NYC NOW - August 9, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is rolling out a broad response to public safety and quality of life concerns on East 14th Street in Manhattan. Plus, thousands of New York state families are eligible for free money for summer groceries. And finally, WNYC’s Tiffany Hanssen talks with Councilmember Sandy Nurse about allegations of sexual abuse on Rikers Island.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jenae P. I walk here, I see it, and we have felt for a few years now the pain of living in a block that you don't want to walk down to. That feels unsafe. That feels dirty. That feels out of control. City leaders are rolling out a broad response to public safety and quality of life concerns on East 14th Street in Manhattan. That's following complaints from residents and elected officials.

like Councilmember Keith Powers about issues including public drug use, crime, and homelessness. The NYPD says it plans to set up a mobile hub between First Avenue and Avenue A, while sanitation and human services workers step up their presence in the area. Health and homeless services workers will also be deployed to the corridor. Adam says it's not enough that overall crime is declining citywide compared to last year. People must feel safe, and disorder is something that you cannot go. go to someone and give them a stat of how safe the city is if they feel unsafe. There have been two homicides in the ninth precinct so far this year.

Thousands of families across New York State are eligible for money to go towards summer groceries, as long as they act soon. The state is participating in the new federal summer EBT program. It offers families $120 in government assistance per kid to buy food when school is out. Governor Kathy Hockel says the state has already distributed funds for 1.5 million children. Here's the issue. There's still hundreds of thousands of kids who are eligible and their parents have not taken advantage of this. Families who receive SNAP benefits are automatically enrolled,

and anyone who qualifies for free or reduced school lunch is also eligible. For months, WMYC has been investigating allegations of sexual abuse on Rikers Island after more than 700 women claimed they were assaulted while in custody at the jail. So what's next? After the break, we'll talk with the New York City Council's chair of the Committee for Criminal Justice. Stick around for the conversation. WMYC has been investigating allegations of sexual abuse on Rikers Island. After more than 700 women sued the city of New York and said they were assaulted while in custody, the deluge of lawsuits were filed under a recent state law called the Adult Survivors Act,

which opened a one-year window to bring up. bring sexual assault cases in civil court, even if the statute of limitations had passed. WMYC's Tiffany Hansen talked with city council member Sandy Nurse, who chairs the council's criminal justice committee and is a vocal critic of conditions on Rikers Island. So let's start with what Mayor Adams has said. He says these allegations are from decades ago, but we know that at least 30 of these lawsuits allege sexual abuse during the last five years, a handful of them during his administration. This week, Adams said he can't say whether there's a culture of sexual abuse at Rikers Island.

So my question is, do you think he's taking the allegation seriously? Well, I would hope so, and I would hope that we see clear action coming from this administration regarding these allegations and a clear plan to make sure these are prevented in the future. The mayor did say that these are old cases, but, you know, we get reports pretty regularly. And, you know, they're supposed to do a semi-annual report to evaluate sexual abuse and sexual harassment allegations on a twice a year basis. So just last year and in April, we had a hearing where the report from July 22 to December 22 listed 132 allegations. But we have reports that show 682 grievances were filed with a sexual assault or sexual abuse allegation at Rikers in the last couple years.

So it is not true that sexual assault and an abuse isn't happening at Rikers. There are instances. And the question at hand is, what is the Department of Correction? What is the mayor doing to make sure that when instances happen, that, that they are reported on, they are investigated, there is accountability, and what are they doing to prevent sexual assault against women in our jails? And also to note that women who work at our city jails have also faced sexual assault. And in some instances, there was reporting around medical staff, also being people who were alleged to be sexually assaulting people in custody. It's a horrific situation. And I'm

not clear that there is action being taken on behalf of this administration to address the issue. Well, it's no secret that you and the mayor have been on opposite ends of this debate about Rikers. You have scrutinized his decisions to block a ban on solitary confinement to delay plans to close jails on the island. You talk about what the mayor should be doing to make the city safe for women to protect women from sexual abuse by jail staff. what steps should those be? Well, first and foremost, when this came out, one of the things that we did was we wrote a letter to the mayor with several of my other colleagues who are women saying that in the new jail plan, the borough-based jails to revert back to a lower amount of beds that were planning for for women.

The mayor had increased the number of beds for women. And our position is that planning to have more women in jail is simply bad policy. We should be looking at prevention and we should be looking at alternatives to incarceration. But more importantly, when we had a hearing, we asked, you know, what are the steps being taken? The Department of Corrections said they were auditing their grievance process, which is the process by which people can make complaints about things they are experiencing in our city jail. We've yet to hear what the outcomes of that are or what the recommendations will be. And it's a situation where sexual assault and sexual violence within our city jails is a horrific act. It is reprehensible.

They violate basic human rights and dignity. And when the staff of the city jails correctional officers sexually assault or harass anyone in custody, it is a egregious abuse of power. It undermines the sense of safety. It undermines our overall public safety because those, women return home. And if they are experiencing more harm, physical harm, sexual harm, sexual violence inside our city deals, are they going to actually be on a path to successfully reenter our communities,

or are they going to be more psychologically harmed than when they came in? And so I don't feel like we are seeing strong actions or strong communications from the mayor, simply saying, well, these are old cases completely. me excuses the fact that you do have complaints around sexual assault and sexual violence right now in our city jails. And we'd like to see some action on that. You mentioned that sexual assault came up during a hearing that you held on the jail's grievance process that happened earlier this spring. When WNYC first published its report on the lawsuits in March, you called for an oversight hearing. So I'm curious if you think the city council should hold another hearing specifically dedicated

to these allegations, 700 plus allegations? I certainly plan to hold more oversight hearings, and definitely I plan to continue to raise this question and raise what they're doing to address the systemic nature of this issue. I think what's interesting is in the one case that was in the most recent article related to a single correction officer, a woman who entered our city jails was not pregnant. She became pregnant during her time there. She had a miscarriage. And there was no action to find out, no proactive action to find out from the Department of Correction. What happened? How did this

happen? How did this occur? And so this is the kind of systemic issue and systemic failure that we continue to see. I would like to see in an oversight hearing from the Department of Corrections what has changed. What has changed since the period that these allegations have coming from to now where you have active complaints and grievances around sexual assault and violence. And they have refused to provide that information. So I intend to bring this up. And I hope that other stakeholders, other agencies and the courts, the district attorneys continue to take this up. Council member New Yorkers may know that various city, state, federal agencies have oversight of Rikers Island. Do you think that a more comprehensive investigation is in order,

there? Absolutely. 700 people who are coming forward and saying that they were repeatedly sexually assaulted and violated to me is a five alarm fire that we could be addressing. There was also a report that came out about juveniles in juvenile detention who have come and said that they were sexually violated. And again, we have active allegations and complaints around sexual violence. So I think that this is a extreme situation that requires as much attention as possible from our state government and from our federal government. We have a federal monitor. And, you know, there is currently a pending court decision by the judge to decide if the city of New York is capable of taking care of people when in custody. That's New York City Council member Sandy Nurse,

talking with WMYC's Tiffany Hanson. And we'll have a lot more. more on this Saturday morning when we drop a special episode of NYC Now. In it, we hear from several women who claim they were sexually assaulted while held at Rikers by one correction officer many knew as Champaign. Turns out the city had no record of an officer who went by that name. So we went looking for answers. Come back tomorrow to hear what we found. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Shout out to our production team. It includes Sean Boutage, Amber Bruce, Ave Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, Owen Kaplan, Lior Noam Kravitz, Jared Marcel, Jen Munson, and Wayne Schoemeister, with help from all of my wonderful colleagues in the WMYC Newsroom.

Our show art was designed by the people at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrato. I'm Jenae Pierre. Have a lovely weekend. See you on Monday.