Bill would make it easier to close violent nightspots

By Albert Amateau

The Police Department went to the City Council on Feb. 13 to support a bill to give the department’s Civil Enforcement Unit expanded powers under the Nuisance Abatement Law to close businesses where violent crimes have occurred.

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.

High-profile criminal deaths involving bars made news last year. Last February, Imette St. Guillen, a 24-year-old John Jay College senior last seen at The Falls, a bar on Lafayette St., was brutally murdered and a bouncer at the bar is charged. Last July, Jennifer Moore, 18, who had spent a night drinking in Chelsea clubs, was picked up while wandering by the West Side Highway and killed.

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 Robert Messner, assistant police commissioner for civil enforcement, regarding the expansion of nuisance abatement powers.

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 Nuisance Abatement Law’s expansion 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,” he said. “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 bill would not come up for a vote in the Council for a month because the Mayor’s Office and members of the Council’s Public Safety Committee were still working on the language.

Rabin said that police have been using nuisance abatement selectively.

“Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium have fights all the time and they have the same liquor license that we do,” Rabin said. “Yet the police don’t try to close them — but they proceed against a club that has a capacity of 500 or 600.”

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, in order to have a nuisance-abatement action approved, 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.

Anthony Hogrebe, a spokesperson for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, said last week that councilmembers, police and nightlife industry representatives were working on language in the bill that would help keep nightlife “safe as well as exciting.” Last year, following the St. Guillen murder and other high-profile incidents of bouncer violence, the Council amended the Nuisance Abatement Law to be used against bars and lounges where security guards are not licensed.