Lawmakers Want City Agencies to Include Photo Evidence with Summonses: NY1

NY1: Lawmakers are pushing for legislation requiring summonses to be accompanied with a photo as proof of the infraction. 

At a news conference in Elmhurst, advocates cited land and business owners who say they have been wrongly penalized by the Sanitation Department for offenses such as preventing city workers from picking up garbage or not picking up wind-blown trash on their premises.

They say making city agencies require photo evidence is a fair, reliable way to save time and money and to ward off invalid warrants.

"The city of New York has a lot of frivolous summonses. We're talking about hundreds of thousands depending on the agency where 60 percent of the hundreds of thousands have been dismissed," State Senator Jose Peralta said.

Various agencies are included in the bill; each would have to create their own standards for collecting photos.

New Yorkers would be able to see those pictures online attached to their summons.