CM Nurse on civil summons dismissal rates
Nurse cites Gothamist reporting nearly 100,000 civil summonses last fiscal year with nearly half dismissed. Gerber shares frustration, noting dismissals are due to paperwork issues not improper issuance, and that officers choose civil over criminal summonses in most cases.
Thank you, Chairs.
Good afternoon.
I think I just have three questions.
Gothamist reported this week that the NYPD issued almost 100,000 civil summons last fiscal year, and nearly half of which were dismissed.
And given such a high dismissal rate, do you think
We should be reallocating resources to more serious crime.
Right.
First of all, we share the frustration in terms of what's being described in that article.
We're not happy about that for obvious reasons.
I do want to emphasize, and consistent with the article, they're being dismissed not because they were improperly issued, the paperwork's not being done properly, it's not being filled out properly, handwriting issues.
We need to fix that.
I'm sorry, you're saying that the issue is that people are not, their handwriting is bad?
If you read the article, the article describes how in some cases, you know, when the officer is filling it out, in some cases it's not filling it out properly.
In some cases, the way it's described from Oath and the article, it's like that they couldn't see what was being sort of handwritten on the summons.
So we need to work on that.
The officers do get training in the academy on how to properly fill out the oath.
Understood, understood.
Just because of time, I don't mean to be rude.
But, I mean, so some of them are getting dismissed because of paper.
The way you're filling it out.
But, you know, back to the point, do you think that given so many of them are being dismissed, maybe you should reallocate some of those resources to more serious violent crime?
So again, but they're not being dismissed because of the underlying issue, but to your question,
in many situations, actually in most of these situations, right?
all but most, an officer is in a situation where the officer could give an oath summons or give a criminal summons.
Most things that are oath summons eligible are also criminal summons eligible.
And so in these cases, you know, an officer is saying, you know, the officer is choosing not to give a criminal summons, not to go down the criminal path.
When he or she could, and say, no, I'm going to do this through the civil process, without any prospect of criminal sanction.
Okay, I understand, and I understand the discretion being offered.
I still think it's a pretty high dismissal rate.
Since you brought up criminal summons, you all are also issuing a lot of criminal summons.