Boro Park Deluged with Citations from a Wide Variety of Agencies

Today, residents of Boro Park who were not wearing masks or who opened their non-essential businesses were deluged with citations given by workers from an unusually broad swath of civil service agencies, such as the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, the New York City Department of Buildings, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and the Sanitation Police.

   Barry Spitzer, the district manager of Community Board 12 cast this bombardment of citations coming from such a variety of agencies as a “recipe for disaster.”

 “This is like a ship without a captain,” said Spitzer, who, when elected in March, 2014, became the first Chasidic Jew to serve as a district manager in New York City. “Sending out agencies without any expertise in [a pandemic] adds to the mistrust and the animosity the community already has toward government.

   “[The deluge of citations from many different city agencies] also shows the community that they are correct when they say they are being directly targeted.”

   Spitzer cast the city’s flood of city workers descending on Boro Park to distribute a plethora of citations as “weaponizing civil service agencies” to an effect that is inscrutable and frustrating.

  In a particularly egregious contradiction, for instance, Spitzer explained that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has provided for a specific exemption that customers do not have to be screened for COVID , yet, two city agencies insisted that essential businesses conduct temperature checks on their customers before allowing them in and threatened to fine them if they didn’t comply.

   “We have DEP personnel, DOB inspectors, DOH officials, and Sanitation Police all running around and creating their own rules,” Spitzer lamented.