The NYPD says it needs to fix how officers issue civil summonses after 47% of those tickets were dismissed in the last fiscal year.
Michael Gerber, the department’s deputy commissioner of legal matters, raised the issue at a New York City Council oversight hearing on Wednesday. The dismissal rate applied to nearly 98,000 civil quality-of-life tickets, including summonses for offenses such as open containers and public urination.
Many of the cases were thrown out as defective and could not be served properly. Oversight bodies including the Department of Investigation have said a key reason is that NYPD officers still write all civil tickets by hand.
Gerber said the department was not satisfied with the outcome, while defending the underlying enforcement and pointing to technical paperwork problems rather than improper issuance of the summonses themselves.
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