Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Thursday, January 2nd. Here's the midday news from Veronica Del Valle.

Verónica Del Valle: Law enforcement has searched the home of former NYPD Chief of Department, Jeffrey Maddrey. In a social media post this morning, Commissioner Jessica Tisch says the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau is working with law enforcement authorities to investigate allegations against Maddrey. Maddrey resigned abruptly last month after allegations he demanded sexual favors from a subordinate. He has denied wrongdoing and was still on track to retire after his resignation. Tisch says Maddrey has now been suspended.

The Manhattan District Attorney's office has said it's investigating. Tisch today referred questions to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Police are investigating after a late-night mass shooting outside an event space in Queens yesterday sent 10 people to the hospital. The NYPD says the shooting happened just after 11:00 when a group of four men opened fire on a line outside Amazura Concert Hall in Jamaica.

They fired around 30 rounds into the crowd of mostly teenagers. Officials say all the people shot sustained non-life-threatening injuries and are expected to recover. New NYPD Chief of Patrol, Philip Rivera, called the shooting a senseless act of violence.

Philip Rivera: Let me start by saying that there is zero tolerance for these senseless shootings, and those responsible for this crime will be apprehended and brought to justice.

Verónica Del Valle: Rivera also says that the shooting was not an act of terrorism. Authorities have yet to make any arrests. Up next, every year, thousands of tenants battle to get their security deposits back from landlords. More on that after the break.

Thousands of New York City tenants contact the state Attorney General to sue their landlords in small claims court or recover their security deposits each year. As WNYC's David Brand reports, getting the money can be a challenge.

Clerk: And then you say why you brought this person.

David Brand: At the sterile building that houses the small claims court in downtown Brooklyn, a clerk behind a counter hands out paperwork to a line of people.

Clerk: Fill that out, put in today's date. Print your name, sign your name, and come back as soon as you're done.

Alice Lau: Okay.

David Brand: You're a pro at this now?

Alice Lau: Yes, I've been here so many times. It's so annoying.

David Brand: Alice Lau is back in this courthouse for the fifth time. She's here because when she and her roommate moved out of a two-bedroom apartment in Greenpoint, their landlord refused to return their $4,400 security deposit, even though she says they left the place spotless.

They sued. When the landlord didn't show up to court, they won. A judge awarded them their deposit check plus interest. That was in April.

Alice Lau: We just assumed that if we went through this process, that it would be rolled in our favor and that everything would eventually work out.

David Brand: It didn't work out. Eight months later, they still didn't have their money. She restarted her lawsuit.

Alice Lau: I was very angry at the beginning. Honestly, I feel like it's more like a justice principle thing. It just feels so wrong, and I can still do something. Why shouldn't I?

Sateesh Nori: This happens a lot.

David Brand: That's NYU Housing Law Professor Sateesh Nori. He says the process for getting a security deposit back is ridiculously long, and often ends in failure.

Sateesh Nori: It's too hard for people to fight. They don't have the time, they don't have the energy, or they moved out of town.

David Brand: That's despite the fact that the law around security deposits is very clear. Either a landlord returns the money or-

Sateesh Nori: Requires landlords to provide an itemized receipt for any damages to the apartment within 14 days of the tenants moving out.

David Brand: What if the landlords don't do that? There are no official estimates for how often landlords don't follow the rules, but the New York Attorney General's office says it's received nearly 5,000 complaints about unreturned security deposits in just the last two years. That's up from previous years. Housing experts like Nori say it amounts to huge losses for the city's renters.

Sateesh Nori: There are tens of thousands of people moving every year. That's real money. I think this is a multi-hundred-million-dollar problem annually.

David Brand: Lau, who moved out of that Greenpoint apartment last year, isn't just one of many New Yorkers who didn't get their security deposit back. She's one of many who didn't get their deposit back from the same landlord. Is this it right here?

Alice Lau: This is the building with all of the lovely pumpkins outside. Both of those windows were actually my bedroom.

David Brand: Alexandria Glasper moved out of this building in Bed Stuy in August 2023. The landlord's name is Ches Parnes. He owns at least eight buildings across the Bronx in Brooklyn, including Lau's old Place. The State Attorney General's office says it's received 14 complaints about him. Five of his former tenants told WNYC he wrongly withheld their security deposits, including Glasper.

Alexandria Glasper: It's just been like trying to chase a ghost to get money back, which is ridiculous.

David Brand: She put the cost of her move on a credit card. When Parnes didn't return her $1,250 deposit, it was a problem.

Alexandria Glasper: The first few months, I was really struggling because I just felt like I couldn't catch up to the moving expenses. I feel like I was paying them down and paying them down and then paying interest. It was a nightmare, all because I didn't have that money.

David Brand: A judge awarded her half her deposit plus interest after she filed her own lawsuit. Once again, Parnes didn't show up to court, but she still doesn't have her money back. I asked Parnes about all the complaints and court judgments for unreturned security deposits. It seems like, from what the tenants are saying, that this is a pattern.

Chess Parnes: I'm telling you, I have a reason why it's-- If I didn't give it back, I have a reason why.

David Brand: He says he should have shown up to court to explain those reasons.

Verónica Del Valle: That's WNYC reporter David Brand, who later caught up with my colleague, David Furst, to talk more about his reporting.

David Furst: David, it sounds like you didn't get much of an explanation from this landlord.

David Brand: That's right. I had a number of conversations with him, and it was hard to get a straight answer. He said share the names of the tenants who were complaining and who had went to the Attorney general and sued in small claims court.

He said he'd looked through his business records. We talked a few days later. He said he thought one of the tenants moved later than she was supposed to, and that's why he said he might have withheld her security deposit but didn't really have much information.

I will say, though, that in the days after we spoke, two of the tenants did tell me that Parnes made the payments to them.

David Furst: Okay. Well, I think the question on many people's minds will be, what do I do if I find myself in this situation?

David Brand: Well, there are a couple of options. If you find yourself texting and calling and emailing and maybe even meeting with the landlord and they're still not returning your money, you can file a complaint with the state attorney general, which a number of these tenants did.

The attorney General will reach out to the landlord to try to resolve the dispute, but they will only take it so far. If the landlord doesn't respond, they are not going to pursue it after that. At that point, tenants have the option of going to small claims court for amounts under $10,000.

It's a lengthy process, and as you heard from some of these tenants, it doesn't always result in the resolution they hope for. Experts, attorneys, say that tenants should bring photos, videos, texts, any kind of correspondence they've had with the landlord to court and then be prepared to wait.

David Furst: Is there a way to check in advance whether a landlord has a history of not returning security deposits, to check before you move into an apartment?

David Brand: It's tricky. You can go to small claims court potentially and ask for any records related to the landlord, or often a limited liability company listed as owner of the property, but that information is hard to get. It's not published online.

There are some other ways you might be able to find it. Sometimes tenants leave Google reviews about the landlord, especially if it's a company. That's what some of these tenants did and how I was able to find a few of them.

There are some websites that position themselves as resources for tenants to review landlords and you can check that way, but it's pretty rare.

One option is to also go on the state court's website, which will list other kinds of lawsuits involving the tenant, whether that's the landlord trying to evict a tenant or in some cases the tenant suing the landlord, sometimes the city suing the landlord because there are problems in the building.

David Furst: Man, a Google review for a restaurant can be harsh. I can only imagine the Google reviews for landlords.

David Brand: Yeah, some of them are not very pretty.

David Furst: WNYC's David Brand, thank you.

David Brand: Thanks a lot.

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