If you've been hiding out from the law after getting ticketed for sneaking sips from a Dale's Pale Ale can at a Bryant Park movie last summer, yesterday was your chance for redemption. Yesterday marked the city's sixth Safe Surrender program, in which people with open warrants for non-violent crimes were invited to a Brooklyn church in hopes of getting their cases dismissed, and many of the small crimes heard yesterday were alcohol-related. Guess that stoop-drinking saga will really never end, huh?
Offenders had the opportunity to meet with a public defender and have their case presented in front of Judge Jacquline Williams. For the most part, she was pretty lenient. "I’m going to dismiss your summons today. I’m going to ask you not to engage in this type of action again," she told three people who were ticketed for breaking open-container laws. And there were a lot of those: one Bushwick resident was ticketed for holding an open beer outside his house; another offender had been ticketed for drinking wine with her boyfriend in Central Park, and yet another was busted for holding a cup of beer outside his car. None of these crimes warranted particularly tough punishments, but for some, it was the principle that kept them from paying a ticket. "It wouldn’t be worth paying 50 bucks for a three-dollar 40," Victor Merced, who got his open container case tossed, told the Post.
Plus, the Safe Surrender event sounded fun, aside from that whole having to see a judge thing. "I was nervous at first, but inside they were doing karaoke and everyone was singing, so it put me at ease," Merced said. We hope they at least played the theme from Night Court.
