NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: Mamdani Walks Back NYPD Criticisms, Gov. Hochul Open to Charging Teens as Adults, Changes to Chinatown’s Canal Street, and Surveillance Tech Could Identify Your Walk

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is walking back criticisms he leveled at the NYPD in 2020 during the George Floyd protests. Plus, Gov. Hochul says she’s open to charging more teenagers as adults following an uptick in youth defendants committing more serious crimes. Also, officials say they're installing barriers and sand-filled barrels in front of pedestrian crossings at Canal Street and Bowery. And finally, the way you walk may soon be enough to reveal your identity through gait recognition technology.

Zeramam Dani walks back his criticisms of the NYPD. Governor Hockel is open to charging more teens as adults. Changes to Chinatown's Canal Street. And surveillance tech could soon identify your walk. From WMYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Junae Piaire. Democratic mayor nominee Zeramamemdani is walking back criticisms he directed at the NYPD back in 2020

during the George Floyd protests. Mumdani was asked about his old social media posts during an interview on the Brian Lera show. But do you still believe the NYPD is racist, anti-queer, and a major threat to public safety? No, I do not. And I've made clear over the course of this campaign that the NYPD and police officers in general are critical partners in creating public safety. His rivals in the mayor's race, Andrew Cuomo and the incumbent, Mayor Eric Adams, have pointed to his comments on policing following last week's mass shooting in a mid-town. office building. They argue Mamdani's prior remarks show he could not maintain the trust of the NYPD. Governor Kathy Hochle is open to charging more teenagers as adults, saying recent changes to criminal

justice laws may do too much to favor defendants over victims. Hokel says the shift is worth exploring when state lawmakers reconvene in January. The legislative session is the time to do that, and we'll certainly entertain conversations on every topic related to criminal justice. Some prosecutors are calling for changes to the age of criminal responsibility, following an uptick in youth defendants committing more serious crimes. That comes after a 2017 law required 16 and 17-year-olds to be treated as children for most criminal acts. Hockel has also been touting changes that loosen requirements for sharing evidence before a criminal trial. Those changes went into effect on Thursday. Speaking of changes, New York City is making big changes to Canal Street in Chinatown.

Last month, a reckless driver killed two people after speeding off the Manhattan Bridge. Now, officials say they're installing barriers and sand-filled barrels in front of pedestrian crossings at Canal Street and Bowery. That's where the alleged drunk driver crashed. Police say they were traveling at over 100 miles per hour. Officials say crews will reduce the width of some of the lanes coming off the bridge over the next few weeks. The city will also reduce the speed limit from 35 to 20 miles per hour on vehicles coming off the Manhattan-bound side of the bridge that runs to Canal Street. Surveillance technology could soon identify you by the way you walk, and a local lawmaker is fighting to protect that information. More on that after the

break. The way you walk may soon be enough to reveal your identity. That's because of gate recognition technology, a developing field in surveillance. And now, a New York City Council member wants the city to start protecting data that may be collected about the way people walk. WMYC's Ben Fewer Heard has been reporting on this. Okay, Ben, so how does Gate Recognition Technology actually work? So I spoke to Jordan Herod. She's a researcher at MIT in Harvard, and she sort of broke down how it worked for us. You need other information, like an existing video of that person walking. And someone could then create a sort of gate profile of that person, which would be used to compare it with something like CCTV video and sort of match the way a person walks to it. And she compared it to something like matching a fingerprint.

It's similar to like, you know, fingerprint stuff. You still need to have the fingerprint on record to match it. But at least for that, chances are you're not going to be able to capture someone's fingerprint on the security camera. And she added that as of now, the technology will likely have actually. accuracy issues, but she also noted that something like facial recognition also had serious accuracy problems when it first started. Yeah, you're right. Who's using this technology right now, Ben? So the experts we spoke to, including someone at Yale and someone with the New York Civil Liberties Union, say gate recognition is being developed by private companies, like people in the security space who work with what's called a biometrics. And the idea is that biometrics actually goes beyond traditional.

identifiers that might come to mind, like a person's fingerprint or footprint, it now includes what they call behavioral biometrics. So according to these experts that we spoke to, they're developing these programs to identify someone based on the behaviors, something like the way a person walks. And law enforcement has certainly used the way a person walks to identify them. There was a pretty notable case a few years ago where an FBI agent identified someone wanted for robbing casinos in Las Vegas. And the FBI agent, wrote in a charging complaint that he identified the person because of his distinctive gate. Wow, that's really interesting. So, Ben, what can you tell us about this bill that's supposed

to protect New Yorkers from this gate recognition technology? So the bill was introduced by Councilmember Jen Gutierrez last month, and they were hoping it'll be debated before the end of the year. And if it's passed, what it would do is it would expand what the city considers identifying and private information to include a number of new things, including gate patterns. So if it passes, it would essentially create some oversight and how city agencies and their contractors can collect and share that information. In many instances, agencies would need written permission from their privacy officer to share that information, but there are a number of exemptions, including any time police are investigating or crime. That's WMYC's Benfewaard.

Before we go, a moment to remember the man who helped bring salsa and Latin jazz to the world by way of New York City. Band leader, composer, and pianist Eddie Palmeri died Thursday at his home in Hackensack, New Jersey. He was 88. Palmerie was the first Latino to win a Grammy for his work. He was born in Spanish Harlem to Puerto Rican parents in 1936 and came of age during the Latin music explosion in New York City. Palmeri helped push Latin music and expansive new directions across scores of collaborations with big names like Laindia and Tito Puente. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.