Katz expands business program to Astoria
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Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced that her business improvement plan would be coming to Astoria on Tuesday. Photo via Queens District Attorney’s office
By Ryan Schwach
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz is expanding her business improvement program to Astoria.
The program, meant to help with safety in local businesses, allows the businesses to contact their local NYPD precinct and report individuals exhibiting “disruptive behavior,” like repeated shoplifting or threatening patrons and employees. Store staff can notify their local precinct who can issue a trespass notice and warn the individual that their continued presence, or return to the location, could result in their arrest.
The DA’s office says that the “program focuses on the small number of individuals responsible for the vast majority of the harm done to local businesses and the communities they serve.”
Katz announced the program’s arrival to Astoria after its previous implementation in Jamaica and its recent start in Flushing in April.
“We need to address the few responsible for the vast majority of the shoplifting and vandalism and for it to stop,” said Katz at the announcement of the Astoria program on Tuesday. “Our goal is to protect local businesses, many of them mom-and-pop shops, and the customers and communities depending on them. We should never lose sight of the fact that communities thrive when local businesses thrive.”
According to a spokesperson for the DA, retail theft complaints more than doubled in Queens from 2018 through 2022, and the program is in response to that. It began in 2021 in Jamaica with 25 businesses, where 23 trespass notices have been issued and three arrests have been made.
“We created the program to create an equitable way to deter crime without necessarily putting people in the system,” Katz said on Tuesday. “First you get a warning, if you choose to ignore that warning, you could be subject to arrest.”
Katz was joined in announcing the expansion by law enforcement and business leaders in Astoria.
“This successful, expanding program perfectly highlights the NYPD’s unwavering commitment to ensure public safety for all the New Yorkers we serve,” said Deputy Inspector Kenneth S. Gorman, the commanding officer of the 114th Precinct. “We heard from the businesses in Western Queens, and we listened – because we know that public safety is a shared responsibility between our communities and their police.”
Marie Torniali, the executive director of the Steinway Astoria Partnership, also supports the program.
“This is a great tool for our small businesses who are many times alone in their establishment and fearful of individuals who habitually enter with the sole purpose of causing harm or chaos,” she said. “This is not about instant arrest; it is a warning to those individuals not to return. Our merchants will be able to breathe a sigh of relief and continue running their business and assist customers without apprehension.”
Though Flushing City Councilmember Sandra Ung stood by Katz when the Flushing program was announced last month, Astoria Councilmember Tiffany Cabán was absent from the Astoria announcement this week. Cabán, who lost to Katz by 50 votes in the 2019 election for Queens district attorney, said that she doesn’t support the program.
In a phone call with the Eagle, Cabán expressed her worry that the program wouldn’t address the root causes of the crimes being committed.
“It doesn't reduce recidivism,” she said. “It kicks recidivism down the road.”
Cabán also said that trespass notices make it easier for prosecutors to bump up smaller misdemeanors, like shoplifting, into other felonies.
“What a trespass notice program does is give a district attorney the ability to up charge,” she said. “It immediately ups the ante from potential misdemeanor charges that carry no more than a year in jail, to felony charges that carry that can carry many years in upstate prison.”
“My question is whether when this program is presented to business owners, whether they understand that what the trespass notice does is just simply give the ability for the DA to…instead of jailing people for up to a year be able to jail them for up to several years,” she added.
