NYC NOW - September 26, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Ten members of the NYPD accounted for more than $68 million in misconduct payouts within the last decade. Plus, New York City's shelters for families with children will soon hire mental health providers. And finally, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with Deputy Commissioner Anne Patterson of the Office to End Domestic and Gender Based Violence, about the impact of street harassment and what should be done to stop it.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. Ten members of the NYPD accounted for more than $68 million in misconduct payouts between 2013 and 2023. That's according to a new report by the Legal Aid Society. The analysis and police records show all 10 are still on the public payroll. Legal aid says one officer is responsible for the biggest payout, about $12 million. in a 2019 case that paralyzed a teenage boy. A police union spokesperson says settlements are a poor measure of whether police officers are doing

their jobs. New York City's shelters for families with children are beginning their process to hire newly required mental health providers. The move comes in response to a new city law that took effect this month. WMYC's Karen Yeh has more. The city's 30 largest family shelters have to have in-person or telehealth services available on site by next July. And the remaining shelters need to comply by 2025. The new law requires family shelters to have at least one psychiatrist or clinical social worker for every 50 families.

Lisa Pineda is a mental health clinical director for TerraFerma, which provides services to immigrants. She says she's concerned the new measures put a heavy burden on mental health workers. 50 families. That's incredibly overwhelming even for a season provider. She's also worried about whether there's sufficient privacy inside shelters or even good Wi-Fi to provide services. Stay close. There's more after the break. New York City is gearing up for a citywide day of action against street harassment. This week, organizers and elected officials will gather to promote the city's recently launched public survey. It aims to track the prevalence and impact of street harassment on New Yorkers

and could inform the city on what should be done about it. WNYC's Michael Hill talked with Ann Patterson, deputy commissioner at the Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence. The office co-chairs the city's Street Harassment Advisory Board, which created the survey, along with local community members and advocates. Here's their conversation. What does the Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence know about the current prevalence of street harassment in the city?

Who does it affect on how? The information we have now about the nature and the prevalence of street harassment is largely national data, data that's been collected by the University of California, San Diego Center on Gender, Equity and Health, along with the organization's stop street harassment. That national information indicates that street harassment disproportionately impacts women, LGBTIQIA, and other queer folks. It disproportionately impacts people who have a religious faith that has a visible identification of that religious, as well as black, indigenous, and other people of color. So that's what the national information data indicates to us about the prevalence of street harassment and who it primarily impacts.

That's a pretty large group that you mentioned. What exactly street harassment are we talking about here? What are the actions? What are the words? We're using a very broad definition. We, in the survey, we define it as any unwanted language, gesture, or touching that occurs on the street or in a public space. What kind of information does this survey ask for, and what does the office plan to do with that information? The survey is really simple and accessible, and it just asks New Yorkers to talk about whether or not they've experienced verbal or physical street harassment on the streets of New York City and in other public.

spaces. We hope to gather this information so that we can inform both the Adams administration, as well as the city council, about how New York City can best respond to street harassment. Many New Yorkers see street harassment as just a fact of life in the city. It's a widespread problem where solutions are long overdue. Why a day of action now and what relief might this bring to New Yorkers? We're excited about tomorrow's day of action because it's the culmination of a local law that was enacted in 2022, which created the street harassment prevention advisory board the group that authored this survey. So this is the culmination of that law and acted in 22. And what we really hope is that we can get as large a collection of New Yorkers who can respond

to the survey to give us an opportunity to share about their experiences with street harassment. so the city can have a citywide coordinated response to street harassment. I'm curious, are you looking at other places across the country of the world and see how they're dealing with street harassment in their communities? We absolutely are. The advisory board was really diligent in learning about what's happening globally as well as locally. We know Washington, D.C. has also launched a survey of this kind, but this will be the first time that we're launching it in New York City. and the jurisdictions and places around the world that have done this, they've seen a real impact on the way that their city responds to street harassment. And we hope the same thing happens here.

Now, some advocates against street harassment themselves say they don't want to see the practice criminalized over concerns. It will disproportionately impact low-income communities of color. Is your office considering this point as you discuss possible solutions? This is the priority of focusing on interventions, beyond criminalization is a key priority of the Adams administration. The intent of the survey is not to limit our responses to street harassment, but to be as expansive as possible. So it's not about eliminating criminalized responses, but to think really broadly about what are some community-driven

responses? What are some innovative and creative responses that already exist globally? And that's happening organically here in New York City? And how can the city really amplify and fund the good work that's already happening to address street harassment in New York City. That's Ann Patterson, Deputy Commissioner at the Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence, talking with WMYC's Michael Hill. We're still celebrating the birth of hip-hop. It's been 50 years since the genre burst onto the scene in the Bronx. For the past few months, we've been spotlighting women who've made their own distinct mark on the culture.

Today, we present one final voice in our series. My name is Kathleen Adams, and I'm one of the co-factual. of Mama's Hip Hop Kitchen. The mission of Mama's Hip Hop Kitchen is to change the way that people view women, especially women of color in hip hop, through song and dance, graffiti, graffiti, graffiti artists, things like that. And we've been around since 2008. Mama's Top Kitchen has been inspired by a couple different things.

The first part was I was a student at Fordham University, which is in the Bronx, and the hip hop was created in the South Bronx. My co-founder, La Terre and myself, were really passionate about hip-hop, as well as environmental factors that impact communities of color, specifically in the South Bronx. At that time, the South Bronx was the poorest congressional district in the United States and also had one of the highest rates of HIV in the nation. It's something I've always been passionate about was reproductive justice, the right to be

a parent, the right to not be a parent and the right to parent your child, which is more of a holistic view of the pro-choice movement. So we wanted to be able to use all these public health, social justice, issues to kind of spur a conversation. And so we knew that hip hop was a great platform and a vehicle of change when it was started. So we wanted to reclaim hip hop specifically for women. We thought that women were not getting a shine that they deserve,

but we're also being over-sexualized at the time. So with all these things that were kind of bubbling up, we decided to create Mama's Sub-Chip Kitchen, the soup kitchen for the hip-hop soul. And so the reason why we call it that is because women congregate in the kitchen to talk about issues and ideas, and hip hop is the same thing. I was produced to hip hop at a young age.

My father's actually from Bedstine, Brooklyn, Canarsie, went to Brooklyn Tech. However, I grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, so no, not like the playground of hip hop at all. However, Cleveland is very much a music town in terms of, like, just shockies and things like that. So we had a lot of music in our household. I feel like I always heard my dad listening to hip-hop, so it kind of just grew from there. I couldn't be who I am without hip-hop. Let's put it that way. Queen Adams is co-founder of Mama's Hip Hop Kitchen.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.