If you’re throwing a rowdy party that and the police get called, unless you invite them inside to discuss the infraction, they’re being left with no choice — they must leave.
This is what’s happening in New York. A new directive, obtained by The NY Post prohibits police from entering a private residence in response to a noise complaint — unless they’re granted permission to enter.
In laymen’s terms — loud partiers can simply tell the cops who come to their door to just go away.
Multiple sources tell The Post the unusual, legal limitation is the result of costly, successful lawsuits against the city by homeowners who argued police barged onto their properties without a search warrant.
Law enforcement leadership and patrol officers are expressing outrage.
Cops are warning neighborhoods will experience from sleepless nights and trash, and the NYPD will lose the vital capability to police out-of-control gatherings by known or suspected gang members, according to The Post.
One source tells The Post police confiscated so much stereo equipment in 2016 its warehouse looked like a big-box home electronics franchise.
“I guess they’re sick and tired of getting sued so often. People were going to jail, sound systems were being broken or confiscated, and then the judges throw the cases out. I think they’ve had enough lawsuits,” a source for The Post reports.
The Post points out new procedures contradict NYPD’s own Patrol Guide, which allows officers to forcibly enter a residence or club if noisy partiers inside have ignored warnings to turn the volume down.
According to The Post, in those cases, “the decision to forcibly enter into private or semi-private premises to correct noise complaints will only be made by a precinct commander/duty captain and only as a last resort, after requests to stop the noise have been ignored,” the Patrol Guide instructs.
Cops complain by overriding the Patrol Guide, the new, “no consent — no entry” directive takes away the commonly resorted-to “last resort.”
Asked about the directive, a police spokesman claimed to The Post Wednesday that, “We spoke to legal. Nothing has changed.”
But the spokesman declined to immediately produce a previous NYPD directive, from any past year, telling cops to ignore that section of the Patrol Guide, The Post reports.
“They’re trying to protect themselves from more lawsuits by saying this has always been the case,” one law enforcement source told The Post.
“They don’t want new people coming forward and saying, ‘I had a party last year that cops busted up’” and then sue the city.
He stressed, “It’s new. That’s not what we’ve always done. That’s why they came out with this bulls—” directive, he said. “This is total horses—.
“The department should just own up to it,” the source tells The Post.
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