Court Watchers Hold 'Progressive' DAs Accountable

This year Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., and his Brooklyn counterpart, Eric Gonzalez, committed to no longer requesting that bail be set in most misdemeanor and violation cases. The announcement received praise from progressives, but soon public defenders began to notice that prosecutors were still requesting bail on the exact crimes they had explicitly pledged not to.

That’s why a group of criminal justice advocates started Court Watch NYC, a new project that aims to hold so-called reformer prosecutors accountable by training volunteers to sit in on arraignments where bail determinations are made and take notes.

During one training session at a bookstore in Dumbo, a Brooklyn public defender tells the room of about 50 volunteers, “the challenge of today is to teach you what we learned in three years of law school and seven years on the job...in like two hours."