NYC NOW - August 11, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

A federal judge in Manhattan has officially agreed to hear arguments about taking control of Rikers Island jails away from Mayor Eric Adams and his correction department and giving it to the federal government. Plus, hip hop history is all over New York City. WNYC’s Precious Fondren shares where to look.

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre for WNYC. We begin in Manhattan, where a judge is moving forward with arguments over whether the federal government should take over New York City's troubled jail complex on Rikers Island. Judge Loris-Wain says she's not convinced that Adams administration is, quote, willing and able to make the necessary changes to keep incarcerated people safe. Monitors overseeing the jails say the efforts so far by the Department of Correction, constitutes little more than window dressing. City officials argue they inherited a jail

at the apex of a crisis and have made considerable progress, but the judge wasn't persuaded. WNYC's Matt Katz talked with my colleague Michael Hill about what all this means. That conversation after the break. A possible federal takeover of the city jail system would be an extraordinary step as we know it.

Would you give us a sense of how we got here? Yeah, I would describe it as a steady drip of bad news out of the jails over the last couple of years and then just a waterfall of developments over the last few weeks. The death rate at the city jails last year was the highest it's been in 25 years, 19 detainees died. That was coupled with a huge trove of recent news stories and government reports detailing substandard medical care, rampant violence, huge staff absenteeism that led to unmanned posts and units, extensive fentanyl use, correction officers failing to provide care or security to detainees and decrepit physical conditions, you know, doors

that don't lock, knives fashioned out of broken plexiclass used in stabbings every day. So that all brought about calls for a federal takeover with some elected officials coming out for it, like the city comptroller and public advocate and certain city council members and public defenders from the legal aid society. And then most impactfully, just in the last few weeks, the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan and a federal monitor who oversees Rikers also, they also signaled the need to move toward a takeover. Matt, you reported last year that the judge involved here had rejected calls for a federal takeover. Did she explain what changed her mind? U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor-S. court, yes, she said that the Adams administration plan to

fix Rikers has basically failed. Last year, she gave the city time to implement its so-called action plan to address Rikers. And while she acknowledged some improvements here and there, she said the pace of reform was unacceptable. The judges involved here because of a 2015 agreement between the Legal Aid Society, U.S. Attorney's Office and the city to address violence, particularly officers' use of force. A federal monitor was installed to oversee improvements and make reports to the court about the improvements.

The monitor until recently worked cooperatively with the city to try to help them make change. But what really happened is the monitor saying the city, this is what happened in the last few weeks, the monitor saying the city had essentially started thumbing its nose at federal oversight. The monitor is accusing the correction department of providing false information, failing to provide accurate details about violent incidents, including deaths. A detainee recently died of a skull fracture and correction officials first attributed the death to a preexisting heart condition. And the monitor said just this week, they visited the jails and there was so much open drug use without officers doing anything about it that one member of their monitoring team who's pregnant had to walk away because of the fumes.

The monitor also described detainees getting gang assaulted in recent weeks and officers standing by doing nothing. So essentially the monitor has just lost total faith in correction commissioner Lewis Molina. And once that happened, the domino's faith. The U.S. Attorney said the correction department should be held in contempt of court, and the judge agreed to hear arguments about a takeover. She said that the urgency of the danger facing those incarcerated in the jails at Rikers cannot be overstated. So the judge is hearing arguments about a takeover, but when would a takeover actually happen? And what might that mean? It's going to take a while.

The arguments between the city, which opposes the takeover and the U.S. attorney and defense attorneys, which favor it, will go back and forth until early next year. so we won't get a decision until at least then. If the judge then orders a takeover, a person known as a federal receiver would be put in charge of the jails, and that person could make hiring and firing decisions, scrap contracts and work rules, and really try to change the culture of the correction department. This is a really, really rare thing.

Hernandez Stroud from the Brennan Center for Justice. He says local jail and prison authorities have only had their power stripped away 12 times in the history of the U.S. and nothing has involved anything as big as the New York City Correction Department. But the judge appeared to give the city one last chance. She wants the city to start working with the monitor to demand transformative change from its workforce. She said she'll be watching. New Yorkers will be watching.

The press will be watching and quote, the loved ones of those who live and work in the jails will be watching in justifiable expectation as well as in hope. Man, it seems as if the debate over the federal takeover already has become a political issue in the city. How is this all playing out politically? Well, if it were to happen, it would be quite a rebuke to Mayor Garik Adams and his administration. So he adamantly opposes this. Commissioner Molina said his team has reduced some violence in jails over the last year

and that it's unfair to compare violence now to 2016, say, or 2015, because bail reform has meant a concentration of violent offenders at Rikers. So that's their defense. And the correction officer's union is also the other major entity like the city that opposes this takeover. And that makes sense because their power and worker protections could really be threatened by a federal receiver. And in recent days, we've then seen political support for the union and the city coming out more vocally against federal receivership. So centrist, Democrat and Republican council members visited Rikers and declared it essentially a great facility. Council member Vicki Palladino posted pictures of herself playing ping pong with a detainee and

said progressives were lying about how bad it is. But in court yesterday, Deputy Federal Monitor Anna Friedberg, she cited statistics from what was going on at Rikers beyond the ping pong tables on that very day that the council member was visiting. She made the point that the correction Department is obscuring the reality for political purposes. So she said that on that very day that council members had their tour and played ping pong with detainees, there were 29 uses of force by officers, four stabbings, 12 detainee fights, seven fires were set, and there were 10 possible suicide attempts plus multiple seizures of cocaine and fentanyl and sharp objects. And she said that's just one snapshot of life at Rikers right now that makes it continually

dangerous for detainees and staff. That's WNYC's Matt Katz talking with my colleague Michael Hill. There's no argument that hip-hop has made a major cultural impact on New York City. But one New Yorker is working to make that impact, geographic. WNYC reporter Precious Fondren has more on a push to designate hip-hop landmarks across the Big Apple. When you go to New Orleans, you know you're in the birthplace of jazz. Same goes for when you visit Nashville, where country music reigns supreme. Leroy McCarthy wants the same for New York.

Being a broken kid and knowing where rappers are from, where hip-hop storylines are originated from, the clubs, the streets. I pretty much put that knowledge together to honor landmark. for hip-hop. McCarthy is a location manager for television shows and films like Summer of Sam and He Got Game. He's also the man behind getting many street signs co-named after prominent figures in hip-hop. Thanks to him, the corner of St. James Place and Fulton Street in Brooklyn, is named after the notorious B.I.G.

And on the Lower East Side, the corner of Ludlow in Riventon is named after the Beastie Voice. If it were up to him, the entire city would be one big shrine to hip-hop and its impact. Well, I think it's about time. The powers that be, from the government's offices to various different entities, they could have done more and embraced hip-hop. As the city where the music genre and cultural movement originated, McCarthy says there

are many streets, buildings, and sites that are significant to hip-hop. I met McCarthy on Christopher Notorious B.I.G. Wallace Way. Here, there are large-scale paintings of the rapper and his lyrics on various. buildings like Key Food. That's where Biggie worked before becoming an internationally known artist. This is the same as historical music, pop culture, landmarks such as Abbey Road in England for the Beatles or Graceland in Tennessee for Elvis. This corner here where Biggie grew up is one of those places. A couple days later, we met on the Lower East Side at Beastie Boy Square. The Beastie Boy Square. The Beastie Boy shot the cover for their second album, Paul's Boutique, in the area.

They decorated to make it look as if it was Paul's Boutique, and that album cover was very pivotal. It took almost a decade to get the square renamed after the iconic trio. In September, there will finally be a dedication ceremony to unveil the new street sign. McCarthy says he's now working to get August designated as Hip Hop Recognition Month across the country. That's WNYC reporter, precious fondre. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Shout out to our production team. It includes Sean Boutage, Ave Carrillo, Audrey Cooper,

Leora Noam Cravitz, Jared Marcel, and Wayne Schulmeister, with help from the entire WNYC newsroom. Our show art was designed by the folks at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrato. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back Monday.