"Inside the Warped World of Summons Court" by Brent Staples

On June 16, Brent Staples wrote an article for the New York Times challenging the fairness and legality of the summons court in New York City. In this article, he quotes statistics, judges, and summonses to prove his point that the summons courts in lower Manhattan are corrupt.

Right from the beginning, the title of this article is eye-catching, and intriguingly- yet appropriately- foreshadows what the article is going to be about. Staples begins with a sentence that clearly expresses his stance on the topic. He then quotes a judge from the Brooklyn Criminal court, who says she cannot remember a time when she convicted a white person. I believe this statement is a bit of an exaggeration, because it is just statistically unlikely that of the 500,000 summonses issued in the city every year, absolutely no white people would be rendered guilty as charged.

Staples includes one man's experience of getting ticketed for a completely worthless reason to try to provoke a reaction from the reader and appeal to them on an emotional level. He uses rhetoric when he asks the question, "And if they are out to get you... what can you do?" He also uses words such as "bogus" and "petty" instead of less attention-grabbing words.

The article is well written and mostly believable, mostly due to the tone Staples sets and his word choice. Overall, I think that this article probably provoked a response from many of its readers, which is what Staples was trying to do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/inside-the-warped-world-of-summons-court.html?_r=1&ref=brentstaples