Time to get medieval! Mayor Adams taps cosplay knight to be NYC judge
Forget tough on crime — this guy is ready to get medieval!
One of Mayor Eric Adams’ new picks for the city judiciary is a cosplayer who dons shining armor to do battle as a historical reenactor, The Post has learned.
Dale Fong-Fredrick, 51, is among the legal eagles Adams has chosen to replace five judges he’s decided not to reappoint this year, sources familiar with the matter said.
Fong-Frederick is known among his fellow fantasy Middle Agers as Sir Jibril al-Dakhil, the fictional “son of a Moorish baron and a mother born of Spanish royalty” who’s rumored “to competitively dance the pole in disguise,” according to the Society of Creative Anachronism website.
Fong-Frederick’s SCA bio also describes him as the “first openly gay knight” in the group’s East Kingdom — which covers the northeast US and part of Canada — and “one of less than a dozen African-American knights.”
Last year, he was elected a director of the nonprofit organization and took part in a one-hour Zoom video conference in which he and two representatives from the SCA corporate office appeared in costume to discuss his attraction to the role-playing pastime.
“You can be a knight in name only. You can play the game, jump through the hoops, dot your i’s and cross your t’s, get your belt, get your chain and say: Whoa, I can hit people with a stick, I’m a knight!” he said.
“Or you can look at the virtues, the philosophy of what it means to be a knight, what it means to be virtuous, what it means to speak up for people who can’t speak for themselves, what it means to deliver the king’s justice.
“It’s not just — they’re not just words. They’re not just concepts of pretend,” added Fong-Frederick, who wore a black-and-gold robe with a filigree design and appeared before a digital Northern Lights background.
Fong-Frederick — who said he joined the SCA “to not do the things I do in the mundane world” — also said his favorite piece of garb was a leather headband featuring images of wild turkeys that was handmade and given to him by “King Griffith” and “Queen Ekaterina.”
“The fact that they took so much time, the king and the queen, during their reign, took so much time to do something so personal for me, is something that I will always hold dear,” he said.
In the “mundane world,” Fong is a Hofstra Law School grad who worked as a court attorney and referee in Surrogate’s Court before Adams appointed him to the Brooklyn Criminal Court bench.
Aside from his apparent Knight Court selection, Adams also tapped Sara Litman, a principal attorney in Brooklyn Supreme Court, and Michael Ryan, a career Brooklyn prosecutor who headed the Career Criminal Unit, as new criminal court judges.
They will replace three other judges whose terms expire this year but whom Adams refused to reappoint: Charlotte Davidson, William Harrington and James Burke, according to a source briefed on the matter.
In addition to the criminal court judges, Adams also declined to reappoint two family court judges: Tracey Bing and Lynn Leopold, the source said.
A city judicial source called their removals “highly unusual.”
“It is quite unusual in a year to have even one judge who is not reappointed,” said the source, who has no direct relationship with any of the jurists. “It is quite unusual. Even in a year to have even one judge who is not reappointed.
“From time to time, a particular person may not be up to the job any more. But 5 people in one year, you’d have to go back at least a decade or more to find something similar.”
A spokesperson for the Office of Court Administration, Lucian Chalfen, said of the moves, “In reviewing the three names of the criminal court judges, we did not have any issue or concerns with their job performance or productivity.”
Adams’ judicial shakeup follows his outspoken criticism of the judiciary for its role in turning the Big Apple into a national “laughingstock” amid surging street crime.
Adams also vowed while mayor-elect to only appoint “the right judges,” saying that no one would get the job “if you don’t understand that my city must be safe.”
In a statement released by City Hall, the mayor said: “My administration is selecting judges that we believe have the highest fidelity to the law, that will not unduly delay cases, and that will make their decisions with the safety of New Yorkers in mind.
“That’s what this group represents, and that will be my North Star going forward,” he added.
Davidson, who was appointed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2016, featured prominently in a June front page Post report — “BUST OF THE CENTURY” — about the 100th arrest of career thief Michelle McKelley.
Davidson released the self-proclaimed “professional booster” without bail, saying the charges against her for allegedly swiping $125 worth of goods from a CVS store in Lower Manhattan were covered by the state’s controversial 2019 bail reform law.
Last year, Davidson also agreed to vacate nearly 6,000 bench warrants in prosecution cases dating to 1975 after then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said he would no longer prosecute the low-level crimes.
Harrington, who was first appointed by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 2001, made headlines in 2019 when he blew his cool and briefly jailed a Brooklyn prosecutor who asked to delay the sentencing of a convicted murderer so the victim’s sister could speak court.
That incident was behind Adams’ decision, even though the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary recommended Harrington’s reappointment, a source familiar with the situation said.
Burke, also first appointed by Giuliani in 2001, presided over Harvey Weinstein’s high-profile, 2020 rape trial.
The MACJ recommended against his reappointment due to his lack of judicial temperament, the New York Law Journal reported last month.
One lawyer told the Law Journal that Burke was “demeaning” and that his courtroom “was a very unpleasant place for lawyers to appear.”
Two weeks ago, The City also reported that Burke’s handling of the Weinstein case infuriated lawyer Arthur Aidala, a member of the disgraced Hollywood mogul’s defense team.
Aidala is also friendly with Frank Carone, Adams’ chief of staff and a member of the executive committee that further advises the mayor on judicial appointments.
City Hall has denied that Carone was involved in Burke’s firing.
Bing, interviewed recently by The Post while she was walking her dog, got visibly upset when asked about the situation.
“Nine years,” she said of her time on the bench. “All I can do is work very hard and try to help people. That’s all you can do.”
None of the other judges who were let go returned requests for comment.
