Busted! Drug War Survival Skills

Another Quality of Life Bust

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 09:25:54 EST

Last Saturday night Dora, a single mother of two, was getting off of work, heading home on the subway to pick up her kids from the sitter. She only had $1.50 on her metrocard, but the machine would not accept cash to refill it, only credit/debit cards, which Dora did not have.

The token booth was closed, so she had no way to get on the subway and had to get home. Another woman came down the steps and offered to take her through the turnstile with her. Relieved, accepted and was promptly arrested on the train platform.

The cop didn't want to hear Dora's excuses. The law's the law. She was taken to central booking and spent the next 36 hours in jail. It was Monday night when I met her. When she was finally separated from general population for our interview she began shaking and sobbing about her children.

She had begged the babysitter to stay with her kids, but she had not been able to speak with her in over 24 hours and had no news of where her kids or the sitter were. She was a recent immigrant from the Dominican Republic, shocked at the brutality of our system, but I had nothing to offer her but sympathy.

This is Giuliani's legacy. This is "quality of life" policing. Whose quality of life is the question not often asked.

PD Holiday...

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:42:31 EST

...to Europe, where the laws are sane, Barak's The Man and even the Green Party has a spot at the trough.

This is a interview I did with Mob Logic (I learned subsequently....)

Happy Labor Day, for those of you who remained employed.

Tough Days in Part A

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:12:28 EST

Gun possession in NYC is taken very seriously, no mercy is shown under any circumstances. Get caught with a loaded gun in public and you will be offered one year in jail prior to indictment, 3.5 years if you try challenging the case against you, i.e., the search, often based on the 'ol "bulge" routine.

Whatever your views on gun control, NYC's gun policy has led to more gut-wrenching scenes than I can count since I've been in the Bronx. Another recently played out during the course of a long day in Part A.

DD was 19 when he was caught in a taxi with a gun. Like virtually every client I've had on gun possession cases, the kid had never been arrested before and had stunned, anguished parents waiting for him in court.

It was only months from DD's high school graduation when he was arrested. After his parents posted bail, the case was adjourned for two months for DD to graduate and then go straight to jail and leave a year later with life-long violent felony record, forever unemployable.

A week before sentencing, DD's mother called, begging me to get him probation or at least more time before he had to "step in." The district attorney would not hear about it.

Yesterday, the day came. DD and family arrived at 9:30 - surprising, I thought, because clients are not usually in a rush to get to court to go to jail. But DD was not ready to go to jail. We can fight, I told him. It's at least 3.5 years if we lose, I reminded.

I left to handle other cases and give the family time to think, time to work up nerve. Nerve is needed no matter what is decided.

I came back hours later, but nothing had changed. More time, please, Mr. Fabricant! Probation! DD just graduated high school! I called the district attorney.

He was not hearing it some more.

The lunch hour came and went; it was 3:00 p.m., time to decide. Mom comes to me weeping, DD sat on the bench behind her staring at the ground. They've decided DD would "step in." We count days on my calendar, circling the day when DD will be home and I leave to go sign up the case.

For a defense attorney, there is no worse feeling than corrections officers suddenly standing behind your client while you are in open court.

The sound of cuffs rattling off belts.

Hands behind your back.

Wait! My cell phone!

Give them to your lawyer.

My keys!

You won't be needing them anymore!

Judge: Defendant is remanded.

Officer: Step in.

DD's little brother is crying. Mom is crying. I give her the house keys...the cell phone starts vibrating when I hand it to her.

I tell her I wish there had been more that I could do.

Look Up "Meat Wagon" in the Dictionary...

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:14:15 EST

...and find this attribution, for which I'm very proud.

And...They're Off

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:10:56 EST

9:00 am - stagger into office, put on stale shirt, once-worn socks, throw on suit in the bathroom stall and head to court.

10:00 am - "in" client pleads guilty to time-served on a misdemeanor, rather than the burglary he had been waiting 7 months for trial...client very happy, skips out of court in his Air Pataki's.

10:30 am - in trial part, client with immigration problems gets case dismissed (but must do some anger mgt classes)...client happy.

11:00 am - visit older woman in jail on felony assault charges who has been waiting 17 hours to get case her case called because corrections is in a work slow down...client not happy.

12:00 pm - woman charged in bogus assault case gets case adjourned for 7th time...this time till September...client not happy.

12:30 pm - phone call from another attorney...client re-arrested just before his sentencing on another case (not good), this time felony assault...client not happy.

1:00 pm - 14 messages on my voice mail, client waiting in my office, 8 high school interns to address and hearing to prep.

2:00 pm - resume pre-trial hearings on client charged with attempted murder, accused of shooting a rival gang member...client and attorney very uptight.

6:00 pm - 22 messages on my voice mail.

Trial resumes Thursday. Stay tuned.

Another 16 Hours in Holding Cell Hell

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:10:16 EST

Sunday and Monday night arraignments again. I have nearly 30 new clients from the past two weeks. Some are in jail, some are out on bail, and some have been released for August court dates. My suits smell like I've been working out in them; I'm sleeping weird hours; the rest of my life is rotating around a different axis, waiting for me to get out of night court.

It's summertime now and the drug cases start to pile up; the kids are out and the dealers are putting them on street to take the risks for them. Spotters (of police and customers), stash men, money men, steerers (Mr. R was steerer); it doesn't matter to the police or the district attorney -- it's just a bunch B level felonies. I too struggle at times to keep human faces on what feels like factory conveyor belt.

When I get home at night, a client or two will usually stick out in my mind. Last night it was Sammy, a 45-year-old crack addict, wearing a bloody hospital gown. He had a broken nose, 18 stitches in his head, 5 stitches in his mouth, a fractured shoulder, a black eye and he was bleeding from both ears. An undercover cop had beaten him with a gun when he discovered Sammy and an informant smoking the crack the informant was supposed to be buying for the undercover cop. The cop just lost it when he saw his bust going up in smoke. He beat the hell out of him, charged him a drug sale and assaulting a police officer and punched out for the night.

Mr. D, a neighborhood guy, no hustler, also sticks out. He tells me his girlfriend is 5 months pregnant, he's unemployed and needed money. For a week he was being harassed to buy crack for someone he suspected was cop. (Admittedly, in my mind, at this point of his story, I began thinking, Then why the hell did you sell to him!) But Mr. D did not want to end up in jail. So he broke up an Alka-Seltzer, stuck it in a baggy and sold it to the guy, who, indeed, turned out to be cop.

Sucker! Strike a blow for liberty!

"Air Patakis"

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:09:13 EST

Bright orange slip-on shoes issued at Rikers....that's what our clients call them.

Legacies

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:00:34 EST

It's almost two in the am (the time post on the blog is Pacific time for some reason), just finished back-to-back 5pm to 1am arraignment shifts; the holding cells have been jam packed, it was 100 degrees in NYC today and nobody went home.

When you spend 16 hours interviewing so many miserable people in the bowles of hell, the trends, the atmospherics start to overwhelm the individual stories.

Fathers in jail...so many client's father's are upstate doing time, that's what I'm left tonight. No matter how we struggle to emulate or disassociate, the power of our parents' circumstance seems to be the dominate the force.

(One guy who did make an impression was a massive dude with a Mike Tyson tattoo on his face. He's a "bail enforcement specialist" - aka bounty hunter -- ironically enough, he was in on a fugitive warrant from out of state for a probation violation.)

A Trip Out to Rikers

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:11:35 EST

I don't go out to Rikers Island very often; clients are usually "produced" for court appearances and we meet in the court's holding cells to discuss the case. It's a strange trip, just take a left in this working class neighborhood in Queens and suddenly there's a winding road, guardhouse and a long, narrow bridge with prison barges for the "overflow" inmates floating grimly off to the right.

A visit to the island is always for a heavy case, and Mr. T's case is fucking heavy.

We've been together a long time, me and Mr. T. I first met him in St. Barnabas Hospital, chained to a bed with a cop sitting next to him. He'd been shot in the face by police, and did not have an attorney until his mother came to our office to find him one.

I was on intake and headed over to the hospital with an investigator and, a few days later, arraigned him right there in St. Barnabas, still chained to bed, with a judge, court reporter, district attorney and about 10 corrections officers in the room.

Today, nearly two years later and still in a wheelchair as a result of the shooting, Mr. T is being "offered" 20 years in prison. If we lose at trial he could get a life sentence for allegedly assaulting a police officer (with a vehicle).

Tough case. Undoubtedly more on this later.

The Return and Remand of Mr. R

Thu, 22 May 2008 17:46:42 EST

When Mr. R trotted down the stairs and out of the courthouse as the jury was retuning with the verdict a few weeks ago, nobody -- not the DA, not us, the judge, the cops -- believed he would be gone long or hard to find. No big sirens were wailing, no guards screaming down the corridors.

Everyone knew Mr. R would go right back to the same neighborhood, probably the same block and hustle to get high.

The same block. The block that the undercover cop had been doing "buy and busts" in for 18 months. Thousands of people she had arrested. The courtroom had to be cleared during her testimony because she's still undercover, working the same block. Right where Mr. R went back to. The easiest place to buy crack. That's where the police go shoot fish in a barrel.

Mr. R was one of the little fish. He has spent seven years in prison since '92, but has never served more than 8 months. 45 days here; 90 days there; four months; time served...the life of a drug addict in the South Bronx.

And of course he went back out there. He lasted about 3 weeks before he was arrested on a possession charge. He now faces 12 years in prison.

My two-year-old likes to sing the wheels on the bus go round and round...over and over (he's two so he doesn't recognize inanity).

The DOC bus that will take Mr. R upstate will pass a bus heading back downstate, release its passengers back to the same block...then the bus will pick some different people from the block and take them upstate.

And the wheels on the bus go...