NYC NOW - September 23, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Emergency crews are cleaning up a 100-gallon fuel spill reported Monday morning on the Upper East Side. In other news, Mayor Eric Adams says a new initiative has removed hundreds of so-called ghost cars from city streets. Those are vehicles with fake or obstructed plates. Meanwhile, the board game Monopoly, where players buy, sell, and trade properties, will soon release a Queens, New York, edition. Plus, questions are swirling around interim NYPD Commissioner Thomas Donlon after he acknowledged federal agents searched his homes Friday. This comes as the NYPD continues to face fallout from last weekend’s controversial police shooting in Brooklyn. WNYC reporter Bahar Ostadan has the latest.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Monday, September 23rd. Here's the midday news from David Furze. Emergency crews are responding to a large fuel spill on the Upper East Side today. The FDNY says workers are cleaning up a 100-gallon spill on East 67th Street between 3rd and Lexington Avenues. officials say the NYPD's 19th precinct station, which is located on the block, was evacuated as a precaution. The spill was reported around 8.30 this morning. There have been no reported injuries and no cause determined yet.

Mayor Adams says a new initiative has removed hundreds of so-called ghost cars from the city's streets. Those are vehicles fitted with fake or obstructed license plates to evade the city's traffic and toll camera. The mayor appeared on WBLS radio yesterday, saying crews are removing dozens of the illegal cars every day. So we are zeroing in on them and targeting them. We're really excited about it. We remove over 295 ghost cars in just five days. Adam says the crackdown is part of an interagency task force assembled by the sanitation department and the NYPD. The initiative targets ghost cars parked along city streets. The city has also teamed up with the MTA to seize ghost cars caught driving along tolled bridges and tunnels and through that program.

The city says officers have also seized hundreds of cars with thousands of dollars in unpaid tickets or tolls. And you'll soon be able to buy a property in Queens for as little as $44.99 cents. Well, only on a game board. $4499 is the price of a new Monopoly, Queens New York edition of the board game coming to stores on October. 5th. There are already other special edition Monopoly games representing the tri-state area, including the New York City edition. And of course, there is the original based on Atlantic City, New Jersey. Sixty-five degrees right now. We're expecting mostly cloudy skies this afternoon, a high around 70 degrees. This is WNYC. Stay close. There's more after the break.

Questions continue to swirl at NYPD headquarters. Over this weekend, we learned that the NYPD's new commissioner, Thomas Donlan, was the subject of a federal search. That news comes as the NYPD contends with the fallout from a controversial police shooting that happened last weekend. Joining us now is WNYC's NYPD reporter Bahar Astidon to bring us up to speed on everything going on. Bihar, tell us what Donlan said over the weekend. Well, late Saturday night when some of us, for trying to take a break from work. Sorry.

The interim police commissioner posted an email and a Twitter statement saying that federal authorities had, quote, executed search warrants at multiple residents and took, quote, materials. He said these materials the feds took came into his possession approximately 20 years ago. Now, Donlan has a background with the FBI himself. He worked as a chief of the FBI's National Threat Center. He was New York's director of the Office of Homeland Security, and he also ran the FBI NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force. He said the NYPD wouldn't be commenting on the search warrants because this is, quote, unrelated to work with the NYPD.

Unrelated to his work with the NYPD, but any idea what the feds are after? You know, there are theories floating around, but nothing confirmed so far. This is, of course, one of several investigations into Mayor Adams' administration and the inner circle. Donlan was sort of an unorthodox appointment because he wasn't with the NYPD the way that most police commissioners have been before his appointment. The prevailing theory there was that Adams appointed a former FBI official was sort of a smart political move as the FBI investigates Adams' own inner circle. So it's sort of extra shocking now that Donlin is touched by some sort of investigation himself. Just about a week after he started. So this brings us to former Commissioner Caban.

Remind us what happened and what's happening with him. That's right. So Caban is under investigation by the IRS. The feds took his phone, the phone of his twin brother, his chief of staff, and several other police officials. NBC reported the investigation is about his twin brother's business as a nightlife consultant. Now, Caban resigned paving the way for Donlin to take over. now Donlan is subject to a probe to your point just over a week later. How are rank-and-file officers reacting to this uncertainty at the top of the department?

You know, similar to how I'm reacting. They're shocked. Everyone I've spoken to is sort of just trying to make sense of how this all happened, the timing of it, you know, between all of this and the chaotic police shooting inside a subway station last week, which we can talk about, there's certainly been no shortage of group text activity in the cop world. Well, yeah, this all comes as the department is revealing more about a police shooting in Brooklyn. Can you tell us about the body camera footage that police made public this was late Friday? That's right. So the NYPD released body cam footage from that shooting just after 5 p.m. on Friday.

This was from a shooting last Sunday when police pursued a man named direct. Rell Mickels after he jumped the turnstile and displayed a knife in the subway. They opened fire shooting Mickles, two bystanders and one of their own. In the video, you can see officers follow Mickles onto the platform. He says, leave me alone repeatedly as they continue asking him to drop the knife. The officers try to tase him to no avail. He runs down the platform toward one officer, then sort of stops and turns to face the other officer, he appears in the video to be standing still when the two officers start

firing on either side of him. Now, they shoot nine times, according to the NYPD. You can see the moment where Mickles is shot in the video, as well as one of the responding officers. In the spray of bullets, police shot a bystander in the head, and they said they grazed another woman with a bullet. But actually, the New York Times reported that the woman was in fact not grazed, but a bullet is lodged in her leg and she can't walk. And the family of the other bystander who was injured by police shots, Gregory Del Pesh, spoke out after the video came out, right? That's right.

So Del Pesch is the bystander. I mentioned police shot in the head. He's still in critical condition fighting for his life. According to his family, his family spoke to reporters on Friday evening after footage was released. His cousin, Gregory Nogues, said, said the officer should not have used legal force. Here's what he had to say.

He wasn't a threat. Why you just was called for a backup? He wasn't a threat. He wasn't even threat. So, you know, Del Pesha's family called the NYPD quote, reckless, and they're calling for an immediate suspension and firing

of the two officers, Edmund Mays and Alex Wong. WNYC's Bahar Ostadon, thank you for speaking with us. Thanks for having me. 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 podcasts.

See you this evening.