NYC’s brazen ‘Nifty 50’ pickpocket suspect still free

A career criminal was repeatedly busted and released again in Manhattan in the past month — allegedly committing one of his crimes right behind the courthouse less than an hour after being freed, records show.

Darin Mickens, 55, is so prolific at his illicit pickpocketing craft that he was once featured in the NYPD’s “Nifty 50” deck of cards of the Big Apple’s biggest subway-crime recidivists, police sources said.

“This guy never met a pocket he didn’t want to pick,” a disgusted law enforcement source said.

The sticky-fingered suspect has lodged 66 arrests in all and currently has three open cases tied to a slew of Manhattan pickpocket busts — in which he was released without bail each time.

In two of his most recent cases, even Manhattan prosecutors from soft-on-crime District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office argued that Mickens be held on cash bail as high as $75,000 because of his repeat arrests, citing a tweak to the state’s heavily criticized bail-reform laws that supposedly allows the move.

Mickens had been charged in each case with fourth-degree grand larceny, a non-violent felony that is not eligible for bail under the controversial criminal reform statutes.

But Manhattan prosecutors said they sought bail under an added “harm on harm” clause, which stipulates that a repeat offender who gets nabbed while facing charges in another case can be held because he or she presents a “harm” to a person or property.

Still, the Manhattan judges in Mickens’ cases — Erin Schumacher, Sabrina Kraus and Marisol Martinez-Alonso — ruled in each instance that prosecutors hadn’t made their cases under the difficult-to-prove “harm on harm” loophole and said supervised release was sufficient.

Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration, said it is up to prosecutors, not the jurists, to prove the “harm on harm” theory applies.

“While this defendant has been charged with 49 counts of grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and identity theft in the three currently open criminal court cases, in and of themselves, none are bail-eligible,” Chalfen said.

“Following the law, all three judges placed him on supervised release, which is solely meant to ensure his return to court,” he said.

“The onus is on the district attorney to show reasonable cause to the arraignment judge that the subsequent arrests caused ‘harm to an identifiable person or property’ that would make him eligible for bail.”

Critics of Gov. Kathy Hochul have said her claims that the “harm on harm” clause, for one, helps address issues with bail reform is nothing but hogwash.

[Hochul’s] reforms need an overhaul — like yesterday,” a law-enforcement source said.

“On what planet are we on where Bragg is actually the one asking for bail?”

The Legal Aid Society, which represents Mickens on two of the open cases, did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.

Mickens’ pending cases include a Sept. 22 arrest for more than a dozen alleged pickpocket thefts in Manhattan, sources and records show.

Prosecutors argued for $75,000 bail under the “harm and harm” theory, saying that Mickens’ repeat offenses demonstrated that he posed a risk to others. Schumacher instead opted to release him without bail under supervision the next day.

Mickens was busted again Oct. 27, this time charged with a pair of new thefts. He was arraigned before Martinez-Alonso, who also ordered supervised release despite a request by the Manhattan District Attorneys’ Office to set bail at $45,000.

Free again, Mickens allegedly walked out of the courthouse, went behind the building and, just minutes after leaving court, picked yet another pocket, records allege.

Brought before Kraus this time, Mickens was again given supervised release.

Mickens has been on the radar for the NYPD for years and was among the repeat subway-system offenders on the “Nifty 50” deck of cards put together by cops several years ago so that officers could be wary as they carried the suspects’ mug shots with them on the beat.

The bulk of Mickens’ arrests have fallen under the so-called “pickpocket provision” in the fourth-degree grand-larceny law, which says the amount a defendant steals doesn’t matter — if the goods are snatched from another person, it’s a felony.

Normally a thief would have to steal at least $1,000 in valuables to qualify for a felony rap.

The 2019 state bail-reform measures, viewed as excessively lenient by critics, changed the landscape of the criminal-justice system in the Empire State.

The measure eliminated bail for misdemeanors and many felony changes, stripping judges of discretion to order defendants held, including repeat offenders.

The “harm on harm” statute is one of the few tools prosecutors still have to argue for bail in cases involving non-bail-eligible offenses — but it’s a remedy not typically granted.

Mayor Eric Adams had been among those who fought to have Albany lawmakers roll back many of the reforms as he grapples with spiking violence in the Big Apple.

In August, state judges became embroiled in a public war of words with Hochul over the reforms, ripping the governor’s call for additional training on the law for them.

One angry judge called the governor “disingenuous” for making the suggestion.

“We’re the one branch of government that does not speak openly in the press, so we’re the easiest scapegoats,” another judge fumed at the time.

A rep for Hochul shot back that “the notion that judges’ hands are tied is simply not supported by the facts nor the data.”

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Rosner, Kyle Schnitzer and Steven Vago