NY Pistol Permit Woes

S

SpringfieldHandgun

Inactive
so, in apr 2005 i applied for pistol permit in suffolk county ny. my record is clean in terms of convictions on a printout (criminal and traffic). the one and only criminal charge from 10 years ago was dropped down to a simple traffic violation.

in july 2005 the investigating officer was about to sign off on the application when i received a silly trespass summons for alledgedly crossing railroad tracks where i was not suppose to. investigating officer did not sign off on my application...., and i actually had received in the mail a postcard saying "your application for pistol permit was approved, please come down to office to pick up your pistol license". i asked the officer why i received such postcard and he said he did not know it was a mistake. how f'd up is that?

yesterday my tresspass allegations were dropped down to a 6 month acod. under the law the officer has full discretionary rights at to grant or deny a pistol permit. my question is, does the law say that he cannot grant pistol permit because of this 6 month acod? or should he consider my clean past record and issue the permit?

thanks for any feedback.
 
I believe your more or less on a probation for that 6 mo. period, the charge stays on record until the period is over then it comes off if you behave yourself. My son had a similar problem back in May 05 while joining the service. He had to have a judge remove it from his record early in order to sign his final papers before he left. I think your gonna have to wait out the 6 mo. period.

kenny b
 
I am assuming that you applied with the Suffolk County PD and not the Sheriff's office.

The SCPD makes their own rules and most likely will not grant the permit untill the six month probation period is up if at all.

In my experience they will look for any excuse to deny or revoke your permit.

You may have to use an Attorney. There are several on LI that handle pistol permit issues.
 
Don't hold your breath waiting for SCPD to issue you a permit if you have given them any reason, even this pathetic, to deny you.

The SCPD does not WANT you to have guns.


It's that simple.

Why should you believe me? Because I had a permit there before I moved. I encountered the standoffish jerkoffs who man the counters in the HQ in Yaphank. My best friend (who also had a permit there) related a story to me about a woman cop who told him point-blank that their attitude is, "We don't think you lowly civilians should have guns."

Ironically, I am in Suffolk County on vacation visiting family as I type this. Home is Florida, where I have a NON-discretionary, SHALL-ISSUE permit to carry.


-blackmind
 
Oh, a little story about SCPD and the pistol permits they issue.


Back before I moved -- this was around 1996 or so, I think -- there was a story in one of the small local newspapers that caught my eye.

A Suffolk County legislator had decided to get a permit, and when he found out the disgusting rigamarole you have to go through just to get a permit to purchase and own a handgun in Suffolk (it does NOT allow you to CARRY!), he was irritated -- the more so because the permit is for home premises and range trips only.

He wrote a county law, which passed and went into effect, that stipulated that the police department had to bring its permit restrictions into line with STATE LAW; this meant that any permit issued would have to be without restrictions against concealed carry!

What happened next?

The scumbag Suffolk County police commissioner (forgot the name) flat out said he was not going to obey that law!! :mad: :eek:

I haven't followed up on the state of permit issuance in SC since I moved in '97. A few years after I moved, they sent a letter to my residence in Florida informing me that since I had moved, my permit was hereby invalidated, and asking me to advise them of the disposition of my guns. I said something that rhymes with duck stew, and ignored the bastards. :mad:

-blackmind
 
its extremely annoying how discretionary decision making is left up to the folks of scpd. i do understand that their job is to keep pistols out of the hands of criminals... but i'm no criminal, just a novice hunter looking to do some pistol hunting this year.....

i was down in scpd headquarters in yaphank on friday.... 2 guys in front of me waiting for a counter person. the 2nd guy was a nassau cop who moved to suffolk and wanted to (had to) bring his pistols in for registration. needless to say (sorry for the harsh words, only way to describe the person), the bitch behind the counter gave the guy a hard time. he took his pistols out of a carry bag which were in pistol cases and placed them on the counter. the gal demanded with annoyance that he remove them from the cases saying "you have to take them out, i'm not gonna open cases". i was like woah wtf.... give the guy a break.

i'll talk with the investigating officer on monday and post back what happens. and btw, if he jerks me around i'm gonna seek a lawyer because there is no good reason to deny me (plus, i have some extra $$$, money well spent fighting scpd).
 
so here's a update. investigating officer seems to think that i am a criminal because i had to show up in criminal court (2 times in the last 10 years). under the law i was charged with a criminal offense but was not found guilty on either of them. in my view, the investigating officer cannot judge me on what i was charged for, only what my convictions are.

i'm no f'in criminal. this whole thing has me pissed off.

as taken from NY State Law:
"A license may be granted to an applicant who is of good moral character, has not been convicted of a "serious offense," (This includes misdemeanors and violations as set forth in Section 265.00, Subd. 17, PL.) states if and when he has ever been treated for mental illness and as to whom "no good cause exists for the denial of the license."


anyone have those names and #'s for lawyers who handle cases like this?

thanks
 
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There is no law in Suffolk except what the SCPD says is the law. Sorry but it sure seems true to me. I believe they are also still the highest paid department in the nation and the guys on the rubber gun patrol in the pistol permit dept. are probably pretty high up there in pay. Most seem to have some seniority. I know that one of them is the neighbor of a coworker. The guy is a drunkard and a general pain in the posterior to his neighbors, although in the past year he is not as drunk publicly as in the past I am told...

As I posted in response to your thread on Packing.org try to attend the NRA CCW event at Happague on Oct 16th. If you haven't found a lawyer yet you may find one there.

BTW, any links to the Suffolk County Law and Legislator mentioned above? I would love to learn more. Just so everybody knows here the SCPD may put restrictions on your permit but they can't charge you with squat for violating them. See http://www.troopers.state.ny.us/FAQs/Firearms/Permits.cfm

Q - What section of the Penal Law authorizes the placing of restrictions on pistol permits by the issuing authority?
The Penal Law does not specifically authorize the placing of restrictions on pistol permits. However, court decisions have consistently supported the ability of licensing officials to impose these restrictions. Such an imposition is an administrative function of the licensing officer.
Click to expand...
 
Sorry, I can't remember the name of the legislator who got involved in writing a county law about the pistol permits. Why does the name "Mustard" stick in my head? It could be that. Not sure. This had to be in the period of somewhere between 1995 and 1997. It happened before I moved to Florida - where permits are NOT discretionary!


My suggestion: Move the hell out of Suffolk County. The place is BEAUTIFUL (I'm there now, on a visit, actually), but two problems exist: the anti-gun political landscape, and the fact that the population is burgeoning and living costs are astronomical as a result.


-blackmind
 
Okay, I found some stuff. Search Google for the name "George Guldi," who was a Suffolk County legislator in 1996.

Here is a link to a story about the situation. You can proceed from there.


Here is some of the text found at that location:

Suffolk County has a unique set of circumstance regarding gun laws; the 5 western towns fall under the authority of the Police Commissioner who is designated as the licensing officer. The licensing officer for the 5 eastern towns is the county Sheriffís office. The licensing officer in New York City and Nassau County is the Police Commissioner; elsewhere in the state, a county judge or some other designated justice official. The determination whether to grant the license has been completely within the discretion of the licensing officer. However, the licensing officer must state "specifically and concisely" in writing the reasons for denial. A denial can be overturned in court only if shown to be "arbitrary and capricious."
Prior to 1996 Suffolk County exceeded New York State handgun permit standards by imposing restrictions or conditions on licenses to the detriment of firearms licensees, making Suffolk County gun laws among the most restrictive in the Nation. In 1996 legislators George O. Guldi, Martin W. Haley, Joseph Caracappa and Joseph Rizzo introduced a bill that was passed, which modified the law so that licensing would ostensibly be uniform throughout the state of New York. The new law, Resolution 678 section 17-2 B reads "...the department will not impose any restrictions, limitations, or requirements on licenses or licensees other than those restrictions, limitations or requirements set forth in section 400.00 of the NEW YORK PENAL LAW. However, the then Suffolk County Police Commissioner, Robert Creighton, declined to amend the restrictions. It must be noted however that section 400 the New York State Penal Code also states that "The licensing officer may, in his discretion, add restrictions to the license, limiting the places where the handgun may be kept or carried." Commissioner Creighton subsequently resigned.
Club members compared the New York state laws with other states. Ray Raynor remarked that "Florida has the most lenient gun law in the country and their crime rate went down. D.C. has the strictest and their crime rate went up." Joe Magagnin, retired New York Fire Department and the club treasurer observed that "Car jacking was a big problem in Florida, because the criminals could distinguish who the unarmed tourists were by the license plate number. Florida passed the law that rental cars could no longer have distinguishing licenses and the rate of car jacking went all the way down. Thatís because now the criminal didnít know if it was a Florida resident or a tourist. A tourist wonít be carrying a gun, but Florida has the most lenient gun law in the nation, and the criminals donít want to get involved with a Florida resident who might have a gun." Ron Atkinson, recently retired, heatedly declared "The guy who shot those people on the Long Island Railroad got on that train knowing he was the only person on the train who had a gun...And the woman whose husband was killed is lobbying for stricter gun control... doesnít she realize that if just ONE armed citizen had been sitting there that her husband would be alive today?"
While the law has officially been rewritten, Suffolk County does not readily issue licenses. Bob Ishkanian of Leslie Edelmanís Pistol Permits in Huntington said that "The police donít want people having a carry permit so they turn down applications and look for reasons to object. We help people obtain permits because we know all the little tricks. There are 20 ways to get out of having an application rejected, such as signing it in black ink, rather than blue." An application can be denied, if it is filled out in the wrong color ink.
 
Try contacting member "LIProgun". He is an attorney and may be able to advise you further.


BTW my cousin is a retired NYPD detective and they gave him a raft of poo when he applied for a permit!

I could tell stories all day about SCPD.
 
Ha Ha, Ink Color!

First time I filled the form out it was the wrong color ink. I was almsot all the way through and had listed EVERY job and residence (5 years at my University with a new address every year plus NY, plus AR). Having just moved back to NY from FL and AR the concept of even filling out the form ticked me off. The Ink thing ticked me off so bad I didn't get back to form for a couple years.

Suffolk is a great place except for many of the people...
 
Well, when you compare and contrast Suffolk County, Long Island with, say, West Palm Beach, FL, you realize how much better SC is.

For example, my dad, sister and I went to Port Jefferson for some sort of little outdoor music concert and festival yesterday.

When it was just about over, Dad leaned to me and mentioned something he had noticed. He said, "Take a look around, and notice that you don't see a single cop out here." I looked. He was right.

We both attribute it to the fact that the upper-middle-class, educated population of that area is such that the police are not really that needed to keep order. The people are CIVILIZED.

Now, in West Palm Beach, such an event has local cops and/or county sheriff's deputies stationed about every fifty feet! Why? Because the people down there are a bunch of mongrels who don't know how to act civilized when around other people. Things get out of hand so easily there, necessitating the police presence.

It's like, how many cops are needed to keep order at a Barry Manilow concert? How many are needed to keep order at a 50 Cent concert? See what I mean?

And we, sadly, also recognized that a lot of the problem seems to stem from the racial strife and friction that exists in WPB. Suffolk County is, for the most part, a racially homogenous population. There are minorities, sure. But I would point out that in my high school graduating class of 550, I can think of perhaps THREE blacks in my class. Go to a town like Wyandanch on L.I., and the majority are black. (Wyandanch is known as a high-crime area.) The schools there have their problems

I don't mean this post to seem bigoted -- I am not bigoted. But that is not the same as saying that it is not observable that areas without much racial intermingling have smaller crime problems. The same argument is made about countries like Sweden and such. They don't seem to have the interracial strife associated with multicultural societies.


-blackmind
 
Also check out this organization. SAFE

It is run by NRA director John Cushman and is verry active on LI.

They may be able to advise you further.
 
SC is a changing Blackmind

Yes, Port Jefferson is a very nice area and you are pretty safe there. By chance though did you drive there on Route 112? Perhaps you noticed the area around the train station at the top of the hill. Like many areas of Long Island it is now innundated with illegal aliens and has problems with drugs, gangs and a host of crimes. Farmingville, located not far from Port Jefferson, is packed with illegals. It used to be a normal middle class neighborhood. Now women can not go to the 7-11 at any time or the KMART after dark becasue of harrasment and possible assault by illegals . Shirley/Mastic has areas with plenty of problems, Patchogue, Ronkonkoma, Riverhead. The list goes on and on. Sitting at a concert at Port Jeff or on the beach in the Hamptons may be safe enough but I am also certain, having lived there, that there are plenty of places in FL where you would feel safe. These criminals also do sometimes stray out of their normal areas to prey on richer game.

Overall Suffolk has gone downhill. You still have "pristine" areas but in general crime has risen across the county and the illegal problem has been ignored for all intents and purposes by the government and the media (who lament about their lack of fair housing, services and a hiring hall!!!).
 
Blackmind. I moved from Suffolk to NE PA. You cannot get a more racially homogenous population that here. Unless you consider the Amish...!

Long Island has underlying problems Re Race. But the races are segregated in their own areas. The SCPD tells you to stay in your own area, and not go into Wyandanch (Black) or Brentwood (Hispanic) for instance.

The problems exist and are kept under control, for now. SCPD keeps things under control with a heavy hand. Part of this is controlling handguns.
 
another tidbit of info http://www.editechconsulting.com/Traveller.html

there are many aspects of scpd that piss me off, but the only one i can actually deal with right now is my pistol permit.

when it comes down to the pay scpd gets i can only compare it to the other nearby localities. as i see it, it gets more dangerous as one moves closer to NYC from the east end of long island, so, it should be that the pay goes up in the same direction. very very odd that the pay goes up as you move east on long island. even stranger that you can jump over to westchester county where getting is pistol rather easy....

as far as how suffolk has gone downhill, mainly because of poor leadership by the county executive. it burns me that we pay these people top dollar and they cant do things right, allot of talk and no action while their pockets get fatter with tax payer money....

thanks for the lawyer info, i will be contacting them.

K80Geoff said:
The problems exist and are kept under control, for now. SCPD keeps things under control with a heavy hand. Part of this is controlling handguns.
Click to expand...

controlling handguns under the law is allot different than controlling handguns by discretionary measures. discretionary practices for governing things that are already governed under law usually leads to civil rights being violated.
 
There are many, many cases where the issuing authority -- most frequently NYPD -- has denied or revoked a license based on things other than convictions, including arrests that turned into ACODs or outright dismissals, and the licensee appealed the denial or revocation. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the trial courts uphold the denial or revocation, and so does the intermediate appellate court (which is as far as they usually get). The courts hold that issuing agents have extremely broad discretion in determing not only whether one has "proper cause" for a license, but whether the applicant is of "good moral character." There is almost no limit to what the issuing agent can claim shows one is not of "good moral character."

My suggestion to the applicant who wishes to appeal a denial is to get an attorney involved in the process early, i.e., at the administrative appeal level. The record you make before the agency will be the only thing that the court will be able to review if you decide to file an Article 78 proceeding in Supreme Court to review the denial, assuming that the administrative appeal fails (and that is a safe assumption). If you mess-up at the administrative appeal, it will be very hard for an attorney to salvage the case in court.

BTW, I was legal advisor to SAFE when that county law was passed, and SAFE was instrumental in its passage. We understood that the law could only be used to apply political pressure to the police commissioner, and that a court challenge to enforce the law would likely fail. It was a chance worth taking because there was no real downside if we could not get the law enforced. Indeed, the commissioner's refusal to enforce it was one of the factors that helped force him out of office. Unfortunately, his successor -- a former deputy county executive who said he supported the law -- also ignored the law when he became commissioner.

- Rob Firriolo
Just visiting from TheGunZone.com
 
Wow, Rob Firriolo! I remember that name from when I was living on L.I. in the mid '90s! You had the Lightning Rod Network for gun rights at the time, and I got email newsletters. I used to live in Smithtown, but I now live in West Palm Beach. (I regret not being more active in gun rights issues on L.I. when I was there.)


Other subjects:
Suffolk County is a-changing. Yes, Port Jefferson is a very nice area and you are pretty safe there. By chance though did you drive there on Route 112? Perhaps you noticed the area around the train station at the top of the hill. Like many areas of Long Island it is now innundated with illegal aliens and has problems with drugs, gangs and a host of crimes.
Click to expand...


You're absolutely right.
Back in the '70s, Long Island was a place that people moved to in order to get their kids into good schools that were not in the City. It was bucolic, serene, friendly, almost semi-rural. There were woods and trails for kids to ride their BMX bikes, and ice cream men came down the street in the summer. Kids set up hockey nets in the street and played all day long.

I come back to Suffolk County now and then (for example, that's where I am as I type this, visiting my sister on the border of Smithtown and Islip). I see how much has changed, and I read Newsday and am chagrined. It's turning into a hole. The Island is getting way overcrowded; too much hustle and bustle; FAR too much vehicle traffic; ridiculous overdevelopment (and the attendant ridiculous home prices: median home prices are something like $500,000 in Nassau, says today's Newsday front page, and I'm sure it's similar or more in Suffolk); and crime is RAMPANT.

Used to be, crime was something you read of occasionally in the nicer towns on Long Island. Now it's commonplace. Seems to have gotten a lot worse since I left in 1997, and the crimes have grown more outrageous, according to reports I read now and then.

And yes, as politically incorrect as it is to say, and as questionable or difficult as it may be to draw correlations, things have gotten worse as the population has become... er... more diversified.

I was in a Walmart in Islandia (a village of Islip) yesterday, and it felt like I was in West Palm Friggin' Beach. Seemed like the majority of the shoppers and workers there were all speaking Spanish! I got blank looks and zero help from two or three hispanic women working there. Just like WPB.

Can anyone say whether the crime is attached to the black and or hispanic populations on Long Island? I guess that perhaps the police can. They'd have more of an insight into it than I would. Wyandanch, Amityville, Hempstead, Central Islip, Ridge... and more, are famous for their crime problems as well as for their large minority populations. Call it racist or bigoted or whatever, but what can one say when one realizes that for whatever reason, the homogenous white areas are generally more peaceful than the minority areas? I didn't make it that way; I just observed it. And anyone who wants to pick on me for simply saying so is invited to drive through Wyandanch in their Lexus or Acura on a Saturday night with their windows rolled down, talking on a cell phone and see what happens. See if you're not 'jacked.


Farmingville, located not far from Port Jefferson, is packed with illegals. It used to be a normal middle class neighborhood. Now women can not go to the 7-11 at any time or the KMART after dark becasue of harrasment and possible assault by illegals . Shirley/Mastic has areas with plenty of problems, Patchogue, Ronkonkoma, Riverhead. The list goes on and on. Sitting at a concert at Port Jeff or on the beach in the Hamptons may be safe enough but I am also certain, having lived there, that there are plenty of places in FL where you would feel safe. These criminals also do sometimes stray out of their normal areas to prey on richer game.

Overall Suffolk has gone downhill. You still have "pristine" areas but in general crime has risen across the county and the illegal problem has been ignored for all intents and purposes by the government and the media (who lament about their lack of fair housing, services and a hiring hall!!!).
Click to expand...


It saddens me to have to face it, because I grew up here apparently when it was in its heyday, and now it's turning into a crapheap. Do we blame it on illegals and blacks? Do we blame it on whites? Do we blame it on policies and permissiveness and lack of attention to the problems when they are small and conquerable? I dunno. I would say this: don't go putting the lion's share of the blame on anyone who isn't doing the crimes, i.e. don't blame the white population for being too rich and making the B/H populations envious enough to rob them; if the white population is not out there sticking people up, they are not responsible for the crime.


-blackmind
 
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