Bounty Hunter Noise Violations

The NYC Hospitality Alliance is happy to announce that the law we led the charge to pass in the City Council, to help stop the abusive Bounty Hunter Noise Violations from being issued to restaurants, bars, and other businesses took effect January 5th, 2024! 

The law applies to pending violations too, so if your business was issued a summons that is still pending, we encourage you to share the new law (linked here) with your lawyer to determine how best to proceed. We hope this ends the abuse, but if you receive any bounty hunter noise violations in the future, please inform us ASAP.  

Thank you to all our members who supported us in getting this old law changed, and the new one passed. Thank you to Council Member Jim Gennaro for his quick action and leadership on this issue as well as all his colleagues who voted for this bill, and Mayor Adams’ administration. 

As a reminder, here is an overview of the situation:

• The NYC Hospitality Alliance was alerted to a growing situation in which bounty hunters were abusing a decades old law designed to allow citizens to report real noise problems in their neighborhoods. The law was never intended to be misused and to be a big money-making business for bounty hunters.

• The NYC Hospitality Alliance fought for legislation in the City Council to limit these bounty hunter noise violations that have been unfairly issued to so many restaurants and bars because over the last year, two individuals were responsible for issuing 90% of the roughly 6,000 so-called citizen noise complaints to businesses.

• The new law the NYC Hospitality Alliance successfully got enacted significantly reduces Bounty Hunter incentives by reducing the bounty they get for new violations they issue from hundreds of dollars each to $5 or $10 dollars. In addition, the law significantly reduces the potential maximum fine of all pending Bounty Hunter violations that have not yet been fully adjudicated to $50. The bounty they received would be half of that. The goal is to disincentivize the Bounty Hunters from continuing to exploit this law by not allowing them to make lots of money on the backs of local businesses.