Loud parties and the law
“Man fatally shot after leaving party at notorious Brooklyn horror home that NYPD has ignored: neighbors,” says the headline.
So you’ve got a long time nuance and the neighbors (“the community”) hate it. This is a weekly event. People pay money. There are fireworks!
So neighbors call police. They expect police to shut it down. And they blame police when they don’t.
But you see police _can’t_ shut it down. This is what politicians intended when — and this important — in 2017 NYC passed a law explicitly preventing police from shutting down parties.
Lack of police enforcement is a feature, not a flaw. Why? “The Criminal Justice Reform Act could annually divert 100,000 offenders from the criminal justice system [and] cut the number of arrest warrants issued for minor offenses.” You see, when police are involved, “A criminal summons can cause additional collateral consequences. An individual may lose a bed in a homeless shelter, encounter difficulty with employment, lose student loan funding, or be deported.” Those were the concern, neighbors be damned.
Enforcement against noise complaints was one of the quality-of-life life laws explicitly targeted. And this despite knowledge of which neighborhoods disproportionately call for police service. They worked hard to deny policing to minority neighborhoods. Congrats?
What’s the result of this quality-of-life reform? People pissing on your stoop and cussing you out when you yell at them. Small price to pay to keep Black and Brown people from getting criminal violations, say people who don’t live there.
Noise complaints became a civil and not criminal matter. If it’s not a crime, police can do nothing more than issue a ticket. They can’t shut down the party. This was entirely predictable. Some of us warned you, but nobody seemed to care.
“Well can’t police do something else?” In theory, but not easily. And the question dodges the point. This was intended. People wanted no enforcement. If police did something, the same people would pass a law preventing _that_ kind of enforcement. “Closing a loophole,” they’d say.
If you want the NYPD to be able to break up parties, then you need to permit them to do so. There is really no other way around this. You can’t pass laws prohibiting it and then complain about lack of policing. Well, you can, but shouldn’t.
I can be dismissive of those saying “we need to increase police legitimacy.” Why do I say that when legitimacy is good? Because the same people push for laws actively destroying police legitimacy. It matters. And I don’t think they care.
2017 was an inflection point for crime in NYC. The Reform Act of 2017 deserves more attention (and blame). Called a “success” because it did exactly as intended — ended quality-of-life policing; noise summonses decreased 83% — but then violence went up.
Time & time again you see race-saviors who don’t live in neighborhoods with quality-of-life problems. Do they really think the whole “community” is partying and hate police? Do they not know “the community” is mostly working people trying to sleep at night? I don’t think they do.
As with many things (like bail reform), this doesn’t mean all reform is bad. But when you pass a big reform act, the flaws need to be addressed. But they never are. Maybe a civil summons ticket is better for some offenses, but cops still need to be able to break-up loud parties.
You can’t “root cause” neighbors blasting bass at 4AM. I know so many people who will, when I ask them, agree with the statement “police need to be able to break up loud parties,” and then they get all defensive when I propose, “Maybe we should let police break up loud parties.” Enforcing noise complaints with a criminal citation does not lead to mass incarceration. If anything, it helps prevent it because you get fewer shootings. But it’s not something that should be overthought. Police should be permitted to break up loud parties.
