The Crappiness of an Office Could Get Literal

● Cy Vance Jr., now Manhattan district attorney: I started out of law school with a class of probably 55 or so young assistant district attorneys. We had more than 100,000 cases each year coming through our courts—an overwhelming number of serious and violent cases. I shared an office with four other assistant DAs. You would get in early in the morning, and you all would sit with your witnesses, preparing them before a hearing or trial. It had the atmosphere of organized chaos. At a time when crime was ten times what it is today, you would have cops slouched in their seats or sometimes just passed out sleeping on the floor because they had been up. It was rough, it was tumble, it was not pretty. The courtrooms look exactly the same now except they’re not quite as dirty.

I got along well with one of the judges, and one morning I went into court with him. You’d have to go down a dark hallway in order to get to the judge’s entrance. So I follow the judge, and as we reach his door—someone had defecated at the front of it. What did we do? We looked down, we sort of looked at each other, shook our heads and then just went in and went to work.