USA: Media held at bay as Boy George sweeps the streets of New York on his second day of a community service sentence

After an aborted attempt Monday (August 14) to sweep New York's streets, singer Boy George managed to get to work in Lower Manhattan Tuesday (August 15) to continue his court-ordered community service. When O'Dowd tried to perform the community service on Monday a throng of news photographers prevented him doing the work and Sanitation Department officials were forced to move him from the streets near Chinatown to a fenced-off parking lot for more sweeping. But on Tuesday, the Sanitation Department kept the cameras at a distance. "Folks, I'm gonna ask you folks to just make sure that... We'll allow you to film, but you gotta stand back. You cannot get close to the operation," said an official. Boy George's manager, Jeremy Pearce, explained what O'Dowd thought of Monday's mess. "I think he thought it was a bit absurd you know, pretty absurd, stopping him doing his job, you know, not respecting his position really, but, that's the media, isn't it?" he said. A judge sentenced O'Dowd to five days of community service in March for falsely reporting a burglary. It was part of a plea deal that allowed him to escape more serious charges of drug possession. George, the cross-dressing front man for the chart-topping 1980s British pop band Culture Club, traded his costumes for dark sunglasses, gloves and an orange safety vest. The charges which led to the community service sentence stem from an incident last year when police responded to his call reporting a burglary and found 13 bags of cocaine in his apartment. At a court hearing in June, defence lawyer Louis Freeman warned that a street-sweeping scene "would turn into a media circus" and asked for his client to work with an AIDS charity. Criminal Court Judge Anthony Ferrara threatened to send George to jail if he failed to complete community service by August 28.

ITN Source | August 17, 2006

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