NYC NOW - May 3, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

The NYPD reports that an officer accidentally discharged his firearm during a mass arrest at Columbia University earlier this week while switching his firearm from one hand to another. Meanwhile, NYC Schools Chancellor David Banks has reaffirmed his support for transgender students participating in school sports. Also, city officials are noting a local and national rise in motorcycle fatalities. Finally, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with FDNY EMS Lieutenant Paramedic Anthony Almojera about a new law requiring EMS workers to wear body armor and undergo new safety training.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jared Marcel. The NYPD says a police sergeant who fired his gun during a mass arrest at Columbia University earlier this week, accidentally pulled the trigger while switching his firearm from one hand to the other. Deputy Commissioner of Public Information, Tariq Shepard, says the NYPD didn't immediately tell the public because it's not their typical policy for accidental discharges. which he says happens about eight times a year. Yeah, I knew it would come up eventually because it always does. So it was no rush for us to talk about this.

Police say the sergeant in the emergency services unit accidentally shot one round while walking through a vacant area of Hamilton Hall, a school building that a group of protesters had occupied. The bullet went through the glass window of an office. The NYPD says the sergeant who fired his gun will go through additional training. The Manhattan DA's office is also investigating. the entity. New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks is affirming his support for trans students in school sports. We see you. We love you. And we are going to do everything that we can to provide

the levels of support that you need so that you can be all that you want to be. The chancellor spoke Thursday at the meeting of a parent advisory board in Manhattan. In March, that advisory board passed a resolution calling on the Education Department to reconsider its gender guidelines, which currently includes allowing trans girls to play on girls' sports teams. Banks rejected that resolution. In public schools citywide, trans athletes are permitted to play on teams that align with their gender identity, regardless of their sex assigned at birth. Motorcycle season is revving up, but New York City officials say the number of motorcycle crashes have been increasing both locally and nationally since 2020. New York City saw 55 motorcyclist deaths in 2023. Transportation Commissioner Edanus Rodriguez

says most of those deaths involved either unregistered vehicles or unlicensed riders. Most of the problem comes from motorcycles who are not properly trained or qualified to be on motorcycles, which as we all know can reach very fast highway speed, making riders very vulnerable. Rodriguez says DOT will launch a public awareness campaign about motorcycle safety and the legal requirements to ride. Up next, New York City is taking measures to protect EMS workers by giving them body armor and safety training. That story after the break. This week, Mayor Eric Adams signed a bill into law that are required body armor and safety training for all fire department EMS workers. and paramedics. My colleague Michael Hale spoke with Anthony Almagera, a lieutenant paramedic with the

FDNY EMS, and vice president of the union that represents fire department EMS officers to talk about it. Does this feel like a victory at all to you? No, it doesn't feel like a victory. It feels like fluff. And I want to clarify that Councilman Joe Borelli has been a big supporter of EMS over the years. And we appreciate that he wanted to do this. It's needed, but it's not what's really needed to fix the overall problems of the MS. We are struggling as a service with many things. One of them is retention. Safety is paramount.

But safety improves when you have people who are experienced working the job. At the moment, I have 75% of my workforce that has less than five years experience. According to the fire department, losing 15 to 20 people a week. So that's people leaving for other jobs. Well, people are leaving for other jobs. There's incredible burnout on the job. Assaults of members have gone up. The pay is $30,000 less than other 911 agencies.

The benefits package. So if a firefighter or a cop dies in the line of duty, that family members get paid benefits for life. If an EMS member dies in the line of duty, which we have had very high-profile members die in line of duty, the family gets pay for three years, no benefits. I've had a wife call me a couple years ago when a member died. The medical insurance was turned off within 24 hours of that member's death.

So if you really want to know what will help, that's what's going to help. Getting people to stay and master the equipment that is given to us. We've already had vests. So signing that we're getting more vests or getting the vests in a continual basis, which I don't think this accomplishes. It doesn't, I don't think the language shows that there's a, renewal for it and these vests have to be renewed every five to six years according to the manufacturer so there's some holes in it but getting people to stay and master the craft of being

an EMS worker an EMT or a paramedic will help reduce incidents on this job where maybe they're put in situations of danger this job is inherently dangerous but it's you know this is just fluff we need we need real real reform to make this job what it is and to make sure that the public of New York City gets exactly what they need, which is top flight medical care, which the members right now are doing the best they can, but they're burnt out. They're doing 6,000 jobs a day. Before the pandemic, we did 3,500. It's never subsided. They're burnt out. They're really struggling. And the high profile vesting, with assigning, yeah, I guess, you know, that's great. And I appreciate Borelli's efforts in this,

I'm not diminishing it, but we need way more than this. We need Eric Adams to hold his promise where he said he was going to give us pay and benefit parity to stabilize the workforce. Would it help, too, to have more FDNY EMS so that you'd have more people responding to the calls? 100%. EMS, FDNY EMS handled 1.8 million calls last year. We have a workforce of 4,000. Just to compare that, on the fire side, they have a workforce of about 11,000. They did about 54,000 fire calls.

So we're out of whack. You need more staff. That'll be the first thing. You know, when you're in a war, and I don't like to use war terminology so much, but it's the only way I can describe it at the moment. You want to increase your foot soldiers so that you can battle what's coming. And then we can figure out what's the proper ratio for what we need to effectively do, 911. What we have at the moment is not it. It's not it. And you can't do this patchwork thing where you try and augment

911 with independent contractors who had not given the same benefits and the same training as we are. So, you know, that's not working. You need a unified EMS service with the same standards that fire and PD has in the 911 system. The bill also mandates that the city provide de-escalation and self-defense training. To what extent were EMTs required to train in de-escalation before all this? We already got that. So when the mental health units came out, if you remember a couple of years ago, that became part of that process where members had to go in for de-escalation and self-defense training that's already given to us.

So to sign it and kind of memorialize it, which is already memorialized in a contract that we agreed to in the last round of bargaining, is a little more fluff. To master that stuff, you need the experience. goes along with that. I mean, it's really just throwing money out the window if we're losing these people within the first three years. And we have to constantly retrain people in this de-escalation and self-defense training. And they're not sitting next to me, Michael. They're not sitting next to a 20-year person. They're sitting next to each other. And they're trying to figure it out in a system that is overrun and overburdened. When you have 21, 22-year-old men and women out there doing the best they

can, but with nobody next to them that's really got all that experience, you know, it's a recipe for disaster and it's already proven that it has led to disaster. Are there any concerns that wearing body armor will interfere with giving care out in the field? I don't think it'll interfere. That'll be an adjustment. Members will have to learn how to work around it with the calls on a case-by-case basis. I'd rather them have it and not need it and need it and not have it. That's my colleague Michael Hill in Congress. with Lieutenant Paramedic for the FDNY EMS, Anthony Almagera.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Shout out to our production team. It includes Sean Bowditch, Amber Bruce, Ave Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, Owen Kaplan, Liora Noam Kravitz, Jenae Pierre, and Wayne Shawmeister, with help from the great folks at the WNYC Newsroom. Our show art was designed by the folks at Buck,

and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrado. I'm Jared Marcel. Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.