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Brooklyn DA brings back warrant-clearing event as quality-of-life tickets surge
By
Ben Feuerherd
Published Oct 2, 2026
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Photo by Richard Levine/Corbis via Getty Images
By
Ben Feuerherd
Published Oct 2, 2026
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Brooklyn's district attorney will clear residents’ outstanding warrants for failing to answer minor summonses this weekend, after a recent uptick in NYPD quality-of-life tickets helped create a “staggering backlog” of such cases.
DA Eric Gonzalez said he will host an event at a Brooklyn church on Saturday to clear warrants that people got after they failed to respond to a criminal summons. The event will be held at the Bridge Street AME Church on Stuyvesant Avenue in Bed-Stuy from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., according to the DA’s office.
“They're for really low-level offenses: being in the park after dark, walking a dog off a leash, maybe smoking a cigarette where you're not allowed to smoke,” Gonzales told Gothamist.
The event comes after the NYPD cracked down on quality-of-life infractions across the city. In the last fiscal year, officers wrote more than 220,000 summonses for minor civil and criminal violations across the city, public data shows. That’s an increase of 13% compared to the prior fiscal year, according to a report released by City Hall in September.
Gothamist previously reported that hearing officers threw out nearly half of all the tickets NYPD officers issued for civil violations, mostly because they were defectively written or not properly served. Critics of the quality-of-life crackdown say the amount of summonses being thrown out shows the increase in ticketing is a waste of everyone’s time.
“The need for an initiative like this … raises serious questions about why so many of these summonses are being issued in the first place,” said Dawn Ryan, attorney-in-charge of the Legal Aid Society's Brooklyn trial office.
NYPD spokesperson Bradley Weekes said the number of criminal summons issued by NYPD officers this year is virtually flat compared to the same period last year. He added that NYPD officers are responding to 311 calls to address concerns from New Yorkers.
In a statement, City Hall spokesperson Sam Raskin said Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration is supportive of Saturday’s event.
“Our administration commends District Attorney Gonzalez’s efforts to help New Yorkers clear old summons warrants, which can make it harder for New Yorkers' to get a job, obtain housing or apply for citizenship, and can deter people from engaging with law enforcement,” Raskin said.
'Less safe'
In an interview with Gothamist, Gonzalez said he doesn’t want to micromanage or second-guess criminal tickets issued by the NYPD, but added that he’s concerned the tickets are being issued predominately to low-income people of color who may not have the means to pay a fine.
“I have always been concerned about the racial disparities in these tickets. You know, 85% of these tickets are given to people of color. That has not changed over the years,” Gonzalez said. “The enforcement is often done in the poorest neighborhoods, where the cost of the tickets have the biggest affordability issues for folks.”
He added that warrants caused by low-level summonses may make people skeptical of engaging with law enforcement. Criminal warrants are issued to anyone who doesn't respond to a criminal summons by its deadline.
If that person later encounters law enforcement, including in ordinary situations like traffic stops, they will likely be arrested.
Gonzalez said people with warrants may mistrust and avoid law enforcement, which he said is bad for everyone’s safety.
“ I think it keeps us less safe, quite frankly, if people try to avoid the police or prosecutors because they have a summons warrant,” he said.
'Begin Again'
Saturday’s event is part of what the DA’s office calls the “Begin Again” program aimed at clearing warrants caused by outstanding criminal summonses.
It will be the first such event since a similar program was paused in 2018.
It has now restarted the program because it is “urgently needed,” the DA’s office said in a press release, noting New Yorkers have hundreds of thousands of outstanding criminal warrants related to unpaid tickets.
Gonzalez is partnering with the New York Legal Aid Society, local judges and other elected officials to host the event. People who show up will have access to free legal services provided by the DA’s office and the Legal Aid Society. After they consult with one of the free attorneys, they’ll be taken to a room in the church that will serve as a temporary courtroom, where a judge will address any warrants and other penalties.
“ Most of these tickets will get dismissed by the judges, as would happen if you went to regular court,” Gonzalez told Gothamist.
Gonzalez said his office sent letters to people in the surrounding areas who have warrants for unpaid criminal quality-of-life tickets — and stressed that they won’t be arrested if they show up to the event.
Undocumented New Yorkers with outstanding warrants related to summonses will also not face immigration consequences if they attend the event, he added.
Tagged
brooklyn
nypd
public safety
Ben Feuerherd
Ben Feuerherd covers public safety and policing for WNYC and Gothamist. He previously covered federal courts for The New York Post and The Messenger. His work has also appeared in POLITICO, the Daily Beast and NBC New York. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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