NYC NOW - February 9, 2024: Morning Headlines

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Get up and get informed! Here’s all the local news you need to start your day: The number of places to sign up for a Municipal ID card in New York City is shrinking. Meanwhile, NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban is in Jamaica, meeting with the country’s prime minister to help solve several cold cases in New York. Plus, double-parking in the middle of the road is illegal, but that doesn’t stop thousands of New Yorkers from doing it every day. WNYC’s James Ramsay explores how to double park ‘politely’ to avoid neighbor disputes and traffic officer attention.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, February 9th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. The number of places you can go in New York City to sign up for municipal ID card is shrinking. WMIC's Cameron U explains. After the DeBlasio administration launched the Municipal Identification Program, there were more than two dozen locations where residents could apply.

inside libraries, hospitals, and public buildings. Now, more than eight years later, there are only 10 ID NYC centers left to sign up, as the Adams administration has been quietly closing them. Nonprofits say snagging an appointment is like trying to win the lottery. The photo IDs offer residents regardless of immigration status, a way to open bank accounts, apply for services, enter school buildings, or for membership to museums and zoos. Supporters say the city needs to open more locations to meet.

the demand by new migrants. It's consolidated sites to be more efficient and is issuing more cards than other years. NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban is in Jamaica this week, not the neighborhood in Queens, but the Caribbean Island nation to meet with the country's prime minister. Officials say the close partnership between the NYPD and Jamaican police has helped solve several cold cases in New York. Authorities even convicted a gun trafficker who police say smuggled weapons to New York from Jamaica, Major General Anthony Anderson is Jamaica's police commissioner. We try to be in good practice because the nature of the problems that we're facing are allowed to have a transnational component.

Police said the Jamaican government footed the bill for Caban's trip. 42 and partly cloudy now. Cloudy today in becoming mostly sunny. We'll hit about 53 degrees in the city. Then tomorrow's slim chance of showers, clouds all the way up near 60, and Sunday, partly sunny and 51. Stay close. There's more after the break.

On WNYC, I'm Sean Carlson. Double parking. Now, it's as much a part of New York City as a bagel with a smear or a slice at the corner joint. But we should be clear, parking in the middle of the road is

illegal, yet thousands of New Yorkers do do it every day. W&C's James Ramsey has been looking into ways to politely double park to prevent angering your neighbors and hopefully not draw the attention of a local traffic officer. He wrote about it for our news website, Gothamus. You can read some of his findings there, but James is also here now. What did you learn, James? What I learned in addition to, again, double parking is illegal. You should not do it.

Of course. The other thing is that if you double park and leave your car, you will cause somebody to honk and lean on the horn for however long it takes for you to come out and then they will scold you. and a simple way to prevent this happening is to take a piece of paper and with a big fat sharpie, write your name and your phone number in that way. Maybe they can contact you and you can avoid that dilemma. Sure. Well, when you're double parking on alternate side parking days, usually essentially to make room for a street sweeper, that's usually my interfacing with double parking, usually entails illegally leaving your car in the road for more than an hour.

When that happened, should people stay in their cars for that entire time? or leave it there and then come back? I think it depends on the block, and you could sort of, if you look out and there's a street with everybody on the opposite side of the road, and they're all sitting in their cars, looking at their phones,

waiting to move at a moment's notice, you do not want to be the one person who says, no, I'm just going to leave it here. On the other hand, if you live on a mellow block, and you're doing this on your own street where you know the neighbors, everybody else has just left their cars out there unattended, stick your name and number on a sheet,

and do the thing that you're not allowed to do because it's illegal. But yeah, that seems to be a little more of the way it goes. What about in a situation, say you're in a commercial avenue? And we all know how hard it is to find parking, right? So sometimes you just got to jump out, get your laundry, pick up your takeout, whatever it may be. Say what's up to the boys in the deli, yeah. What do you do with the next year? Yeah, don't do it.

Okay. That's really the one, you know, you see it all the time. Everybody does this. But this is one where you really don't want to do it. even if it's not in a designated bus lane or a bike lane, if it's a commercial avenue, you're still going to probably block a bus or cause a cyclist to have to swerve into the road, which is extremely dangerous. I also know from all of my reporting on this story that's sort of the unscientific truth is that based on talking to shop owners and talking to drivers,

you're more likely to get a ticket if you do this on a commercial avenue as opposed to your own residential street. You pull up in front of the dry cleaner and there's not a spot right there, go another block, make a right onto the side street to try and park there. It's really not worth it to try and just leave your car in the middle of a commercial street so you can run into a shop. Now, if somebody were to get a ticket or be reprimanded, whatever it may be, of course, again, I have no experience with this given that this is illegal, but what is the ticket? What is the fine? The ticket is $115. And it does happen. I mean, you say, you know, look around and everybody's double parked and there's no consequences.

says it does happen. The NYPD told us that a little over 410,000 tickets were issued for this last year. So people do get tickets for it. If you block someone in and they call the cops, the cops will come and write a ticket. The other risk is that you leave your car in the middle of the road and somebody who comes drag racing down the street doesn't recognize that your car is not moving. And before you know it, there's a huge accident right on the street. Now, James, it's just you and me here. Forget the tens of thousands of people who might also be listening to this, do you ever double park? Thank you so much, Sean, for having me in all things considered. I really appreciate the time. That's WNIC's James Ramsey. You can check out more of his reporting on this at our news website, Gothamus.

James, thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcast. See you this afternoon.