R.I.’s TV judge courts a national audience

Television watchers around the country are getting an up-close look at a Providence courtroom and a local judge famous for his compassionate and sometimes humorous rulings.

The program featuring Judge Frank Caprio, “Caught in Providence,” started national syndication on Monday. The show, featuring real court proceedings on low-level citations, has run for more than two decades on local TV; now, it will reach some of the biggest TV markets in the country on weekdays.

“Providence will be exposed in such a favorable light — not just the city, but the people of Providence,” Caprio said in an interview. “The institutions of government can be fair, understanding, compassionate and just. That’s really the focus of ‘Caught in Providence.’”

Caprio’s grandfatherly dispensations of justice — as examples, sometimes asking kids to determine their parents’ guilt or punishments or letting a defendant out of a ticket after she was able to do a handstand in his courtroom — earned a viral following online for an 81-year-old municipal jurist. His videos have received 1.5 billion views in a year online, according to the syndication company, Debmar-Mercury.

For showrunner Brad Johnson, the online reaction to Caprio prompted him to pitch the show for a national audience. He told a friend who’s in the TV business, who at first rejected the idea. There are enough judge shows. That was until the friend saw a “sizzle reel,” or highlights of the show.

“It’s not a judge show,” Johnson said. “It’s a human-interest story, it’s humorous. It’s not some sound stage, it’s not mean-spirited. It’s actually an every-person message.”

Johnson hadn’t been to Providence before his involvement; now he’s at the Public Safety Complex about every three weeks. The show will air in many of the country’s biggest markets, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, at various times. In Providence, it will air at noon at 12:30 p.m. on WNAC-DT2.

“This is one of the most diverse cities I’ve ever seen in my life, and I love it,” Johnson said. “The accents, the people, and the stories — that’s really what we’re doing.”

(On those accents: At least one person on Twitter is already agape, befuddled when he thought Caprio was saying “cow.” He was saying “car.”)

Caprio isn’t always there to let people off the hook. In TV-judge-show parlance, this is invariably referred to as “no-nonsense,” and Caprio can dial it up.

In one popular video, a driver is caught zooming through a red light on a slick, snowy road. Caprio plays the video — the violation is as clear as day — then says dismissively: “Let’s look at it once more, I don’t know why.” The defendant declares, “I’m just guilty.” A visibly irritated Caprio doesn’t give him a reduction on the $85 ticket but does give him time to pay it.

In another case that went viral, Caprio asked a man’s son whether his dad should pay $90, or $30, or have his ticket dismissed. To the amusement of the courtroom, the kid said $30. Caprio, describing little Jacob as akin to Solomon, made a further compromise: If the dad took him out for breakfast, he would dismiss the ticket.

People who show up to municipal court for their cases always see a sign before entering court that there’s filming going on there, and they can let the judge know they’d rather not be on TV if they wish. The program takes those privacy protections seriously, said Johnson.

Caprio credits his own father, an immigrant from Italy who sold fruit, with instilling in him a profound moral code: The road is long and bumpy, but one must always act with honor and dignity.

Ethics questions did arise about the television-show arrangement. His brother, Joe, is behind Citylife Productions, the coproducer of the show. The Rhode Island Ethics Commission ruled that his brother could videotape the show and make money from it as long as he didn’t get special treatment and that Frank Caprio himself didn’t make any money from the program. Frank Caprio doesn’t make money from the show.

“I wanted the world to see them, and now they are,” said Joseph Caprio, who has been involved since the beginning.

Caprio is one of four judges appointed by the City Council, and has been for more than 30 years. He serves as the chief judge. He also has a law firm that he founded, Caprio & Caprio.

“I am what I am, and I’m not about to put on a show for anyone,” Frank Caprio said.

For most people, Caprio noted, their only direct interactions with the justice system and the government will be in a place a lot like his courtroom in the Public Safety Complex — fighting a parking ticket or a speeding ticket. It can be daunting to go up against The Man.

And of course, in Providence, The Man is a machine. Speed cameras and red-light cameras have no moral code. It is a machine that makes the first determination about whether someone has violated traffic laws. But it’s Caprio who will take another look — dismissing one case, for example, when he determined that, although a driver definitely didn’t stop for a red light before turning right, as she’d insisted, she didn’t actually have to under the law.

“That’s where the human element comes into consideration,” Caprio said. “I take all of those human factors seriously.”

As for his own story, Caprio went to law school at night in Boston after teaching at Hope High School during the day.

It sounds like the grounds for some leniency if he’d ever gotten a ticket in those days but he hadn’t, he said.

“Maybe more appropriate is if I ever got caught, particularly when I was late for an exam,” Caprio said. “Maybe, fortunately for me, they didn’t have cameras in those days.”

— bamaral@ providence-journal.com

(401) 277-7615 On Twitter: bamaral44