NYC NOW - July 23, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

E-bike battery charging docks will soon appear on sidewalks across New York City. Also, New Jersey residents buried in medical debt will soon get new protections thanks to a bill signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy. Meanwhile, Arva Rice, chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, has stepped down at the request of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Finally, as part of the fallout from the pause on congestion pricing, the MTA has started cutting projects aimed at improving the transit system, including adding elevators to 23 subway stations.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Tuesday, July 23rd. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. E battery charging cabinets soon will appear on sidewalk citywide. WNMIC's Matt Katz reports. Officials want to stop the scourge of lethal fires caused by e-bike batteries, which have caused hundreds of fires and 29 deaths since 2019.

A plan announced Monday allows property owners and commercial tenants to have battery charging cabinets installed in front of their buildings. These cabinets give delivery workers a place to charge batteries or swap out depleted ones. Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanaugh said the point is to get potentially dangerous lithium ion batteries outside. You don't keep propane and gasoline in your bedroom and you shouldn't keep an e-bike in your bedroom either. Officials also announced a $2 million trade-in program in which delivery workers will swap. swap out uncertified dangerous e-bikes and batteries for certified safe ones. New Jersey residents buried in medical debt will get new protections thanks to a bill. Governor Phil Murphy signed yesterday into law.

The law prohibits credit rating agencies from lowering people's scores for most forms of medical debt and prohibits collectors from garnishing people's wages to pay what they owe. Murphy says the problems caused by medical debt disproportionately affect black and brown communities. 76 and cloudy now, patchy drizzle and afternoon showers and thunderstorms, mostly cloudy in 84. Then tomorrow afternoon showers and thunderstorm seem more likely cloudy in 83 for a hot. Stay close. There's more after the break. Here on WNYC, I'm Tiffany Hanson. The head of the city's police oversight agency is resigning several months.

after Mayor Adams asked her to step down. Civilian complaint review board chair Arva Rice has criticized the NYPD over its handling of evidence in a fatal police shooting and had been pressing for more resources for her watchdog agency. WNYC's Bahar Oestidon covers the NYPD and has details. Hi, Bahaar. Hi, Tiffany. First of all, just remind us what is the civilian complaint review board? Tell us what its role is in overseeing the NYPD. So the average person may not know about it. The CCRB has existed in its current form as an independent agency since 1993. Essentially how it works is people can submit claims of police misconduct to the agency. They investigate those claims. They look for video evidence. And depending on what they find,

they recommend disciplinary action or charges against police officers. Well, let's talk about Arva Rice. I mentioned that the mayor's office asked her to step down. Tell us a little bit about her and why that happened. Sure. So Rice was appointed by Mayor Adams in early 2022 as the interim chair and a board member of this agency. She's gone sort of head to head with Adams and the NYPD since the fatal shooting of a man named Kawoski-Treywick. Listeners may remember him. He was a 32-year-old man who was shot and killed by the NYPD in his apartment in the Bronx. The NYPD took a year and a half to turn over key evidence in that case. So this oversight agency missed its statute of limitations by almost five months, which made it harder to recommend charges against those officers. Rice was vocal in her criticism against the NYPD for delaying the case, and a week after voicing some of that criticism, the deputy mayor for public safety asked her to resign in April. Well, Bahar, if she was just advocating for her agency, which is really part of her job as the head of an independent agency, then what would cause City Hall to ask her to step down? Well, there's

sort of been this longstanding friction between the NYPD and the city's police oversight agency. Critics say that police accountability has eroded more broadly under Adams, who of course is a former NYPD captain himself and his deputy mayor, Phil Banks, is a former NYPD chief of department. Recent data that came out shows that the current police commissioner has personally buried more disciplinary cases against officers than the last police commissioner. So that's sort of all coming into play here in how the Treywick case was handled. Let's back up to that Treywick case. We're talking about Kawasaki-Traywick. What ended up happening there? What ended up happening in that case, Tiffany, is sort of a good illustration of the limitations of the

power by this oversight agency. At the end of the day, the final say on officer discipline sits with the NYPD. So the police commissioner followed the agency's recommendations in just over half of misconduct cases last year. And that's something that Rice spoke out against vehemently. Do we know what Rice is planning to do next? Well, her last day is. August 15th, the mayor has the power to appoint another interim chair himself, or the mayor and the city council speaker have to agree to appoint a permanent chair. So we'll have to wait and see what happens. Bahar Osteadan covers public safety here for WNYC. Bahar, thanks for joining us. Thanks, Tiffany. When Governor Cathy Hoku paused congestion pricing, it forced the MTA to make some tough choices.

Without the income from the tolls, the agency had to start slashing projects like New signals on the 2nd Avenue subway extension. WNMC Stephen Nesson reports, officials have also cut plans to add elevators to 23 subway stations, including one where 22-year-old mother died after falling down the stairs. In 2019, Malaysia Goodson entered the 7th Avenue station at 53rd Street in Midtown. She carried her toddler in a stroller down one set of stairs, and then another. She had nearly made it down a third set of stairs when she was. she fell. Goodson died. Her baby survived. Being down here just is really emotional and it brings

back a lot of memories. That's Dantasia Turner, Goodson's cousin, standing at the foot of the stairs where her cousin crashed down. Heartbreaking memories, because this is the place my cousin took her last breath. This is only the second time she's been back to the station since her cousin died. Turner helps care for Goodson's daughter, Riley. She's seven years old now. The medical examiner ruled that Goodson died from a heart issue. She had thyroid problems and an irregular heartbeat. But her death became a symbol of failure at the MTA to make the subway accessible.

And not just for people with disabilities, but for parents who struggle with strollers. Turner is furious at the MTA for still not having an elevator at this station. We don't know. What if there was an elevator in the station? And she did get in an elevator in her heart style. What if somebody would have been there

and would have been able to save her. After Goodson died, Turner became an advocate for elevators. Appearing at MTA board meetings, giving fiery speeches. You have people with strollers, babies, pregnant, walkers, wheelchairs, anything that you could think of. Struggling up and down these stairs is not right. It's not fear. I feel like y'all have to do something fast, quick, before something like this happens again. In a system with 472 stations, less than a third have elevators.

But momentum shifted last year when the MTA settled a lawsuit with disability rights advocates. As part of the settlement, the transit agency agreed to make 95% of its stations accessible over the next 30 years. This is huge. Today is huge. That's MTA chair, Jan O'Leiber, pledging to spend $5.2 billion to make 72 stations accessible. including the 7th Avenue station where Goodson died. There is no other public agency in the country that has ever made the commitment of the scale that we're making in terms of dollars or a number of stations. But that all crumbled when Governor Hockel paused congestion pricing in June.

The MTA announced it was cutting 23 of those elevator projects, including Goodson's station. Here's Chair Lieber at a board meeting after the decision was made last month. It breaks my heart, but we can make sure that they are ready to go when the funding shows up. Joe Rappapur is Executive Director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled. His group is one of the plaintiffs in the ADA lawsuit. He says lawyers are still reviewing Hockel's decision to pause congestion pricing and how it will impact the terms of the settlement.

It's tremendously disappointing that there's going to be delays. and what we're going to do now is press the governor, press the legislature to figure it out. Rapapur says if the money doesn't come from congestion pricing, the governor and the MTA are likely still on the hook to find it somewhere else. Still, five years after Malaysia Goodson died, people are still struggling to get up and down the cavernous stairs at the 7th Avenue station. During last week's heat wave, 37-year-old Aaron Jackson has two crutches in one hand, while hobbling down three levels

with a giant plastic boot on his right foot. He tore his Achilles playing basketball. Elevator would be very crucial right now. Also, there's no elevator at 125th where I stay. He also has three kids. We use our stroller all the time, so we've been using the bus more, which makes our commuter a little bit longer.

And today, I just have to get on the train. so I had to wobble down the stairs today on this stop. He's going to have to keep wobbling for a while. The MTA doesn't have plans to upgrade the station anytime soon. Stephen Nesson, WNYC News. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a day,

for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.