Slow Motion Riot

by Peter Blauner

  “I’m just not sure if I’m ready to get serious about someone like that,” she says and then hesitates.

  I don’t know what “like that” means. Is it that she’s not sure she wants to get serious in a particularly intense way? Or does “someone like that” refer to me being just a probation officer? I’m a little pissed off, but I know I’ll never get anywhere with her by acting sour. Instead, I ask if we can have dinner and talk it over.

  “I’ll get back to you on that, Steve.”

  “Sure,” I say, trying not to sound too dejected.

  I pan around the courtroom, looking for a familiar face. “Where is the court liaison officer?” I ask Andrea. “I’m not going to prosecute this violation myself. That’s not my job.”

  Court liaison officers act as prosecutors at violation hearings, which are somewhat less formal than trials. If no court liaison officer is available, regular probation officers sometimes prosecute the cases, though I’ve never done that myself.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I say. “I’m supposed to be training with the Field Service Unit so I can go out with them tomorrow.”

  “Ms. Petrocelli said she’d be by to do this case,” Andrea says.

  “Shit. She hasn’t even called me to talk about it. She doesn’t know what the fuck’s going on.”

  “That’s what she told me to tell you.”

  More people stream through the big oak doors to the side and fill up the spectator benches. A male and female pair of court officers stand around comparing muscles and firearms. Most of the new arrivals in the courtroom are defendants with family members and Legal Aid lawyers in tow. I take Andrea’s folder off her lap and start going through the papers quickly. Then the side doors slam and several voices mumble tensely.

  “Is this Darryl King?” Andrea whispers.

  He walks slowly past the wooden balustrade right in front of us. What he wears is nothing special: a red T-shirt, black jeans, and sneakers. But something about him puts sweat on the back of my neck. He has the fearless “b-boy” swagger down to an art. Other defendants swivel in their seats to look at him. He gives Andrea and me a bored smirk as he passes the first row and turns down the center aisle. The court officers hitch up their gun belts and try to look a little more alert. A woman who looks like she might be his mother follows. Then comes Ross Goldfarb, a wily old defense lawyer I know, who seems to be having a problem closing his fly.

  “You never told me why Darryl got probation,” Andrea says.

  “It’s the numbers. Everybody wants numbers. Prosecutors get rated on how many cases they get convictions on, right?”

  “Of course,” she says, getting a notebook out of her bag and starting to write down what I say.

  “And so do judges and defense lawyers. So it’s in everybody’s interest to dispose of these cases as quickly as they can, without going to trial. And the easiest thing to do a lot of the time is to get the guy to take a plea, so he’ll get probation and be out of everybody’s hair.”

  Judge Bernstein comes out of his chambers and makes his way to the bench. He’s a bent-up man in his sixties without a hair on his head. His face, with its deep creases and broken blood vessels, is like a map of war-torn Gaza. He wears his black-framed glasses far down on the bridge of his nose. On the few occasions when I’ve stood near him, I could swear the judge’s glasses do not have lenses.

  As the first case of the morning is called, the male court officer yells at the well-dressed white man in the back row to put down his newspaper. When he obeys, the male officer smiles at the female officer and mutters something that sounds like, “I showed him.”

  The first defendant has his case called and steps forward with his Legal Aid lawyer. He’s a short, chunky Hispanic guy in his mid-thirties.

  “Why didn’t you show up for your last hearing, Mr. Hernandez?” the judge asks.

  “I had an excuse from God,” Mr. Hernandez says in a forthright voice, giving a court officer a piece of paper to give to the judge.

  “I see,” Judge Bernstein says, looking it over. “And do you have any witnesses?”

  “Yes. God.”

  “Oh.” The judge glances around the courtroom. “Is he here?”

  “Yes, Judge,” Mr. Hernandez says earnestly. “He’s in my body and he’s using my voice.”

  “And why’s he doing that?”

  “He’s embarrassed,” Mr. Hernandez explains. “He has a funny voice.”

  Jeff Washington, the judge’s clerk, is waving for me to join him at the table to the left of the bench. Jeff is a tall, young black guy who’s a sometime drinking buddy of mine. We have a steady exchange of inside information about the courts and probation flowing back and forth.

  “We’re gonna get to your case this morning,” Jeff says, laying a hand on the folder I gave him earlier. “But the judge has gotta see a couple of people before you. All right? So just sit tight, we’ll get you in.”

  “No problem.”

  “Who’s handling the violation?”

  I check the room once more. The spectator seats are more than half full. Andrea’s giving me that appraising look again from the first row. Four rows behind her, Darryl King glowers and folds his arms across his chest. Ms. Petrocelli, the court liaison officer, still isn’t here. “I guess I’m going to be doing it,” I say.

  “How interesting,” Jeff says. “Are you nervous?”

  “I’m starting to be. Do prosecutors ever get stage fright?”

  “Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s terrible sometimes. You want a Valium? The judge has a jarful in his chambers.”

  “No thanks, I guess.”

  As I go back to my seat, I notice Darryl King watching me with furious concentration. Trying to unnerve me just by staring.

  I try to smile back at him, but my heart isn’t in it. Darryl isn’t the only thing bothering me. It’s that I’m going to have to make a lawyerly presentation right here and now and I don’t want to make a fool out of myself in front of everyone. Especially not in front of Andrea. My throat starts feeling dry and parched. I could use a stiff drink and a long smoke right now. “You all right?” I hear Andrea say. “You look a little pale.”

  People are moving and talking in front of me; I can’t quite hear them. It’s like watching television with the sound turned down. The images pile on top of each other, making increasingly less sense as you can’t follow their meaning. I try rereading some of the court documents, but that just makes things worse. The words and letters appear backward and out of order to me. I get that old feverish panic I couldn’t control or understand when I was younger, before they told me it was dyslexia. Everything’s blurring. In the middle of the crowded courtroom, I feel absolutely alone.

  The next sound I hear clearly is Jeff Washington calling my case. I turn and look at the clock on the back wall. It says almost 11:30. The last time I looked, it was 10:25. Andrea touches my arm lightly. “Good luck,” she says.

  I button my jacket, straighten my tie, and stand up to approach the bench.

  I stop at the district attorney’s table on the left. Sergio Rivera, the assistant district attorney handling the regular cases this morning, steps aside to give me some room. Darryl King and his mother are standing near the defense table with Ross Goldfarb, the lawyer. Darryl puts his hands behind his back and crosses his wrists, assuming the classic defendant’s pose, as though he were still wearing handcuffs. Darryl’s mother searches through her handbag. “Mr. Baum,” the judge says. “You’re looking very handsome today in your jacket and tie. To what do we owe the pleasure of your formal presentation?”

  Bernstein has a harsh voice; I picture his throat being like a rusty old pipe. Everything he says has the singsong rhythm of ancient Yiddish wisdom and a knife’s edge of bitterness.

  “Judge, we have a probationer who needs to be violated here.” I sound strange and disembodied, like my mouth is on one side of the room and my ears are on the other.

  The judge stops shuffling papers a
nd peers down his long nose at me. “What’s the problem?”

  “Judge, since you gave the defendant Darryl King probation earlier this year, he has violated a number of his conditions and I believe he is quickly moving into a high-risk category. He has repeatedly failed to report to his assigned probation officer. When he has reported, he has been uncooperative and he has refused to answer all reasonable inquiries.”

  Darryl King makes that disgusted ticking sound with his mouth as I pause to look at my notes again. “In addition, Judge, the probationer here continued to associate with his original co-defendant, a Robert Kirk, of 209 East 105th Street, and I have evidence that Mr. King is persistently using drugs. He appears to be becoming a menace within his own household …”

  I protect Darryl’s great-grandmother’s identity, as she asked me to, by not mentioning her name in court. But I put a copy of the note she mailed me in the judge’s file.

  “Finally,” I say, “Mr. King was recently arrested again, this time on multiple charges involving car theft and resisting police officers in Harlem. And … I have reason to suspect he may be involved in much more serious criminal activities …”

  Darryl whips his head around to glare at me. I deliberately avoid meeting his eyes. I don’t need to know exactly how much he hates me right now.

  The judge looks down again at the papers on his desk. He rocks back and forth in his chair as he reads for the next few seconds. He reminds me of the film I once saw of Orthodox Jews davening before the Wailing Wall in Israel.

  The file, which Andrea helped assemble, includes Officer Kelly’s statement, notes from my interviews with Darryl, the formal statement of charges and the violation complaint, and an affidavit that Andrea got from a nonpolice witness to the most recent arrest. Goldfarb, the defense lawyer, asks if he can have a word with the judge.

  I don’t have enough experience to know whether I should object to the judge and Goldfarb having a private conference. Goldfarb faces the bench and at one point, he jerks his thumb over his shoulder to indicate he’s talking about Darryl and me. I can’t hear a word they’re saying. It’s like trying to eavesdrop on a conversation in a tomb. The judge keeps looking back and forth between Darryl’s side of the room and mine. From the corner of my eye, I see Darryl’s mother blowing her nose into an old tissue while Darryl impatiently bounces up and down on his heels.

  Finally, the conference breaks up and Goldfarb returns to the defense table. “Mr. Baum,” the judge says. “Do you ever go to the track?”

  I lean forward, not sure I’m hearing him right. “No, Your Honor.”

  “Have you been to Atlantic City?”

  “Um, no, sir.”

  The judge clears his throat with a loud revving sound. “Then let’s become gamblers, you and I, Mr. Baum. Not in Atlantic City, not at Aqueduct, not on the roll of the dice or how fast a horse can run—but an enlightened form of gambling. Let’s gamble on a human being.”

  The judge seems to be giving a campaign speech, though as far as I know, he is not up for renomination any time soon. “I am not one who believes that there is no such thing as rehabilitation,” the judge declares. “I believe human beings are capable of change. So I say, let’s be gamblers, Mr. Baum, and let us use probation as our track.”

  “Your Honor, with all due respect, I think Mr. King has already shown himself to be a very bad bet.” A few people chuckle behind me.

  Without meaning to, I find myself making a speech too. “Judge, you were talking about racetracks before. I wonder if I could change metaphors on you for a moment. Because sometimes I think poor neighborhoods are more like river streams and the people struggling to get out are like the salmon making a run for it. Felons like Mr. King poison that stream. And his victims are often the best people in those communities, and he makes it harder for them to get out. If I might switch back to your racetrack analogy, giving Mr. King probation is like blowing all of your money on a doped-up horse, Your Honor. Which leaves you nothing else to gamble with.”

  All this sounds like a lot of shit to me as I’m saying it, but everybody else seems impressed, including the judge. I turn my head slightly and see Andrea nodding. I don’t know how all of this came out of my mouth. The judge asks me to step forward.

  “That was very eloquent, Mr. Baum,” he says with a low rumble. “I’m surprised you did not become a lawyer …”

  I’m too confused and nervous to manage a decent response. Bernstein takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. People in the spectators’ galley shift in their seats. Darryl and his mother murmur to each other. “Man, why are these motherfuckers clockin’ me?” someone says.

  The judge ignores the growing restlessness. It feels like a big fist is closing in my stomach, taking my guts in its grip. Bernstein gives me a mean look as he pushes his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Baum,” he says, “do you remember when you were in investigations two years ago?”

  “Certainly, Your Honor.” My first job with Probation was writing presentence investigations, which supposedly help judges decide what sentence to give a defendant.

  “Do you remember an individual named Claude Briggs?” the judge asks.

  “Not offhand, Judge.”

  “Let me refresh your memory,” Bernstein says. “I promised Claude Briggs probation. He was a young man of eighteen. Not the smartest youngster I have ever seen, who dropped out of school and impregnated a girl. He became the sole support of his paramour and his mother, who was a junkie and badly in need of treatment for drug abuse, and a couple of siblings. He had a job. He worked as a manager of a pizzeria. He met someone older than him—a street person—who took this young man and encouraged him to go on what he thought was a burglary. He entered the apartment in a building near St. Nicholas Avenue, ready to steal, when the complainant witness came home …”

  “And they beat the crap out of him,” I say. “I remember the case now.” And I remember Claude Briggs too. A big slow-talking kid with huge hands.

  “And do you remember what you recommended?” the judge asks.

  “I believe I recommended jail time for this Briggs fellow.” Almost as soon as I say this, I remember that I did so despite the judge’s early promise of probation for Briggs. In those days I did not know better.

  “That was indeed your recommendation!” The judge slaps his desk so hard that sleepy eyes around the galley pop open. “And do you know what Claude Briggs is doing now?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I ignored your advice and gave that young man probation,” the judge says. “He responded beautifully. I gave him youthful offender treatment, which means that as far as his criminal record is concerned, he has no criminal record. He is doing spectacularly well in his job. He is going to buy his own pizzeria. He saw to it that his mother entered a methadone program and is doing fine. And he was trying to attain a high school equivalency diploma. He did not succeed! But he enrolled in the course again! He’s going to keep taking that course until he finally masters it!”

  I hear Darryl King make the angry ticking sound with his tongue again and then mutter, “Bullshit,” as Judge Bernstein glares down at me for his triumphant summation.

  “By being placed on probation that young man assured society far more protection because we now have an individual who can be productive,” the judge says, smiling and shaking his head in wonder. “And you wanted him locked up.”

  “Judge, nothing makes me happier than a story like that. I went into this field to help people. But this … individual is different.” I point to Darryl King, who looks like he’s ready to explode and take everybody else in the room with him.

  By the time I finish speaking, I know it’s too late. In Judge Bernstein’s mind, this is no longer a typical case. If it was, he’d be happy to violate Darryl King and pick up another disposition for his scorecard. But now the judge has to teach me a lesson. I made a terrible mistake, challenging him with my little speech, and now I’m going to pay the price.
/>
  “I have already gotten one bum steer from you, Mr. Baum,” the judge says in a steely tone. “I don’t intend to get another.”

  He indicates he wants me to step back to the prosecution’s table. Then he looks over at Goldfarb, Darryl, and Darryl’s mother. Goldfarb is writing something in a date book. The mother has her head down; she appears to be asleep standing up. Darryl has his broad shoulders back and his bottom lip curled.

  “Mr. King, I’m very disappointed to hear about these violations from Mr. Baum,” the judge says. “Probation is a privilege and it should not be abused. Now, I don’t expect to hear anything else about you getting in trouble. But if I do, rest assured the full weight of the law will be brought to bear on you. For the moment, though, I’m impressed by your mother’s involvement in your rehabilitation, as Mr. Goldfarb has explained it to me, and I am restoring you to probation … You should continue reporting to Mr. Baum as assigned.”

  My heart sinks. Goldfarb clicks one of his pens, closes his briefcase, and walks away. Darryl’s mother thanks the judge and sniffs back the tears that never came.

  Darryl King is already sauntering past the balustrade and heading for the door. He gives his shoulders an exaggerated roll and pumps his arms into the air victoriously. After what just happened, why shouldn’t he feel indestructible?

  “OUTTA HERE!” he shouts as he hits the doors.

  An elderly, well-dressed black woman in the fifth row looks after him with pure hatred in her eyes, like she’s just seen a parent’s worst nightmare go by.

  In the first row, Andrea looks hurt and bewildered. “What went wrong?” she says. “I thought you did great.”

  “Well, that’s what they do.” I loosen my tie. “What can I tell you?”

  Jeff Washington is already calling the next case. A kid with two gold-plated front teeth—one of them with the Mercedes-Benz insignia—smiles as he passes me on his way to the defense table and Judge Bernstein.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” I say. “This place is getting me depressed.”