NYC NOW - October 7, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

New York City Mayor Eric Adams confirms that Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks submitted his resignation Sunday, becoming the 7th senior official to depart amid multiple federal investigations swirling around the administration. Meanwhile, Monday marks one year since the Hamas attacks on Israel. WNYC’s Jessica Gould reports on how local universities are trying to prevent a repeat of last spring’s disruptive demonstrations. Plus, Passaic County Jail in Paterson, New Jersey, faces demolition after decades of overcrowding and poor conditions. WNYC’s Tiffany Hanssen speaks with Professor Jenny-Brooke Condon, who worked on a 2008 lawsuit against the facility.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Monday, October 7th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Another member of the Adams administration is resigning as investigations continue to swirl around City Hall. Mayor Adams confirmed on New York 1 this morning that Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, Philip Banks, handed in his resignation letter yesterday. The news was first reported by the New York Post.

The mayor says Banks wants to, quote, transition to other things with his life. Banks is a longtime friend and ally of Adams. The deputy mayor is the seventh senior Adams administration official to resign in the last few weeks. Other resignations include Phil Banks' brother, school's chancellor David Banks, who will leave his post next week. Today marks one year since the October 7th attacks on Israel that sparked the ongoing war. WNIC's Jessica Gould reports local universities hope to avoid a repeat of the disruptive demonstrations from the spring. NYU, Columbia University, and CUNY are holding a series of events all semester meant to foster respectful conversations on campus.

Some amount to pop up listening sessions. Others are more emotional. NYU's president was tearful at a recent event featuring the relatives of Israelis and Palestinians who died in the decades-long conflict. Universities have also implemented new restrictions on campus protests. Now the discourse on campus faces a big test. In other news now, 70 and partly sunny out there in the big city. Mostly sunny today and 72. It'll be chilly tonight in the city down to the mid-50s, even chillier in the outlying areas.

Then tomorrow's sunny and 68 even cooler on Wednesday and Thursday. 70 and partly sunny now. Stay close. There's more after the break. On WNYC, I'm Tiffany Hanson. An infamous jail in downtown Patterson, New Jersey is on the verge of being demolished. For decades, Paseyac County Jail was known for unsanitary conditions and overcrowding, prompting several lawsuits. Professor Jenny Brooke Condon is director of the Equal Justice Clinic at Seton Hall University.

She worked on a 2008 suit against Paseac County's government and jail officials. over conditions at the jail. The case led to a multi-million dollar effort to bring the structure up to code. She joins us now to talk about it. So this story actually starts back in the 70s when inmates first started raising concerns about the conditions at the Passaic County Jail.

Very unsanitary conditions. So paint for us a little picture here of what it was like back in the 70s. You know, the shocking thing when we look back at the conditions in the 70s is that they were very much the same conditions that we were challenging in 2000.

You had extreme overcrowding, you had inadequate and deficient food, you had denial of access to religious worship. And after that lawsuit, there was a blimmer of hope that there might be some changes. But unfortunately, even with a settlement agreement back in 1979, conditions did not improve. They just got worse and worse. Well, you mentioned the overcrowding. The jail was originally built in the late 50s to house just 230. people throughout the years it operated, it held as many as 1,300. How do we get from 230 to 1300? Well, the jail was expanded in 1991. So it ended up accommodating 896 people, I believe. But it was

always even far in excess of that capacity, two and three times that amount. And so the real problem that happened in the early 2000s and it continued was that the county was really pursuing a policy of corrections for profit, meaning they were taking in inmates from other jurisdictions, federal immigration detainees in particular in order to make money and then spending that money on other policy projects within the county rather than an actually guaranteeing humane treatment to the people that were held there. We talked about the concerns, raised back even in the 70s by incarcerated people. Advocates have spent years talking about their concerns at the Passaic County Jail. The suit, as you mentioned, that you worked on was in 2008.

I'm just curious why those problems, despite all of the repetition of concerns about the space, why were those problems so persistent? Well, I think part of it is a story about just the fundamental inhumanity of our carcarsal system, one that disregards. regards the fact that many of the people that were held at the Passaia County Jail were not convicted of any crime and unable to afford bail. I think another part of the story is the state holds some responsibility here. The state of New Jersey consistently for decades gave waivers to the Passaia County Jail with respect to their inability to meet basic regulatory requirements for jails. I want to talk a little bit about the closing of the jail. Some experts, some state officials,

to New Jersey's 2017 bail reform law as a major catalyst in the closing of the jail. So maybe you can explain to us why these state officials and experts are pointing to that law as a catalyst for reform. Well, bail reform meant that people could no longer be held while they were pursuing their right to challenge the charges against them simply because of their inability to pay. And what we saw after bail reform was implemented, that the vast majority of people who were held at PCJ were not considered flight risks or dangerous and needed to be held there. Of course, that's some part of the population. But the vast majority of people who were held there at PCJ for decades were there because they were impoverished. And once that law went into effect, even during my tenure on the case, we saw

the population of the jail steadily decline. That is, Professor Jenny Brook Condon, a professor at the Seton Hall University School of Law. She focuses on constitutional law, civil rights, and prisons. Jenny Brooke, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. 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 podcast. See you this evening.