NYC NOW - May 25, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Mayor Eric Adams is challenging New York City's "right to shelter" rule which requires the city to provide a bed to anyone who needs it. New York composer and bassist Bill Lee passed away at 94. And its Fleet Week, the annual celebration of the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. Finally, it's been three years since a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd. It set off a global movement for police reform and a reckoning with anti-Black racism. But how much has changed in our area since protests swept through New York and New Jersey that summer? Michael Hill speaks with WNYC’s public safety reporter Matt Katz.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Thursday, May 25th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Mayor Eric Adams is challenging New York City's unique right to shelter law. It requires the city to provide a bed to anyone in need of a place to stay, including arriving migrants. The mayor's chief counsel says the lack of space and resources means permanently limiting the right to shelter. shelter for adults, but two groups instrumental in establishing the right to shelter in the 1980s say they'll fight any attempts to erode the law.

That's again never from the Mobeda Blues soundtrack composed by Bill Lee. Lee died yesterday at his home in Fort Green Brooklyn, a bass player and composer. His film scores helped to establish the sound and film the feel of his son Spike Lee's early films. Spike Lee shared the news of his father's death on Instagram. Bill Lee composed music for She's Got a Habit, School Days, and Do the Right Thing, and sometimes made cameo appearances on screen. Lee played on more than 250 albums and performed with household names like Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, Harry Belafonte, and Bob Dylan.

Bill Lee was 94. Fleet Week is here once again. The annual celebration of the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard is underway with events taking place all the way through Monday to see. a full list of events and highlights, check out our story on Gothamist.com. Great weather for that. 63 with sunshine now, sunny and 68 today and breezy, and then tonight, clear and cool down to 52. Sunny and 73 tomorrow, this holiday weekend. Mostly sunny, 76, 75, and 83 on Monday.

It's been three years since the many hours. police officer murdered George Floyd, an incident that set off a global movement for police reform and a reckoning with anti-black racism. But how much has changed in our area since nightly protests swept through the streets of New York and New Jersey that summer? Joining us now to discuss is WNYC's public safety reporter Matt Katz. Matt, in the aftermath of Floyd's killing Black Lives Matter protesters demanded more oversight of police departments and changes in how we fund public safety. has that played out? What's different today compared to three years ago? Yeah, it was right after Floyd's death and amid the protest that we saw legislation that had been languishing for years, never even

moving to the floor for a vote, finally becoming law. Then Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill mandating that state police where body-worn cameras. He repealed the law from the 70s called 50A in order to allow complaints against officers and officer disciplinary records to finally be public information, and because of that, we now have a searchable database on the city website of all NYPD misconduct allegations. City Council also passed a ban on police using chokeholds during arrests and withstood court challenges on that front from the police unions. And we also have the Post Act, which mandates the NYPD reveal the surveillance technology

that it uses, although I should add that the Office of Inspector General for the NYPD recently said police are not actually complying properly with that law. I know Newark, New Jersey moved money from public safety to create the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery in search of upstream solutions to lessen police encounters, among other reasons. What reforms have had lasting impact in New Jersey? In the winter of 2020, Governor Murphy signed laws putting body cameras on every police officer in the state. And last summer, he signed a law requiring police officers to hold licenses, which is intended to avoid officers who were accused of misconduct. conduct from just going to another law enforcement agency and getting a new job. But advocates for reform in New Jersey still haven't gotten a law pass to allow civilian complaint review boards with

subpoena power. And last year, Murphy used federal COVID funds to add an additional class of state trooper cadets. So no defunding actual police resources in that respect. Matt, is this a theme has momentum behind changing law enforcement petered out in some circles? Mayor Adams, a retired member of NYPD himself, has pan calls to, quote, defund the police. I think gradually over the last three years as certain crime numbers went up and as the number of protests subsided and as a pro-police mayor was elected, momentum shifted. The police commissioner right after Floyd's death had disbanded a controversial plainclosed unit made up of officers who were disproportionately involved in violence with the public. But Mayor Adams last year resurrected a similar version of that unit under a different name. The lack of sustained political change demanded by protesters is really evident in budget numbers.

You may remember, Michael, in 2020, de Blasio had promised to reallocate $1 billion with a B dollars away from the NYPD's budget. That was the goal of, quote, defunding the police, you know, shifting resources from police to social services. but that reallocation just never materialized. The operating budget for the NYPD dropped a few percentage points, but the agency in the last two years has blown past. It's budgeted overtime spending. It was $2.2 billion last fiscal year, 93% higher than budget.

Plus, the Adams administration just inked a new contract with officers that will mean double-digit percentage increases in their salaries for many of them. What might be considered the most lasting victory three years later for those seeking reforms. We definitely now have a clearer picture of how law enforcement works, particularly talking about misbehavior by officers, and that's due to these reforms. Although it's still not certain that even those reforms will be permanent. In 2021, for example, city council expanded the powers of the civilian complaint review board,

which acts as this watchdog of the NYPD to empower it to investigate racially biased policing. But the new Civilian Complaint Review Board unit that was supposed to do that in order to hold officers accountable for racial discrimination can't currently do its job, in part because Mayor Adams' budget cuts have left it with a staffing shortage. So people like Michael Sissicki, who works on police reform policy at the New York Civil Liberties Union, he says politicians tend to only act on true policing reform in moments of crisis. What we need to see is a more active, engaged city council, state legislature on these issues full time. We shouldn't only be passing major reforms in the wake of brutal and unjustified killing like we thought was George Floyd. When you talk to organizations and individuals mad who were out on the streets in 2020, what do they say they're doing now? What's next in their movement? One priority is trying to figure out how to rein in the strategic response group.

This is the NYPD unit responsible for suppressing street protests. They're called the SRG. We saw that the SRG responded aggressively to the people who came out to protest after the subway killing of Jordan Neely earlier this month. And what activists thought was too reminiscent of how the police handled themselves during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. City is now paying out $20,000 a piece to hundreds of protesters attacked by police at just one of those protests back in June of 2020.

Mostly from activists, you hear a lot of the same concerns about too much money going to police, not enough to social services, about fighting continued police efforts to avoid scrutiny. The NYPD right now is in the process of trying to weaken the disciplinary code for officers. On the flip side of that, there's a bill and city council that would create an elected police oversight board that could impose its own discipline on officers. It's really a push and pull continuing between forces that see police as the best way towards safer communities. And those who think police alone can't fix the problem and maybe even make the criminal

justice system more violent and less just for some people. Quite an overview there from WNYC's Matt Katz. Matt, thank you. Thanks, Michael. 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.

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