Seventy- five improper cannabis shops were shuttered in the first week of the Adams president’s” Operation Padlock” assault on illegal marijuana sales in the town, officials announced Tuesday.
There are believed to be some 3, 000 unlawful marijuana shops operating in the Big Apple, the majority of which came to light after the state legalized marijuana in 2021 without quickly establishing a complete lawful business. The second batch of closures is a drop in the bucket.
Mayor Adams acknowledged at a media briefing at City Hall on Tuesday night that there is still a lot more work to be done.
” They are really getting started”, he said of the Function Padlock hit force, which is being led by the city Sheriff’s Office.
Gov. reacted to the activity by starting the activity. Legislators in Hochul and Albany granted the city’s last month’s expanded enforcement powers, which would allow it to shut down improper weed shops without first obtaining state approval.
Before the condition gave the city the beefed up power, Adams , promised repeatedly , that he would locked down every unregulated cannabis shop in the city “within 30 days” of being awarded the expanded police forces. But on April 30, shortly after the condition finally gave him those capabilities, Adams tempered expectations, saying he’d rather make” a large dent” in reducing the number of illegal shops within 30 days.
The locations of the 75 newly- shuttered shops were n’t immediately known. They were not immediately identified by the Adams spokeswoman.
The spokeswoman added that she would not provide a specific number of stores that Operation Padlock , which aims to shut down every week, but said the strike force will have 15 teams deployed across the city carrying out daily closure operations.
Going forward, enforcement teams will “proactively monitor” establishments that have been shuttered to make sure they stay closed, the spokeswoman added.
According to Adams ‘ office, the 75 fresh padlock cases resulted in nearly$ 6 million in fines being levied against the owners of the businesses involved. How many of those fines have been collected so far is unknown.
Court processing is a recent topic that has caught the attention of lawmakers in connection with cannabis enforcement.
Under the expanded enforcement authorities, the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, known as OATH, must adjudicate any weed shop padlock case within five days.
According to information contained in , the most recent Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report, OATH is already working to address the growing case backlogs that have caused the average adjudication time for summonses to last 12 days in the current fiscal year.
Given the existing backlogs, Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer, a Democrat who chairs the Council’s Oversight and Investigations Committee, wrote a letter to OATH Commissioner Asim Rehman last week expressing concern about how the agency will be able to follow the five-day deadline.
Rehman stated in a Tuesday response letter to the Daily News that OATH is “actively working to hire additional staff” to address the anticipated influx of new weed shop padlock cases.
OATH spokeswoman Marisa Senigo said the agency is, among other positions, looking to hire new judicial hearing officers, attorneys and support staff. The agency is looking to hire a certain number of new employees, but she did not specify that.
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