Councilman Simcha Felder of Boro Park performed his civic duty today by serving Jury Duty at Kings County Supreme Court in Downtown Brooklyn. At the end of his service Mr. Felder made it a point to comment on how much the jury accommodations have improved since the last time he served.
He stated that “serving Jury Duty has now truly become a pleasant experience. I highly recommend that everyone who gets summoned should use the opportunity to perform their civic duty.”
Due to the court’s light docket, Mr. Felder was not chosen to serve on a Jury and he was discharged after one day.
Incidentally, this is the same day that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is serving Jury Duty in Manhattan. With two of New York City’s hardest-working public servants out of commission it leaves one wondering; ‘who’s running the city today’?
Unlike Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Felder fulfilled his civic responsibility without fanfare, and no special accommodations were made for him.
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14 Responses
With all due respect Mr Felder is not exactly the mayor of NYC and he is not well known to the general public other than the jewish community. So that is why he did not garner any attention.
I don’t get what you are trying to bring out
Simcha Felder and his entire staff are the only Jews in Brooklyn that are honest true public officials.
Kol Tov
destro613: I take offence to that, I served 3 days because I was put on a case and then was let off because they ended up settling out of court.
I even went in on the ORIGINAL summons and didn’t reschedual – now THAT is a chidish.
Why finagle his way out of Jury Duty? He gets paid from US (the taxpayers) anyhow!! Public (government) workers get FULL salary no mater how long they sit on the jury – so this didn’t cost Simcha anything to sit on a jury!! (I guess the government feels, hey theses gov’t workers ‘sit’ and do nothing all day and call it ‘work’, we’ll pay them to ‘sit’ and do some jury duty)
I know people in the private sector (yeh, us middle class folks) who have been summoned to sit on grand juries for MONTHS, and got that measly $40 a day – and their employer legally is not responsible to pay them the difference (employer is only responsible to keep the job open, and not penalize for not coming in).
You can starve to death on such a system!! Its no wonder why hard working people (who pay taxes, and don’t get any free handouts) try to finagle out of jury duty.
Why all the cynicism?
You know what would be a real way to get the people in our communities to go out there and do their civic duty? Lets’ hear about when the next rav/rebbe/rabbi/rabbinic leader gets jury duty. They probably have an easy out, however for the klal to hear about that would really drive the point home.
Bauer,
Yeah, lets blame the rabbonim for the fact that not everyone performs their jury duty. Everything is their fault, huh?
Joseph, the article begs for a cynic to respond.
Simcha is an asset to our community!
Baruch Hashem for the Kiddush Hashem.
I met him in the jury room. He was not looking for any special attention.
What an example we should all follow…
I have never avoided my jury duty.
In fact I once served on a grand larceny case involving members of a different community.