Night court a tourist hotspot in NYC
19 March 2014 10:45 PM GMT
In a city synonymous with theaters and nightlife, the 26-year-old from Munich was perched on a scarred wooden bench in a utilitarian room in lower Manhattan on a recent evening, straining to decode, sometimes even to hear, the methodical hubbub of arraignments in one of the nation’s busiest courts.
‘It’s very interesting to hear real cases,’ Baumann said as she and a friend watched a judge decide whether to set bail for people facing charges ranging from choking a girlfriend to stealing a six-pack of beer. Each case was handled in a matter of minutes amid a hive of clerks shuffling paperwork, police taking retinal scans, defendants and lawyers conferring in a confessional-sized glass booth and court officers occasionally bellowing, ‘Quiet, please!’
It’s one of New York’s more peculiar and paradoxical tourist traditions, a place visitors extol on travel websites while many residents hope never to wind up there. To travelers, it’s gritty entertainment, hard-knocks education or at least a chance to experience real-life law and order on a New York scale.
Dozens of jurisdictions nationwide hold some court sessions at night, but Manhattan Criminal Court occupies a unique spot in the public’s imagination, thanks to TV’s Law & Order and Night Court, not to mention arraignments of real-life notables ranging from rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs to French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
The court handles more than 100,000 arrests a year, averaging about 70 to 90 cases during the 5 pm-1 am night session - and that doesn’t count people who got summonses, let alone New York City’s four other boroughs.
‘It’s very interesting to hear real cases,’ Baumann said as she and a friend watched a judge decide whether to set bail for people facing charges ranging from choking a girlfriend to stealing a six-pack of beer. Each case was handled in a matter of minutes amid a hive of clerks shuffling paperwork, police taking retinal scans, defendants and lawyers conferring in a confessional-sized glass booth and court officers occasionally bellowing, ‘Quiet, please!’
It’s one of New York’s more peculiar and paradoxical tourist traditions, a place visitors extol on travel websites while many residents hope never to wind up there. To travelers, it’s gritty entertainment, hard-knocks education or at least a chance to experience real-life law and order on a New York scale.
Dozens of jurisdictions nationwide hold some court sessions at night, but Manhattan Criminal Court occupies a unique spot in the public’s imagination, thanks to TV’s Law & Order and Night Court, not to mention arraignments of real-life notables ranging from rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs to French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
The court handles more than 100,000 arrests a year, averaging about 70 to 90 cases during the 5 pm-1 am night session - and that doesn’t count people who got summonses, let alone New York City’s four other boroughs.
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