Decrepit NYC Courthouses Disgust Watchdogs As Workers Return

NEW YORK CITY — An expose has shown the city's courthouses to be run-down and unsanitary – including rodent-infested holding cells and moldy chairs - as workers return in-person after COVID.

The New York Daily News reported that in the non-public areas of one courthouse in Manhattan, the chairs are moldy, the walls are splattered with dirt and the air intake vents are covered with soot.

The back-of-house areas, where defense lawyers and their clients meet before an arraignment, posed a safety hazard even before the coronavirus pandemic, the Daily News reported. The walls haven't been painted in years and the holding cells lack critical ventilation upgrades.

And that has been true for years, according to court staffers.

"I’ve been there 20 years," veteran defense attorney Julie Sender told the Daily News after seeing photos of the area. "Those stains have been there for as long as I can remember."

Tina Luongo, attorney-in-charge of the criminal defense practice at The Legal Aid Society, said in a statement that the conditions are "nothing new."

"The City has wholly failed in its commitment to keep these areas sanitary, and this failure is indicative of how administration after administration views our hard-working staff and the New Yorkers that we represent," Luongo said. "This level of incompetence is truly disgraceful, and we demand immediate action from City Hall to keep these areas clean and safe for our staff and our clients."

A spokesperson for the city's Department of Administrative Services said in a statement to the Daily News that the department's cleaning employees cannot access the holding cells and other non-public areas because of special security precautions.

The Office of Court Administration (OCA), the Department of Correction and the New York Police Department are responsible for those areas, the spokesperson said, adding that nobody from those agencies has requested that they be cleaned or upgraded.

The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys (ALAA) said in a statement that the areas of the courthouse that hold individuals waiting to be arraigned are infested with rodents and roaches.

The toilet facilities often lack soap and a properly working sink, the statement said, and the food can be rotten.

"The working conditions inside the courthouse have always been abysmal and unsanitary. We all have stories about the barbaric conditions of the arraignment interview areas, including watching rats scurry over our feet and roaches crawl across our files as we were writing," Sender said in a statement. "We have always known that working arraignments meant we’d likely be sick soon after our shift. We have been fighting to improve these conditions for years."

The ALAA has been seeking information from the OCA and city agencies about the conditions of these courthouse spaces for over a year, it said in a statement. Multiple of its requests to access the areas to evaluate their conditions have been ignored or denied.

"This is bigger than just COVID, this is about ensuring that any agency which bears responsibility for keeping the conditions of all the spaces in the courthouse safe and sanitary are held accountable," said Lisa Ohta, President of the ALAA, in a statement. "We will continue to demand that all the areas of the courthouse, both public and nonpublic, be remediated and kept clean. We are fighting for humanity in an inhumane system."