NYC NOW - Midday News: Report Says More Police Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Less Crime, Two Men Charged with Deed Theft, Summer Streets Program Returns, and New Jersey Reaches Pollution Settlement

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

A Vital City report shows that hiring more police officers doesn’t necessarily mean less crime. Meanwhile, two people are facing charges for allegedly stealing the home of an elderly woman in hospice care. Also, a stretch of streets from the Brooklyn Bridge to Dyckman Street will be closed to cars Saturday for the city’s Summer Streets program. Plus, New Jersey secures a more than $2 billion settlement with DuPont and related companies to clean up “forever chemicals” at four contaminated sites. Columbia University’s Dr. Julie Herbstman joins us to discuss the health impact of these chemicals.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, August 8th. Here's the midday news from Tiffany Hanson. New York City mayoral candidates are sparring over the number of officers needed at the NYPD. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo says he will hire 5,000 new recruits if elected. Democratic nominees, Oran Mamdani, says he will keep levels where they are. John Hall is a former NYPD executive. authored a report for the group Vital City that shows more police officers don't necessarily mean

better crime rates. He also says the premise that the department can increase headcount right now might be off base. I don't even think that's the actual question that we're dealing with at this point because the budgeted headcount right now is above 35,000 and the police department is having trouble getting there. None of the candidates from mayor responded to a request for comment on the report. Two people accused of stealing the home of an elderly woman in hospice care are facing criminal charges. The New York State Attorney General's office announced the indictment yesterday against DIPA Roy and Victor Quimis. Prosecutors say the two forged homeowners signature on documents to transfer the deed to themselves. The AG's office says they then got a mortgage worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Roy and Quimis faced charges under a new state law to crackdown on deed theft. Attorney information for Roy wasn't immediately available. Quimis's lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. Weatherwise here this afternoon, we're looking for a sunny sky, just beautiful with a high near 81 degrees tonight, clear with a low around 64, looking ahead to your weekend, sunshine both Saturday and Sunday, Sunday's high inching up closer to 90 degrees. Stick around. There's more to come.

I'm Sean. I'm Carlson for WNYC. The state of New Jersey is settling with a multinational chemical company DuPont and other related firms to clean up so-called forever chemicals at four sites across the Garden State. New Jersey officials say the more than $2 billion settlement is the largest of its kind reached by a single state. Joining us now to talk about all of it is Dr. Julie Hrpsman, a professor of environmental health science at Columbia University, and the director of Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health. So, doctor, before we get into the meat of the settlement, can we just talk about forever chemicals, also known as PFS, and what they are and why they're harmful?

So PFS, they're a really large and pretty diverse class of chemicals. There's more than 10,000 of them. And they're pretty unique in the sense that they can be used in lots of products. And they have pretty useful chemical properties that make them so useful. And so you can find them in things like firefighting phones. or in pans that you use to cook. And people have heard of things like Teflon or in clothing like ScotchGuard, Gortex, food containers, microwave popcorn bags can kind of go on and on. And the reason that they're used in all of these different kinds of things is because they've got this really unique property that makes it so that they repel water and also repel oil. Why are they harmful then? They're harmful because the thing that makes them so useful is also not really found in nature and doesn't really break down. And because of that, the human body doesn't really know what to do with it.

And so it tends to bind to proteins in blood and move around in the body freely. And then it sticks around for a really, really, really long time. If folks are listening to this and are like, oh, my God, how do I know? What should they be looking for on labels to know if these products do have these chemicals in them? Yeah. So that's a great question. There's not a label that says contains, P-FAS. But the truth is that it's really hard to screen them out of our lives because they are so

pervasive. And so the reality is that the way we're getting exposed, yes, we can be exposed through our microwave popcorn bags and Teflon pans, but it's really through drinking water that there's a concern. And that's why the settlement is so interesting and important. Yeah, let's talk about Dupon. Can you explain how the PFAS from DuPont facilities entered the environment in the case of these four locations in New Jersey? So I don't know specifically in terms of these locations or these, but in the sense of making things that contain PFAS and making things that have these kind of properties, when you manufacture the products, some of it ends up in the effluent or can end up leaching out of the manufacturing processes and ending up in waterways. So we call PFAS Forever

chemicals. Is there a way to remove them from the environment? Yeah. So there are pretty, effective ways to do that. There's a whole bunch of ways that you can filter, particularly water, to remove PFAS from water. There are things like granulated, activated charcoal filters, reverse osmosis. All of these things can or are pretty effective. They also can be a bit expensive. Do you know, Dr. How much of the population has these chemicals in our bodies? I'm sorry to say that we all do. Every person, is exposed to some amount of PFS. And they're even hard to test for truthfully because they're in the background of everything.

So getting your person to zero is not really a goal. What we should be that's achievable anyway. What we're trying to do is prevent additional exposure. And particularly in drinking water, that's super important. And it's doable, right? There are these ways to filter out drinking water to make it so that public water supplies don't have PFAS in them. Well, that all said, how much exposure does a person need to have with PFAS for it to be a

problem, to be a hazard to our health? So it's an interesting question. There's a whole bunch of different health outcomes that have been associated with PFAS exposure. And the regulation that the EPA has set most recently is four parts per trillion. And that's, it sounds technical, really what we're talking about is a very, very, very small amount, right? If you think about it like one droplet of water in an Olympic-sized pool, it's confusing as to why that would be harmful. But if you think about like how much of a drug is in a pill that you would take, it's also in that range. So it's not unreasonable that such a

small amount of exposure could have measurable health impacts. Is this something that having a BRITA filter for your drinking water will help filter out? Standard BRDAs don't remove PFAS from water, there's an elite Brita that's marketed to remove specific types of PFS. And I think it can work. But when it's been tested, it sort of depends on the filters age and how much PFS you're trying to remove to begin with. So unless you're very, very diligent using this elite type of Brita, a standard Brita is not going to do the job. Well, that was Dr. Julie Hrpsman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University. Doctor, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, very happy to be here. Thank you.

In his statement, DuPont and related companies said the settlement will resolve all contamination claims related to the company's current and former operating sites in the state of New Jersey. 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.