As Queens, Staten Island and Bronx courthouses resumed in-person day arraignments Monday, public defenders across New York City called out the city for what they say are “deplorable” conditions.
The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys condemned the Office of Court Administration and the Department of Citywide Administrative Services for unsanitary and unhealthy conditions that they say are rife throughout city courthouses.
“As ALAA members returned to ‘in-person’ arraignments, they found that OCA and the City had not only failed to remediate the dangerous and unsanitary conditions, they had failed to take a single measure to clean or upgrade these areas from their pre-pandemic levels to meet even minimum standards of health and safety,” the union said in a statement.
The calls to clean up conditions come not only because COVID-19 remains a threat but because as proceedings resume, people who work in the buildings are seeing its conditions again with fresh eyes, attorneys say.
“We've always known it was bad but I think with COVID we just had the separation from that environment,” said Julie Sender, the Manhattan Criminal Defense Practice vice president of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys. “We don't have to just accept that we're going to get sick and that we're going to maybe bring roaches home or bring bedbugs home because we were at work and it was not cleaned.”
Sender, who mainly works out of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse building at 100 Centre St., said that nonpublic courthouse spaces, inlucing jail cells, pens and meeting rooms for defendants and their attorneys, are often unsanitary.
Surfaces are stained, ventilation systems are covered in dust and pests like insects and rodents are sometimes spotted, Sender said.
The conditions are present throughout criminal courthouses in the city, including in Queens, attorneys said.
11 comments:
I did court duty on sutphin a few years ago and it was gross and outdated. In the room the jurors sat in, there was no air conditioning. And while walking around the courthouse, the water fountains were gross and the bathroom has seen better days. I can imagine that back in the day, it was probably beautiful. But as it aged, it was never upkeeped. The government wants to build more apartments but can't maintain the public buildings that currently stand. The courthouses and schools are dumps and need very bad maintenance. Then nycha is another story all together. But yet the city has no problem coming out of pocket to shut down rikers and build new jails in every single borough just so it can profit off of "waterfront" properties. But then you have schools with outdated plumbing, falling apart courthouses, crappy roads that even when they do patchwork on it, the pothole still returns, crumbling nycha houses (then again who can blame them when most of the people who live in these houses live like shit to begin with), and no places to put the homeless and/or mentally ill people. This city is a real joke and mayor dumbdumb and all these politicians are just the ring leaders of the circus. All ny attracts is idiots who make decisions but then again, the sheeple who live here vote with their feet anyway and most who vote, don't even speak a word of English and just vote by who they are told to vote. Most of the time, it is solely based on race alone and who they mostly "identify" with, its never about who really is the better candidate for the job.
"All rise! Here come da sludge!"
Basic maintenance as been neglectd for years in all city buildings.
Courts. We still have courts. I was under the impression that all courts were done away with as they are symbols of white power and made to repress the the people of color.
The governor and the state legislature have decriminalized all bad behavior. So why do we need courts for? They should be converted to community centers for late night basketball and pizza parties for wayward youth. Think of the money that could be saved.
Right now they are just a wheel of revolving justice, with the same people going into the system and being put back on the streets they after day.
No one is being held accountable for their actions anymore. The politicians seem to make every excuse for these people and their actions.
And the people that suffer the most are located in communities of color that have needed and need the most help right now. Just take a look at the homicides that are taking place.
Bet the courthouses don't look like this in Texas or Florida.
""symbols of white power and made to repress the the people of color""
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You got that right and a new thing making the rounds in the ANIFTA BLM and other socialist mobs and chatrooms:
The "repressed people" including hipsters & shit want the right to come into your home, take your TV, Jewelry, cash as reparations"
--As in crimes committed out of acts of desperations will be de-criminalized, it will also and require the victims to stand down, retreat and deescalate the situation.
And if you shoot or hurt them YOU will be charged with not one but several crimes instead.
This is why the president, mayor & governor want to grab all the legal premises hand guns. He knows the animals balls are getting bigger "F_ The Police" "F_ White people" "F_you cracker" and will be coming through the windows soon.
We are now seeing this on the streets and subways.
This guy likes to go to court !
Homeless man with 90 prior arrests busted for anti-gay assault in Queens.
https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/homeless-man-with-90-prior-arrests-busted-for-anti-gay-assault-in-queens/
Get ready, they are firing up the Covid machine again !
Of course it’s a Petri dish -the lawyers are toxifting the court houses.
Courthouses in Texas are pristine, have flags, statues and well maintained 100-20- year old desks and woodwork.
They put the smugglers, felons, gangbangers in bright pink pants in ankle lowjacks and make them pickup garbage on the highways. ---no free rides.
Prisoners call it hell.
Andrew Cuomo and mayor jackass should visit and learn something.
Maintenance isn't in these people's vocabulary.
Has the court officers union filed a grievance about these conditions?
Why hasn't the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys filed an Article 78 to get a court order to get the responsible parties to fix things?
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