Certain snoops can strike gold under an obscure city “quality of life” law, reports The Post’s Lisa Fickenscher — and it’s not even clear that anyone else benefits.
The ordnance lets citizens register complaints against businesses they accuse of exceeding noise limits, and collect up to half of the resulting fines.
Problem is, it doesn’t require much evidence of a violation, or even notice to the alleged violator before he or she can get ticketed again.
And the city Department of Environmental Protection is slow enough to send out tickets that the first a business can know of any complaints is notices that it’s at risk of five figures in fines.
That’s what Hell’s Kitchen bar owner Mario Arcari told The Post happened to him.
He faces over $33,000 in fines stemming from seven summonses from a single “civilian enforcer,” plus a ticket straight from the DEP.
Technically, the ban is on playing amplified music “for advertising purposes or to attract attention,” but in practice the “bounty hunters” just target loud local bars and restaurants.
WNBC-TV reports that anti-noise vigilante Dietmar Detering has filed more than 500 summonses for more than 600 grand in fines.
Every official who hears of these outrages says the law needs changing.
The question is: How long will it actually take to fix it, and how many small businesses will get dinged in the meantime?
