NYC NOW - October 13, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Police say there are no credible threats to New York City this morning as planned protests over the war between Israel and Hamas have officials on high alert. Meanwhile, the NYPD says New York City Council member Inna Vernikov is facing a "criminal possession of a weapon" charge after she brought a gun to a protest at Brooklyn College yesterday. Also, food pantries in New York City say there's a spike in the number of residents who need a hot meal or free groceries. Plus, data from the National Highway Safety Administration analyzed by Newsday, found that Nassau and Suffolk county are among the deadliest counties for traffic fatalities in New York state. Elissa Kyle, Placemaking Director at Vision Long Island, explains why the roads are so dangerous and explores solutions to improve street safety on Long Island. Finally, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez has been hit with federal charges accusing him of acting as an agent of the Egyptian government. Joining us to discuss the latest claim is Sean Sullivan, investigative reporter covering criminal justice and government at The Star-Ledger and NJ Advance Media.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, October 13th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Police say there are no credible threats to New York City as planned protest over the war between Israel and Hamas have officials on high alert this afternoon. A pro-Palestinian demonstration takes place in Times Square this afternoon and counter-protest. are expected. The NYPD says New York City Council member in her Vernacov is facing a criminal

possession of a weapon charge after she brought a gun to her protest at Brooklyn College yesterday. The Republican lawmaker represents parts of Southern Brooklyn and is the council's minority whip. Social media images show Vernacov with a gun strapped to her belt at a protest supporting Palestinians, a protest she also criticized on social media. Vernacov has not responded to our request for a comment. Food pantries in New York City say there's a spike in the number of residents who need a hot meal or free groceries. Zach Hollis with the Food Bank of New York City, he says they're seeing an 8% increase in average monthly visitors since February. Putting food on that table is a constant negotiation, right?

And thinking through, do I pay the light bill or, you know, get enough food for dinner for my kids? Or if I make different choices about which types of foods I'm purchasing. Food providers say rising food prices, coupled with end of pandemic-era benefits, are causing a surge in demand. 60 and sunny now. On this Friday the 13th, sunny and 64, tomorrow afternoon rained likely cloudy in 56th, could be heavy stuff along the Jersey Shore with flooding. Street safety advocates say there have been a concerning amount of deadly car accidents and pedestrian deaths. on Long Island in recent months. Local papers report there have been more than three dozen traffic-related deaths across Nassau and Suffolk counties in just the last three months. Data from the National Highway Safety Administration analyzed by Newsday found the two counties are among the deadliest

counties for traffic fatalities in all of New York State. The analysis also found about a fifth of all traffic fatalities in New York State in 2020 happened on Long Island. Elissa Kyle is placemaking director at Vision Long Island, which works to improve pedestrian safety and promotes other community growth efforts. She joins us now to talk about why the roads are so dangerous and what can be done to improve street safety on the island. Alyssa, why are Long Island roads and streets so deadly? Well, I think part of it is most of our road infrastructure was built 50 to 70 years ago. And at that time, the population of Long Island was. considerably less than it was now. And there was considerably less traffic and fewer people

walking. And we haven't really kept up with our infrastructure to keep up with our changing and growing population. There's a lot more people walking and biking these days than there were 50 years ago. And our streets are just not designed to accommodate that. While researching this story, our producer tried to find exact official numbers on traffic deaths, but Long Island officials said it would not be possible to give out that number on such short notice. Understand, your organization doesn't have a count either. Why is that number so hard to get to?

Well, we have two primary police forces, plus a number of local village police forces. So, you know, there's a lot of separate databases that you'd have to bring together. Every week, there's, you know, multiple headlines of people being hit and killed or severely injured, just trying to get across the streets or just trying to get to where they're going. So the number seems to be continually increasing. Alyssa, where are the pedestrian accident hotspots on the island? A lot of it's in lower-income communities because in those areas, they don't have the most up-to-date infrastructure. And also, there's a lot larger portions of the community that are walking and biking, not by choice for exercise,

but just out of necessity to get to their daily destinations. So, you know, you've got high traffic areas because a lot of those communities are kind of in the center of the island. So there's lots of conflicts. Long Islanders are still very dependent on cars to get around, as you said. What kind of access to public transportation do people have there? We do have bus systems and we have the Long Island Railroad. The Long Island Railroad is primarily geared to get people to and from the city. We do have bus systems that they are trying to improve to make them more efficient and effective.

But given that our population is more spread out, particularly as you go further east, it's just hard to have an efficient system when people are living such distances from where they're going to. Now, tell us what is your organization? Vision, Long Island, what is it doing to try to improve street safety? We are a smart growth advocacy organization. We focus on planning and housing and transportation issues primarily. We work with communities to do walking audits and just kind of see what it's like to be a person, you know, walking around in a community that many people only drive through and they never

really have that perspective of walking. So we kind of take observations of what the hazards are and where things could be improved and then put together recommendations for improvements. What changes would Vision Long Island recommend the people in charge implement to protect pedestrians and drivers? So there's certain things like curb extensions where the sidewalk is extended into the shoulder to shorten the distance that it takes to cross the street. It also makes it so that drivers have to slow down more as they make turns so they can't make fast, dangerous turns. And also things like in multi-lane roads, pedestrian refuge islands, which are a median essentially where it gives you, a place to stop as you're crossing a multi-lane street.

So you don't have to deal with cars coming from all directions at once. And it's much safer because there's just fewer conflict points. And it makes it easier to understand what's happening around you. Alyssa, Kyle, placemaking director at Vision Long Island. Alyssa, thank you for joining us. Thank you. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. Federal prosecutors are now charging New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez

with illegally acting as an agent of the Egyptian government. The latest accusation against the Hudson County Democrat was in a superseding indictment filed in Manhattan Federal Court. The new charge comes weeks after Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian, were accused of accepting bribes from local businessmen in exchange for helping Egypt and trying to interfere with criminal investigations. We're joined now by Sean Sullivan. He's an investigative reporter covering criminal justice and government

at the Star Ledger and NJ Advanced Media. Hey, Sean, welcome back. Yeah, thanks for having me. Walk us through this latest charge here. What are Senator Menendez and his wife accused of? Basically, as you said, they're charged formally now with acting as foreign agents, or at least conspiring so that the senator could act as a foreign agent. Former indictment had focused largely on, I guess, localized garden variety, New Jersey

corruption. You know, this is the interfering with criminal investigations. But this stuff hones in on accusations that the senator was actually using his perch at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to influence government doings, whether it was in the Senate or in the federal bureaucracy, on behalf of a friend of his who was acting as sort of a liaison between him and the Egyptian government. Yeah, so let's talk about him being on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the chair of the committee. Do prosecutors say they have any evidence that he did leverage that position to do the bidding of the Egyptian government?

Yes, I mean, the indictment includes allegations that he hosted certain meetings that included his wife and this associate, that these meetings were hosted in his Senate office, sometimes without the knowledge of his Senate staff. And so the indictment does include a number of allegations here that this activity was going on while he was doing the business as a senator. Now, we talked about what you produced as garden variety, New Jersey corruption. How do the new allegations relate back to the previous charges that the Justice Department brought against Menendez last month? Really what this indictment, the superseding indictment does is it kind of goes back and fills in a little bit of the gray areas with some new detail. But largely what it says here is that in totality, the stuff that we previously alleged amounts to the senator acting as a foreign agent, which, you know, under federal law, if you're acting as a foreign agent, you know, essentially lobbying or trying to. to influence public opinion, you know, on behalf of a foreign government, you need to register with the foreign government. And now, you know, Senator, as a senator, he wouldn't even be allowed

to do that. And so the allegations there are sort of doubly troubling from the government's perspective because both he didn't register and it's just not something a senator is supposed to do. Has Menendez responded to the latest allegation? What has he said? He has not responded, but he's been pretty vociferous in his previous comments saying that This is all, you know, a sham investigation by, you know, enemies who are out to slight him. He points out that, you know, he previously faced corruption charges in another case, which sort of fell apart and resulted in a hung jury. He even said that the government presented its case to make it look as, quote,

the quote was as salacious as possible. Yeah. Sean, where does the case go from here? Do we know when we can expect to see him? Where's wife back in court? Well, the judge in the case has set a trial date for May, but a lot of the, of the legal observers and other folks that I'm talking to about this case, seem to think that that isn't likely. I mean, there's a lot of procedural stuff between here

and when a case actually goes to trial, there's a whole discovery process. And so I think you're going to, this is going to be a long, drawn-out process that is going to definitely stretch at least until the next election. Sean Sullivan is a reporter for the Star Ledger and NJ Advanced Media. Thanks so much for explaining this to us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll be back this evening.