Friday, February 17, 2012

Addabbo and Miller introduce anti-harassment bills

From the Queens Gazette:

The state senate last week approved a measure introduced by state Senator Joe Addabbo Jr. that would make it a crime to use a government agency to harass an individual by making false claims to officials.

“Sometimes disagreements among community residents can rise to the level where one person falsely accuses another of wrongdoing and reports the alleged misdeeds to a government agency, simply to cause their neighbor grief,” Addabbo said in a prepared statement.

“This kind of harassment not only seriously hurts the person who is wrongfully accused but leads to a waste of government resources and precious time that various agency inspectors could devote to actual violations of the law,” Addabbo declared.

The bill was prompted by complaints made to Addabbo’s office and would allow authorities to charge a false reporter with second-degree aggravated harassment, a class A misdemeanor.

Addabbo said a similar bill sponsored by Assemblymember Mike Miller is under consideration by the state Assembly.


Photo from Project Woodhaven

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess reporting illegal apartments, construction without permits and illegal residents, noise complaints, parking in front of driveways, no snow removal are no longer going to be reported......................

Anonymous said...

I suggest this be balanced with a right to sue -how about the Agency head? -for non-enforcement!

Anonymous said...

You people dont get it, This is code named for it is time to leave, it is third world now, leave the tri state and rejoin america

Helen said...

Pardon me but those two appear to be old-fashioned Government Fat Cat "Flotation Devices".

Anonymous said...

prediction: the state senate will vote it down and it probably will not get out of committee.

this would cut into the civil law suit industry and take $$$ out of the pockets of lawyers ,who finance the politicians handsomely at election time.

is not the purpose of Big Government to WASTE RESOURCES sent to it from the taxpayers?

Anonymous said...

"we don't want people reporting claims against our tweeded. We give them soup now, they give us votes later."