[theme music] Title: Reporters Ask the Mayor: A Humanitarian Crisis in Midtown?

Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Matt Katz, a reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. I'm filling in for Brian today. Now it's time to catch up with WNYC, Gothamist lead Mayor Adams reporter Elizabeth Kim. Every Tuesday, the mayor holds this off-topic press conference where he allows reporters to ask him about any issues that they want to ask him about. For the last eight months, Liz has joined Brian on Wednesday mornings to recap what's going on at City Hall. Hey, Liz. Welcome back.

Elizabeth Kim: Good morning, Matt.

Matt Katz: Good morning. They covered quite a bit in yesterday's off-topic press conference. We're going to talk about Brad Lander, the city comptroller. We're going to talk about his various probes into the Adams administration and his job aspirations, maybe. We'll talk about what some people are calling a humanitarian crisis in Midtown West. First, let's check in about last night's storm. Rain is expected to continue into this evening. I've been here for several hours. It was not raining at 7:00, but maybe it is raining now.

I assume it's coming down. Do you know? I don't need to ask you, Liz. You're not the meteorologist. The rain is coming and the mayor has been trying to communicate that to New Yorkers, and he seems to be doing it in a unique way. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida back in 2021, which brought record-breaking rainfall, at least 14 city residents died. A majority of those casualties happened in basement apartments and in the outer boroughs.

To prevent something like this from happening again as we face Hurricane Debby, Adams told reporters yesterday that the city would be sending out drones with loudspeakers to flood-prone neighborhoods in order to warn residents of this coming rainfall. Depending on how you look at it, this is the technology that might be seen as really exciting. It's a new way of reaching people, or it might be dystopian and a waste of money. Tell us a little bit about this, Liz. I know that this administration is into technology. I know that this police department is into drones. What are they hoping to do with these drones?

Elizabeth Kim: That's absolutely right, Matt. The fact that you brought up 2021, that's really a specter here when it comes to severe weather events, specifically severe rain events because, as you said, 14 New Yorkers died and it was an event that really caught the city off guard. The question for Adams has always been, how would he handle a situation like that? What are the lessons learned from the remnants of Hurricane Ida?

As you said, the mayor really likes technology. As the NYPD officer or captain, he worked on CompStat, which we know is the crime statistics database for the police department. Under Adams, the NYPD has been using drones. They've been using them for crowd control. Most recently, they've been using them to patrol beaches to identify swimmers in distress and there's even been talk about using drones to respond to 911 emergencies.

Now you won't be surprised, but this is controversial. We have critics of government surveillance technology that don't like this. They feel that there's not enough checks and balances on the use of drones. Given what happened in 2021, the mayor sees this as an opportunity to reach certain communities that the city has historically had difficulty reaching. I think we have a clip from the mayor yesterday saying exactly why he thinks drones are an appropriate use here.

Mayor Adams: We live in a bubble, and we have to meet people where they are in notifications so they can be prepared. That is what we've done under the commissioner, he has used alternate methods of notifying people. On a phone call this morning, the potentiality of using drones with loudspeakers going in those areas or where we know historically we've had flooding problems. It's about notifying. Yes, we're going to have a large number of New Yorkers that's going to sign up for Notify NYC, but there's a large number that won't. Not everyone gets their information from social media, some people don't speak English, so we must meet New Yorkers where they are.

Matt Katz: Liz, did this work? Did we have any sense of how this went last night? Did the drones meet New Yorkers where they are in a range of languages?

Elizabeth Kim: That's not really clear because I asked the city to send me a video or a recording of what the drone looked like and sounded like from the perspective of someone living in the neighborhood. I don't know how the city plans to collect data on how many people heard these drones and then took action but the mayor did say they're trying this out. The emergency management agency described this as a pilot. One thing that didn't go so well was the Spanish version of the drone.

For this beginning pilot, the city put out a drone that first gave instructions in English and the instructions were just alerting people that there was going to be a storm, that there could be potential flooding, and if they are in trouble to call 911. Then after that English version, it jumps into a Spanish version. That one wasn't so well received. I think we have a clip of that.

Speaker 1: [Spanish language]

Matt Katz: My Spanish isn't very good but even so--

Elizabeth Kim: Neither is mine, Matt. I've been told by fluent Spanish speakers that that was not very understandable. It sounds as if it's a computerized or robotic version of the same message that was delivered in English. The question here is if we are trying to "meet people where we are," why didn't the city have a natural-sounding Spanish speaker or a Spanish speaker deliver that in a natural-sounding voice? I will say that Zach Iscol, the commissioner for emergency management, did go on Twitter, and he acknowledged that that should not have happened and that it won't again.

The plan for this is not just to have these drones speaking in English and Spanish, the plan is to have them speaking in multiple languages, but to see the first language other than English that they tackled go so badly, and this is a widely spoken language around the world. To see that go so badly, it makes you wonder, "Wow, how are they going to handle some other languages?"

Matt Katz: They are piloting this pilot-less technology so we'll see where it goes. Listeners, what do you think of this new tech? Did you happen to hear the drones last night in your neighborhood? If so, what did you think? Did you have any idea what was happening when these things started flying over you making announcements? Is this a smart new use of technology by the city or maybe a frighteningly futuristic way of making public service announcements?

The fact that they're making these announcements in different languages seems like it might be an effective way to alert people. Do you agree with that, especially if you live in a neighborhood that was hard hit by Ida or superstorm Sandy? Did you find that the drones actually made a difference in how you and your neighbors might prepare for heavy rainfall? Or does it, again feel like more surveillance? Give us a call, send us a text, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 and if you had some troubles with the rain last night continuing to today, also let us know, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Liz, in terms of the pushback, you mentioned it briefly. Pretty much everybody has cell phones, even non-English speaking New Yorkers, and those phones blare the emergency alert sounds. That kind of technology probably did not exist during certainly Sandy and Ida probably as well. Was that what the pushback was about, that there's other ways of getting information to people given phones or was it more related to the dystopian nature of pilot-less police vehicles hovering above us?

Elizabeth Kim: That was certainly one argument. I will say that this was not the only way that the city tried to reach people. They do have this system called Notify NYC, but you do have to sign up for that system in order to get alerts. These are not just weather alerts, they're traffic alerts. They're alerts about a lot of things, but you do have to sign up. The other thing that the Adams administration said it did was that it partnered with around 2009 non-profits to reach these communities where people are living in basements or the first floor.

They said that they have done this work on the ground. Now when it comes to this idea that why can't the city just text people? I think what we saw with the earthquake is that the city argues that the bar for using that kind of text alert needs to be very, very high because I don't know that there is a way for them to isolate particular neighborhoods, like in this case, those in flood-prone neighborhoods, and have only those people receive the text.

The idea is that if we overuse the text messaging for alerts, then you want to reserve it for a real, real emergency because you don't want to overuse it because if you're blasting this out to everyone, it's going to get to a point where it's going to have perhaps less value in the minds of people who are getting these texts.

Matt Katz: These drones, do we know what other capacity they have? Is there a concern that there's a surveillance capacity with these things?

Elizabeth Kim: That's the concern. Yes, and what exactly are the regulations around the use of these drones? That's what is really concerning to people who are thinking about privacy issues.

Matt Katz: Right, because we know that they can.

Elizabeth Kim: They can.

Matt Katz: I saw in which they can look at what's below them. They discovered sharks in the water earlier this summer. Right?

Elizabeth Kim: Right.

Matt Katz: They look to be the same devices. It's the same drones, I assume.

Elizabeth Kim: I don't know.

Matt Katz: You don't know.

Elizabeth Kim: I don't know if they're the exact same, but these particular drones, we were told were a mix of drones that were operated by the NYPD and also emergency management.

Matt Katz: We got a text. "Hey, this announcement via drones feels both creepy and a huge waste of money." Do we know the money end of things when it comes to the drones or any of the other newfangled tech that this administration has purchased?

Elizabeth Kim: The New York posted a story on this last year, and obviously, this was last year, but at the time, they had found contracts worth tens of thousands of dollars in the scheme of New York City's budget like billions of dollars. That's not that much. I think the question, though, is does the city plan on expanding this use and can they reassure New Yorkers that these are the ways in which drones will be used and these are the ways that drones will not be used?

Matt Katz: Right. Speaking of money, let's talk about Brad Lander, the city comptroller. He recently announced he's going to be challenging Adams in next year's mayoral primary. Also, he's still the comptroller, and he's made a lot of probes into various aspects of the Adams administration. Most well-known is Lander's audit of Adams's campaign financing, which you had talked about last week. I want to ask about the other efforts that Lander's office has made to make sure the administration is doing things by the book. Can you talk a little bit about Lander's audit of the city's contract with DocGo? This is the controversial migrant service provider. What's going on there?

Elizabeth Kim: DocGo had a $430 million contract with the city for migrant services. There have been troubling allegations around several aspects. One is the treatment of migrants by its employees or subcontractors, wasted food, unlicensed security guards. The attorney general, Letitia James, is conducting an investigation into the company for potential violations of federal and state law. This particular audit of DocGo that was done by the comptroller, found that nearly $2 million went to 10,000 unused hotel rooms.

The mayor was asked about this because it is the comptroller's job to do these types of audits and comptrollers historically used this position to scrutinize the mayor and to find taxpayer wasteful spending of the administration. The question was put to the mayor, and this is what he had to say.

Mayor Adams: We had a total of over 210,000 people that have arrived at our city, larger than the size of Albany, New York. We've all heard this over and over again. When you get that call in the middle of the night, you need 200 rooms, a bus pulled in, you need 150 rooms, you need 300 rooms, you don't have time to call Motel 6. You better be prepared.

Matt Katz: What do you make of that explanation, Liz?

Elizabeth Kim: Listen, the problem with DocGo's contract is the problem with many emergency contracts. They don't go through a bidding process, and there's generally less oversight. Now the reason for that, the administration will argue is that during a time of crisis, and, for example, we can just look back to COVID, the mayor and his officials need to move swiftly on contracts. The mayor, as you heard in his remarks there, felt like this was exactly the example of that kind of circumstance.

The city was seeing a large influx, like hundreds by the week coming into New York City, and they needed to provide them with housing, and they couldn't always predict how many people would come on any given day, so they had to be ready. As a result of that, there were some periods of time where they had rooms that were empty.

Matt Katz: Liz, sticking with the comptroller here for a moment, there was another audit underway, and this time it's on the city's Operation Padlock to Protect Program Adam's initiative aimed at shutting down the illegal cannabis shops that have been popping up all over the city and apparently, pretty successful so far. City has shut down over 800 unlicensed dispensaries, seized $45 million in illegal products. So many stores, it's really mind-boggling. At yesterday's press conference, the mayor and his administration were even sitting in front of posters touting the success of the program. What is Lander's new audit about regarding this program?

Elizabeth Kim: I think, in general, his audit is just to see how is this program working. I don't think he's made any judgment one way or the other. I think he's still looking into it. This is something that the mayor very much wants to run on as a success, which is closing down illegal weed shops, particularly, those that are marketing weed to children in the form of flavored gummies. I think we've all seen them in different neighborhoods.

This is really something, I think, that the mayor wants to make a capstone of his campaign. It's something that he's talked about since the beginning, and it was only through this recent session in Albany that he and other municipalities received the permission for them to do these more aggressive enforcement actions.

Matt Katz: Yet, Lander is examining this, and one of the reporters at the press conference yesterday asked the mayor whether he thinks Lander is, I guess, using his office to pursue a political agenda and using his office to launch his primary campaign. How did the mayor respond to that? How is this being perceived to what Lander has been up to, both from official and political perspective?

Elizabeth Kim: The mayor, I think, very wisely just punted on that question. He said I'm really not going to address that one way or the other. I think we know that Brad Lander, as the comptroller, has this very advantageous office. He's in a position, whether he's running or not, it's his job to scrutinize city spending. You got to believe now that he's running, he's going to take advantage of that office and he's going to hold press conferences and he's going to perform a lot of audits.

Matt Katz: He has during his whole time in office but it is really an ideal job if you want to be primarying the mayor.

Elizabeth Kim: Right. To be fair, he has not been as aggressive as prior city comptrollers in going after the mayor. Just as an example, think of Scott Stringer versus former mayor de Blasio.

Matt Katz: We have some callers and texters who want to talk about these drones. Ben [unintelligible 00:19:33] Spring Arbor asked a good question that I probably should have asked. Why don't they just use a car with a megaphone that says, "Hey, be careful, there's flooding coming?" Why does it have to be a drone overhead? Do they have that capacity anymore? Is there any reason why that couldn't be done? Do we know?

Elizabeth Kim: I don't know for sure. I'm imagining that the feeling is that the drone can cover a larger territory without having to go through a city's drive through a city street. Although there does have to be someone operating the drone. No, other than the fact that drones are already a tool that is being used by the city, I think we should expect more expansive uses of drones, just given how much the mayor seems to like this technology.

Matt Katz: That's a bit of a technological creep there, too. Aaron in Brooklyn is calling in. Hi, Aaron, thanks for calling. We are getting, Aaron, I think.

Aaron: Hello.

Matt Katz: Hey, Aaron. Thanks. Sorry to keep you waiting for a moment.

Aaron: Hi.

Matt Katz: Thanks for calling in.

Aaron: Thanks for taking my call. I was calling to find out about how the sewers play into all of the flooding that resulted in deaths and what the city is doing about improving the sewers, rather, so that there are less deaths, less flooding.

Matt Katz: Do you have some flooding in the sewers night near your home?

Aaron: A few blocks away. I know that some of the residents, they do have issues with heavy rains and flooding in their basements. I live in-

Elizabeth Kim: Where do you live--

Aaron: -New York Brooklyn.

Elizabeth Kim: Where do you live, Aaron? Oh, Brooklyn.

Aaron: East New York, Brooklyn.

Elizabeth Kim: East New York. Okay. Yes, this has been something that has been talked about for years in the city which is aging infrastructure. In some places, like southeast Queens, under Mayor de Blasio, they did make a massive investment into upgrading that infrastructure and putting in new sewers. I think in some places, we're starting to see the benefit of that. I just reduced complaints about flooding in certain neighborhoods but of course, this is something I think that this will happen in a lot of neighborhoods and the city has by no means gotten to every neighborhood. Yes, this is definitely on the city's radar.

Matt Katz: I wanted to touch on another one of the really interesting discussions from yesterday's press conference about what some people are calling a humanitarian crisis in Midtown West.

Elizabeth Kim: Specifically The Post.

Matt Katz: That's true.

Elizabeth Kim: Right.

Matt Katz: That's true. Although I thought I saw something. Did I also see a story in the Times? Maybe I'm mistaking that. I feel like I've--

Elizabeth Kim: There've been other versions of this story about other parts of the city, like 14th Street, for example.

Matt Katz: Got it. This area that we're talking about is more Penn Station area [unintelligible 00:22:34]?

Elizabeth Kim: Right. West side.

Matt Katz: Let's listen to a clip of Adams talking about it.

Elizabeth Kim: To give you a list of things that were happening in that area.

Mayor Adams: Such as sleeping on the street.

Elizabeth Kim: No, people are openly using drugs. Another example is having sex on benches, a Holiday Inn that was taken over, needles and cracked wipes loaded on the ground. Is that not an issue for the city?

Mayor Adams: Remember there was a city council law that was passed that says people have the right to sleep on the street. My agencies cannot break the law to enforce the law. We must be clear on some of the laws, laws that are put in place. We have to run the city around those laws and this is what we advocate for. The police commissioner and his team, we're going to have a combination like we did in the subway system under Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom. We're going to go out and deal with some of those quality-of-life issues. That's our focus. There are many, many laws, more than people realize, that prevent us from, as one would say, moving people along. You just can't do that in the city.

Matt Katz: Liz, he's blaming city council on this? Do you want to give a little context there?

Elizabeth Kim: Sure. Just to peel it back a little bit more. You heard that interesting exchange between The Post reporter and the mayor. Where she is identifying certain behaviors that The Post has reported on. Now The Post, as many people know, is very much this. They're the avatar for the New Yorker who is concerned about quality of life and law and order. She's talking about open drug use, homeless people sleeping on streets and benches. For passersby, these are quality-of-life issues but for those experiencing these struggles, it's other things.

It's mental health, it's lack of housing, lack of employment. Deputy Mayor Ann Williams-Isom, she's the deputy mayor for health and human services, has been really trying to shape the narrative around this. She's argued because this is not the first time that this has come up in a press conference. She has argued that simply removing these people from the community is a cosmetic solution and it doesn't really get at the root problem of what's happening not just in New York City, she argues, but nationwide, if you think of something like mental health.

The mayor's instinct on this, as a former police officer, as this law and order Democrat has always been to assure the public that the city is on this. I thought it was interesting that yesterday, and he's done this before, he does try to deflect blame on this issue to progressives, which is unfair. It's inaccurate to say that the city council passed a law that allows this. What they did was they passed a law that enshrined current rights that people who are homeless have. It also felt a little bit like he was abdicating responsibility on this issue but then, he comes back with a second answer, which I thought was very interesting.

Mayor Adams: I'm sorry.

Elizabeth Kim: So there's red tape to the city actually?

Mayor Adams: No, it's not red tape. You have to follow law. If someone is standing on a street corner clearly under the influence, but they just standing there, it's not desirable to see it. We don't have the authority to say we're going to just lock that person up because of that. It's about giving a cross-section of services, of going out with teams, interacting. We've done it at Washington Square Park. We've done it in the subway system. It's about building trust.

We partnered with Norman Siegel, who has done an amazing job. He's getting ready to do an anniversary of what he has kicked off. It's a combination of engaging people, building trust, giving them the services that they need, and we can't be heavy-handed in doing it.

Matt Katz: What does he mean by not being heavy-handed?

Elizabeth Kim: That's interesting because the mayor is often-

Matt Katz: Heavy-handed.

Elizabeth Kim: -criticized for being heavy-handed. Here we have him saying, "We can't be heavy-handed in this." Basically what he's saying is that these are not people that the police can simply round up and arrest, although he has been accused of doing so with some street homeless encampments. This is an interesting dichotomy here. In this moment, the mayor is really much backing up what his deputy mayor has tried to-- The argument she's tried to make over and over again, we need a cross-section of services. It's about building trust. We see-- I don't know if this is the evolution of the mayor's thinking, but it was certainly worth noting.

Matt Katz: Before we wrap up, Liz, I want to ask about some of the recent confrontations between the NYPD and the press. There's been a lot about this on Twitter in the last 24 or 48 hours among reporters who covered New York City. Apparently, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry got aggressive with a daily news reporter who covers the police. This happened last week on his face, had to be separated by other officers, apparently.

Then just yesterday, a journalist was charged with committing a hate crime for accompanying and documenting pro-Palestinian protesters while they vandalized the homes of top leaders at the Brooklyn Museum. His lawyers, this photojournalist, the lawyers are arguing he was acting as a credentialed member of the media, but he actually had his home searched over this. Then just yesterday, I believe, the NYPD came out with a long statement against that daily news reporter that they had gotten to this fight with.

What do you make of these confrontations between law enforcement and the press in historical context here? Is this the normal antagonism that just might be playing out more publicly, given the nature of media these days, or is there something different about what's going on with this administration, with this NYPD and our local reporters?

Elizabeth Kim: I think it's definitely been different and more intensified. Of course, there's always going to be some tension between the administration and the press, but this has been something that has been ongoing and escalating between the NYPD and the press. You might remember Chief John Chell, he attacked daily news columnist Harry Siegel. He's attacked council member Tiffany Cabán, he attacked a freelance journalist named Talia Jain that raised a lot of eyebrows.

The question was whether the mayor was, in fact, empowering them to act this way. The mayor himself said that he wants the NYPD to speak their mind. He often feels that the press unfairly attacks both himself and the NYPD. What made this latest episode stand out, was the fact that the tensions actually had been diminishing. We hadn't really seen a lot of social media coming out of someone like Chief Chell. The mayor himself has said that he wants to bring down the temperature between just in the political atmosphere, but also, I think, with the press.

The mayor himself has been a lot more subdued at his press conferences. This, I think, caught a lot of us by surprise but it was something else to have a senior-ranking police official get in the face of a veteran police reporter and then have to be restrained, that's according to witnesses and according to the daily newspaper report. That was not a good day, I think, for the NYPD nor the mayor. It was interesting that the mayor, in this case, he didn't do this very staunch defense of the NYPD. He said that this was the first he had heard of the incident, but that he thought that the officer needed to be communicated with because this was not professional.

Matt Katz: Liz, always great to have your perspective, your reporting on the mayor and this administration. We're going to leave it there for today. My guest has been WNYC and Gothamist reporter Liz Kim. She covers city hall and Mayor Eric Adams. You can find all of her reporting at gothamist.com Liz, thanks so much.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Matt.

 

 

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