Last week, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation to combat reckless driving in parking lots, a longstanding noise and public safety issue for many eastern Queens residents.
Elected officials and civic leaders gathered in the Holy Family Catholic Church parking lot in Fresh Meadows on Tuesday morning to celebrate. All around them, tire skid marks on the ground served as evidence that drivers had been performing donut maneuvers there.
“It’s a huge step forward for keeping our community safe. For too long, these areas have been used for dangerous activities that create noise, damage property, and put lives at risk,” said Assembly Member Nily Rozic, who co-sponsored the legislation.
State traffic law now considers parking lots places where reckless driving can occur, giving local law enforcement more power to stop this common late-night activity. Some have described it as a game of cat and mouse in which groups of cars zoom from parking lot to parking lot to evade police. Inside the lots, they’ll perform car stunts for spectators and demonstrate how loud their engines get.
“We are giving law enforcement the ability and the tools to come onto private property, such as this, without getting immediate prior authorization from the property owner to enforce against this kind of reckless driving,” said Senator Liu, who introduced the act in the senate.
Senator Liu and Assembly Member Rozic first introduced the legislation in 2021, when local residents noticed a significant uptick in the behavior. This past July, they held a press conference urging the governor to sign the act into law.
Local residents say this type of reckless driving is most common on weekend nights during the summer months. However, they say that the loud meet-ups happen at all hours of the night on weekdays, too, throughout the year.
Just six months ago, the church installed three electric gates at its entrances to try and stop cars from entering the lot at night. It cost them over $40,000.
“This was happening quite often,” Rev. Sean Suckiel, the church’s pastor who has been Holy Family for six years, told QNS. He noted that “after the pandemic, it really picked up.”
The civic leaders in attendance on Wednesday expressed gratitude to the state elected officials for pushing the bill through. They’re optimistic that closing the enforcement loophole will bring them more peace and quiet at night.
“We hope that enforcement is strong, especially as we hit the summer next year. In the past, they could say, ‘There’s nothing we can do.’ Now we can say, ‘You have the law behind you do something.’ So it’s a wonderful law to have,” said Maria Deinnocentiis, President of Utopia Estates Civic Association.
Others criticized the participants for participating in the dangerous activity, which police can now enforce as a misdemeanor charge in the same way they treat reckless driving on highways.
“As I look around at this parking lot and other parking lots in the area, I feel like I’m standing in a playground that’s used by people who have grown up but haven’t quite reached that level of maturity not to play games and cause this kind of destruction on private property, and, in fact, religious property,” said Sol Sturm, President of Fresh Meadows Tenant Association.
“It’s disrespectful, and it’s annoying,” he added.
Another civic leader, Elaine Young, President of West Cunningham Park Civic Association, recalled hearing cars “screech around and do 360s” in the Cunningham Park parking lot just the night before, a Monday.
“Hopefully, we’ll see a decline, and hopefully, we’ll see more enforcement from local authorities,” added Assembly Member Rozic.
