Police seek to expand Nuisance Abatement powers

Volume One, Issue 23, February 23 - March 1, 2007

By Albert Amateau

The Police Department went to the City Council on Feb 13 to support bills to give the department’s Civil Enforcement Unit expanded powers under the Nuisance Abatement Law to close businesses where violent crimes have occurred and to close business that sell false IDs.

Intro 515 would allow authorities to go to court for Nuisance Abatement orders to closed establishments – bars, clubs and lounges are the obvious targets -- where two or more charges of murder, manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide or three or more charges of felony assault were made in a 12-month period.

Intro 484 would allow law enforcement agencies to seek abatement closing orders for locations changed with making or selling false IDs.

Criminal deaths involving bars made news last year. In February, Imette St. Guillen, a John Jay College senior last seen at The Falls, a bar on Lafayette St., was brutally murdered and a bouncer at the bar was charged. Underage bar patrons using false ID’s have also been in the public eye. Last July an 18-year-old girl who spent a night drinking in West Side lounges was murdered after she was picked up drunk on the West Side Highway.

Currently, the Nuisance Abatement Law allows authorities to proceed against establishments that “endanger public health and safety” with, repeated illegal drug sales, prostitution, gambling and illegal social clubs. The law, known when it was first enacted as “The Bawdy House Law,” may also be used to proceed against premises that habitually violate building, health and zoning codes.

“We seek to bring a stop to criminal and dangerous public nuisances,” said Assistant Police Commission for Civil Enforcement Robert Messner regarding the expansion of Nuisance Abatement.

But David Rabin, owner of Lotus, a club on W. 14th St. and president of the New York Nightlife Association, said in a telephone interview that the expansion of the Nuisance Abatement law is troubling.

“It’s hard to argue that a venue where murder and other violent crime has been committed shouldn’t be closed, but these instances are charges not convictions, and the proceedings are ex parte.” Ex parte means the city can go to court to close a place without the owner’s participation, although the owner and any tenant involved is entitled to a hearing within three days of the closing.

A spokesperson for Councilmember Alan Gerson said on Feb. 21 that the two bills would not come up for a vote in the Council for a month because the Mayor’s office and members of the Council public safety committee were still working on the language.

Rabin said that police have been using Nuisance Abatement selectively. “Madison Sq. Garden and Yankee Stadium have fights all the time and they have the same liquor license that we do. Yet the police don’t try to close them, but they proceed against a club that has a capacity of five or six hundred,” Rabin said.

Rabin noted that Nuisance Abatement closings often come on a Friday night and before a three-day weekend, meaning that an owner doesn’t really have an opportunity to respond within the statutory three days.

Rabin said that no closings should be made solely on the application of the government. “If a club is operating under best practices, police should come to us and say there is a problem and give us a chance to fix it,” he said.

But Messner said, “Nuisance Abatement is a serious remedy for serious problems and we believe no problem merits attention more than violence causing serious injury or death.” He noted that law enforcement agencies are required to show a judge compelling evidence that a venue has been a continuous danger for a year.

In a Nuisance Abatement action that temporarily closed Crobar in West Chelsea at the beginning of this year, police cited 15 narcotics violations and 22 State Liquor Authority violations in the previous 12 months.