NYC NOW - May 20, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is defending the NYPD's overall response to a pro-Palestinian rally in Brooklyn on Saturday after video emerged showing two officers punching three protesters. In other news, a video screen that lets people in New York and Dublin peer into life on opposite sides of the Atlantic has re-opened after reports of "inappropriate behavior." Plus, MTA data shows that subway strikes are increasing, with 2024 on track to have nearly double the number of fatal strikes as 2019. WNYC’s Brittany Kriegstein reports that families are often left with little clarity or closure.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Monday, May 20th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Mayor Adams is defending the NYPD's overall response to a pro-Palestinian rally Saturday in Brooklyn. That's after video emerged on social media showing two officers punching three protesters. The mayor told Fox 5. Today the incident will be reviewed, but he criticized behavior of protesters.

People take an isolated encounter of a police officer, and that's the totality of what happened before and after, of those who attempted to resist arrest, those who attempted to disobey lawful orders. Public advocate, Jamani Williams, says his office will also investigate what happened, but call the conduct of officers inexcusable. The NYPDs, his officers arrested about 40 people. A video screen that lets people in New York and Dublin peer into life on opposite sides of the Atlantic has reopened.

W&M.C. Tiffany Hanson has more. The live streaming art installation called The Portal opened on May 8th at 23rd Street near Madison Square Park. Organizers touted the interactive display as a unique way to, quote, embrace the beauty of global interconnectedness. The portal was shut down last week after videos on social media showed people behaving badly. from a woman in New York bearing her breasts to Dubliners displaying images of the Twin Towers burning on 9-11. But now, the massive sculpture has reopened with on-site security during all hours of operation. New Yorkers can see the portal in action daily from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. 69 with some sunshine in the city right now.

Mostly sunny in 76 for a high and then tomorrow we start to warm up. Mostly sunny in 85 Wednesday all the way up near 90. 69 with sunshine right now. Stay close. There's more after the break. Deadly subway strikes have been rising steadily in recent years. Data from the MTA show that this year is on track to have almost double as many deadly strikes as 2019. But families of those hit and killed by train say they're often left with little clarity and little closure. W.N.C.'s Brittany Krigstein has more.

Toward the end of March, Nelson Cross, got the call that his 16-year-old daughter had been struck and killed by a southbound G train while walking along the track at a Brooklyn station. After the initial shock, he says he was in disbelief. I know for a fact my daughter wouldn't walk down the track. In the months since, Cross has been trying to figure out exactly what happened to his daughter, Naisa. He says he's heard multiple different versions of events from different people in different agencies, but no one in the MTA or NYPD has shown him video of the incident. Video he's certain they have,

based on how quickly those video images emerge when police suspect someone of a crime. If they have that footage available for foolishness, why do they not have that same camera footage available for things that are important? Every family needs to know what's going on. Nelson Cross is not alone. Families and their lawyers tell W. on MyC that when their parents, trying to get surveillance to see the last moments of their loved ones' lives, they're subject

to amaze a bureaucratic obstruction. Lately, I've been finding that both the police department and the transit authority want long extensions of time to gather this information. 60 business days, 90 business days, then they ask for further extensions. And it just seems to be inordinate to me. That's Alan Shapy, an attorney who's represented families in similar cases for decades. It seems to be a strategy to prevent me from getting information that they already have. Shapy is currently representing the family of 32-year-old Anthony Cyrus Hall,

who died last October after getting struck by a train at the Jefferson Street Station in Brooklyn. They know very little, other than he went out to go out on a Saturday night in Bushwick, and they get a call early in the morning that he was killed by a train. The family filed public records requests for information about the incident. But Shapy says the MTA never provided the records, even though many of those reports are created as soon as the incident occurs. All this important investigatory information is there that day, yet I can't access it and I can't tell them what happened. It's horrible. Family members of 18-year-old Jessica Ashtak Gwarcas say they went through a similar ordeal.

The teen was fatally struck by an E-Train at the Roosevelt. Avenue Jackson Heights Station in Queens, just a few days after Hall was killed. Her family says she was on her way home from work at an empanada restaurant. That's Guarca's brother-in-law, Angel Sen. He says the loss has been really hard for the family. He says police initially told them Jessica fainted because she was sick, but the department later changed its account to say she took a wrong step before she fell. Sen says it took weeks for him to finally convince NYPD detectives to let the family see the video.

In part, he feels, because he struggles with English. But he says they couldn't show it to Jessica's parents back home in Guatemala. I mean, me would have liked that we'd like to us, me to send her to my like Nelson Cross, Sen says families of victims have the right to see surveillance videos that could give them closure. In my part, I think that we have all the right to have this video, so we're just familiar. An MTA spokesperson says the agency releases surveillance footage to the public on a, quote, case-by-case basis as part of formal litigation proceedings or freedom of information requests.

The NYPD says they have no official policy surrounding the issue. Data from the MTA shows more people are ending up on the tracks for a variety of reasons. Even though fewer people were riding the subway in 2020 and 2021, the MTA reported that what they call track trespassers increased by 20%. The agency has proposed several preventative measures, including better messaging, suicide prevention initiatives, track intrusion detection technology, and platform screen doors.

In January, the MTA began installing yellow barriers along the platforms at several stations as part of a pilot program. But once someone gets struck, Attorney Alan Shapy says the MTA fights hard to avoid litigation. Part of the problem is the transit authority lives in a legal state of mind where people in the tracks are trespassers and they have no rights. While some families seek to hold the agency accountable, others like Nelson Cross, say they just want answers. You know, they're worrying about the malpractice part of it.

I'm worrying about how my daughter passed away. Brittany Craigstein, WNYC News. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. 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 podcasts. See you this evening.