NYC NOW - June 7, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

A cryptocurrency scam targeting the Russian community in Brooklyn has resulted in more than 20 residents losing over a million dollars combined, according to the Brooklyn DA’s office. Meanwhile, New York City’s public schools will enlist principals and other school leaders to educate students and their families on proper gun storage after a 14-year-old boy died when police say a younger child accidentally shot him in Brooklyn. In other news, the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade on 5th Avenue in Manhattan is on Sunday. WNYC’s Ryan Kailath talks about the festivities in store. Finally, there’s a windowless room in the Manhattan Borough President’s office where hundreds of years of New York City maps are stored. WNYC’s Michael Hill speaks with Manhattan’s official topographer Hector Rivera and Borough President Mark Levine to learn more about the unconventional job and the borough’s history.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, June 7th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. A cryptocurrency scam targeting the Russian community in Brooklyn has resulted in more than 20 residents losing more than a million dollars combined. That's according to the Brooklyn DA's office, D.A. Gonzalez says his virtual currency unit disrupted the scam and that 70 online domains believed to originate Russia have been taken offline. Gonzalez says victims were lured into making bogus investments by

responding to Facebook ads. He added that victims then got a call from someone speaking Russian claiming to be an investment advisor. The DA's office says since the scam originates outside U.S. jurisdiction, recovering the stolen funds would be extremely difficult. New York City's Public schools will start enlisting principals and other school leaders to educate students and their families on how to properly store guns. This comes after a 14-year-old boy died, and police say a younger child accidentally shot him in Brooklyn. Schools Chancellor, David Banks. We had a young man who killed his cousin accidentally because they had access to a gun that was not safely secured.

The Education Department will use resources. from the White House on proper gun safety storage, which the Biden administration offered earlier this year. 80 and partly sunny now, mostly sunny today in a high of 82 with a calm wind, and then tomorrow and Sunday, sunny near 80 with a slim chance on Sunday showers. This is W&MIC News. Stay tuned. There's more up next. NYC.

The annual Puerto Rican Day parade comes to 5th Avenue in Manhattan on Sunday. It'll feature more than 170 different groups marching, driving, and floating down the 35 blocks. W&M.C.'s Ryan Kail talked to one of the parade organizers, and he's here to tell us about this year's event. Hi, Ryan, so before we talk about this weekend, tell us a little bit about the history here. This parade took place for the first time back in 1958. Yeah, that was the first edition. It grew out of a Catholic Church parade that had been going on. I think they tried to anglicize it at first, and then after all these waves of Puerto Rican immigration, they said, let's stop trying to whiten this thing up and just lean into the community we've got.

So now it claims to be the largest, longest-running Latino parade in the city, which is almost certainly true, given our, you know, proud Puerto Rican heritage here. And, Ryan, if folks have never been there, what can they expect? Oh, yeah, so I've been once only, but it's a blast. You want to stick around. It's huge. The flag is ubiquitous, of course. You can see the flags going up and on cars around town already. You know, the floats have entire bamba groups and salsa groups on the truck beds. I think there's 70 floats this year.

The organizers estimate a million participants and spectators combined. It seems a little high, but it's definitely packed. And I should say that the whole neighborhood, you know, East Harlem, the South Bronx, et cetera, the whole neighborhood is popping all parade weekend. it's great vibes all around. Now, you talk to one of the board members of the parade, which is organized by its official non-profit organization. Yeah, Miguel Guadalupe. One of the most interesting things he told me is that, you know, every year the parade highlights communities on the island, but also a different Puerto Rican community on the mainland. This year, they are

highlighting Hawaii. I don't know if you knew this, but Hawaii actually had the first Puerto Rican transplants off of the island after it was annexed by the United States in the late 1800s. They were moved from Puerto Rico to Hawaii to cut sugar cane. Super interesting. I didn't know about that. He says thousands of Puerto Ricans were transported across the country, basically indentured servants. Most didn't know what they were getting into. Guadalupe says they were kind of tricked into working alongside Chinese immigrants and Hawaiian natives in the sugar cane industry. They settled there. They, you know, it's one of the oldest communities in the country.

And they've been able to thrive and keep their culture despite the fact that they've been separated by thousands and thousands of miles for, you know, over 100 plus years. Brand new information for me. And what Moupe says that, you know, teaching people about history like this is exactly why the parade organizers do this and highlight a different mainland community. every year. Now, how about the basic details, Ryan? When, where? Yeah, so it's Sunday morning, starts at 11 a.m. at 44th Street and 5th Avenue. Then they march three, four, or five hours from there, up 5th Avenue to 79th Street. You can watch on TV or stream online. The Grand Marshal is Tito

Natives, the salsa star, and a bunch of other celebrities in the lineup as well. That was WNIC Arts and Culture Reporter, Ryan Kailoff, giving us a brief history on the Porter we Day parade. Ryan, this is fascinating. Thank you. Thanks, Michael. There's a windowless room in the Manhattan Borough President's office where hundreds of years of New York City history live. We're talking about maps and plenty of them, all overseen by one man, the borough's official topographer. Hector Rivera has been doing that job for almost two decades. He joins us now with Borough President Mark Levine to talk about his unconventional career and being the keeper of a slice of New York City.

history. Hector, Manhattan Barrow, topographer, that's your title. Tell us, what exactly do you do? Well, I facilitate the map changes that occur with the Department of City Planning and other city agencies. I also verify and assign addresses, and I respond to inquiries from city agencies regarding whose response before that particular street or property. And what about the research part of the role? Well, the research part of the role, the Map Room has a lot of documents. We're working on digitizing a lot of it. They have history card files that we have that tells us the street history and the legal responsible owner for those particular properties.

How did you get this role, Hector? I actually started in the borough president's office as an intern when I was in high school. So I learned different routes and I was very good with organization and computer technology and then Borough Presidents got Stringer acts if I wanted to go into this map room that had no digital input, no digital output, and upgraded in somehow. And I accepted. Hector, I'm curious. How have you seen the borough president's office change over time? Well, when I first got there, there was no Internet.

Like, say it was a dial-up when there was no network. We had the dot matrix printers. I was an intern at 16 running around giving the daily borough president's package. At the time, it was Roof Messenger. So I would have to photocopy her speeches and make sure that every person that's supposed to be at an event was there and make sure that she has all the items in her agenda folder. So you're talking about the Stone Age, you know, I'm teasing. It sounds like it.

It's a bunch of photocopies. Yeah, was it? Gosh. Now, pretty recently, you and Borough President Levine literally took a street off New York City's map. Would you explain that process to us a little bit, Hector? The Burl president's role is to verify that any proposed changes are technically correct. So what you've seen is him signing the proposed change, but it's going through the Yula process. The change in official until the maps go through the Yula process and are returned to the

borough president's office. Right. Now, Barrow President Levine, you were obviously a part of this process, too. Why does it matter that the maps of Manhattan can change from a historical perspective and a practical one, too? Well, the borough president's office is the keeper of the official maps of the street grid, with historical maps going back to colonial times. You can see underground streams on properties from the 1700s. It's very important, not just for history, but also to understand modern engineering challenges. And there are changes to the Manhattan Street Grid more often than I think most New Yorkers would expect.

A pretty big one's coming up soon because the Port Authority bus terminal is going to be redeveloped. Well, that requires a change in the map. I'm curious about something. As you talk about these changes, what happens with the apps like Google Maps and others when it comes to this kind of information? How do they get this information?

How does that work? Yeah, we will officially update Google to make sure they have the latest information. This has a lot of other implications as well because when a property is considered a street, it's no longer in private hands. And so we have a remapping on East 121st Street now that there won't be any visible change that the public will see, but there's kind of a mistake and an area that has a building on it, a brand new affordable housing project, is actually considered a street. and that means if someone trips and falls there, they would sue the city.

So we've got to fix that. So we're going to be remapping East 120th Street. Also, there is a pedestrian bridge over the FDR that is going to be knocked down. It's going to be replaced by something that is much more accessible with ramps. That's a remapping as well because since that follows East 25th Street, it's considered a Map Street. So there are more technical reasons that we do change the map, and we inform Google and It's just an obscure but important function in our office. And it also impacts, or it also affects when it comes to firefighting, police response,

and all those other kind of things because they need accurate information. Yes, and we have a second function, which is we actually designate the official addresses of buildings of Manhattan, which often buildings don't want to have a straight up plain address. They want to have something a little fancier. That's something that we have executive authority over, and there's over 100 buildings around Manhattan. that over the years have had this kind of special addressings, but you think about one pen plaza or three Bryant Park. We grant that as well. And of course, all that information is shared with FDNY, NYPD. It's electronic these days, so it's easier, but it does ultimately impact emergency

response. Hector, a lot of your job involves research and preservation. What role does technology play in those processes? And how has it changed since you started doing this job back in 2008 when Bloomberg was mayor. Technology has evolved a great deal. The first thing I was running into when I was trying to digitize a lot of the files was based in storage. So over the years, storage has not been come in issue anymore. And then also just network capabilities have advanced greatly.

So I've continued to try to upgrade and keep up with changing technologies to provide access to the information we have on file. Hector, do you consider yourself a historian sort of? Yes. Did it start that way? Do things gradually start to change as you continue doing the job? It did not start that way. Originally, I was just there to basically do a technical cake these old papers

and convert them into a digital format to provide access to the people. When I first started, I built a website that gives people access to the city map. Then we also focused on digitizing all the assignment letters we had on files so that we could properly work with other city agencies to account for each place. public use entrance to help update 911 emergency services to best it can be. Because when you look at a building and you have a primary entrance in three commercial spaces, and they all are using the same number that causes a problem for an ambulance of which entrance do they go into. So we've been working with the building owners and city agencies

to correct that. Right. Hector Rivera is a topographical assistant at the Manhattan Barrel president's office, Mark Levine is the borough president. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. 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 times and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.