The Queens District Attorney describes JFK and LaGuardia as Queens County's airports, and a case that starts at either one can go in two directions. If the charge is a New York crime, the Queens DA prosecutes it and you are arraigned at Queens Criminal Court in Kew Gardens, while charges involving smuggling or conduct aboard an aircraft can be brought under federal law in the Eastern District of New York. When this happens you may be far from home and short on time, so you need a lawyer who can tell you quickly which system you are in and what that means for you.
Inside the DA's Airport Investigations Unit.
Within the Queens DA's Crime Strategies & Intelligence Bureau, formed in 2021, sits an Airport Investigations Unit. The DA's own description calls the airports magnets for thieves, smugglers, traffickers and internal conspiracies, notes that JFK moved 63.3 million passengers in 2024, and says the unit works with local, state and federal partners. The office's airport prosecutions have included contractors charged with grand larceny, burglary and criminal possession of stolen property over copper wire taken from a JFK work site, apprehended together with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. That cooperation across agencies is why the first question in any airport case is who will actually prosecute it.
Guns at the checkpoint and the home-or-business limit.
A traveler who brings a firearm lawfully owned in another state into a Queens airport can face New York weapons charges. Criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree under Penal Law 265.03 is a class C violent felony that includes possessing any loaded firearm, and the subdivision covering that conduct does not apply when the possession takes place in the person's home or place of business. An airport terminal is neither of those places, so the exception that protects a New Yorker at home offers nothing to a visitor at a gate. Penal Law 70.02 sets a class C violent felony range of 3.5 to 15 years, and lesser charges include 265.01-b, a class E felony, and 265.01, a class A misdemeanor.
Federal charges under 49 USC 46505 and 21 USC 952.
Certain airport conduct is a federal crime from the start. Under 49 U.S.C. 46505(b), having a concealed dangerous weapon that would be accessible in flight while on or attempting to board an aircraft, or placing or attempting to place a loaded firearm on an aircraft, is punishable by up to 10 years. Drug cases arriving from abroad fall under 21 U.S.C. 952(a), which makes it unlawful to import schedule I or II controlled substances, with penalties supplied by 21 U.S.C. 960, where quantity tiers such as 1 kilogram or more of heroin or 5 kilograms or more of cocaine trigger the highest penalty tier. Those cases are prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
