They may be loud and boisterous on the streets, but in the hallways of the courthouse, they speak mostly in hushed tones.  Even tough street kids know better than to get too loud, attract too much attention, in the one place where their bluster won’t pay.  Courthouse hallways tend to be unnaturally calm.

When 22-year-old Anthony Jones was tossed out of a Philly courtroom for wearing a hat, he broke that calm.

The incident started about 11 a.m. last Friday, when a court crier in Courtroom 706 ordered Jones to remove his hat and then booted him out when he became upset, Sen said.

In the hallway, Jones yelled and cursed, and Sen hurried to defuse things, Hoy and Sen said. (Sen didn’t represent Jones, but her employer, the Defender Association of Philadelphia, did.)

Paula Sen was a public defender, who happened to be there as Jones got loud and angry.  Richard Hoy was an old-time lawyer, sitting on a hallway bench, watching the drama unfold.

Of Jones, Hoy said: “There was obviously something [mentally] wrong with him. But [the] PD [public defender] had him 75 percent calmed down.”

Some street guys have difficulty taking orders.  They react poorly, as they feel it makes them look weak, and there is nothing more dangerous on the street than looking weak. So they respond inappropriately to save face.  Yes, it’s silly and pointless, but it happens.  A few curses and assertions of manhood, and they can let it go.  A reminder from a PD that the courthouse hallway isn’t a good place for this particular battle often helps.

And so the incident ended with a whimper? Not this time.

Still, about six officers suddenly swarmed, Sen said.

“A very large officer got into [Jones’] face and was yelling at us,” said the petite Sen, who is 105 pounds and stands 5-foot-3. “I was scared for [our] client. I stood directly in front of him with my arms outspread. I said: ‘Everybody, calm down.’ I was just trying to get people to act like grown-ups.”

Instead, Officer David Chisholm lunged and swung his arm, Sen said, adding, “I think the intent was to put [Jones] in a chokehold and take him to the ground.”

But Chisholm’s fist caught Sen in the back of the head and knocked her to the floor, as he took Jones down, she said.

Jones wasn’t being violent.  There was no fight happening.  He just broke the calm of the hallway, and in response, Officer Chisholm decided to break something as well.  The first thing Chisholm broke was the back of Sen’s head in his zeal to attack Jones.

[Spokesman for District Attorney Seth Williams, Cameron] Kline disputed witnesses’ version of events, saying Sen wasn’t punched but rather “fell over” after she “walked into the scrum.”

Because, you know how those PDs lie about getting the back of their heads bashed. Jones, on the other hand, didn’t fare as well.

Chisholm and two other officers punched the downed defendant several times as more officers piled on, handcuffing him and dragging him to his feet, Hoy and Sen said.

“He was bleeding fairly profusely and the cops continued taunting him,” Sen said, adding that while she was treated at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital for bumps and bruises, police did not take Jones for medical care.

Hoy added his two cents, that there was no cause for this violence.  His thoughts were not appreciated.

“The officer told me to ‘mind your own f—ing business,’ ” Hoy said.

A supervisor from the Public Defenders Office arrived on the scene, and was treated no better.

And when one of Sen’s supervisors arrived to investigate, Chisholm allegedly refused to identify himself.

“He said: ‘If you let these animals act like this, this is what happens,’ and, ‘If you keep pushing this, we are going to have a conversation,’ ” said Jordan Barnett, chief of the Defender Association’s Southwest Division. “I find it troubling that the officer would refuse to give his name and make statements like that in a public courthouse.”

It appears that Chisholm wasn’t a court officer, but a beat cop from West Philly’s 18th District, where people are less inclined to question their beatings, mostly because that will buy them a beating as well.  Philly. Just like Mayor Rizzo pictured it.  But this was the courthouse, not the streets of West Philly, and most of the time, it’s run by the grown-ups. PDs don’t get caught in the path of a brute’s fists.

Courthouse deputies, though always prepared for the worst, tend not to be made of the same stuff as street cops. They don’t look for the fight. They aren’t a hair-trigger away from hurting someone to prove their machismo, just as street kids like Jones too often are.  When a volatile situation happens, they deal with it. They don’t go looking for it.

Sure, they have a “thing” about telling people to remove their hats in the courtroom, barking orders that disrupt the proceedings because it’s their job to stop people from disrupting the proceedings.  But it’s not backed up with tanks and scrums, and people usually comply with their orders because this is a courthouse, the one place where discretionary calm usually prevails.

Paula Sen took it upon herself to be not just a grown-up, but a lawyer.  Jones may not have been her client, but he was a guy making a needless ruckus that couldn’t inure to his benefit.  Tough-guy boisterousness impresses no one in the courthouse hallway.  While Jones was a client of her office, it’s unlikely that she seized the opportunity to help this kid just because of that.  Sen was just a good person, a good lawyer, and there to avoid this silly situation from escalating.

There was no reason Paula Sen would have anticipated a swarm of animals attacking, or that when she stood between Chisholm and Jones, her head would be the first thing to go.

“[Chisholm] didn’t do anything wrong; the public defender was knocked down in the course of him handling the defendant,” Kline said.

So much for the calm of the courthouse hallway.

H/T Max Kennerly, who reminds me that I’m “still an asshole and wrong about everything.”

* This is the 7,000th post published at SJ. There are another 141 posts that, for various reasons, never saw the light of day, but there are now 7,000 that have. As Dr. SJ told me this morning, “it seems like it should be more.”