seems like your friend could have just gotten a desk appearance ticket and paid his citation and been done with it.
of course though rikers is filled with people who committed minor infractions and could afford to pay the dat.

IMHO, it’s absurd to simply arrest people for being drunk in public. If they are causing trouble, fighting or breaking some other law, then they deserve to be arrested. If not, then there’s no harm.

Perhaps this would never work in the USA, because of all the different ethnic types and root cultures mixed together, all the guns available and the ease with which people seem to become violent, however, in Japan, even in big cities like Tokyo it’s perfectly OK to drink and be drunk in public.

People police themselves and their friends.

And it works. People rarely get out of hand, but fights do occasionally happen, just like they do amongst sober people. Another neat aspect of life here is that the falling down drunk is treated like a victim rather than a criminal.

Subway and rail works and even cops will take a drunk in and give him/her a can of coffee and make sure they get home and don’t fall on the tracks….often so will strangers. One thing is for sure, the drunk will never (or rarely) be victimized by others or pushed around or harassed by cops.

I like that system. It’s accepting.