Epstein questions DCWP on street enforcement and inspector safety
Epstein asks whether DCWP has street enforcement staff for illegal tobacco or other violations. Ortiz says those inspectors focus on brick-and-mortar inspections because public-space enforcement is dangerous; DCWP inspectors have been assaulted and lack police powers.
And thank you, Councilmember Brewer.
Just a couple of last questions, and I'll let you all go.
So DCWP does have some people who do enforcement out on the street.
So if there's someone selling illegal, I don't know, I don't know, if you go to someone selling illegal cigarettes, Ben, but there are a lot of...
They're not licensed for tobacco or they're licensed for tobacco and they're selling something else.
You have people who go out and do that enforcement, correct?
Yes.
Can I elaborate a little bit more, though?
Those folks are focused on brick-and-mortar inspections.
And why?
Why are they focused on brick-and-mortar?
I think, you know, speaking from my experience over the past 10 years, there are inherent challenges that we, our inspectors, face when conducting enforcement in public spaces.
I'm speaking from experience of street vending enforcement, for example, ticket seller enforcement.
Our folks are not police officers or officers in any kind of way.
They don't have badges.
They don't have the ability to detain people.
In fact, we've actually had cases where our inspectors engaging in this type of
of enforcement in public spaces have been assaulted or threatened.
Even in the context of, you know, an unlicensed smoke shop, and we've shared this with the council previously, we have had inspectors who had doors closed on their hands or shutters brought down on their feet.
It's really challenging for us then to try to expand that out into on-street enforcement of moving vehicles or
are ambulance actors.
Well, you could do enforcement in collaboration with another enforcement agency.
You could do the pedicab enforcement along with NYPD.
You could have staff on site.
You could both issue violations through DCWP and through NYPD, right?
We have done that in the past.
I think, you know, without disparaging at all my colleagues in enforcement work who do amazing work, there is a certain redundancy and liability there.
You know, in the context of that inspector who was assaulted during a ticket selling operation, he was with a police officer and it just created kind of another exposure.
For an assault.
So I think that's why we try to, as much as possible, leverage our expertise on the licensing and broader investigation scale, while PD's footprint on the on-street presence.