NYC NOW - April 24, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Tick season is back, and because of a new disease, health officials are urging New Yorkers to update how they examine themselves for the eight-legged critters. Plus, New York City's public school teachers have been working on an expired contract since last year. Now, talks with City Hall appear to be heating up. And finally, hundreds of drunken-driving cases involving Hispanic drivers in Westchester County are getting a second look. WNYC’S Michael will discuss what went wrong in those cases with ProPublica reporter Brett Murphy.

Good evening and welcome to NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. Health officials say the spring has ushered in a vigorous tick season. And because of a new disease, outdoorsy New Yorkers are urged to update how they examine themselves for the eight-legged critters. A tick-borne illness called Powassan virus has been on the rise in recent years. Jennifer White directs the state's vector-borne disease unit. She says the virus can be transmitted in as little, as 15 minutes. So we really are trying to refresh our educational messaging to remind folks that

it's very important to be vigilant about checking your body for ticks while you're still outside. Previous guidance had recommended checking for ticks once daily after a hike or yard work. That's good enough to prevent Lyme disease, the most common tick-borne illness in New York. Cases of Powassin are rare relative to Lyme disease but can cause life-threatening brain inflammation. New York City's public school teachers have been working on an expired contract since last year. Now, talks with City Hall appear to be heating up. WNYC's Elizabeth Kim has the details. Contract talks are typically all about the money. But Michael Mulgrew, who heads the United Federation of Teachers, says members want raises and changes in educational policy.

What we have seen more than anything else, the low morale is absolutely tied to all of the stuff that people are being asked to do that has nothing to do with educating children. According to the union, that stuff includes excessive testing, record keeping, and trainings, they say, are unrelated to teaching students. The teachers union is one of the biggest and most powerful labor groups that is yet to reach a deal with the city. Members say they will stage rallies for a contract in front of city schools all this week. Stick around. There's more after the break. Hundreds of drunken driving cases involving Hispanic drivers in Westchester County are getting a second look.

Officials are concerned that the evidence collected by New York State Troopers might have been tainted by dubious English to Spanish translations. Brett Murphy is a reporter for ProPublica. He talked with my colleague Michael Hill about what went wrong with many of these cases. Your report finds that for years when state troopers stopped Spanish-speaking drivers' forces. suspected drunken driving, they gave them mistranslated information. Tell us about that and how it affected the evidence. Right. So from at least 2014 through 2018, state troopers in Westchester were pulling over Spanish-speaking drivers, and when those drivers didn't want to take a breathalyzer or another chemical test for DWI suspicion, the troopers would give them a

piece of paper that read something to the effect of if you refuse this test, if you don't want to take this test, we will punish you as being guilty. That is dramatically different than what these warnings are supposed to read. If you get pulled over, if anyone else gets pulled over, the police officer is supposed to read you a warning that says something to the effect of this can be used as evidence against you, this being your refusal to take the test. But because that this mistranslation was so different for Spanish-speaking drivers versus what it was supposed to be, it led to confusion. And a lot of legal experts told us that it amounted to kind of coercive language. So there were this large number of cases we don't know how many yet that may have been affected by this tainted evidence.

You reported that Westchester prosecutors were made aware of the translation issue years ago. why has it taken so long to get these cases reviewed, and how many DWI cases might we be talking about here? Yeah, that's a really good question. So they first learned about it in 2018, and I should say, too, this was a prior administration to Mimi Roka's current administration. She took office in 2021. But senior prosecutors there, including one who is still currently in the office, first found out about it in 2018. from the records and from my reporting, it doesn't look like any steps were taken after she learned about the issue. A year later, it came up in another case.

Again, it doesn't look like any internal steps were taken at the DA's office at that time in 2019. This was on a separate case. Fast forward to 2021. It came up a third time in another case, and this time legal aid reached out to the DA's office, the Conviction Review Unit, and said, hey, this is a problem.

We are going to the state police and we're asking them for information about other cases that may have been affected. We've put in a records request. We would like you guys to take a look at it as well. At that point, the CRU, the Conviction Review Unit at the Westchester DA's office, started to field information about those hundreds of cases. And right now, they're going through the paper. It's been a year and a half or so since that process started. And some of the lawyers, the critics have said it's just taken too long. It's taken too long since 2018 when they first learned about it, and it's taken too long since

2021 since they first started asking for these records. Brett, is there any indication these reviews will lead to convictions being overturned or people being let out of prison? A couple days before we published our story, the DA's office told me just that. They said convictions may be overturned, may be vacated, is on the table. They are discussing that as an option for some of these cases that they're reviewing. In their review so far, I think they've found about five cases. I don't know if that includes or if that's in addition to the three that I already found.

And like I said, they're still pouring through hundreds more. What are the state police saying about this? And is there any indication that this problem reaches beyond Westchester? So the state police said, listen, this is not an official state police translation. This is not an official document. We don't know where it came from. They couldn't tell me where it came from when it originated, when it first was. started being used, and they said they believed it was only in Westchester and that these

mistranslated documents are no longer in circulation. That's ProPublica reporter Brett Murphy, talking with my colleague, Michael Hill. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.