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“Your love is really helping us through this difficult time,” David Caprio said
Caprio billed his courtroom as a place “where people and cases are met with kindness and compassion”

NEW YORK: People from all over the world are expected to pay tribute to Frank Caprio, a retired municipal judge who found online fame as an empathetic jurist and host of ” Caught in Providence,” at memorial services beginning Thursday in his home state of Rhode Island.

Caprio, who won hearts with the folksy humor and compassion he brought to his courtroom, had pancreatic cancer and died on Aug. 20 at 88.

His family said they had been moved by the outpouring of support since Caprio’s passing and the “thousands of requests from people around the world” who wanted to pray with the family at Caprio’s service.

Caprio’s son, David Caprio, welcomed members of the public to attend his father’s visitation on Thursday and his Friday funeral Mass at Providence’s Cathedral of Saints Peter & Paul, which will also be livestreamed on the former judge’s social media pages. In a phone interview with The Associated Press, he said supporters of his father were traveling to Rhode Island from as far as the Philippines to attend his services.

“Your love is really helping us through this difficult time,” David Caprio said in a video posted on social media.

Caprio billed his courtroom as a place “where people and cases are met with kindness and compassion.” He was known for dismissing tickets or showing kindness even when he handed out justice. The show, produced by his brother, ran for more than two decades on local television until being nationally syndicated in 2018. Caprio retired from the bench in 2023.

Clips from the show have had more than 1 billion views on social media. His most popular videos have been those where he calls children to the bench to help pass judgment on their parents. One shows him listening sympathetically to a woman whose son was killed and then dismissing her tickets and fines of $400.

According to his biography, Caprio came from humble beginnings, the second of three boys in an Italian immigrant family in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island. He said learned compassion from his father, who would wake Caprio and his brother up at four in the morning to accompany him on his route delivering milk.

“I saw firsthand how other hardworking people couldn’t afford to pay their bill and I saw how my dad treated them, you know?” Caprio told journalist Adrienne Bankert while promoting his biography, “Compassion in Court: Life-Changing Stories from America’s Nicest Judge,” earlier this year. “His company ordered him to stop delivery if they missed paying for two weeks. He never stopped delivery. Never.”

In a 2017 interview with the AP, Caprio said he knows that his courtroom may be the only interaction with the justice system many people ever have. He wanted it to be a positive one.

“Whether it’s justified or not, I think there is distrust of the institutions of government,” he said. “I think there’s a sense that there’s lacking in understanding and compassion and kindness with the institutions of government ... I’m not trying to change the world, but I’m trying to do my part to dispel those thoughts, those feelings.”

Caprio’s funeral visitation will take place at the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence on Thursday from 3 to 7 p.m. and be followed by a funeral Mass at Providence’s Cathedral of Saints Peter & Paul on Friday at 10 a.m.

LAHORE/SRINAGAR: Pakistan’s eastern towns of Chiniot and Hafizabad face a risk of catastrophic floods if an irrigation barrage crumbles on a major river upstream after heavy rains swelled it beyond capacity, officials warned on Thursday.
Nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan are battling torrential monsoon rains that have unleashed flash floods, swelled rivers and filled dams, with 60 deaths this month in Indian Kashmir, and Pakistan’s toll at 805 since late June.
Any flooding blamed on India stands to inflame relations between the archfoes, embroiled in a tense stand-off since a brief conflict in May that was their worst fighting in decades.
The waters of the Chenab river in Pakistan’s sprawling province of Punjab threatened to burst through a 3,300-foot (1,000-m) concrete barrage at Qadirabad that regulates flows, siphoning them into a canal irrigation network.
“It is a crisis situation,” said a technical expert at the National Disaster Management Authority, adding that the collapse of the barrage could wash away the towns, home to more than 2.8 million.
“Under the constant supervision of experts and administration, the water level is receding, but it is still not beyond danger levels,” added the official, who sought anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The threat comes as India’s release of excess water this week from its dams swelled river flows downstream in its neighbor’s breadbasket province of Punjab, home to half the population of 240 million.
Authorities said Pakistan evacuated more than 210,000 villagers near the rivers Ravi, Sutlej and Chenab that flow in from India, where heavy rain battered the northern region of Jammu, killing 60 people this month.
India routinely releases water from its dams when they get too full, with the excess flowing into Pakistan, accompanied by warnings from New Delhi, which calls them a humanitarian measure.
On Thursday, Pakistani officials said India passed on its third flood warning since Sunday, this time for the Sutlej, while the previous two concerned waters heading into Pakistan on the Ravi.
India’s water resources ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the matter.
More than 900,000 cusec of water passed through the Qadirabad distribution structure on the Chenab river, or 100,000 cusec in excess of its capacity, the provincial disaster management authority said.
A cusec is a flow of volume equivalent to one cubic foot, or 28 cubic liters, every second.
On Wednesday, authorities blew up part of the riverbank to release some water before it reached the barrage.
Twelve people had been killed this week in Punjab, said Marriyum Aurangzeb, a senior minister in the provincial government.
“As one nation, we will face this challenge together,” said Aurangzeb, standing on the banks of the swollen Ravi. “There is no need to panic.”
The waters of Pakistan’s eastern rivers join those of northern rivers in Punjab in the giant Indus river, to flow through the province of Sindh before emptying into the sea.
On the other side of the border, Himalayan river levels began to recede after days of heavy rains that triggered landslides and flooding in both countries, with forecasters expecting downpours to subside from Thursday.