Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., today announced a major initiative to reduce the number of illegal knives on the streets of New York, following a large-scale investigation into the sale of illegal knives by local and national retailers doing business in New York.
Despite the significant decrease in violent crime over the last decade, illegal knives are an increasingly serious problem in New York City and across the state.
The DA's investigation found the widespread sale of knives which, with very limited exception, are illegal to sell, own or carry in the state, such as gravity knives and switchblades. District Attorney Vance's investigation led many of the sellers, including Home Depot, Eastern Mountain Sports, Paragon Sports, and four others, to enter into deferred prosecution agreements.
| Home Depot sold switchblades? |
The "switchblade" law was so broadly written it can be applied to almost any knife that can be opened with one hand. If you have a folding knife with a raised part on the blade that allows you to use your thumb to push the blade open, it counts as a switchblade.
The agreements require the companies to turn over all profits from the sale of such knives during the past 4-year period, totaling nearly $1.9 million to date, and to finance a campaign to educate the public about illegal knives. In addition, DA Vance announced the appointment of a District Attorney's Knife Sales Monitor, to ensure compliance of the seven companies with the terms of the deferred prosecution agreements.
"The District Attorney's Office has a responsibility to do everything it can to prevent crime in our streets and in our homes," said District Attorney Vance. "The agreements signed by these seven companies, each of whom has demonstrated good corporate citizenship by doing so, are only the beginning of an effort to ensure that illegal knives find no place in Manhattan."
Despite New York's drop in violent crime during the past decade, knife violence remains a serious problem in Manhattan. In 2009, there were 2,269 arrests involving the possession of illegal knives in Manhattan, and approximately 30 percent of that year's homicides for the borough involved a stabbing death. Last year the Office prosecuted more than 2,000 cases for possession of illegal knives. In addition, in even greater numbers, knives are used in non-fatal stabbings, in robberies and burglaries, in sexual assaults and other violent crime. |