Exclusive | NYC sheriff forces shops to shutter despite court finding no illegal weed sold: How will I feed my family?

Scores of city bodegas and tobacco shops targeted in pot raids have been ordered to remain closed for a year — despite not even selling cannabis, according to court hearings, records and industry players.The nonsensical move is the result of a small provision in the state law that kicked off Operation Padlock To Protect, which aims to close illegal pot shops — and also granted the city’s sheriff the final call to determine which raided stores can stay open and which must remain closed for up to a year.Some of the raided shops’ lawyers call the measure “authoritarian” and say it makes Sheriff Anthony Miranda, already mired in scandals and investigations, an unelected “de-facto judge” because he can arbitrarily overrule a city administrative court.“What’s the point of us going to these hearings?” said lawyer Nadia Kahnauth, who has represented 10 targeted stores at administrative-court hearings where her clients won recommendations to reopen — only to have the decisions overruled by the sheriff. A Brooklyn tobacco store on Fulton Street was ordered to remain padlocked for up to a year despite an administrative-court hearing determining that the store was not selling cannabis at all. “A few days or a month we could manage,” said Abdo Al Saidi, who has owned the Bed-Stuy store for a decade and a half.“But a year?” The loss of his small business may force him to go on welfare, he told The Post. “How will I feed my family?” Al Saidi said.Even big boosters of Operation Padlock To Protect agree that this part of the law gives the sheriff far too much discretion and power.“I think that [state] law has to be changed,” said city councilmember Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan), who has made rooting out illicit smoke shops an almost personal crusade. While largely supportive of the popular effort, she has tracked the rollout of Operation Padlock closely as the chair of the council’s oversight committee and has previously asked for better ...