling inci­dent, Judge Valenti­na Morales, a Man­hat­tan crim­i­nal court judge known for her lenient approach to sen­tenc­ing, dis­cov­ered bul­let holes in the bed­room of her apartment.

How­ev­er, rather than imme­di­ate­ly con­tact­ing the author­i­ties, Morales opt­ed to noti­fy the Office of Court Admin­is­tra­tion, which then informed the Man­hat­tan Dis­trict Attor­ney’s Office.

The rev­e­la­tion that Morales failed to call the police has sparked out­rage and raised ques­tions about the judge’s pri­or­i­ties and her rela­tion­ship with law enforcement.

As an appointee of for­mer May­or Bill de Bla­sio, Morales has faced crit­i­cism for her deci­sions to release sev­er­al vio­lent crim­i­nals in the past three years.

Neighbor Arrested for Shooting Incident

Inves­ti­ga­tors from the Dis­trict Attor­ney’s office even­tu­al­ly went to Morales’ build­ing and spoke to her upstairs neigh­bor, John Moore, who was pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed of drug deal­ing in 1987. Moore admit­ted to acci­den­tal­ly fir­ing a weapon and then throw­ing it into the Hud­son River.

When NYPD offi­cers exe­cut­ed a search war­rant on Moore’s apart­ment, they dis­cov­ered an arse­nal of weapons, includ­ing a sawed-off shot­gun, ammu­ni­tion, switch­blades, stun guns, and even law enforce­ment badges. Moore was sub­se­quent­ly arrest­ed and charged with weapons pos­ses­sion and reck­less endangerment.

Concerns About Judicial Bias and Public Safety 

The inci­dent has raised con­cerns about the judge’s han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion and the broad­er impli­ca­tions for pub­lic safe­ty. Crit­ics argue that Morales’ deci­sion to avoid con­tact­ing the police direct­ly is indica­tive of a bias against law enforce­ment, which could have seri­ous con­se­quences for the admin­is­tra­tion of justice.

Fur­ther­more, the dis­cov­ery of the cache of weapons in Moore’s apart­ment under­scores the poten­tial dan­ger posed by the lack of imme­di­ate police intervention.