A new bill proposed at City Hall looks to put a stop to so-called vigilantes making thousands of dollars from writing up citizen summonses for noise.
Owners of several New York City bars, restaurants, and shop say they're fed up with an avalanche of city summonses. A little known law allows regular New Yorkers to issue their own noise tickets and keep between 25%-50% of the fines collected.
On Monday, at a City Council hearing, lawmakers took on the so-called vigilante ticket blitz. Environmental Committee Chair Jim Gennaro proposed a bill that would cap citizen recoveries to just $5 or $10 per ticket -- that's a far cry from the thousands citizen enforcers currently stand to make.
“It would basically help put an end to all of these self interested bounty hunters getting rich on the small backs of businesses," Andrew Rigie, of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, said.
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The Department of Environmental Protection said, so far this year, 90% of the city's 6,000 noise complaints have been written by two regular citizens. Prolific citizen enforcers have been making a living writing such tickets.
"There are so many violations out there and the lack of enforcement - I see the victims," Deitmar Detering told News 4 over the summer.
Detering, who has issued tickets carrying more than $600,000 in fines, opposes the bill to cap awards. As does Peter Gibson, a Greenwich Village resident who said he is fed up with noisy restaurants and bars.
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"If the person that’s putting in the violation has evidence the vendor is clearly breaking the law, that should be processed,” Gibson said.
At the hearing on Monday, business owners spoke about their frustrations with the process, which in some cases has citizen enforcers issuing multiple tickets with escalating fines before owners are aware of the first ticket.
"We find ourselves facing overall a sum of $30,000 in fines. I humbly request that you intervene and rectify this glaring injustice," one business owner who spoke before city council members on Monday said.
"We received eight, nine, 10 violations all at once," restaurant owner Murphy Fitzpatrick said.
The DEP supports the idea of capping awards to civilian enforcers. The legislation, is passed, would not affect a program allowing civilians to profit from issuing tickets to vehicles that pollute the air.
at equate to the amounts of the SBA loans we received to stay afloat during Covid, which we are still paying back.”
But some neighbors fed up with noise say lawmakers who acquiesce to complaints from businesses, may underestimate how much support there is for peace and quiet.
Diane O’Connell, an attorney from Brooklyn, said she’s been complaining to the DEP about neighborhood noise for years without a satisfactory resolution. She sees citizen enforcement of the noise code as a terrific way to fill the gaps city inspectors are unable to fill.
“I don’t understand how it’s not a win-win,” O’Connell said. “Quite frankly the DEP doesn’t have enough inspectors to go around and inspect all the noise complaints in the city. They’ve proven that.”
