NYC NOW - August 21, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Longtime New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell has died at the age of 87. Plus, WNYC’s Liam Quigley reports a vacant lot in the Bronx that was supposed to become home to a new charter school is now a hotspot for illegal dumping. And finally, WNYC’s Michael Hill and Samantha Max discuss a New York City law meant to keep guns away from dangerous people. However, gun experts say city officials rarely use the law.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City. From WMYC, I'm Jenea. Longtime New Jersey Representative Bill Pasqurell has died at the age of 87. Pascal, a Democrat, was in his 14th term representing the area around Patterson. He was a former public school teacher, state assemblyman, and mayor of Patterson. His family did not disclose the cause of death. He was hospitalized with a respiratory illness last month. Pescaro was in the midst of a re-election bid.

Democratic Party leaders will now have to replace him on the ballot. A vacant lot in the Bronx, once slated to house a new charter school, has become a hotspot for illegal dumping and a bottomless buffet for rats. WMYC's Liam Quigley has more. A rotten stench lingers over a whole stretch of Gerard Avenue just blocks from Yankee Stadium. The source of the odor is piles of trash bags and other debris in an overgrown, undeveloped lot. There's rotting food, a stroller, a broken fan, and buckets of rancid liquids. It's all spilling onto the sidewalk.

Rats scurry around seemingly unconcerned by disgusted neighbors like Sandra Lake. Can I ask you about it? Okay. Every time we call 3-1-1, I know for me, I give them the details. and they said, oh, it's going to take so-and-so amount of time because we have to find the owner. The health department confirmed it's issued more than a dozen fines for conditions on the lot since 2021, totaling over $4,000.

A sanitation department spokesperson says workers frequently have to remove garbage from the site. It hauled away trash just last week. It's disgusting. It's inhumane. Ashley Addison lives next door. and says she avoids walking near the lot. I don't even know what's in here. You're just to walk by to the stench. It's been like this for four years.

Plans to build a charter school at the site fell through during the pandemic. The developer behind the project went bankrupt and a lawsuit slowed down the sale of the property. The current owner, the Vaja Group, bought the lot in June. Neighbors want them to install a fence. Why is not fenced in? That's the biggest problem.

If you fenced it in, then no one can throw the garbage. The rats are what nearby building super Miguel Mieves is most concerned about. Sometimes they're coming running out of the bag. Every day's the same. Every day's the same. You see them all running up to 6.6.30, they don't care who's around. They run over your feet. Cleaning up sites like this is key to Mayor Eric Adams' war on rats.

Sanitation officials say their workers clean around 3,000 vacant lots every year. They're also cracking down on illegal documents. dumping, which carries a minimum fine of $4,000. I reached the lot's new owner, and they said they'd take care of it before hanging up. But after four years smelling rancid trash, residents aren't holding their breath. That's WMYC's Liam Quigley. New York City has a law to keep guns away from dangerous people, but safety experts say city officials rarely put the law to use.

More on that after the break. New York State has a law on the books that's designed to make it harder for certain people to get guns, like individuals experiencing extreme mental illness or people with a track record of domestic violence. But WNYC's Samantha Max has found that courts in New York City rarely put these laws to use. She spoke with my colleague Michael Hill. Sam, first tell us, what laws are we talking about here? So this goes back to 2019. It's a law that created something called an extreme risk protection order. You might have heard of this more commonly as like a red flag law.

And the idea is that it bars people from having guns or buying them if they might pose a threat. These laws were then expanded in 2022, if you remember, there was that mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo. And lawmakers then made it that in addition to family members and romantic partners, doctors and mental health providers could also apply for these orders if they thought that their patient was maybe a risk. And the law also states now that police and prosecutors are required to apply for these orders if they get credible information that someone poses a threat. So they're often used for people who are accused of domestic violence or people who are experiencing a mental health crisis. And I should note that this isn't a criminal charge. It's a civil order that

prevents someone from having a gun. And this also comes at a time when, according to NYPD data, we know that many more people are applying for gun licenses and permits to carry guns in New York City than they were before because of some changes at the Supreme Court. You found that New York City courts have issued about 220 of these orders in the last five years. That's out of more than 20,000 statewide. Why is it? So part of the reason is because these orders are specifically meant to take guns away from people who already have a legal gun, or who are trying to buy a gun legally. And it's infamously difficult to get a legal gun if you live in New York City. The NYPD didn't respond to a request for comments,

so we only know so much about what their strategy is here. But some local district attorneys say that they do train their prosecutors on when to apply for these orders and sometimes use them, but they have other tools that they use more often, specifically for people who have unlawful guns, like maybe a search warrant where they can go into someone's house and take their guns away if they think they're committing a crime. The Staten Island District Attorney's Office actually uses these the most, and that's partially because they have a prosecutor who is specifically assigned to handling these types of orders.

But the experts that I talked to and some law enforcement told me that, you know, to really use these orders effectively, you need education, you need all the different law enforcement agencies to be coordinated. needed and you need resources so that you can have enough staff making sure that they're assessing when one of these orders is needed and then going through all the paperwork to make them happen. Suffolk County on Long Island leads the state in these orders. They've issued thousands of them. What's happening differently there than other places? So officials on Suffolk County have made these orders a priority, especially in the last couple of years since the laws have expanded. They've issued more than 6,000 temporary or final orders of protection over the years.

I spoke with Suffolk County Chief Deputy Sheriff Chris Brockmeier, and he runs the division that serves these orders and searches for guns to confiscate. He compared extreme risk protection orders to arresting someone for drunk driving. You know, he said it's illegal proceeding. It can cause people anxiety, challenges in the court system, but they can also prevent a deadly outcome. We've seen how lives have been destroyed in those scenarios. I look at this scenario very similarly. You know, the potential of harm if we don't do anything is just as great. He said that also in Suffolk County, there's a lot of collaboration between police, prosecutors, judges, his sheriff's office,

and that, you know, they have training in place and a streamlined process to make sure that these orders are happening as efficiently as possible. Sam, are there any recent local cases? that could have benefited from one of these orders? You know, it's hard to say since the circumstances of these types of cases are often really private. And we typically don't hear about tragedies that don't happen. But, of course, there are the shootings that do happen that kind of bring these laws back into the public conversation. One that I'm thinking of is last month there was a shooting on the Upper East Side between two women who were engaged in a years-long custody battle. had been called multiple times in that case, but it's unclear if the police knew that the shooter had

guns or if they had even thought about applying for one of these extreme risk protection orders. I spoke with some friends and domestic violence advocates who told me that they think that police should have, you know, been thinking more about what was at risk and trying to prevent this shooting, especially in a case where you have a really contentious custody battle. But at the end of the day, we'll kind of have to stay tuned to. see if New York City starts using these more, especially as the gun laws continue to change and the number of people trying to get guns in New York City changes. That's WMYC's Samantha Max talking with my colleague Michael Hill.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.