On Monday, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced the Council will move ahead with legislation decreasing penalties for some low-level offenses. NY1's Courtney Gross filed the following report.
Right now, if you stay out in a park after dark, you could get a misdemeanor conviction on your record. It's one of dozens of park rules that, if broken, come with a criminal summons.
"These are nonviolent, low-level offenses, and they are still illegal, and we are just dealing with it in a much more just way," said City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
The City Council is set to vote on a package of legislation this week that reduces penalties for some low-level criminal offenses, like violating park curfews and littering.
It has been a pet project of the Council speaker since she took over the body, first announcing she wanted to reform the system in her 2015 State of the City address.
The point was to unclog the court system and remove the possibility that someone would spend a night in jail for a small violation, like urinating in public.
Under the compromise, which the Council will vote on on Wednesday, the NYPD will still retain its ability to issue criminal summonses for these low-level offenses. But the legislation encourages the Police Department to issue civil summonses instead.
"We create, not only reserve the tools that we've had all along, but we've also developed new tools to assist the officers in enforcing these quality-of-life offenses," said Oleg Chernyavsky of the NYPD's Legislative Affairs Unit.
"We got to a point of mutual understanding," the Council speaker said.
Right now, it's a bit unclear when exactly a criminal offense would be triggered versus a civil penalty. Officials tell us that's something the City Council and the NYPD will be working on for the next year.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has backed the measure, saying it would play a crucial role in building a fairer criminal justice system. Advocates were also backing the proposals.
"She promised these reforms, I think a year and a half ago, and they are coming to fruition now," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
That may be so, but much of this legislation would not take effect for one year.