NYC NOW - September 17, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Prosecutors are planning to criminally charge the man police shot inside a Brooklyn subway station over the weekend. Plus, WNYC's Ramsey Khalifeh reports on the reaction from residents in Brownsville days after the police shooting at the neighborhood station. Also, two recent police shootings highlight an ongoing problem for the NYPD and their tasers. And finally, WNYC’s Michael Hill and Matt Katz discuss the latest corruption scandal in city government after a grand jury indicted two former FDNY chiefs.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jinnay Pierre. Prosecutors are planning to criminally charge the man police shot inside a Brooklyn subway station over the weekend. A law enforcement source tells WMYC that Dorell Mickles is expected to face charges of attempted assault and two counts of fare evasion. Police say Mickles was holding a knife while office. officers followed him through the Sutter Avenue L train station in Brownsville. Police say Mickles refused orders to drop the knife and two officers then tried to tase him. The law enforcement source says Mickles then lunged at one of the officers with the knife

and officers then shot him several times in the abdomen. Police also shot two bystanders in a process, including one man in the head and a fellow police officer. The man is still in critical condition. The shooting has shaken Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood. Here's WNYC's Ramsey Caliphé with more. At the Sutter Avenue subway station in Brownsville, Brooklyn, police officers are grabbing a man for hopping the turnstiles. They're telling him to get out of the station, and the altercation begins to escalate as more officers approach. The MTA agent working the station looks tense, as do the commuters trying to get on the train.

The altercation is happening less than a day after a similar dispute led to pops of gunfire at the very same station as police tried. to arrest a man who had also skipped the fare. The NYPD says the police shot the man after he threatened them with a knife, but their bullets also hit two innocent bystanders and an on-duty officer. This latest altercation resolves peacefully. The man eventually leaves the station.

Commuter Margarita Pino standing outside the station says that people rarely pay the fare in the neighborhood. And here, everybody passes through them doors, every one. The only thing that they're not doing now because the police is there. Once the doors open, people go right through, like of nothing.

Census status shows that Brownsville has a poverty rate of 39%, the highest of any, in New York City. Here, many residents have trouble meeting their basic needs of housing and food, and the cost to ride the train every day can be a big burden. The MTA has for years called for more enforcement against farevation. Gibral-rahim, who has been living in Brownsville for four years, says a crackdown on turnstile jumping shouldn't lead to violence. Just for a fair, just grab the person, put them off from the side. Okay, this is what's going to happen.

We got your name, we got your ID. You're receiving a ticket, finding everything else like that. Let it be. MTA chair, Janelle Lieber, thank police officers who work in the transit system to stop people who carry weapons on the subways. The police shooting at the Sutter Avenue subway station is one of two recent police shootings in Brooklyn that highlight an ongoing problem for the NYPD. Officers tried to use tasers before using their firearms, but the taser didn't work. WNYC's Baha Oestadon,

has more. Police data shows that NYPD tasers fail 40% of the time. And because an officer has to get close to a person to use a taser, Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum says that can leave officers feeling like they're in greater danger when a taser doesn't work. And now they're within, you know, a much closer range. And they may feel that, you know, in order to protect themselves, they have to use deadly force. Wexler says, using a taser, can actually escalate a situation and that police should instead be more thoughtful before using one. A federal indictment unsealed this week charges two former FDNY chiefs with accepting bribes in exchange for fast-tracking building inspections. It's yet another corruption scandal in New York City government.

Stay with us for that conversation after the break. On Monday, A grand jury indicted two former FDNY chiefs. Federal prosecutors say they accepted at least $190,000 in bribes in exchange for fast-tracking approvals of buildings' fire alarms and fire suppression systems. WNYC's Mack Hats spoke with my colleague Michael Hill about yet another corruption scandal in city government. These two chiefs who ran the Bureau of Fire Prevention now retired were charged here. What do federal prosecutors say happened here?

Straight up pay to play, Michael, that's what they said. According to this indictment, the men who were the top officials at the Bureau of Fire Prevention, Anthony Sakavino of Manhattan, Brian Kordasco of Staten Island, they were getting paid to let owners of hotels, bars, restaurants, apartment buildings, cut the line, essentially, when it came to reviews and inspections. And at the time, there were these long delays due to COVID, staffing shortages, when it came to getting fire alarm, fire suppression systems reviewed and inspected. So a former firefighter named Henry Santiago Jr., who pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the feds,

he acted as the alleged middleman here. Prosecutors say Santiago would take cash from building owners who wanted to get approvals quicker, which would allow them to maybe open a restaurant sooner, right? And he would then pay off the fire chief, sometimes handing over cash at steakhouse dinner. Here's what U.S. Attorney Damien Williams said about the scheme. They allegedly created a VIP lane for faster service that could only be accessed with bribes. That's classic pay-to-play corruption, and it will not be tolerated by this office. Matt, what's the fallout from this been so far?

An isolated incident of a couple of alleged bad apples or something bigger here? Well, first off, the attorney for Sakavino, I should say, called his client a 9-11 responder and an American hero. and said he should be presumed innocent. But there are, as you indicated, some major political implications here. You may remember that last year, my WNYC colleague David Brand reported that City Hall had allegedly created this list

to move favored developers and campaign donors to the front of a similar fire safety inspection line. And that so-called city list was indeed brought up in this indictment, but not in a way that implicated Adams. In fact, it turns out the defendants in this case used the news last year of this city hall list to explain why certain businesses were getting better treatment in order to cover up their own behavior, prosecutors say. They have text messages from one of the defendants

blaming elected officials saying they're actually the ones that wanted to expedite favored businesses in terms of these inspections. Prosecutors, though, say businesses were actually getting special treatment because they were the one paying the huge. chiefs. How was the mayor responding to this, Matt? Yeah, he mostly blew it off at a press conference. He noted correctly that this scheme started at the end of his predecessor's term in office, though it did continue into the Adams administration. This is a big city, and there's so many things that happened, things that happened in previous administration, materialized in your administration. But can you maintain the focus to continue to move the ball down the field?

And that is what this administration has been successful in doing. Matt, has the mayor been successful in keeping his head down and moving the ball forward? I mean, not recently from a PR and political perspective. Just as one example, the headline of a long CNN article that mentioned the FDNY indictments was New York City Mayor Eric Adams' administration is in chaos as federal probes target his inner circle. Now, again, this pay-to-play FDNY scandal does not appear to have any. anything to do with the mayor or anyone close to him, but there's so much else going on right now, given the litany of federal investigations that we know about into city hall and into top public

safety officials with the NYPD commissioner and the mayor's top lawyer, resigning just in the last few days with the school's chancellor and deputy mayor having their phone seized. The mayor is just finding himself on the ropes, even answering a question at yesterday's press conference about whether he'd be resigning soon. He said he wouldn't, of course. Did U.S. Attorney Williams, whose office is apparently investigating Adams' inner circle offer any insight into the handful of other probes into the administration? No, he wouldn't talk about anything other than the fire chiefs.

But he did make this one missive, which I thought was kind of ominously intriguing. William said that his prosecutors are determined to root out corruption. And then he kind of spoke directly to New Yorkers working in the... city government. He said, if you are aware of and participated in corrupt activity in our government, now is the time to come forward to get on the right side of the law. That's WNYC's Matt Katz, talking with my colleague Michael Hill. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Junae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.