As coronavirus has spread through New York City, the criminal justice system has been hard hit in all corners. Already, more than 100 NYPD employees have tested positive for COVID-19 and almost 9 percent of the force called out sick on Wednesday. At the same time, the disease is spreading rapidly through Rikers and other notoriously unsanitary and unsafe jails, putting New York’s incarcerated population at unnecessary risk.
Nevertheless, the criminal justice system continues on. Courthouses, which are usually crowded as it is, are struggling to adjust to life under the pandemic, operating at a slowed-down pace. The state has taken some precautions, including issuing a new directive on Wednesday that requires judges, the prosecution, and defense attorneys to participate in hearings remotely via teleconference—previously, only defendants were video conferencing in from holding cells. But unsafe conditions have still left some scared that they might contract coronavirus and spread it when they return home.
VICE recently spoke to one man who was arrested for a misdemeanor and arraigned at the New York county courthouse last week. According to him, authorities practiced little social distancing and took few safety precautions from the beginning to the end of the process. He’s now mostly afraid of spreading coronavirus to older members of the household that he lives with. He requested to withhold his name and the identifying details of his story because his case is still open.
There were about four or five police officers here. The officers were not in gloves or masks when they arrested me. They had to search me, so they were really close to me. They brought me to the precinct, which was sanitary. I was the only one in the holding cell. The officer had Lysol and he used Windex on the fingerprint scanner. They searched me at the precinct and they had gloves on, but no masks. I was there for about six hours.
Then they took me to central booking. When I arrived I was asked by a nurse if I had any symptoms, if I had traveled, or if I wanted to go to the hospital. I said no. When I was led to the holding pen there, that’s when it just got crazy.
There were six holding pens—four were filled with individuals and the two largest ones were left open. One was open for medical reasons and the other was where they would temporarily put people when they cleaned the other pens.
I was in that section for about 29 hours. I was placed in a pen with six others. We had about two to three feet between us—it wasn’t that much. In a different pen, there were more than ten people and there were a bunch of people sleeping on the floor. When I was there they only cleaned the pen four times. Cleaning consisted of wiping down metal benches with a spray cleaner and a cloth wipe. A corrections officer used the same mop for all the cells. Sometimes individuals would be sleeping on the floor and the officer did not ask them to get up, they just cleaned the mop around them.
In one of the other holding pens, someone who was sleeping on the floor began furiously vomiting, like ten or fifteen times. It created a huge puddle and they asked the corrections officer for medical assistance. The other people in the pen asked to be moved and the people in the pen I was in were asking for someone to help. The corrections officer ignored us.
One corrections officer came over after half an hour and looked at the situation with the huge puddle, looked at the guys that were asking to be moved, and said, “I can’t move you guys right now,” even though there were pens open. EMS eventually arrived. They checked the vomiting individual and said, “Hey, he’s gotta go to the hospital.” But they could not take him because they needed a police escort. I think it was about an hour before the police escort showed up. People were moved out of that pen and put into another one, so there were now over ten people in one pen. After the vomiting person was taken to hospital they didn’t clean up the puke for hours.
Finally, I was brought upstairs to another holding pen where I spoke with my attorney about the case. There were three to five people in the pen waiting to speak with an attorney in a much smaller space. There wasn’t even one foot between us. There were police officers outside the pen as well, so it was just a lot of people in a small amount of space.
I waited another four or five hours before I was arraigned. I was taken to a different holding pen to speak to the judge. The arraignment was over video and everyone else was in the courtroom. [Editor’s note: A new directive on Wednesday established that all parties participate via teleconferencing.] I didn’t know what was going on. When I was trying to listen, the connection came in and out. I would hear some things that the prosecutor would say and some things my attorney would say, but I didn’t hear everything. I understand what they were trying to do was for safety, but it complicated things. I was worried and scared. We eventually had to meet with the attorney in person afterwards, which undid all of that anyways.
I’m worried about being home now and getting the older people in my household sick. I took a shower and put my clothes in a bag away from everybody. I still practice social distancing from them. I feel fine, but at the same time, it takes two to fourteen days to feel symptoms sometimes. I’m using hand sanitizer, washing my hands, and trying to be as safe as possible.
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