After an I-Team investigation found regular New Yorkers earning hundreds of thousands of dollars by issuing citizen-generated noise violations, City Council has voted to effectively end the practice.
In a 43 to 3 vote Wednesday, lawmakers agreed to cap payouts to citizens that issue noise violations. Previously, they could earn 25%-50% of fines collected. In the case of a third offense, a citizen enforcer stood to earn more than $1,000. Under the new law, citizen complainants will receive just $5 or $10 per summons, no matter how many they issue to a single business.
The reform was applauded by bar and restaurant owners who reached out to the I-Team in June, complaining of a citizen ticket blitz that threatened to cost them tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Many of the businesses said they received multiple noise complaints from a single citizen before they even knew about the first one.
“It was definitely a cash grab,” said Sharon Treanor, who owns BarDough and several other bars and restaurants in and around Times Square. She said her group of businesses had been the target of more than fifty citizen noise complaints.
“For someone to walk down the street and issue you tickets for thousands and thousands of dollars. It didn’t sit right, it wasn’t fair,” said Theresa Sigler manager of the Pig and Whistle on West 48th Street.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
The new law not only caps payouts for future citizen-issued noise violations. It also places a retro-active $50 cap on payouts for summonses previously written by civilians.
Dietmar Detering, a Queens resident who has issued hundreds of citizen noise violations, sharply criticized the new law and insisted it would make the city a louder, less hospitable place.
“What’s being presented as a common sense bill is actually an amnesty bill benefiting already caught noise polluters,” Detering said. “It also, certainly intentional, eliminates both citizen enforcement effects of the last 18 months and the corresponding fair and reasonable compensation.”
Though Detering has declined to say how much money he’s netted by issuing citizen noise violations, Council Member James Gennaro, who sponsored the reform legislation, said citizen enforcers have walked away with hundreds of thousands of dollars by writing rapid-fire violations in neighborhoods far from where they actually live.
It was a scam,” Gennaro said. “It was people taking advantage of the system and that’s not what people ought to be doing.”
For Gennaro’s bill to become law, NYC Mayor Eric Adams must still sign it.
Even before the legislation went to a vote, Detering filed a lawsuit, alleging New York City’s administrative law judges have too often reduced the fines for businesses tagged with citizen noise violations. That case is still pending.
“I responded to the clear letter of the law, doing something the city refused to do, causing all this noise to go out of control,” Detering said.
