NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: School Districts Prepare for Cell Phone Ban, State Comptroller Gets Challenger in Next Year’s Race, NYPD Commissioner Praises Recruitment, and Voices From East Harlem

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Nearly all New York schools are ready to prohibit cell phones this year. Also, longtime New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has a Democratic primary opponent. Plus, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the department was desperate for applicants six months ago. Last week, she swore in the largest class since 2016. And finally, we hear from New Yorkers in Manhattan's East Harlem neighborhood.

School districts prepare for statewide cell phone ban. State controller Tom DiNapoli gets a challenger in next year's race. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch praises recruitment and voices from East Harlem. From WNYC, this is NYC now. I'm Jean-Apierre. Nearly all New York schools are getting ready to prohibit cell phones this year. A new state law requires students to be separated from their cell phones from, quote, Bell to Bell. Governor Kathy Hokel says all but a handful of school districts have adopted the policies.

She says students should start preparing now. I'm telling parents, get ready for this. You should be weaning your young people, whether especially young children, but also learning our teenagers, and it's going to be a hard transition. A state website says fewer than 30 districts in charter schools have not filed required plans with the state. Some districts are directing kids to just keep their phones in their lockers. Other schools are using magnetic pouches. Classes start after Labor Day in most districts. The election for New York State Comptroller isn't until next year, but one challenger is already making his case.

WNYC's Jimmy Vilkine has more on the race, which so far includes longtime state controller Tom DeNapley and Drew Warshaw. The state controller oversees a pension fund with more than $280 billion. Drew Warshaw says he would use more of it to build affordable housing. It's just one of the reasons the former government aid is running for the position. To have the opportunity and the power to attack the affordability crisis head on is a dream job. Tom DiNapoli says it's more important to provide steady returns than to invest too much in housing. I'm more than proven that I'm capable of helping the state navigate through challenging times. The primary election is in June.

Six months ago, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the department was desperate for applicants. Last week, she swore in the largest class since 2016. More on NYPD recruitment after the break. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch is singing a different tune about police recruitment. Just six months ago, she said the department was in a, quote, hiring crisis. Here's Tish at a breakfast for the Association for a Better New York. It wasn't that long ago when people would wait years to get the call to join the academy. And every incoming class was full to capacity.

Now we are practically begging people to take the exam. Fast forward, now the police commissioner says the NYPD will have the most recruits since 1984. Here she is at a police academy ceremony last week. It is proof that people want to be cops again. It shows that this profession, which for me is the noblest job anyone could choose, is back in a big way. My colleague Charles Lane says there are three things that explain the commissioner's transition. The first is that the department lowered their standards. The second thing is, according to Tish, there was a change in rhetoric around policing.

And the third thing is the reality. Things may not have changed that much. The NYPD could still be in a hiring crisis. Charles breaks it all down. To be fair, the lowering of the standards was probably the biggest part of several other changes. They also waived the fees to take the police tests. They started offering more tests every month, in fact. They also reduced the minimum age to be able to be.

become a recruit from 25 years old to 20 and a half years old. But Charles says the main change was lowering the college requirements. Previously, it was 60 college credits. Now it's 24, going from roughly four semesters down to only two. How impactful this is, it's sort of a mixed bag. A number of experts will tell you that the professionalization of policing, which coincided with the big crime drops that we saw, all this happened because more police started going to college.

Other police experts, they point to research that show a correlation between job satisfaction and college decrees. The NYPD's boost in recruitment could also be thanks to what the commissioner calls a change in rhetoric around policing. But she didn't point to anything specific in the last six months. Charles says it's kind of hard to quantify anti-police rhetoric, but there still is a larger issue of morale. Experts and police unions say that the job is thankful. both in terms of shifts and the hours that they actually have to work. There's also this cyclical routine of actually not solving problems and sort of being a jack of all trades that is called in for everything

that they don't really have a lot of control over, things like homelessness or drug addiction or mental health. But what if this is all made up? And the NYPD's hiring crisis isn't actually over. Charles says, though Tish has alluded to things getting better, she isn't actually declaring a victory. But if you look at the numbers, we're kind of just treading water. According to numbers provided by the police unions,

we're set to lose as many officers this year as new recruits are coming in. That's WMYC's Charles Lane. Every now and then, we team up with the nonprofit street lab to highlight stories from neighborhoods across New York City. Here's some of what we heard at our recent visit to East Harlem, near East 115th Street. My name is Talea Smith. I'm 40 years old.

I am in East Harlem. New York and I am a community service learning facilitator for another choice youth and family outreach we're out here every Friday right now we have the summer youth program that's working with us and this week is event three which is focused on finance intellectual and occupational wellness and anything else that they might need we have fresh produce that we hand out also we do the pantries and everything without summer youth I have 20 years in health care experience. So just using that to focus more in my community. This is my passion. I love working with the community, but more so our youth is basically our future. So we have to have them stay together.

My name is Reverend Khalil G. James. I've been doing ministry work for over 20 years. The church should be a platform for individuals who are looking to fly, to dream. So our church is a hub for for artistic expression, community engagement, and social change. We allow people to be who they are. We try to help them by validating what's in our young people and in our community. So many stories that we have. People who are looking for a community, looking for love. And we think one of the antidote to shame and stigma is love and belonging. Me, myself, I have a story.

I was just as lost to some of these young people in the speech. And that's why I do what I do. what was done for me, I do for this. So we create that safe space. We have homeless youth to stop by the church weekly just to charge their phone to get some water, use the bathroom, sit in the air conditioner, or the heat in the winter. We don't have all the answers,

but we do know proximity is key, and we sit with people, and we're present, just being human. My name is Isaac Scott. I am proudly from Harlem, born and raised, and I am 43 years old. I want other community members to know that we have the power as people to solve a lot of our problems. We don't have infinite resources, but we can strategically partner. We can share resources.

We can share tasks to get things done. So I really want to see community come together more and solve our own issues because we literally are all we got. You know what I mean? Like just looking at our federal government, we know that no one is going to come safer. You know, so we are all we've got, and I really want to see us do better. That was Talea Smith, Reverend Khalil G. James, and Isaac Scott of Harlem. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.