NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: NYPD Seeks Discipline for Officers in Queens Shooting, Grocers Push Back on Online Pricing Bill, and NYC Trash Containers on Streets Could Take 7 Years

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch has filed disciplinary charges against two officers involved in the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Win Rozario during a mental health crisis in Queens last year. Meanwhile, a bill in Albany would require grocery stores and delivery apps to disclose whether they are marking up prices online. Also, Jim Henson fans can celebrate the late Muppet creator’s birthday this weekend at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Plus, in this week’s transit segment: New York City’s seven-year plan to move trash into curbside bins, the looming threat of a Long Island Rail Road strike, a City Council bill to limit how ride-hail apps like Uber and Lyft can deactivate drivers, the Transit Museum’s annual bus festival in Brooklyn, and the question of why New York hasn’t adopted automated subways like other global cities.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, September 19th. Here's your morning headlines from Michael Hill. The NYPD Commissioner is serving disciplinary charges against two officers who shot and killed 19-year-old Wynn Rosario in the midst of a mental health crisis at home last year in Queens. WNYC's Charles Lane reports. Rosario's family says he was. is having a breakdown when police entered the kitchen and shot him in front of his mother and brother. The civilian complaint review board filed eight charges, four against each officer,

for excessive force and abuse of authority. Commissioner Jessica Tish's decision allows the case to proceed to an internal trial. The police union says the officers acted within the department policy and accuses the CCRB of anti-police bias. Rosario's family is also suing the city. A pending bill in Albany would force grocery stores and delivery apps to disclose whether they're marking up prices online, and grosses are not happy about this. The bill would force the apps and grosses to say whether the prices are higher or lower online compared to on the shelves. Mike Durand is the president and CEO of a trade group called the Food Industry Alliance. Durant says it would force grocers to provide constant price updates to the apps.

If you just had the disclosure, say the online prices, are different or maybe different versus in-store prices, then that's transparency. Consumers are aware that there's a difference there, and we think that that would alleviate some of our still lingering concerns. The bill's sponsor say the legislation makes clear the disclosure would be based on the most recent prices provided to the apps. Governor Hockel has until the end of the year to sign or veto this bill. Jim Henson fans can come celebrate the late Muppet Creator's birthday this weekend at the Museum

of the moving image. WNYCs, Alec Hamilton has more. Henson died in 1990, but September 24th would have been his 89th birthday. Now the prolific puppeteer is being remembered this weekend with music, puppet workshops, a costume contest, and a memorabilia swap meet, though they call it a swamp meat in honor of Kermit. Among other things, fans will get the chance to get eye-to-eye with the frog himself, plus Big Bird, the sweetest chef, and other characters from Henson Productions. Most events are free, though you do need tickets for a few of them. We're right around 70 degrees with clear skies this morning, on the way to a sunny day with a high temperature in the low 80s, right at 82.

Most would clear 60 tonight and then Saturday and Sunday. The last weekend of the summer, low 70s with sunshine. It's Friday. That means it's time for a weekly segment of On the Way. Covering all things, transportation. That's after the break. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. It's time for All in the Way, our weekly segment on All Things Considered, breaking out of the week's transit news.

Joining us, WNYC's transportation reporter, Stephen Nesson and Ramsey-Kulife. Also joining this week a very special guest, WNMICC's sanitation reporter, Liam Quigley. And Liam, we're going to start with you because you broke a story about a looming fight over street space. The city plans to install trash containers and parking spaces across town to get piles of garbage off of the sidewalks. Now say it'll take, get this, seven years to install all of them. What's the deal? Yeah, it could take us into 2032 to finish this trash revolution, which a lot of this comes down to parking. That's kind of what you get when you read between the lines of this new city document that's hinting at a bunch of potential challenges to the rollout of this trash revolution.

It's something the city does that kind of cover its bases, eyeing. What could happen when we really do swap parking spots for these Empire bins that sit in the street instead of having huge piles of rotting trash bags everywhere? Sanitation officials are careful to say, look, God did not decree that these were parking spots. We just happen to use them for people to store their cars. And there's a potentially better way to use this public space, which is storing residential waste. That would be roughly 4% of parking spots. And you know, something I was thinking about when he brought this up is, you know, city bike docks are everywhere.

How does that really like play into this and the strategy for the city? Like how did they do that? Yeah. It's a good example of we can change in a pretty big way how we use this curbside space. That's 10 years in the making. That's now just coming to Bay Ridge. So it's another example of this stuff takes a long time. Yeah, yeah.

Well, in any event, a really interesting dialogue about how we use public space in New York City, right? Moving on, Long Island Railroad riders breathe a sigh of relief this week. A looming strike was averted for now. But Stephen, you report that the threat of a strike is very much alive, and that could happen next year, right? Absolutely. So this week, the five Long Island Railroad unions that have been without a contract since

2022 voted to authorize a strike that would have gone into effect today. But they did something else as well. They asked President Trump to create this emergency board to help broker a deal. Actually, they said it's the first time. in the history of the union that they've had to do this. And it's basically a mechanism that pauses everything for several months so the sides can meet, present their cases with the mediator, see if they can find a solution.

But, you know, if they still can't agree on a contract, they could still go on strike next May. And, Sean, just a reminder, this is all because they are trying to get a new contract. Right. The unions want a 16% raise over four years, and the MTA says that's way too much. And both sides seem pretty stuck on this. If you remember, the New Jersey Transit Strike and that union,

that strike actually did happen in May and there were similarly stuck on pay raises. How are we going to both agree on this? So what that agency never did was say that they might have to raise the fares because of this. And now this is what the MTA is suggesting if they want to meet the needs of these five unions. But it looks like they have now some months to figure it all out a deal that works for both sides. Still, the MTA sort of continued this war of words with the public after the union made this announcement. The MTA's chief of policy, John McCarthy said, quote, after months of radio silence, these outlier unions have finally admitted they weren't serious about negotiating. They never had a plan to resolve this at the bargaining table.

He says if they were serious about settling, they would have agreed to something binding arbitration. He calls what calling for the president to help intervene a, quote, a cynical delay. He says, but the union on the other hand says they're being the grownups in the room by asking for professional help. To me, it sounds like the classic Pee We Herman, I know you are, but what am I, kind of arguments. All right. We accept Peeway Herman references here and on the way. We have a new bill making waves in the city council right now. It could be up for a vote in the coming weeks.

It would limit how ride hell apps, things like Uber and Lyft, right, can remove drivers from those platforms. Ramsey, tell us what that's about. Right now, these apps, if they get any complaint, whether it's something as extreme as alleged sexual assault or if you were looking at your phone too much, they can immediately. deactivate you from their platform if you're a driver. What this bill does is maybe create a system that requires a two-week notice before a driver gets fully deactivated and also establishes, I guess, an arbitration process which could include a panel of driver-side representatives, of company-side representatives. And the bill, at the same time, would still allow for Uber and Lyft to immediately remove somebody

if they can find that they just cause for egregious misconduct. But Lyft believes that the language of the bill might be a bit too very very very very very very very very very. vague, what exactly is egregious misconduct. And because of that, they're now marketing to their customers through emails and even to their drivers internally that this bill might not be safe for you, might create a dangerous environment because these drivers are still on our platforms. Interesting. So council member, Shaykar-Kristian, is the lead sponsor of the bill.

And both him and activists say that Lyft might be misinforming the public. They believe that the move from Lyft is maybe indicative of a pattern of them basically being opposed to public legislation in city council historically that creates any sort of regulation on their platforms. They're saying this is just another example of that. Ultimately, they believe that Lyft doesn't want to pay their drivers, whether that's paying for a minimum wage law that was passed in 2018 or to pay for an arbitration process to settle these disagreements. They ultimately say that this is the goal and it's not what Lyft is saying it is. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Sunday is the New York Transit Museum's annual bus festival.

You heard the bus festival in Brooklyn Bridge Park. I walked by your guys as yesterday. I heard you talking about this. And I'm like, oh, no, is this going to be on the way this week? Oh, yeah. You referred to it as the woodstock of buses. But Stephen, you wrote about one of them this week. It's a rare double-decker from the 1930s.

What makes it so special? Well, first of all, let me just say, foamers out there, buckle up. This is going to get deep. Maybe put on some sepia glasses if you have them. Right on, groovy, man. So the double-decker bus that I wrote about it. It's called Betsy. We should call it by its proper name.

It's a forest green double-decker bus with a creamy mustard yellow upper deck. It was made in 1930. We ran on the streets of New York until 1947. If we have some Ken Burns music. This was the era of double-deckers in major cities, especially here in New York. And one of the key selling points is that you could fit lots of people on them. Obviously, two layers, twice as many almost. They had these padded upholstered seats, wood paneling, nice craftsmanship.

But one of the problems was you'd had to have two people to work on these things. driver and someone to collect the fares, which did make it more costly to operate. But what Transit Museum curator Jody Shapiro says is what ultimately doomed the double-decker in New York City is traffic lights. So when traffic signals started getting hung over roadways in some areas of Manhattan, especially, the buses would interfere with their operation, let's say. And then trees that would grow over the road, the bus would hit some of the lower branches and things like that.

Yeah, not good. By 1953, there were no more double-decker buses in New York City. But back to Betsy, this bus that will be at the transit bus fare, it was actually later named Betsy, not in New York, but in Alaska, you'll appreciate this show. I love Alaska, yeah. The Skagway Transportation Service Have Bus Will Travel, that's the name of the company, purchased Betsy and actually drove it over there. It eventually ended up in Toronto.

Wow. And in 2004 became part of the Transit Museums. fleet. And I will say from the research I've done, it is actually a rare bus. I spoke with some folks in Hershey, Pennsylvania, who are experts in buses. Here's Dave Milhouser, a former bus salesperson and volunteer at the museum explaining it. I would say very rare, extremely rare. I have never seen one. There may be a few in Europe, and the reason for that is European manufacturers have a history of being very good at preserving their history. But I do not know of a single one in this country.

Wow. So go check it out. You can see it Sunday in Brooklyn Bridge Park 10 a.m. to 3.30. All right. Well, leave it there for today. Thanks to double the NIC Stephen Nesson, Ramsey Caliphay, and special guest, Liam Quigley. You can stay in the know in all things transit or ask it. We're going out on this music.

This is what we're doing right now. You can ask a question of your own. Peace and love. You can sign up for our weekly newsletter at gotthmus.com slash on the way. Everybody, chill out. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, Sean. 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.