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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. When you're on the subway and you see a police officer, or now a member of the National Guard, how does it make you feel? Safer and more at ease, or more threatened in some way? Maybe it depends who you are and what you or your community's life experience has been. At Mayor Adams' weekly news conference yesterday, he made the case for the National Guard making people feel safer now that Governor Hochul has deployed about 750 National Guard members to the subways, supporting what the Mayor called law enforcement omnipresence.

Mayor Adams: We were clear that there was a lot of concerns and fear and that omnipresence was important. The omnipresence right now of having a National Guard. If you're on a subway, and all of a sudden you come upstairs and you see that state trooper, that police officer, that National Guard, you have a feeling of safety and that uniform means a lot to people.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams yesterday. We'll hear more clips from yesterday's news conference and discuss them to start the show today, as our lead Eric Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim, joins us as she does most Wednesdays after the Mayor's Tuesday news conferences. Hi, Liz. Good morning.

Elizabeth Kim: Good morning, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're going to open the phones right away too this morning for your reactions to that clip. How does police omnipresence or police presence generally make you feel in the subway system? If it's safer, call up and say so. 212-433-WNYC. If more threatened because of the Bloomberg-Giuliani era, let's say, of stop and frisk, and so many arrests of Black and Latino New Yorkers especially for small infractions, or harassed for looking homeless, or post-Michael Brown or post-George Floyd discomfort, you can say that. Maybe your reaction is mixed, depending on who you are and what your experience has been, but how do you feel when you see police officers generally, or what the Mayor called police officer and now National Guard omnipresence in the subway system? How do you feel when you see those uniforms? He singled out the uniforms. Maybe it's even different underground than on the street for you. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text.

Liz, what was the context for that response by the Mayor that we just played?

Elizabeth Kim: The Mayor was asked about how he felt about the National Guard in part because there was the appearance of a conflict between himself and Governor Hochul on the issue last week. The Mayor was conspicuously absent when Governor Hochul made the announcement in a New York City subway station. The thinking was that the Mayor had been asking the Governor for more funding to have the NYPD do the patrols in the subway. He basically needs more overtime funding. He has surged 1,000 more officers, but he wanted more, and the Governor didn't give it to him. Instead, she gave him this. Immediately afterward, we saw an NYPD chief go on social media and criticize the plan. He said New York City "is not a warzone." He also said that the city has been doing bag checks for years.

There was a question as to what was going on here between the Mayor and the Governor. When he was asked about it, he really sought to put any idea that he was not happy with this plan to rest, and he gave that statement that he is in full support of having more uniformed officers in the subway system.

Brian Lehrer: Now here's a reaction, listeners, to the new deployment by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. Then, Liz, you'll tell us why you brought this clip today.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: We need to take a look at the root causes. Where is the investment in mental health service? I looked at footage on a new station the other day, might have been yours, where it showed a subway car pulling into a station and you saw various homeless individuals wrapped in blankets, shoeless. Where are the services for those individuals, some of whom have been off of their meds for months and months and perhaps even years? I would love to see those investments coming into our city, stronger mental health solutions that actually do prevent people from cycling through the criminal justice system. That should be our focus.

Brian Lehrer: Adrienne Adams, Speaker of the City Council. Is the Speaker saying, address root causes and don't put more cops in the subways in the meantime to reduce crime and reduce fear? Is she saying it's either or?

Elizabeth Kim: She was asked about the police presence, and I think her answer was she didn't feel as if policing is always the answer. In this particular case, we have to be mindful of the fact that the data shows that crime is actually down in the subway system compared to prior years. Even the Mayor has come out and said that. It's been a little bit confusing because both the Mayor and the Governor have come out strongly saying that they need to tamp down fears of crime in the subway, but at the same time, they also are saying, "But the subway system is incredibly safe for New Yorkers," and the data backs that up.

What they're trying to answer to is perception, and perception is a very tricky thing. It may be that the-- I think the Mayor said something like six felonies a day, but what happens is, is when there is a high-profile crime, it drives up fears. The question is, how do policymakers respond to that? Do they respond to the data and continually emphasize, "This is what the data is telling us," or do they, in fact, try to answer this? It's a tricky thing. How do you reassure New Yorkers? How do you respond to perception? But the Mayor and the Governor have said together that they feel that it is very important to respond to that perception.

Brian Lehrer: And what a response. I mean, calling out the National Guard and surging what the Mayor says is 1,000 NYPD officers into the subway system. You're right. It's tricky for a policymaker to respond to perception when perception doesn't meet statistical reality. Have you gotten anything from the Mayor or maybe deeper into his administration behind the scenes on how they make that calculation?

Have they just given up on explaining reality to New Yorkers and saying, "Look, six felonies out of four million rides every day. Look at decades past when we didn't have a National Guard in the subway, and things were much less safe and people didn't have this level of fear," nevertheless, maybe because of what's in the New York Post every day or what's on some of the local news channels? Have they given up on just explaining reality, reinforcing reality, rather than caving to the perception issue by deploying so many cops?

Elizabeth Kim: I think one issue here is this is about crime. This is an issue that is always important for any mayor, but particularly for Mayor Adams because he campaigned on a promise to restore a sense of safety to the city following the pandemic. This is his key priority. In this case, when he sees the headlines and crime makes headlines, I think he's worried because it could be a very big political vulnerability. It's that way for any mayor, I think, but especially for this mayor, and I think because it's crime, he feels a need to answer this perception.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Cameron in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hello, Cameron.

Cameron: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hello. You want to respond to the question of how you feel when you see police uniforms or what the Mayor called the omnipresence of police in the subway system?

Cameron: Oh, yes. I was saying in my mind all the time that it means nothing to people, especially in the Bronx, because we don't see those National Guard troops. We just see the police, and the police don't really do anything except for standing on the platform. The bag checks-- It's weird because most people that carry bags, like go to work, or work day people, hardworking, don't really commit any crimes, but the offenders with knives and guns, they don't carry bags most times. It doesn't make any sense that they're checking bags. There's no way-- nobody carries them.

Brian Lehrer: Cameron, thank you very much. Liz, was the Mayor asked yesterday about the fact that the deployment as announced is going to focus on major hubs like Grand Central and Times Square, when like the slashing of the subway conductor happened at the station in the Bronx in the middle of the night, so the current deployment presumably would not have prevented that. That kind of question?

Elizabeth Kim: No, but the Mayor initially suggested that the patrols would be roving and the bag checks would also be roving. I think they appeared first at these major transit hubs, but the idea was that they would eventually move around and be a presence across the five boroughs.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call in response to the question. Justin in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Justin.

Justin: Yes, hi. Thank you for taking my call. I'm a person of color who works in the city. I go back and forth between Brooklyn and Manhattan all the time. I think it's helpful to see cops, and I've actually utilized police officers. I was transferring from the 1 Train to the 2 Train in Times Square one time, and there was a guy, a homeless-type guy who was harassing a woman who was still on the train. He was actually harassing her from the outside and banging on the window, and there were cops right there, and I said, "Hey, that guy is harassing that woman." They walked over to him and said, "Hey, what are you doing?" He straightened up real quick and walked away. That is great.

On the other side, I do think that there should be more help for people with mental illness and find a way to keep them from having to just live on the subway in a blanket. I actually have a son who's mentally ill, and I have him housed somewhere, but what I say to people all the time is, "At least I don't see him in a blanket on the 1 Train." That feeling of seeing these people, who sometimes smell or just are loud or scary or whatever, is very disconcerting, and I think there needs to be something done to help those people find whatever services they need.

I think both things are true, in a sense.

Brian Lehrer: Justin, thank you. Here's a text that came in that's also expressing some complexity. Listener writes, "I don't see a heavy police presence and feel safe. The first thought in my head is, what's with all the cops? Is this a dangerous place?" Liz, I don't know if you have any thoughts on the caller, but that's an interesting text that makes the whole thing seem sort of counterintuitive. If you see a lot of police presence, you might not immediately think, "Oh, this is well-defended. I can walk through here," as opposed to, "Oh, something dangerous must be going on here."

Elizabeth Kim: Right. I do want to tell listeners that Governor Hochul did at the same time commit $20 million to expanding a pilot program that brings social workers into the subway system, but I will say that that investment is- the timeline for that is to happen sometime before the end of next year. The National Guard announcement was the one that really got the most attention here, but I think the callers all raise really good points.

What I would say is I recently spoke to a political consultant that made the point that what New Yorkers or what the public really wants to see is, does the government work? Is the government working for me? They want to see that in a real, tangible way. I think that that's why the Mayor and the Governor latch onto this idea of uniforms, that somehow that that represents that government is being responsive.

I would ask, like to Speaker Adrienne Adams' point, what would happen if the Governor asked social workers to come into the subway system and they were wearing uniforms, and commuters saw a social worker in a uniform trying to talk to a homeless man, trying to bring that person off the street, talking to a mentally ill person. I wonder if that in many ways would address what the Speaker is talking about, which is the root causes of crime, but also the root causes, perhaps, of our uncomfortableness or fears in the subway system.

Brian Lehrer: Right, but didn't Mayor Adams already institute a program of trying to coax more people who, let's say, look homeless or incapable of taking care of themselves off the subways and it's met with very little success, people are still resistant to going? Maybe, just as a hypothetical on the other side of what you just laid out, if a social worker, like a cop, was wearing a uniform, maybe that would make those people feel more anxious and like they were being approached by authorities instead of a helper.

Elizabeth Kim: That's true. That's a fair point, Brian. I think the Mayor and the Governor have talked about this pilot program that they're doing. I think the problem is that we are still seeing many homeless people in the subway, and we are still seeing people who appear to be mentally ill in the subway. We are seeing a lot of police, though, at the same time. I think to many New Yorkers, there's a disconnect here that's happening. Are the Governor and Mayor addressing what the Speaker described as the root causes of the fear here?

Brian Lehrer: Here's an interesting text that reflects a number that are coming in. This says, "Why did the last gentleman who called in have to go to the police and point out that a man was harassing that woman? Why aren't the police more proactive?" Liz, I have a number of texts here from people saying, "Yes, great. They're deploying lots of police to the platforms. They stand around and talk to each other and look at their phones. Why aren't they riding the trains?" Texts like that.

Elizabeth Kim: Right, and I think you can find various anecdotes from New Yorkers, both positive and negative, about how the police presence is- what it's doing, practically speaking, on the subway system. I don't know that there is an overall-- The Mayor likes to say that when he speaks to New Yorkers that they feel very reassured by seeing the police officer on the platform. I think you will inevitably come across some New Yorkers who say they don't feel that way.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a couple of more calls on the question, how does it make you feel when you see a lot of uniformed police officers, or now National Guard, at your subway station? Randy in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Randy.

Randy: Hi. I think how I feel these days about ill-conceived policies that are dealing just with perceptions, it makes me angry. I think that policy has to be driven by what you said, Brian, by data. That public officials have to tell the truth about data to the people, and if their policies based on data don't work, then you don't elect them again. Every elected official wants to get elected again, so they wind up doing these Band-Aid policies that don't really help, and I think that this is one of them. I believe what all of the people have said, including Adrienne Adams, that money for mental health care and for homelessness, all of this will help in some way. I think that if --

Yesterday you had a transit policeman on who talked about the fact that the troops and the policemen aren't on the platform and they're not in the subway car. If there's going to be an increase in uniformed people, they should be in the subway car that might avert someone from- that isn't mentally ill because [sound cut] [inaudible 00:18:34] person, we cannot predict their behavior, but on the platform and in the subway. I'm tired of these Band-Aids [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: Randy, you're giving us your intellectual analysis of the situation, and I appreciate it. How do you personally feel when you go into a subway station and there are a lot of police officers, if you've had that experience?

Randy: Yes. I mean, I think that because I listen to the news and I read the paper, I understand why they're there. I guess on some level, in the car and on the platform, it might make me feel a little safer. However, I won't feel safer with troops with guns standing around. That will make me only feel more anxious.

Brian Lehrer: Armed police officers. Randy, thank you very much. Lydia in the West Village, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lydia.

Lydia: Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. I just had a baby, and I use the subway often, and walking past people with essentially machine guns feels really creepy, having a baby with me in a stroller. I don't think there's any other situation where my daughter is going to see machine guns except for the subway which is supposed to keep us safe. I don't know. It feels very creepy and a little bit scary.

Brian Lehrer: Lydia, thank you very much. Antoine in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Antoine.

Antoine: Hi, Brian. Thanks for this conversation, I think which is a continuation of the conversation you had with Bragg, actually, around crime and safety. I want to [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: With Alvin Bragg a few weeks ago, the Manhattan DA. Also, with the head of the Transit Workers Union on Monday who wants this, the workers want this, and the guests from the New York Civil Liberties Union on Monday. Who doesn't? Yes, we're still talking about it. It's obviously a big deal in the city. Go ahead, Antoine.

Antoine: Yes. I think I want to just offer that there have been investments in the previous mayoral administration through the Office of Neighborhood Safety and, full disclosure, I have been a part of that and most of that being community participatory work. I think what we need to build is a language around this, which is our psychological safety and our physical safety. I can tell you that we have made significant strides to understand both of those domains through the Office of Neighborhood Safety. I can tell you also that police use of weaponry in terms of psychological safety are total opposites to what folks need to feel safe as they navigate New York City.

I think this administration would do well to lean on resources that already exist and have some level of efficacy in the intervention, meaning that they are effective to reducing crime while giving people the opportunity to deal with the data and their feelings as they navigate New York City. I think New Yorkers can do both of those things when given the requisite information and the skills. I think that should work. I can tell you that I, having participated in that research and led part of it, did not, have not taken my child into the subway and have navigated the city with my car because there's no way that I would introduce my child to that on the train in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Antoine, thank you very much. Liz, there we had two callers in a row, as it turns out, who were uncomfortable introducing their children to these uniformed and armed police officer or National Guard member spaces. We certainly had a caller the other day when we were talking about this from somebody who has a baby, and said that they too often feel that the baby is being threatened by threatening-looking people on the trains, and they like the idea of a police officer. The public is obviously divided on this.

I guess the political calculation that the Mayor must be making to put a pin in this for now is that there are a lot more people out there who are going to feel reassured than are going to feel threatened in the way that some of our callers have been articulating.

Elizabeth Kim: Right. I think it's also important to keep in mind is that this is an investment, and this is an investment that will likely take away from other investments that the city and the state could make. I think that the callers who are critical of the Mayor for responding to perception as opposed to data make a good point. The Mayor always says, "I have to also respond to how New Yorkers are feeling," but I think you can argue that as the Mayor, he has this incredible bully pulpit in which he can explain the data. He could use his weekly press conferences to break down the data, and that's another way to get the messaging across. It doesn't have to be this deployment, this very expensive deployment of uniformed officers.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Elizabeth Kim, our lead Eric Adams reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, with more clips on other things from the Mayor's news conference yesterday, and more of your calls and texts. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with our Elizabeth Kim who covers Mayor Adams, including his Tuesday news conferences, and then comes on on Wednesdays with clips and analysis. One more thing on the cops and the subways, only because we're getting a lot of texts making a similar point. It does seem overwhelmingly from the comments that are coming in that those listeners who are writing that they are open to cops and National Guard in the subway system, they want them on the trains not on the platform.

I will say that I was on an A-Train on Sunday, and I heard an announcement that I'd never heard before on the train, a pre-recorded announcement that said there is a New York City police officer on board who will be patrolling this train. In the 20 minutes or so that I was on the train, no police officer happened to walk through my car, but that's-- Did the Mayor get asked about that, and is it clear how much the deployment includes presence on the trains?

Elizabeth Kim: He didn't get asked about it, but he has said that the police officers should be riding the trains, but like the listeners and like yourself, Brian, I ride the train almost every day, and I am yet to see a police officer on the same car with me. I don't know-- That's one data point, but I think maybe other New Yorkers have that same experience. That's a good question. I don't know how many of them are doing it, and what percentage of the day they're devoting to doing that because they're also-- as New Yorkers have said, they are seen on the platforms and that's clear. There's always an announcement when I am coming into 14th Street, where the conductor will tell everyone that if you're in trouble, there are police officers stationed here.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Well, maybe that's a question for next week's news conference.

Elizabeth Kim: It is.

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] Also, at the Mayor's news conference yesterday-- This is still about the NYPD, but not about the deployment. He was asked why the NYPD seems to spotlight crimes committed by migrants in NYPD statements to the press about certain recent crimes, and the Mayor said this.

Mayor Adams: They didn't say that this is a West African crew. They didn't say that this is a Venezuelan crew. When we find patterns, if there is a crew of Blood gang members, we'll say this is a crew of Blood gang members. If there's a crew of a particular group, we say that. And so, I don't think that he used ethnicity and he didn't say-- my understanding, he didn't say shoplifting. He said pickpockets.

Journalist: Oh, pickpockets [crosstalk]--

Mayor Adams: Yes. No, it's okay. If there's an organized pickpocket group, professional group carrying out a crime, he's identifying a crime. In order to solve the crime, you don't sit down and say, "Okay, let me be politically correct in what I say." No, identify what it is.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, explain why that came up?

Elizabeth Kim: That was a question I put to the Mayor because I'm very interested in how the NYPD and the Mayor himself talk about crime. This was an interview that an NYPD chief of transit gave on Fox News, in which he described "migrant crews" who were pickpocketing on the subways. I asked the Mayor to talk about what this public safety reasoning is behind labeling them as migrants. At the same time, both the Mayor and the NYPD have said that migrants are overwhelmingly law-abiding, and that is backed up by data, but the NYPD has spotlighted migrant crimes.

What I was putting to the Mayor is, why exactly do they talk-- they're not just talking about, we have crews of people pickpocketing in the subway. What is the point of labeling them as migrants? I can't recall hearing the PD ever saying there's a crew of Asians that are going around the subway system and pickpocketing. What's behind the messaging? Is it about making New Yorkers alert to the fact that there are some migrants doing that? Should that make New Yorkers concerned when they ride the subways and they see migrants?

The Mayor's point was they weren't using race or ethnicity, and he felt it was an appropriate use. As you heard in that clip, he says we can't get-- this is not about being politically correct. It's putting out an accurate description to New Yorkers about who's doing the crime.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. You say you never hear a group of Asians-- you never hear a group of native-born Americans were out there committing crime. In fairness to the Mayor, I've also heard him recently refuting, let's say, the Republican narrative that migrants commit more crimes than people originally from here. That Republicans and some of their related media are taking individual crimes and tagging asylum-seekers generally with that label, it's what Marjorie Taylor Greene was doing at the State of the Union, all of that, in the Republican response; when we never hear them single out criminals born here, as native-born American killed someone today or robbed someone today, even though historically, as you referred to, the data tells us that that is at a higher rate than immigrant crime. I've heard the Mayor make that point too, so maybe the bottom line or the end result is a mixed message.

Elizabeth Kim: Right. I guess what I wonder too is when the police are talking about crime, how are New Yorkers supposed to translate that into something that's useful? It occurred to me that when you say migrant, we are a city of immigrants. How does that signal to me that-- should I be on the lookout for-- We're a city of immigrants.

The other point I would make is that pickpocketing-- We're not talking about a serial killer, that they're on a manhunt and they want people to be on high-alert for. I think if we looked at the statistics for pickpocketing, it's probably done by-- I don't know what the racial breakdown or nationality breakdown or what their immigration status is, but we somehow-- What is the rationale behind spotlighting migrant crews doing this kind of crime?

Brian Lehrer: The Mayor was also asked about an incident of police use of force, talking about potential criminal and real criminal use of force, police use of force against a recent migrant, a man who came from Venezuela, apparently, who was holding his one-year-old child when a police officer fired a stun gun at him. The Mayor said it was justified by the circumstances. Here's that.

Mayor Adams: This person was under the influence of alcohol, holding a child. Those officers had to get that child from him so that child was not going to be endangered. All of this is on body-worn camera. Those officers responded to a person who was dangerous, and he took appropriate actions.

Brian Lehrer: Can you tell us more about that incident?

Elizabeth Kim: Yes. This was a story by The New York Times. As you said, The New York Times had obtained a video in which you see multiple police officers at a Queens' migrant shelter. It's a very chaotic situation, but you do see them at one point gathering around this individual who's holding a child, you hear other people screaming, and then you see them use the stun gun. The other thing that happens, which is also disturbing, is after they remove the child, they're then trying to tackle the man. Then you see a police officer punch the man squarely in the jaw twice.

This is an incident that is currently under investigation. The Mayor was asked about it yesterday and it's interesting that he is, in a way, coming ahead of the investigation by saying that the use of force was justified. He said that the man was intoxicated and the child was endangered. The man himself, who was interviewed by The New York Times, said that he had not been drinking that night. We will see. The investigation should, hopefully, yield more information on what exactly happened.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I guess even when there's video, there can be different interpretations of how it looks to people. The Mayor defended it based on the bodycam video. The Times released that video, which I haven't seen, but I gather from the discussion around it that it's made people suspect that something was done wrong by the police officer. Do you know what police guidelines are in a situation like that?

Elizabeth Kim: I don't, but the Mayor said that the two most dangerous situations for police officers are responses to car stops and also reports of domestic violence. He conveyed that this is a very sensitive kind of response for police. You're right. We have that one video, and we'll know more from the bodycam video which the Mayor has seen, but which has yet to be released to the public.

Brian Lehrer: One more topic from yesterday's news conference: closing Rikers Island. By way of background, listeners, the law passed during the de Blasio administration requires closing it by 2027, so it's coming up, and replacing it with jails in four boroughs. Staten Island, no. Here's the Mayor acknowledging he will not reach that 2027 goal on time.

Mayor Adams: We know what happened in COVID. We lost two years in the plan. I think you saw a very honest approach, which I ask my team to do all the time. Listen, we're probably the least politically correct administration in history. We're not going to just tell people what they want to hear.

Brian Lehrer: That's two clips already from yesterday in which he bragged about not being politically correct, but what's the Rikers situation, and is it in or out of the Mayor's control?

Elizabeth Kim: That question came following the Mayor's budget director, Jacques Jiha. He was asked to testify before the City Council on the budget. Of course, the issue of Rikers came up, and he very bluntly said that the closure of Rikers wasn't going to happen by 2027. I think that it wasn't so much a surprise, but the fact that it was such a blunt admission of it was the first time that the press, that the public had heard something like that. The Mayor has previously said that the deadline is not realistic, that we need to have a plan B. He's kind of wavered on committing to the deadline, but he's never gone as far as to say what his budget director said, which is it's not happening by 2027.

In that clip, the Mayor talks about some of the reasons why. By law, the city is mandated to close it by 2027, but he lists off the pandemic. He lost two years because of the pandemic. Then another issue is that the costs have also risen. It was originally projected-- in order to build the replacement jails for Rikers, the cost was supposed to be around $8 billion. It's now risen to around $15.5 billion. That's a lot. I would also point out that when a plan gets delayed, that's also what happens. The cost of construction and also of acquiring land that goes up as well. That shouldn't be a total surprise, but that's where we are now. It seems, more and more, the administration is willing to just say they're not going to make that deadline.

Brian Lehrer: We did a segment yesterday that was mostly around opposition in Chinatown to the borough jail that's proposed for there. I wonder if you have reporting on how much that-- because there's opposition, I think, in all four boroughs that are supposed to get borough jails. Nobody wants a jail in their neighborhood even though there are prosocial reasons for that. Because it's good for eventual rehabilitation for people to continue to be connected to their families and communities rather than isolated at places like Rikers or prisons Upstate that are just in these incarcerated people and correction officer communities. There's a lot of pushback according to fears of crime or because of fears of crime around jails, whether those fears are justified or not. I'm just curious if NIMBY on the jail construction is also slowing things up, if you know.

Elizabeth Kim: Undoubtedly. That's one of the reasons why the timeline has been extended is because there has been major pushback to the jails. I would, though, say that-- I think it's important to say that criminal justice experts argue that the closure of Rikers is still imperative. Two people have died at Rikers so far this year. Last year it was 9, the year before that it was 17. The city, at the same time, is facing a threat of a federal takeover of Rikers. A federal judge last month did lift what was called a contempt order on the city for failing to work with a federal monitor. That was good news, but at the same time, the judge said that the level of danger at Rikers was still unacceptable. This is both to inmates and the employees that work there.

There needs to be some resolution, which was why this plan was created. The fact that we can't meet this deadline, I think is concerning because you see what can happen if Rikers is allowed to continue as is.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Yes, and I guess another conversation for another day is whether it will be any safer for people who are incarcerated in the borough jails than it is currently at Rikers, but that's a longer conversation for another day. We leave this conversation here for today. Our Elizabeth Kim, our lead Eric Adams reporter, City Hall reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, who generally comes on with us every Wednesday with clips and analysis from the Mayor's weekly Tuesday news conference.

Liz, thanks as always.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.

 

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