On the first day of her community service sentence for assaulting her maid, supermodel Naomi Campbell chose to wear chocolate brown pants, dark sunglasses and a newsboy-type cap over a short hairdo.
What Campbell was wearing was on the minds of many as she arrived Monday morning at a sanitation garage. After all, the catwalk star is tasked with work that could kill a good set of designer clothes: sweeping, mopping and cleaning offices, locker rooms and bathrooms.
Campbell, wearing black stilettos and slinging combat-style boots over her shoulder, arrived at the Manhattan District 3 Garage at Pier 36 on the Hudson in a black SUV at around 8 a.m.
For five days, Campbell will push a broom or mop at the garage to fulfill her sentence of community service for throwing a cell phone at her maid over a pair of missing jeans.
She was met by an official of the garage who escorted her through the dirty, steel double doors of the building.
She did not acknowledge the horde of assembled media.
“Miss Campbell arrived on time to work. She came ready to work,” Albert Durrell, deputy chief of the Department of Sanitation, told reporters at a briefing outside the facility.
It’s the same sanitation depot where singer Boy George performed community service as part of his sentence. He pleaded guilty for falsely reporting a burglary at his lower Manhattan apartment. The responding officers found cocaine instead.
Unlike George, who performed his duties outdoors in full view of TV cameras, Campbell will be working inside the garage, sweeping and mopping and cleaning offices, locker rooms and bathrooms, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. She was issued protective gloves, a dust mask and a reflective orange vest.
“We have plenty of work for her to do over the next five days,” Durrell said.
Campbell will get a one hour lunch break – which she can take in or out – and two 15-minute breaks.
Because of her celebrity status, sanitation police officers will be stationed at each entrance of the facility during her five days there, said Durrell. She is part of a four-person community service crew.
If community service workers refuse to perform a task, “they’re basically sent back to court,” added Durrell.
The judge had granted Campbell’s request to delay her service until after several fashion shows.
While community service has been employed in U.S. courts for decades, the punishment has gained a higher profile after the celebrity sentences.
Television cameras were on the scene when Boy George found himself using a broom and wearing a reflective orange vest as he swept a driveway of the depot.
While he did not respond to requests for comment at the time through his lawyer, the singer did tell the makers of a British documentary, “I’ve enjoyed it in a bizarre, perverse Boy George kind of way.”
Besides community service, Campbell must pay the maid’s medical expenses and attend a two-day anger management program.