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Janae Pierre: The MTA wants to use AI to flag problematic behavior. A new report reveals the cause of a deadly garage collapse in 2023. A US attorney pushes for telecom companies to monitor sexual predators. New York City's Greenmarkets, and Poetry Month. From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Janae Pierre. It's a brave new world in New York City's subways. MTA officials are laying out plans to use artificial intelligence technology to push its surveillance capabilities to new levels.

Michael Kemper is the MTA's chief security officer. He's working with AI companies to use technology that monitors the MTA's various camera feeds and sends alerts when riders are behaving erratically on subway platforms. Kemper says the tech could help prevent crimes.

Michael Kemper: That's just one example of a few that we're working with tech companies literally right now and seeing what's out there right now on the market, what's feasible, what would work in the subway system.

Janae Pierre: Privacy watchdogs are wary of the plans and say the MTA should not make riders the subject of an AI experiment. City officials say unauthorized demolition work and years of neglect caused the deadly collapse of a parking garage in Lower Manhattan in 2023. On Monday, the city released its final investigation into the collapse. It says workers removed bricks from a critical support pier without permits or proper shoring.

A forensic report also found extensive deterioration, overloaded floors, and corroded supports weakened the nearly 100-year-old building. One worker was killed and seven other people were hurt. City leaders say new inspections and stricter building rules aim to prevent future tragedies. Now to Albany, where a federal prosecutor is threatening to sue telecom companies in a bid to get them to monitor users' messages and crack down on child sex predators. WNYC's Jimmy Vielkind has more.

Jimmy Vielkind: Interim US Attorney John Sarcone says he wants companies to monitor users' messages for language that could indicate predation.

John Sarcone: This has got to really come to some kind of a head, and the only way to do that is to drag one of these big companies into federal court, let them fight it and be humiliated publicly.

Jimmy Vielkind: Justin Harrison, of the New York Civil Liberties Union, says personal communications are protected by the US Constitution.

Justin Harrison: There are very serious privacy, Fourth Amendment, First Amendment problems with all of this.

Jimmy Vielkind: Sarcone has been in his job for five weeks and has never worked as a prosecutor before.

Janae Pierre: Barry Benepe was the co-founder of GrowNYC's Greenmarket. He passed away last week, but his legacy lives on. More on that after the break.

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Janae Pierre: In New York City, there are over 45 greenmarkets. Barry Benepe co-founded GrowNYC's Greenmarket program in the 1970s, alongside Robert Lewis. The two started the largest farmers' markets in the country. Robert says the idea came about because they were both concerned about the region, its farmers, the food supply of the city, and its use of public space.

Robert Lewis: These ideas came together into the notion that if we reestablished the role of the farmers' market in the city, that we could help the city recover, that we'd bring healthy and fresh and, most importantly, tasty food back to the city. To people who may have forgotten the taste altogether in that world of hard tomatoes, hard times.

The way agricultural policy is that markets were not looked at as really important, but in this region, small farmers still existed, and we wanted to support and save them and invite them in and make them feel welcome here in the city. That is exactly what happened on the very first day in 1976. When there was this electric spark that happened between the farmers, the tomatoes, and the New Yorkers.

Janae Pierre: Barry Benepe passed away last week, but Robert has fond memories of their very first market. It opened in the summer of 1976 on East 59th Street and Second Avenue.

Robert Lewis: I remember it very well. This was a empty lot that the transit authority had temporarily ownership of. If you go there now, it's a condo.

Janae Pierre: Robert recalls rounding up farmers who got lost on their way to the city. It wasn't a big deal, he says. After all, he had developed a relationship with these farmers. In those early days, it was his responsibility to find farmers to participate in the program.

Robert Lewis: The reaching out, the welcoming, the visiting, the backdoor sitting. I used whatever I had to find ways to encounter farmers in their own place. Of course, I was a representative of a city that was perceived at a distance as really fallen into a black hole of crime of front page tabloid headlines. I had to overcome that with the farmers and say, "Look, we're going to make a place special for you, and I guarantee it, when you get there, even though it may be navigation challenges driving in, we're going to make this place your place."

Janae Pierre: Now it's been nearly 50 years since the start of GrowNYC's Greenmarket program, and Robert says there's a lot to be proud of.

Robert Lewis: What's so exciting is that we were able to engage people of color to be farmers. I did some work on that around 2000, giving a talk in Spanish. The result of this, because El Diario La Prensa put it on the front page of the newspaper Regresso al Campo, we had 500 phone calls from former farmers who wanted to resume their activity here. So this was an immigrant population who knew how to grow, who we needed to become farmers. You know what's happened now since then? There's an entire coalition of Latino farmers upstate.

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Janae Pierre: That's Robert Lewis. He helped organize New York City's first greenmarket. GrowNYC's Greenmarket program still supports over 200 local producers today. As April comes to a close, so does National Poetry Month. Today, we have quite the treat. A father-son duo out of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Andrew and Rafael Zornoza say they've been writing poems back and forth to each other all month long. We'll start with Andrew, Rafael's dad. This one is called Mystery Couch.

Andrew Zornoza: Hey, son.

So here's the deal.

I hid it all behind the sofa.

Everything you wanted.

Everything that went missing.

Binky, the blanket you'd sucked into a coma,

That dinosaur you loved to make roar when I was trying to write poetry,

That hamster I accidentally fed watch batteries,

That note from mom about why she left,

That acceptance letter from the college that was too expensive.

Yeah, all those things you've wondered about, forever probably,

They were too close to the radiator.

And when the apartment burned down,

Well, that was a fresh start.

Janae Pierre: Now, here's Andrew's son, Rafael, with Mystery Couch, Part 2.

Rafael Zornoza: Hey, dad.

I looked behind the couch.

Do you know that?

I looked behind the couch and on the roof,

I looked out over the city at the towers.

They were taller than I remembered.

Silver and shiny enough that I could see the river in the windows.

I never wanted to go to college anyway.

I like the view here, where I can picture us all together.

And the hamster was just a hamster.

Sometimes, though, I wonder where Binky's ashes went.

Janae Pierre: Two poems for the price of one. That was Andrew and Rafael Zornoza, closing out National Poetry Month. Thanks for listening to NYC Now, from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.

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