192 58 MISCELLANEOUS REPORTS, 3d SERIES
Although the MOU requires respondent Police Department
to report which charges it has prosecuted, against whom, and
how, the inferences from petitioners’ allegations are that the
District Attorney does not influence the reports’ contents—
what charges are prosecuted, against whom, and how—nor
influence future prosecutions in response to reports received.
(Schumer v Holtzman, 60 NY2d at 53-54; see Matter of Hag-
gerty v Himelein, 89 NY2d 431, 436-437 [1997].) Even if re-
spondent District Attorney may delegate prosecutorial appear-
ances to other public officers, any failure by him to ‘‘retain the
ultimate, nondelegable responsibility for prosecuting all crimes
and offenses’’ (People v Soddano, 86 NY2d at 728), abdicates
his ‘‘duty . . . to conduct all prosecutions for crimes and of-
fenses cognizable by the courts of the county for which he . . .
shall have been elected.’’ (County Law § 700 [1]; People v Sod-
dano, 86 NY2d at 728; see NY Const, art XIII, § 13; Schumer v
Holtzman, 60 NY2d at 50, 53; Dondi v Jones, 40 NY2d at 19.)
In fact petitioners maintain that the MOU’s only purpose is
to avert the Police Department’s civil liability because, for
years before the MOU, the District Attorney never appeared in
the Summons Part to prosecute violations, and many charges
against frequent and regular protesters were being dismissed,
allowing them to sue for damages from the arrests and initi-
ated prosecutions. Only after the MOU has any prosecutor, one
from the Police Department, appeared to prosecute violations
against protesters. (Verified petition & complaint ¶¶ 24-25, 28-
29, 31, 33, 48-50.) The fact that Police Department prosecutors
demand allocutions of probable cause for an arrest, rather than