NYC NOW - August 27, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

A new report from the Board of Correction reveals that a third of medical care requests for Rikers Island detainees were ignored last year. Meanwhile, Queens District Attorney says 37-year-old Saul Colon has been charged with stealing a $50,000 Torah from a Far Rockaway yeshiva. Plus, New York City is intensifying efforts to curb public drinking. WNYC reporters Jaclyn Jeffrey Wilensky and Bahar Ostadan analyzed the data and share their findings. Finally, WNYC’s Ryan Kailath reports on a New Yorker who built a museum dedicated to old signs.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Sean Carlson. A third of requests for medical care for detainees at Rikers Island were disregarded last year. The findings come in a new report from a governmental oversight body, the Board of Correction. WNYC's MacCats reports. Tens of thousands of requests for medical care allegedly went unanswered. And the Board of Correction found that most sick calls that were accepted didn't result in people in custody being escorted to the clinic within 24 hours, even though city rules require detainees get access to care

within a day. The board recommended that the Department of Correction and Correctional Health Services document medical requests electronically and track reasons why detainees are not seen by clinicians. Both agencies rejected the board's findings, saying its methodology was flawed. Last week, a detainee at Rikers died after falling ill at a jail for sick people in custody. The Queens District Attorney He says a man is in custody and charged with stealing a pricey Torah from a yeshiva in Queens a few months ago. 37-year-old Saul Cologne of flushing was reigned Monday after prosecutors say he and another man stole a locked safe from a far-rockaway yeshiva in May that contained the scroll inside. The other man has not been apprehended. The DA says the NYPD found the safe in a wooded area in Queens this month with the Torah still in it and apparently damaged by water.

According to the criminal complaint, the Torah is valued at $50,000. Officials say the scroll has been returned to the family that originally donated it to the yeshiva. An attorney for Cologne did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Up next, the city has been cracking down on people drinking alcoholic beverages out in public, that story, and more after the break. New Yorkers across the city enjoying cold beers and nutcrackers out in public this summer have been getting hit with 20. $25 fines. It's the city's latest crackdown on low-level crimes, in this case issuing public drinking tickets. My colleague, Jene Pierre, spoke with W&MIC reporters Jacqueline Jeffrey Wulenski and Baha Oostodon, who analyzed the data. So public drinking has been illegal in New York City for decades,

right? But Jacqueline, your reporting shows a recent uptick in tickets. How many are we talking here? Absolutely. So what we're seeing is that tickets are actually up overall since COVID started. you know, pre-pandemic 2019, we were seeing like between two to three thousand tickets per month in the warm months and the core drinking outside months. Then during the first years of the pandemic, we saw very little enforcement. In fact, you could buy cocktails to drink in the street. But now it's actually back with a vengeance. We're seeing that the number of monthly tickets has more than doubled in the warm months. Police wrote about 7,000 tickets for public drinking just this past June. Wow.

Bahar, I'm wondering why the sudden interest in enforcing public drinking laws? Well, this is in line with Adams' focus on enforcing low-level crimes, not just public drinking, but public urination, littering, noise complaints, jumping the turnstiles. Of course, like you said, Jeney drinking in New York City has been illegal for decades, but we've seen a really stark difference in how the Adams administration has police these crimes compared to Blasio. In 2016, the city council introduced a package of bills called the Criminal Justice Reform Act. The idea was to decriminalize some of these crimes like public drinking and make it so that police would give out civil tickets rather than criminal summonses or arresting people. Of course, the sort of pattern of the tickets being decreased have reversed under Adams. His argument falls in line with what critics call broken windows policing. him and sort of top NYPD officials now say these sorts of low-level crimes contribute to more serious crimes and disorder across the city.

But when I spoke to people on Coney Island Beach last week, they said, this is just another way for the city to make money. Okay, so I'm not saying I was, but if I was at the beach last week and drinking a nutcracker, how much would I be fine? And what do I do if I get a ticket? If in the off chance you received a ticket for public drinking, it would be a $25 ticket. If you don't want to go to court, you can plead guilty by mail. The form for that is at n.Y courts.gov. Or if you're feeling spicy, you can challenge the ticket at the Office of Administrative Hearings. And I'm sure a bunch of New Yorkers are feeling spicy.

So, okay, let's talk about where these tickets are being issued. Is it across the city, Jacqueline? So it's a little tricky to know 100% for sure just because of how the tickets are coded in the data. So instead of writing like an address, COP will write something like a corner of blank and blank or like Coney Island Boardwalk, which doesn't always show up neatly on our mapping software. That said, we do see some pretty interesting patterns even, you know, without perfect data. So in addition to seeing, you know, some tickets being written along the beach in Coney Island, we're also seeing lots of tickets along Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. a lot in Washington Square Park and along St. Nicholas Avenue in Upper Manhattan and crucially, very few tickets in Central Park and Prospect Park. What's been the response to those disparities?

So we haven't gotten to dig into it yet to the extent that we'd like to, but something that Bahaar and I are going to be looking at is whether certain neighborhoods or holidays or cultural festivals rack up more tickets than others. I mean, we already saw a few just immediately, just for a few examples, Pride, Juve, and not very surprisingly Santa Khan. That's my colleague, Janae P.R, with WNYC reporters, Jacqueline Jeffrey Wollenski and Baha Ostenon. You can see more of the reporting at our news website, Gothamist. Have you ever noticed a cool old sign in your neighborhood, maybe above a laundromat or a bodega,

something you pass all the time and maybe don't think about much, until maybe one day it's gone and the business closes. And after the store becomes a Popeye's or a cricket wireless, you think, man, I miss that old sign. Well, if you are one of those people, you're in luck because as WMIC's Ryan Kailoth reports, one New Yorker loves those signs so much he built a museum to put them in. What's going on? I'm retiring and we're taking the sign down today, very bittersweet.

Ralph DeSerbo's father opened JNR television and air conditioning in Park Slope in 1953. 74 years later, Ralph is closing up shop. He's been working behind the counter since he was 12. We've become an institution. We have a lot of old people come in and rely on us that change their batteries and tell them what vacuum bag they need and the small stuff, you know. But the younger crowd, you know, they'll survive,

but it's tougher on the older crowd, and that's where it hurts the most. DeSERBA wasn't surprised that when he announced his closing, people wanted his store's sign. Faded pastel on big block letters, cracked acrylic. He thought about replacing it once. And he was like, no, no, don't do it. That's the charm of the...

store is the sign. They love it, you know, so we left it. It looks kind of old and beat up, but... Yeah, but in a great way. In a good way, yes. Yes. That's when he heard from David Barnett. I would guess that the smaller piece up top was, like, factory produced, but this full top... He's what you might call a signage enthusiast. Such a cool storefront. He's got strong opinions about metal trim designs, case construction, knows all the giants of the industry. There are some very high-profile ones, silver essence, Ninete, Neon, Art Craft Strauss, like big name companies, but most signs like this were probably just made by like a local maker.

I had another place that wanted it. You know, it was a production company, but from what I understand, it was going to just be stored in a warehouse until they needed to use it. Like a film production or something. Exactly. And my sisters and I and my mother all voted on it. And, you know, we decided that we'd prefer to go to the museum. That is, the New York Sign Museum.

It's a nonprofit Barnett formed a few years ago. For the dozens of signs like this he rescues and stores in a warehouse in East New York, like from Essex Card Shop on the Lower East Side. Queen, the old Italian restaurant in Brooklyn Heights, a big oval ESO gas sign. The museum is appointment only, given that it's also his workshop. Barnett's day job is Noble Signs, the sign-making studio he co-founded in 2013. Specializing in storefront signage, specifically. Classic fabrication and design inspired mostly by vernacular styles from New York City.

Most people don't pay much attention to their neighborhood science, he says. They're just background texture. But then you start to see the neighborhoods changing, and you realize that that texture has like a bigger role than maybe you imagined before. Early on, Barnett scoured libraries for ancient tomes of signage lore, learning the old ways of material construction, painting technique, brush lettering, and glass gilding. He says the more old signs he rescues,

the better his new signs get. You can design something that looks classic, but if you don't make it the classic way, it might have like an Erzatz feeling, right? I think we've learned a lot from collecting old signs about the way signs were made. Barnett's company does business all around the city. They did the sign for the new Veselka location in Williamsburg, Diller Pickles on the Lower East Side.

Shoe repairs, pharmacies, their work is everywhere. In fact, if you start to pay attention and you notice a cool old sign in your neighborhood, there's a chance it's a cool new sign David Barnett made by hand. Maybe even good enough to hang in his museum one day. That's W&M.C.'s Ryan Kailoff. Before we go, just a reminder for New Yorkers that late-night Uptown two train service will be suspended. between 149th Street in the Bronx and 135th Street in Manhattan. That's going to be from 9.30 at night until 5 in the morning, effective Monday night and going through Friday.

And four trains will be running express from Barclay Center to Utica Avenue stopping at Franklin Avenue overnight. And this weekend, two trains won't be running at all between 149th Street in the Bronx and 96th Street in Manhattan, starting Friday night through Monday at 5 in the morning. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day. I'm Sean Carlson. We'll be back tomorrow.