NYC NOW - May 7, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

City officials, musicians and advocates gathered in Albany Tuesday in support of proposed "Rap on Trial" legislation, a bill that would limit the use of lyrics as evidence in criminal trials. Also, some police oversight advocates say they’re concerned the NYPD hasn't made required changes to how it responds to protests, despite a federal judge ordering the department to do things differently after the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations. WNYC's Samantha Max reports. And the Adams Administration says New York City public schools are now separating out their food waste to be put out for curbside compost pick up…three months ahead of schedule. Lastly, WNYC’s Michael Hill speaks with Councilmember Tiffany Caban about what she thinks is a dangerous trend: the tweets from the NYPD’s Chief of Patrol John Chell

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNMIC. I'm Sean Carlson. City officials, musicians, and advocates are rallying to keep lyrics out of the courthouse. They gathered in Albany Tuesday in support of proposed rap-on trial legislation. The bill would limit the use of lyrics as evidence in criminal trials. Prosecutors would have to prove the descriptions are both literal and relevant to the case. The New York State Senate has already passed the rap-on trial bill. it did so last year as well.

A Manhattan criminal court judge sentenced a Brooklyn-born rapper Takashi 6'9 to two years in prison after prosecutors presented lyrics and music videos as evidence during his 2019 trial. Some police oversight advocates say they're concerned the NYPD has not made required changes to how it responds to protests. WNYC Samantha Max reports a federal judge order the department to do things differently

after the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations. The mayor and NYPD officials have repeatedly praised how officers have handled recent protests on college campuses across the city. But Isabel Lava with the New York Civil Liberties Union says the police response has not been calm at the demonstrations she's observed. At Columbia, she says, she heard screaming and the loud booms of flashbangs. So it was a very, very intense police presence. The NYPD recently agreed to overhaul how it police's protests after facing lots of litigation from the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. The police union has appealed the settlement.

New York City public schools are now separating out their food waste to be put out for curbside compost pickup. That's according to the Adams administration. Mayor Eric Adams says the milestone was reached three months ahead of schedule. He says composting keeps waste out of landfills and reduces food for rats. It's part of a broader environmental initiative in school cafeterias. Officials say that school custodians, faculty, and students have been trained to prime. properly separate food waste. And some schools now also have cafeteria monitors that remind fellow students to sort their trash. One of the leaders of the NYPD is using social media to

attack city officials and others he doesn't agree with. City council members are calling for an independent probe into the department's use of social media. We'll have more on that after the break. A top NYPD official continues to use social media to attack judges, reporters, and now other city officials with whom he disagrees. Chief of Patrol, John Shell, recently posted on X that Councilmember Tiffany Caban, quote, hates our city. That's after she criticized the NYPD arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University and City College last week. Now City Council Speaker Adrian Adams is demanding for an independent probe into the NYPD's use of social media. My colleague Michael Hill talked with Councilmember Caban, who represents

parts of Queens and is on the committee on public safety. In this day, age, social media spats happen all the time. What's different about this one? There's a big difference here. You know, we're not talking about your average citizen, but we are talking about one of the highest ranking NYPD officials. And engaging in that kind of speech online, no matter the platform, is prohibited. It's prohibited by law. It's prohibited by policy. And for good reason. You know, it is prohibited by the conflicts of interest law, which says that public service can't use city time or resources for political purposes. It is prohibited by the patrol guide. I would even argue that it's prohibited by the federal hatchack. And the reason for that is because it is a basic

principle of democracy that police forces work for elected officials. They work under an administration. And that, you know, a cornerstone of democracy is that kind of, you know, rulemaking and following. And it's what separates democracies from authoritarian police states. So you're saying what he said last week about you is political speech. Absolutely. And it isn't the first time, right? We saw this before where he's told people, you know, people don't care about the city or they're making things dangerous and like go out and vote or seek the change you want to see. And that is absolutely political speech.

It veers into electioneering. And you'll notice that over the years, this is like a really, really huge aberration. This is something that we're not used to seeing. Obviously, it is much more easy to access in the world of social media. We're at a different time. But I think public advocate, Jimani Williams, said it well when he said, this might be what we would see in the Giuliani era if we had social media to this degree. But I also want to just frame this for you, Michael, because it's part of a larger problem, right?

If you put this political speech together with just a pattern of unaccountability, we're talking about NYPD not showing up to city council hearings to be, you know, accountable. We are talking about the billions of dollars that we spend in police misconduct. You only have to look at the families of Kawasaki-Treywick and Win Rosario, who have not found justice for their family members, and then look at the raids on the universities and see how they blocked out the press. They set up a 15-block per runa around Colombia, did not allow the free press in, but shot of propaganda. and a video. Even in war zones, we allow access to the free press because we understand how important that is. And so taken together, we're seeing really dangerous, problematic behavior

by the NYPD overall, and it really has to be reined in. I want to ask you what the council can do about this. But first, I want to bring up what the mayor has said about when it comes to accountability and so forth and what the mayor himself. It seems shall another, according to the mayor, they have the mayor's blessing, and the mayor is even encouraging this. And frankly, it would seem to me that he doesn't give a hoot what anybody thinks about this. The mayor said last week, I want the leaders of the administration to stand up for police officers who are placing their lives on the line. Your thoughts? It's not surprising. This is who the mayor has always been. And I want to shout out the speaker who has, you know,

taken the fight to the mayor's door, who has shown leadership and is really making sure that we are holding an unaccountable, NYPD accountable. We have a mayor that ran on saying, hey, I was a former police officer. I am here to hold the police accountable to make sure they're doing the right thing, to root out misconduct. And again, across the board, we have seen that his actions are in complete tension with that. We have, he is encouraging, but we know very clearly that it is in violation of our city's conflict of interest law.

We know that this is a legal behavior. We know that it is problematic and dangerous behavior. It makes people less. safe. You know, even looking outside of all of the things that I mentioned, but it absolutely incites violence and so's violence. We've seen there have been studies done. We've seen around the country that there is a stark, stark increase in political violence against particularly women of color and elected positions. And it would be naive of them to say that they don't know what kind of fear and danger that they're sowing. That's council member, Tiffany.

Mika Bond talking with WNYC's Michael Hill. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNIC. You can catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Sean Carlson. We'll be back tomorrow.