The NYPD has dramatically ramped up criminal enforcement of low-level quality-of-life violations under Mayor Eric Adams, despite a 2016 law that enabled and steered police to issue civil tickets for offenses such as public urination and open alcohol containers.
The number of criminal summonses issued for the five offenses targeted by the 2016 Criminal Justice Reform Act was up fivefold in the first six months of 2023 from the same period in pre-pandemic 2019. More than 90% of tickets where race was noted went to Black and Hispanic people — and Hispanics for the third year straight accounted for the majority of those getting criminal summonses.
“These are the things that people are calling to complain about,” then-Chief of Department Kenneth Corey said, “and the NYPD owes them a response.” The NYPD vowed to target its enforcement efforts in The Bronx and eastern Brooklyn, using newPublic Advocate Jumaane Williams, who sponsored the Criminal Justice Reform Act while a member of the City Council, condemned the trend in an interview with THE CITY.
“By trending towards giving increased criminal summonses for offenses that could be addressed with a civil summons, the Police Department is going backwards,” said Desamours. “Continuing in this direction holds great potential to disrupt Black and Latino families and give many more New Yorkers criminal records.”THE CITY sent multiple questions to the NYPD asking for comment on the surge in criminal summonses and the concerns raised by public officials and advocates.
He recalled that in 2016, when he lived at a Brooklyn shelter for people with mental health and substance use disorders, the police dropped by in the early morning to round up people with open summons warrants, who then stayed in jail for 24 hours. “Cops would come every few months to question me early in the morning and wake me up using their flashlights. I would develop all kinds of anxieties,” he said.
The trend has reversed under Adams. Not only have criminal summonses for CJRA offenses soared fivefold this year versus 2019, but civil summonses have nearly quadrupled.
Still, the guide instructs officers to issue a criminal summons to people with two or more felony arrests in the prior two years, or who ignored three or more civil summonses, or who are on parole or probation. People with open arrest warrants must also get criminal summonses instead of civil tickets.
Brooklyn’s 73rd Precinct which encompasses Brownsville and Ocean Hill, the 40th Precinct in South Bronx, and the 52nd Precinct in the northern Bronx also saw especially large surges of criminal summonses issued.In Manhattan, criminal summonses are heard either in the Midtown Community Court or at the main criminal court building on Centre Street, on the 16th floor.
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