NYC NOW - Midday News: Feds Seek Death Penalty for Luigi Mangione, Ex-FDNY Chief Sentenced for Corruption, Ocean Parkway Crash Sparks Safety Push, and Composting Fines Begin

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, accused of murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown last year. Meanwhile, former FDNY chief Brian Cordasco has been sentenced to 20 months in prison for corruption. In Brooklyn, a fatal crash has renewed calls to install speed limiters in the cars of drivers with multiple violations. WNYC’s Michael Hill speaks with Senator Andrew Gounardes who sponsored the bill. Plus, New York City begins issuing fines to buildings not following its new composting mandate. WNYC’s Liam Quigley explains how residents can avoid penalties.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Tuesday, April 1st. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Luigi Mangione could face the most serious punishment of all if he's convicted. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi says she's directing federal prosecutors in New York to seek the death penalty against Mangione, accused of stalking and killing United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson outside a Midtown Hotel last December. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to federal charges. The death penalty is no longer an option in New York state courts, but it's still allowed under federal law, and the Trump administration has promised

to ramp up executions. A spokesperson from Mangione's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A former FNY chief who pleaded guilty to corruption has received a 20-month prison sentence. WNMIC's Catalina Gonella reports. Brian Cardasco admitted in court that he accepted cash in exchange for fast-tracking fire safety inspections and reviews. He told the judge at his sentencing he's thought about his actions and how they hurt his family. He also recognized the harm he caused the employees at the FDNY's Bureau of Fire Prevention. He said that office was upended due to his betrayal. Federal Judge Lewis Lyman said the sentence reflected the seriousness of the crime and sent a message that corruption won't be tolerated.

Krodoska was also ordered to forfeit $57,000 the amount he profited from the scheme and pay a $100,000 fine. Take a look at your forecast, 47 with sunshine now, sunny today and high mid-50s and gusty, and then tomorrow mostly sunny, cooler, a high in the upper of 40s, Then on Thursday, here come those warm temperatures, low 70s again. Stay close. There's more after the break. NYC. Last weekend's deadly traffic crash on Brooklyn's Ocean Parkway is renewing calls to crackdown on serial speeders. The NYPD says the driver in the Midwood crash had a suspended license, made an illegal turn, and killed a woman and her two young daughters. A website that tracks moving violation shows she already have been ticketed for multiple.

moving violations, including speeding through school zones. State Senator Andrew Gannardis represents parts of Western Brooklyn in Albany. He sponsored legislation to require the installation of speed limiters in the vehicles of people with multiple speeding offenses. And he joins us now. Senator, thanks for joining us. Tell us about your bill, please. Good morning, Mike. Thanks for having me. So what our bill does is simply copy what we already do for drivers who get caught driving under the influence of alcohol. If you get caught driving under influence of alcohol, you have to get an ignition lock installed on your car to show that you, you know, when you get behind the wheel of your vehicle, you are able to operate it safely. The speed limiter does the exact same thing. We say that

anyone that has six or more speeding tickets in a year, which is the worst 4% of drivers. So 96% of drivers would not be impacted by this, would have to have a speed limiter device installed in their car by a court order, and that would physically prevent their car from traveling above the speed limit, making sure that drivers could not behave as recklessly as this driver did this weekend, mowing over this family. Now, you said not above the speed limit, but would that work then in school zones, or would it work just on the highway or on the street? It works everywhere.

So the technology has gotten really great. I actually tested this out last year. The technology knows exactly what the school. what the posted speed limit is on all of the roads based on GPS. And it changes with you. So if you were going from a street where the speed limit, let's say, was 25 miles an hour, onto a highway ramp, it would automatically accelerate you up to the legal limit of the highway. And then if you're getting off the highway again, it would automatically decelerate you back to what the local speed limit is.

That's how advanced the technology is. So this answers the critics who say, oh, you know, you can't suspend license. You can't suspend registration. You can't find people. You can't take away licenses. You can't take away my car. No, we're going to physically make your car impossible to become a deadly weapon that puts other people's lives in jeopardy. Now, this is not the first time you sponsored a bill like this, right?

But previous bills have died in committee without getting a vote. Why hasn't there been more appetite for this from your colleagues? So I think this is one of those things that is novel for people. I think I was actually the first legislator in the country to propose this in any jurisdiction. And it was the time of a fairly novel concept, even though over in Europe, this is much more mainstream technology. And I think it takes time to educate people, explain to them how this works, have them take a test drive, have them see the technology for themselves. And so we've been doing that work little by little to kind of build a way. awareness and support for this. But then unfortunately, a tragedy like this, what happened this past

weekend, kind of accelerates or acts as a catalyst of momentum and really helps put the issue at the forefront, which is what we're seeing now. And a lot of my colleagues have been reaching out with incredible interest about this as a way to help save lives. Senator, as you were speaking about momentum, the Washington Post reports, Virginia is about become the first state in the country to pass a similar law. Does that also a change momentum for your bill? It certainly does. I believe Virginia just passed theirs last week. The governor is scheduled to sign it imminently. Now we have proof of concept. Now we know that we're not the first. We're not the first ones to dip our toes into the water here. The state of Washington is also

considering similar legislation. They just held a hearing on it yesterday. The District of Columbia, in fact passed a law last year authorizing this. So this is becoming more and more mainstream. I should also mention that the city of New York operated a pilot program on 500 municipal vehicles, city vehicles, and found it to be an overwhelming success that they're now recommending it for full fleet adoption. So this is the way that the technology is moving. This is the way the street safety industry is moving. And I think it's time for New York to follow that lead. Senator, tell us, where does your bill stand? What happens next for this bill?

And should people expect this to pass this time? Well, I'm always an optimist. I have to in this line of work. And so I'm hopeful that we will get this passed this year. And right now the bill sits in the Transportation Committee in both the Senate and the Assembly. And it's my hope that once we finish wrapping up the state budget in a couple of days, we'll be able to get back to our regular legislative business. and we can move this through committee in both chambers, setting us up for a vote on the floor by the end of the legislative session in June.

Like I said, I've gotten a lot of interest from colleagues just in the last couple of days about this. Community folks, advocates, stakeholders are all reaching out because what happened this weekend was just so senseless. And, you know, people just can't understand it. But we have an answer here. We have a way to prevent this from happening. And so I'm hopeful that we will be successful, but we're going to need everyone who supports this idea to kind of weigh in with their legislators as well. Call your state senator, call your state assembly member, tell them this is important to you, tell them that you want them to support this. You know, because it's not just the injuries or fatalities that should be in our mind when these things happen.

It's everyone who pushes a stroller down the street. Everyone who walks and tries to cross the street themselves. Like we are all, it could have been any of us. It could happen at any time. State Senator Andrew Good Honor. Senator, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. Have a great day. Composting is the law in New York City. Since October, the sanitation department has required every single resident across the five boroughs

to separate their organic waste from the rest of their trash. But data show there are few people are actually complying, and many New Yorkers are still figuring out just how to make composting part of their routines. Starting today, the city's issuing fines to buildings that break the new rules. Here to talk about how to compost and avoid fines is definitely in my state's parks and sanitation reporter Liam Quigley. Liam, in New York City, we've thrown food straight into the garbage for decades and decades. Explain what's changing for people who've never composted anything. Yeah, definitely.

This is anything that came from planet Earth, basically, now goes in a separate bin in your kitchen that then gets set out to the curb once a week on the day that your recycling is collected. So that's food scraps, you know, organic waste from your kitchen, you know, a dead plant in your house. All that stuff is going to be composted. You've reported a lot of people on actually composting. Why is that in, what does this city doing about it? Yeah, this system exists of the citywide curbside composting. That's been around since October. That means the crews are out there looking for composting on the same day that crews are looking for recycling to pick up.

So we're spending money on the system. It's there for us to use. The sanitation department says they made it super easy to use. But, yeah, a lot of people are not participating despite outreach and talking about the program. So that's why, that's one of the reasons the fines are starting to get people in compliance and to get the numbers of people participating in this program up. So is the city just relying on thousands of tickets to get everyone to follow the rules? Or is there a campaign or something on the way to inform people, hey, we got a compost?

Yeah, the tickets that start at $25 for smaller bill, buildings, 100 bucks for, you know, bigger buildings. That's one mechanism. That's the new thing that's starting today. But there has been a lot of outreach, you know, millions of flyers going out, the sanitation officials visiting every community board and just telling people what this is. I mean, despite that, you know, I've walked down blocks in Brooklyn as recently as a couple weeks ago where people, they don't know what composting is.

But they say they'll do it. They just didn't know it was a thing. Now, you've talked to someone about this. Avenue? You actually talk to Andrew Hargis, who runs a composting supply company, and he says, look, you might not want to summon a city inspector right away to deal with this problem. You might. Talk to your neighbors. Talk to your super. It's one thing if one person in the building saying, hey, I think we should compost. It's another if 19 out of the 20 apartment units are saying, hey, like, we would love to do this. Yeah, so that's, he's talking about the idea of getting buy-in from

your building to get this set up, because superers have a lot to deal with. and it's going to be different in every building. Liam, how does the sanitation department know if I'm actually composting? I mean, it's not like they have people going through the trash, or do they? Michael, that's exactly what they do. I mean, they've done that for years to enforce recycling rules. So, look, it's not going to be an army of sanitation inspectors on every block in the city, but they will check your garbage bags to see if there's organic waste

that should be composted being put in that waste stream. That's kind of how they enforced this for decades. But how about on the individual level? If I live in a high-rise apartment and I'm dutifully composting, but my neighbor is not. Yeah, that's the challenge of the program. I mean, remember, your landlord is the one on the hook for the fines if a sanitation inspector identifies organic waste in the trash bags. But yeah, I mean, it's going to be a learning curve. It took a long time to get recycling numbers up in the city.

So, yeah, that's definitely a challenge. Liam, there are going to be people listening to this. I'm going to say, what's the whole point of getting these organics out of landfills? Yeah, this is not all just some, you know, a big scam where the compost is just thrown in the trash anyway, and the city makes money from $25 tickets to ruin everybody's lives. Like this, there are real environmental benefits to composting. You know, you turn the compost into finished compost, which the sanitation department will give out. And some of it gets converted into energy.

So there's, there are real benefits. benefits to composting. Now, you mentioned in your own building that there could be an issue there because not really composting. Does that mean that the landlord is subject to fines? Yeah, exactly. That's, you know, something where I'm ready to compost. I've never done it before, but I'm, I'm ready to do it. There's just no space in my building. And, you know, I have to find the super and talk to him. And yeah, that means, you know, today my building could start getting tickets for it. That's WNMIC reporter Liam Quigley.

Liam, thanks for joining us on this. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. More soon.