NYC NOW - March 1, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Mayor Adams says he hasn't been contacted by federal authorities in regards to an FBI raid on the Bronx home of his adviser Winnie Greco. Meanwhile,city officials are defending the decision by top NYPD officials to criticize a judge by name on social media as an attempt to counter misinformation with facts. Finally, on this week’s episode of On the Way, Sean Carlson talks with reporters Stephen Nessen, Nancy Solomon and editor Clayton Guse about subway violence, MTA’s new congestion pricing technology and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s billion dollar NJ Transit tax plan.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, March 1st. Here's the midday news from Lance Lucky. Mayor Eric Adams says he hasn't been contacted by federal authorities in the wake of an FBI raid on the Bronx home of his advisor and fundraiser, Winnie Greco. She became the third known member of the mayor's inner circle who's been the target of an FBI search. The U.S. attorney in the Southern District is currently conducting a press. probe into Adams' 2021 campaign, but it's not clear if that's related to yesterday's raid. Speaking on Pix 11, the mayor said he's letting the investigation take its course.

No, I am not worried. I live by one rule that I share with everyone. Follow the rules, follow the law. Greco has been under a city investigation after a report that she misused her position for personal gain. Adam says she is now on sick leave. He says her future at City Hall would depend on the outcome of the ongoing investigations. Meanwhile, city officials are defending the decision by top NYPD officials to criticize a judge by name on social media as an attempt to counter misinformation with facts. Except now it appears the facts were wrong. Chief of Patrol John Chelle recently posted on X attacking Manhattan Supreme Court Justice

J. Michelle Sweeting for releasing a repeat offender ahead of trial. He praised Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Brad. for asking for bail, but neither Sweden nor brag were involved in the case. The Bronx District Attorney requested bail and a spokesperson for the court says Sweden was not the presiding judge. City Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment. MTA officials say an a-train subway conductor is grateful to be alive after he was slashed in the neck at a station in Brooklyn yesterday morning.

59-year-old Alton Scott has been working for the MTA for more than two decades and told officials he never experienced anything like this unprovoked assault. He's recovering at home after being hospitalized. Demetrius Critchlow is the MTA's vice president of Subways. He says the agency is trying a variety of tactics to keep subway riders and employees safe. Trying out different pilots at different stations, you know, installing more cameras in our cars, cameras in our stations, working with the NYPD to boost coverage at different locations. The Union's that represents MTA workers is condemning the attack. They say police should be deployed to protect workers. An earlier version of our story misidentified the conductor's first name. It's 42 right now,

maybe 45 this afternoon, and lots of sun clouds overnight with a slight chance of rain after midnight and 38. Rain tomorrow in 50 degrees. This is WNYC. Stay close. There's more after the break. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. It is time for On the Way, our weekly segment breaking down on the week's transit news. Joining us is W&MIC's transportation reporter Stephen Nesson and editor Clayton Gousa and a very special guest this week, New Jersey reporter Nancy Solomon. We're going to start this week with something rather serious. This week's On the Way newsletter focuses on violence in the subway. Three people have been murdered on trains and platforms so far this year. Clayton, you spoke with someone who witnessed that horrifying subway shooting back in 2022. That's when convicted gunman, Frank James,

shot 10 people. What did you learn? So backing up a little context here, we're looking at the data on subway murders and found that 32 people have been murdered in the transit system since the start of 2020. That's a big uptick. There were 31 in the 15 years before that. The three shootings this year kind of have struck a chord with how vulnerable a lot of people can feel on trains, especially when a gun goes off. You're kind of trapped in there, as was the case in the 22 shooting. I'd covered that shooting on the scene and spoke to a lot of people who bared witness to it. And I reached out to Fatim Haloshi, who was on the train next to Frank James when he started firing off these shots.

He actually broke through a door that was locked at the end of the train and helped people get to safety. He is a subway hero. He's now 21 years old, but he's afraid to ride the trains. I talked to him last night. He explained kind of what he's gone through in the aftermath of that shooting. here he is kind of explaining why he doesn't want to ride the transit system anymore. You know, when you see a person who shot so many people, including yourself, you start to realize how everything changes.

For me, everything's hard for me. It's very hard. I can't even explain to myself. I can't. And Fittim's father told me his son's on medication. He was unable to graduate high school. He doesn't stray far from home. And here he is explaining.

kind of in very vivid terms, what Fetim went through when he tried to ride the subway the first time. They passed through 36th Street where this shooting occurred. His face was coming in yellow, changed the color. Start shaking his hands. When the train was reaching to exactly place, there is six streets. I didn't believe in myself. When I look at him, I say, this child,

my son is finished with a child. And of course, the MTA points out statistics that show it's exceedingly rare to be shot or be the victim of violent crime on the subway. But stories like Fittims really kind of hammer home the long-term toll of gun violence on the subways and in the city in general. And it's kind of a powerful story to follow up on. So we also have a congestion pricing update. The MTA has nearly finished installing all the technology that will be used to toll drivers. It's pretty cutting-edge stuff, right? Can you tell us about it, Stephen?

So the MTA installed these devices at 110 locations all around the tolling zone, which is lower Manhattan below 60th Street. It's going to take pictures of your license plates. And it also has the ability to, you know, if you have an easy pass reader, we'll determine if you have that as well. And it's cool. It uses what they call infrared illumination to take a picture of the plates. They go into this sort of triangular beam. So they get the front of your plate. And when you leave the beam zone, it gets a picture of the back of the plate.

And what's really interesting and unique about it is there's no flash, not like on the tolls and bridges where you know the flash goes off. So it's safe for birds and it won't annoy people that live in the area. And because they're tracking like when they enter this beam and when a vehicle leaves the beam, it'll be able to determine what type of vehicle it is. Because there's actually five different toll rates depending on the size of the vehicle, whether it's a motorcycle, a car, a bus, a truck, or a really big truck. And so the MTA updated us this week and said about, you know, a third of these devices are actually already put on existing infrastructure like signs and pedestrian walkways, overpasses. The rest were put on new poles or mast arms. And this technology uses machine learning. So it's going to get better with time.

And maybe we'll have future functionality that we don't even know about now. The one thing that these new devices can't do anything about is if someone is using a license plate that's covered up with one of those. devices, a piece of plastic, or they have ones that go on and off, as well as ghost plates, ghost tags that we've heard about fake license plates. So at the moment, there's nothing that can be done to sort of technologically speaking deal with that. The MTA is calling on the state to increase the penalties for people who do that sort of thing and, you know, commit toll evasion on purpose. They want to increase the penalty for it. They want the police to be able to seize vehicles. But believe it or not, right now, if you do toll evasion, it's not considered a theft of service misdemeanor.

The same way if someone, you know, hops the subway toll, that action is considered a theft of service and is a misdemeanor violation. So they're hoping to increase the penalties to sort of crack down on toll evasion, although the MTA did note that only 1% of drivers right now commit toll evasion. So 99% are paying the tolls. As we said, we have a special guest on the segment this week. New Jersey senior reporter Nancy Solomon. Hey Nancy. Hello. This week, Governor Phil Murphy said he wants to try to plug a $1 billion hole in the NJ Transit's budget with a new tax on big corporations. Can you tell us more about what the plan is, how likely it is to pass? How crucial would it be for transit? I think it's very likely to pass. I mean, the Democrats control the legislature. I don't think this is really the

centerpiece of the governor's budget address earlier this week. And so I don't think he would have said it without their support. So what he's planning on doing is, yes, creating a dedicated fund for New Jersey Transit, which doesn't exist, and he would tax companies that earn profits in excess of $10 million. Any of the huge businesses that have a ton of profits would pay more, and that is expected to raise about $800 million a year, and that would go into a dedicated fund. There had been a corporate business surcharge on businesses it earned more than a million dollars a year. Murphy had sunseted that law and there'd been a lot of criticism of people saying, no, don't give that money back to the corporations. Let's fix New Jersey transit. So he is

addressing that issue, but getting just the 600 richest companies in the state to pay the tax. And I do think it will go through and they'll have that money for next year. For contrast, the MTA gets 44% of its budget from dedicated taxes. That comes out to $8 billion. billion dollars a year to fund mass transit, which New Jersey doesn't have. Hasn't had till now. And, you know, that's what Murphy's trying to fix. We're going to close out this week with the fact that it is a leap year. Not only that, but today is leap day. Clayton, you found some interesting parallels between today and another very historic leap day. What is it? That's right. Tomorrow is the MTA's 56th birthday.

Whoa. The Metropolitan Transportation Agency was announced or it was about to be formed on Leap Day 1968. There's a lot of parallels between now and then. Part of the formation of the MTA was to take the bridge and tunnel revenue that had been owned by Robert Moses for years and years and years and use that to subsidize transit. Today, we are looking at a new set of tolls coming into congestion pricing, as we laid out earlier, that will again subsidize transit construction. So everybody's favorite New York Public Authority or favorite to hate is having a big birthday tomorrow. You can find out more about the MTA's birthday in all things transit news by signing up for our week. the newsletter at gothamis.com slash on the way. Stephen Clayton, Nancy. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you. Happy to be here. 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 guys. Also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.