Transcript: Office Of Public Safety Holds Briefing On Public Safety In New York City

January 4, 2024

Assistant Deputy Mayor Louis Molina, Public Safety: Good evening, everyone. My name is Louis Molina, the assistant deputy mayor for Public Safety. For those of you joining us for the first time, this discussion is a part of a series of briefings we hold about public safety in New York City to let you hear information directly from the source, the leaders working behind the scenes to keep our city safe.

Protecting public safety is a team effort, so each briefing brings features from different agencies, speakers and topics. But that team also includes you, the public. My ask of you if you are tuning in this evening is to take something you learn here today and share it with a friend, a family member, a neighbor. We stay safe by staying informed. If each of us passes along the information we learn about what the city is doing to increase safety, we, in turn, help to protect ourselves and our loved ones.

Today, I'm joined by New York City Sheriff Anthony Miranda, and members of his team: Lieutenant Kenneth Matos, Sergeant Richard Lois and Sergeant Francesca Rosa. The sheriff's office is a critical arm of the public safety apparatus when it comes to enforcing laws in New York City.

One of the sheriff's office's responsibilities that has gotten a lot of attention over the past couple of years is to conduct inspections at smoke shops, including those that are illegally selling marijuana products, which the sheriff will provide an update on in just a moment.

But they also handle a wide range of enforcement efforts such as enforcing Orders of Protection and Mental Hygiene Warrants, getting ghost cars and unregistered vehicles off of our streets, and investigating scams known as deep theft or deep fraud.

So, while their roles vary, at the end of the day the goal of the sheriff's office is the same: to enforce the laws and increase safety in our city. With that, I'll turn it over now to sheriff Anthony Miranda.

Sheriff Anthony Miranda: Assistant deputy mayor, thank you so much. It's an honor and pleasure again giving a presentation, and welcome to all of you who are joining us.

As was stated, the sheriff's office is the chief civil law enforcement officer of the City of New York, in addition to the additional responsibilities that we have, which include preserving the peace and the orders of protection that we spoke of and the many other programs that are initiated by the sheriff's office.

While we've gotten a lot of attention about the smoke shop enforcement, the mandate which the mayor gave us in November of 2022, it's important for us to be able to share with you the important numbers that we have been able to do so far this year.

So, in 2023 year to date, we have inspected over 1,400 compliance and intelligence inspections of smoke shops, over 211 arrests were made. 371 C summonses were issued. 314 notices of violations, these are the civil penalties. Over 2,055 DCWP notices of violations, with 8,011 DCWP violations, 45,755 DCWP counts. We have over $51 million in assessed civil penalties, and over $21 million in illicit products have been seized during these inspections.

Just alone, in December of 2023, 135 compliance and intelligence inspections were conducted, which resulted in 23 arrests, 43 C summonses, 229 DCW notices of violations and $7 million in assessed civil penalties and over $1.5 million in illicit products that were seized in these efforts.

Due to the efforts not only at the sheriff's office and joint compliance task force is comprised of the sheriff's office, the New York City Police Department, DCWP and we work with the buildings department, the fire department and DOH, MH, as well as state agencies, which is Office of State Cannabis Management, State Liquor Authority and Department of Labor.

In that enforcement effort is a collaborative effort to address all the illegal issues that are happening inside of these locations and the targeting of what we believe are targeting our youth with these illicit products that are catered to children, mirroring all the children's products as well as children's packaging.

So, the enforcement effort is extremely necessary to be enforced in New York City. While we are here to enforce the laws, which is to promote the legal market, we are also here to ensure that the illegal market — the unlicensed market — goes into compliance with the law and helps continue to help to keep our community safe.

On that note, I've got today to talk to you about our cannabis enforcement. I want to be able to share with you the other efforts officers that the sheriff's office has been mandated to carry out. I'd like to introduce you to Lieutenant Kenneth Matos, who will be discussing further.

Lieutenant Kenneth Matos, Sheriff’s Office: Thank you, sheriff. As Sheriff Miranda mentioned, our office works with agencies across New York City to keep all New Yorkers safe.

An Order of Protection is issued from the court to limit the behavior of someone who harms or threatens to harm another person. Depending on the severity of the allegations, the court may attach a search and seizure warrant to the order of protection in order to go ahead and seize some firearms.

Now, these orders of protection, they can come in all shapes and sizes, whether it be to limit someone's communication with someone, to remove someone from a home; or, just again, to limit the behavior of another individual.

With these search and seizure orders, any illegal weapons that are to be found are to be seized. All illegal weapons are also to be also seized, along with any ammunition and permits allowing for those firearms to be in New York City to also be seized. These search and search and seizure orders can be dangerous. We are going into these homes looking for anything that can be used in these allegations in the orders of protection.

We also execute and serve extreme risk protection orders, which are issued to prohibit a person from purchasing or possessing guns and require them to surrender any and all guns they own or possess. These can be petitioned by a DA, a police officer, a school official, anyone that believes that a person may be some sort of risk to another person.

In addition to these orders, we also work with Department of Mental Health to go ahead and execute Mental Hygiene Warrants. Now, there are different mental hygiene warrants, one of them being the 960 Mental Hygiene Warrant, which assists patients who are not complying with their assisted outpatient program.

As well as Mental Health 9.43 warrants where an emergency assessment is necessary for immediate observation and care and treatment for these individuals. I'll now pass it back to Sheriff Miranda.

Sheriff Miranda: Thank you, Lieutenant. The Orders of Protection and the Mental Hygiene Warrants are where the sheriff's office intervenes when people who are in crisis and need of immediate intervention, and this is just one of the services that are provided by the sheriff's office.

I'd like to take you to a different area and introduce you to Sergeant Richard Lois in charge of our road patrol unit and tell us about the efforts that we are doing and different programs we have in enforcement on the roads.

Sergeant Richard Lois, Sheriff’s Office: Thank you, sheriff. To keep our roads safe, the sheriff's office employs various technologies to identify vehicles that have unsatisfied debt, unpaid taxes and unregistered vehicles.

"Ghost vehicles" has become a very popular term, and it describes vehicles that have temporary paper license plates or mismatched metal plates which are used to evade tolls, traffic cameras and impede law enforcement investigations. Our team conducts overnight joint operations and daily patrols to remove ghost cars from our streets and facilitate legal owners to properly register these vehicles.

To date, in 2023, we have impounded over 400 ghost cars from all parts of the city. We work with our partners at the New York City Police Department, the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority and the New York State Police to share information, facilitate operations and strategize about future efforts as we continue to patrol the roads and keep New York City's streets safe. I will now pass it back to Sheriff Miranda.

Sheriff Miranda: Thank you, Sergeant. Again, this is another part of a special, important part of our operations are the enforcement, taking away these dangerous vehicles away from the street which endanger both the public and also result in a serious revenue loss to the city for the red light violations and speeding violations in New York.

We'd like to talk to you about another area that's of great concern to our community. I want to turn it over to Sergeant Rosa who will discuss the next topic.

Sergeant Francesca Rosa, Sheriff’s Office: Thank you, sheriff. The Bureau of Criminal Investigations of the sheriff's office handles all the investigations that revolve around deed fraud. Deed fraud, if you don't know, is when someone takes the title or the deed to a property of someone else without the proper owner's knowledge or permission.

There's two main or common ways that this actually occurs. One of them is forgery, when someone just outright forges a signature of the rightful owner and then files those documents. The other way is a scam where the person is tricked into signing papers that then files those documents to have the new person own the property with that forged signature. It's basically you're tricking the person to signing over the deed to their property.

Increasing concern for deed fraud in the city is the heirs at law or the partition of heirs scheme, and this is basically investors acquire a fraction of interest of the property and then buy out the other living heirs partition for that property.

Many times this happens when an uninterested heir of the property gets scammed or swindled into signing away their partition or rightful parts of their deed to that scammer and then that scammer then goes and either forces a sale of that property or buys out the other heirs.

The sheriff's office has been investigating deed fraud since 2014, and basically all referrals have come from the city registrar's office. When the city registrar's office reviews documents to be filed, they'll find missing information or information that doesn't correlate with the previous deed that was filed and then they'll refer that document to the sheriff's office to be investigated.

Since the sheriff's office has been involved with investigating deed fraud we've worked with the attorney general's offices and the district attorney offices in all the counties to make it a holistic approach towards investigating deed fraud.

In 2019, the attorney general formally formed the Deed Fraud Task Force which addressed all these issues in collaboration. They worked with the District Attorney's Office and our office to investigate these frauds. Some risk factors to know for deed fraud and for everyone to be aware, to look out for deed fraud is if your property is not covered in a will or if your will has not been probated and if the property is in some type of financial crisis or in foreclosure. Those are some of the top risk factors for deed fraud.

To minimize these risk factors, we encourage you to take the following steps. You can sign up for notifications through the ACRIS website. ACRIS stands for Automated City Register Information System, and that you can get through the city's registrar's website. These notifications will notify the deed holder or property owner that new documents have been filed on their property.

Another way you can get notifications is to have a trusted third party also get these notifications for any documents that have been filed on the property. Also be sure to make sure that your property is covered in a will and that the property is in good financial standing, that it's not in foreclosure.

Since 2014, there were 450 deed fraud complaints city wide, but since implementing these safeguards and community outreach with making people aware of these risks and how they can cover themselves so they don't become a victim of deed fraud, we've actually brought that number down to only 51 complaints city wide since 2014.

In November of 2023, Governor Hochul actually signed a new bill that gave government agencies even more tools to combat deed fraud and actually helped reinstate the property to the rightful owner.

Deed fraud is definitely something homeowners should all be aware of. They should take these safeguards and get the notifications so that they can protect themselves against this fraud. And we will continue to educate New Yorkers so that they can protect themselves in the future. Thank you, sheriff.

Sheriff Miranda: So, from deed fraud, the Department of Finance has put many protections in place to notify homeowners of any potential fraud actions; to the road patrol, which enforces, helps keep our streets safer; to the orders of protections, which intervene in people in crises and the Mental Hygiene Warrants.

These are all programs that are run within the sheriff's office, so again, we thank you for the opportunity, Assistant Deputy Mayor Molina, to give a presentation to the city and let you know these are some of the services and the programs including the smoke shop enforcement that we're conducting, some of the programs that we have and are running out of the sheriff's office.

Assistant Deputy Mayor Molina: Thank you. Before we open it up to on topic questions, I just want to convey on behalf of Deputy Mayor Banks and the Deputy Mayor's Office of Public Safety our appreciation and congratulations to the NYPD on their double‑digit decreases in shootings, burglaries and homicides.

Like the mayor said, we remain the safest big city in America, and that came with not only a lot of hard work but precision police work to make that actually happen. Considering where the city was at the end of 2021, this is remarkable, and we continue to trend in the right direction when it comes to public safety. With that, we'll open it up to on topic questions. Charles.

Question: Yes. Two questions, please. So, first, where does the NYPD fit into smoke shop enforcement on day to day? Could you talk about how the two groups work together? And then second, I'm wondering where is Deputy Mayor Banks tonight?

Sheriff Miranda: So, the joint task force, we work hand in hand on the daily operations. We also exchange intelligence information as gathered from the reports of the officers in the street as well as community complaints.

The Police Department is generally the first people that the community complains to, so those complaints are funneled to the sheriff's office and we maintain that information collectively for all complaints throughout the city from every agency that receives complaints as well as our elected officials and community residents that complain directly to us.

Assistant Deputy Mayor Molina: And Deputy Mayor Banks isn't here this evening, but I'm covering for the public safety briefing like I have in the past.

Question: [Inaudible.] So, my question is like since OCM started giving out devices, and there's too many people saying there's too many illegal smoke shops related crimes. So, I was just wondering if there's a trend, if you know if there is the trend of like the number of illegal smoke shops, are they like decreasing or increasing, or do you have a rough number of like how many illegal smoke shops across the city? Thank you.

Sheriff Miranda: We have documented over 2,000 registered complaints about alleged illegal smoke shops. Again, those are allegations that still have to be investigated. OCM does what they're supposed to do in their shop. I believe that as legal shops open, the illegal shops will also fade out. But there's a balance that has to be struck here between enforcing against the illegal shops and ensuring that the legal shops that are a regulated industry that doesn't endanger our community also has a successful opportunity to operate.

Question: I have a couple of questions. A lot of people do not think that the sheriff's office has the capacity to crack down on the smoke shops. Do you really have the capacity and do you feel that you're well equipped to handle all the smoke shop issues that are going on across the city as they open up?

Sheriff Miranda: The good thing about your question is, and thank you for the question, is that we're operating as a task force. There's where we get to leverage, the services or the availability of staff from all the different agencies working collectively. That was the mandate given to us by the mayor, that we would work collectively as a city department, so all the agencies have an input into resolving the issue.

Question:  Where does the search and seizure money go?

Sheriff Miranda: It will go through the normal legal process and the courts will determine where the money is divided in the city, but it's a court process, so we're just the beginning of the legal process in terms of enforcement.