Tag Archives: New York City

New York police body camera program needs changes: civil rights lawyers

FILE PHOTO - A police body camera is seen on an officer during a news conference on the pilot program of body cameras involving 60 NYPD officers dubbed 'Big Brother' at the NYPD police academy in the Queens borough of New York, December 3, 2014. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Civil rights lawyers on Wednesday demanded changes to a pilot program for New York City police to wear body cameras, saying it does not ensure that officers are held properly accountable for how they treat people.

The court-ordered program, whose details were approved by a federal monitor last week, was intended to precede a rollout of the cameras to all patrol officers by the end of 2019.

That came after the New York Police Department’s “stop-and-frisk” methods, faulted by critics as a means to conduct racial profiling, were declared unconstitutional.

But lawyers including Darius Charney of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Angel Harris of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund said the year-long pilot program was vague about when officers must use cameras.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan, they said officers should be required to turn cameras on during “forcible” stops, encounters where people are free to walk away and when they are “generally” looking out for crime.

The lawyers also said the program should clarify when officers must alert people about the cameras, and that officers cannot review videos until after writing their reports or making statements, so the footage does not color their recollections.

“Details of the policy as approved by the monitor turn the cameras from an accountability tool into a tool for surveilling and criminalizing New Yorkers,” the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement.

Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the city’s law department, said: “We are reviewing the plaintiffs’ submission and will respond in due course.”

The stop-and-frisk litigation helped start the body camera program in New York City, which joined cities such as Chicago and Washington, D.C., that also adopted the devices.

Such efforts were launched amid nationwide concerns about the use of excessive force by police, especially against black and Hispanic people.

The monitor, Peter Zimroth, on April 11 urged Torres to let the program go ahead without further court intervention. But the civil rights lawyers disagreed, citing a risk that police unions may try to block it in court.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat who has had an uneven relationship with the police department, favors equipping patrol officers with body cameras. He is seeking re-election in November.

The cases are Floyd v City of New York, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 08-01034; and Davis v City of New York in the same court, No. 10-00699.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bill Trott)

New York police arrest 25 at immigration protest in Trump Tower

A New York City Police officer (NYPD) escorts protestors after making arrests for demonstrating in Trump Tower in New York, U.S., April 13, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York police on Thursday arrested 25 people in the lobby of Trump Tower protesting U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration and border policies.

The demonstrators who sat in front of the elevators and chanted “no ban, no raids, no wall!” led security forces to close public accesses to the president’s signature property, a commercial and residential skyscraper where first lady Melania Trump and son Barron Trump stay while the president is in Washington.

As heavily armed police wearing ballistic vests stood guard blocking the entrances, other officers carried the protesters to police vans.

The building in the heart of the Fifth Avenue shopping district was also home to Trump’s campaign and has been his primary residence for years. The lobby is open to the public, though security was tightened as the 2016 campaign progressed and he was elected president.

Charges were pending, a police said in a statement.

The demonstrators wore T-shirts with slogans such as “No wall,” in reference to Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico, and “No raids,” referring to U.S. arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants.

“No ban” refers to Trump’s executive orders seeking to restrict immigration from several Muslim-majority countries.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Jewish cemetery vandalized in New York, third case in two weeks

Local and national media report on more than 170 toppled Jewish headstones after a weekend vandalism attack on Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, U.S. February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Tom Gannam

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The vandalism of more than a dozen headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Rochester is being investigated by a New York hate crime task force, the third known case of a Jewish cemetery desecration in the country in the last two weeks.

Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he ordered the investigation at Waad Hakolel Cemetery given the wave of bomb threats that later proved hoaxes targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism at Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia and St. Louis.

U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has condemned the threats and attacks, although he has at times also questioned whether some perpetrators might be opponents of his seeking to link his new presidency with a rise in anti-Semitism.

Trump’s election campaign last year drew support from some white nationalists and right-wing groups, despite his disavowals of them.

Besides the toppling of headstones at the Rochester cemetery, images of the deceased embedded on at least half a dozen headstones had been scratched away, although it was not clear how long ago, said Karen Elam, the director of community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester.

“It’s clear vandalism,” she said in a telephone interview after touring the cemetery on Thursday afternoon to photograph the damage. “Any vandalism of a Jewish cemetery is de facto anti-Semitism.”

Michael Phillips, president of the non-profit organization that oversees the cemetery, told the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle newspaper that there was no proof the vandalization was a case of anti-Semitism, citing the smaller scale of the damage in Rochester.

About 100 headstones were knocked over at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia last weekend, and about 170 headstones were knocked over in a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis.

Officials at the cemetery in Rochester did not return calls seeking comment. In 2014, vandals toppled more than 40 headstones at another Jewish cemetery near Rochester, but local police concluded the vandalism was not motivated by anti-Semitism, the Democrat & Chronicle reported.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by David Gregorio and Lisa Shumaker)

Protecting Trump Tower cost NY City $24 million from election to inauguration

FILE PHOTO - Police and fire crew stand outside Trump Tower following a report of a suspicious package in Manhattan, New York City, U.S. on December 27, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo

By Gina Cherelus

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It cost New York City about $24 million to provide security at Trump Tower, President Donald Trump’s skyscraper home in Manhattan, from Election Day to Inauguration Day, or $308,000 per day, New York’s police commissioner said on Wednesday.

The revelation prompted renewed calls for Congress to reimburse the city for the cost of protecting Trump’s private residence on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, where his wife and their son continue to reside.

“We are seeking full federal reimbursement for all costs incurred related to security for President Trump and his family at Trump Tower,” Freddi Goldstein, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, wrote in an email to Reuters.

New York City Police Commissioner James O’Neill said in a statement that the Police Department now has a dual role in protecting the first family while also serving and protecting residents in the city.

“Trump Tower itself now presents a target to those who wish to commit acts of terror against our country, further straining our limited counterterrorism resources,” O’Neill said.

Trump’s spokespeople could not be reached immediately for comment.

De Blasio asked the U.S. government in December for up to $35 million to cover security costs for protecting Trump in his home atop the 58-story skyscraper, which is located on Fifth Avenue near Central Park, an area popular with tourists.

At $24 million, the final cost was less than that. Trump spent most of his time from Election Day on Nov. 8 until his inauguration on Jan. 20 at his penthouse apartment in Trump Tower.

In addition to the police protection, the Fire Department incurred $1.7 million in costs during the time period Trump was in New York, according to O’Neill.

On days when first lady Melania Trump and the couple’s son, Barron, are the only ones in the city, security going forward will cost between $127,000 and $145,000 per day, less than when the president is in residence, O’Neill said.

When Trump is in town, the cost of police protection will go back up to $308,000 on average per day, O’Neill said. It will cost about another $4.5 million per year for the New York City Fire Department to protect the building, he said.

“We anticipate these costs will increase significantly whenever the president is in New York City,” he said.

Trump has not been back to Manhattan since his inauguration.

New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney said in a statement on Wednesday that the city’s taxpayers should not be forced to pay for a “national security obligation” and that “Congress must provide city taxpayers a full reimbursement.”

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus; Editing by Sharon Bernstein and Leslie Adler)

Russian envoy to United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, dies in New York

Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin addresses members of the U.N. Security Council during a meeting about the Ukraine situation, at the U.N. headquarters in New York

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, died suddenly at work in New York on Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The ministry gave no details on the circumstances of his death but offered condolences to his relatives and said the diplomat had died one day before his 65th birthday.

“The outstanding Russian diplomat passed away at his work post,” it said.

Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general’s office, said: “He has been such a regular presence here that I am actually quite stunned. Our thoughts go to his family, to his friends and to his government.”

Churkin was a pugnacious defender of Russian policy, notably its intensive bombing of the Syrian city of Aleppo last year to crush rebels opposed to President Bashar al-Assad.

When then-U.S. envoy to the U.N. Samantha Power accused Syria, Russia and Iran last year of bearing responsibility for atrocities there, Churkin said she was acting like Mother Teresa and forgetting her own country’s track record in the Middle East.

(Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Gareth Jones and Mark Trevelyan)

New York City mayor says ‘affordability crisis’ threatens city

New York Mayor

By Hilary Russ

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City is threatened by an “affordability crisis” because rising housing prices have significantly outpaced wage growth, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday.

De Blasio used his state of the city address to speak broadly about New Yorkers’ struggles to pay rent and make ends meet and discussed recent proposals, rather than lay out many new proposals.

De Blasio, a Democrat who took office in January 2014, is up for reelection in November.

Held at the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem, home to numerous American musical legends including Billie Holiday, the program featured at least 45 minutes of introductory remarks that were a mostly a love story to the city’s diversity.

“So many people in this city are afraid they cannot stay in the city that they love,” because of high costs, de Blasio said.

De Blasio cited a long list of what he considers some of his biggest accomplishments, including the implementation of neighborhood policing and the highest ever four-year high-school graduation rate of 72.6 percent in 2016.

He said residents would hear in coming weeks more details of forthcoming proposals about homelessness, opioid addiction and the creation of more higher paying jobs, which he called the “next frontline.”

He said the city would strive to create 100,000 more permanent good jobs that pay at least $50,000 a year.

Last week, de Blasio released information about other proposals that he touched on in his speech, including ways to help seniors and low-income people afford housing by adding new units and providing more rental assistance.

He said previously that he would seek to add 10,000 apartments for households earning less than $40,000 a year, half of which would be reserved for seniors, while another 500 would be for veterans.

De Blasio referenced another element of the plan announced last week to help more than 25,000 older residents with rent of up to $1,300 a month through the city’s “mansion tax,” which he has proposed before.

“You will hear people say it cannot be done,” de Blasio said of the tax. “They will say you cannot get it through Albany,” using the state capital to refer to the state government, whose approval would be required for the tax.

The mansion tax would bring in $336 million on the sale of homes over $2 million, he said.

“We’re not going to give tax breaks to people doing well,” de Blasio said. “We’re going to ask them to do more.”

(Reporting by Hilary Russ; Editing by Leslie Adler)

New York City police to wear body cameras under labor settlement

NYPD now needing cameras

By Hilary Russ

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City and its largest police union settled on a tentative five-year labor contract on Tuesday that includes salary increases while also agreeing that all patrol officers will wear body cameras by the end of 2019.

The agreement “is a big step forward for a vision of safety in which police and the community are true partners,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press conference with union and police officials.

The New York Police Department, the nation’s largest, already has a pilot program with cameras for 1,000 officers. But further rollout was stymied by a lawsuit, which the union agreed to drop as part of the deal.

New York will join other cities requiring their police forces to wear body cameras amid nationwide concerns over use of excessive force by police. Chicago aims to have the devices on all officers by the end of this year.

The contract agreement also removes a potentially expensive uncertainty that was a hold-over from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who left office at the end of 2013 with every public-sector labor contract long-expired.

Since taking office, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has chipped away at negotiations with teachers and other unions, but the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association contract was still a major sticking point.

Reached at about 4 a.m. on Tuesday, the agreement will cost the city $530.4 million altogether, most of which will be covered by a labor reserve fund. Including healthcare savings, the net cost to the city is $336.7 million.

The deal, covering nearly 24,000 police officers, includes a 2.25 percent bump in base salary for patrol officers as they shift to a new method of neighborhood policing which focuses more on beat patrols and community interaction.

The increase that patrol officers get will be offset in part by lower starting salaries for new hires, although their maximum salaries will rise. Upon approval by union members, the new contract would go into effect March 15.

The city will also support the union’s efforts to get state lawmakers to provide disability benefits at three-quarters of salary, while the union agreed to drop other lawsuits against the city.

(Reporting by Hilary Russ; Editing by Daniel Bases and Andrew Hay)

Hundreds of cats quarantined in New York City bird flu outbreak

By Gina Cherelus

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hundreds of domestic cats have been quarantined in New York City after contracting a strain of highly contagious avian flu at shelters operated by a major animal rescue organization, and the virus also infected at least one veterinarian, officials said.

It is the first time the H7N2 strain of the virus, commonly found in birds, has infected domestic cats, according to the New York City Health Department.

Symptoms are generally mild, and include sneezing, coughing and runny eyes and noses.

The virus was first detected last month in 45 cats housed at a Manhattan shelter run by Animal Care Center of NYC, and later turned up in cats at shelters in the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. It was not immediately clear how the cats contracted the virus or how it spread so quickly, the city’s health department said in a statement on Thursday.

“We continue to urge New Yorkers who have adopted cats from ACC shelters to be on alert for symptoms in their pets and take proper precautions,” Health Commissioner Mary Bassett said in a statement.

She said the risk to human health from H7N2 is low.

H7N2 is a type of avian influenza virus, also known as the bird flu, that can mutate and transfer onto mammals such as cats. It could infect other mammals as well, including humans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website. The CDC provides guidance on bird flu in cats on its website. (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlights/avian-influenza-cats.htm)

More than 450 cats will remain at a temporary shelter for up to 90 days until a University of Wisconsin lab confirms they are no longer contagious, the city’s health department said. ACC, the New York Health Department and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are monitoring the animals together.

In December, the city’s health department and the CDC confirmed that a veterinarian had been infected at the ACC’s Manhattan shelter. It was the first case of cat-to-human-transmission of the flu, the city’s health department said. The illness was mild and short-lived.

The health department screened more than 160 ACC employees for the virus and contacted more than 80 percent of pet adopters from the Manhattan shelter, but no other cases have been found.

Residents who adopted a cat from an ACC shelter between Nov. 12 and Dec. 15 should monitor their pets for signs of sickness, officials said.

(Editing by Frank McGurty and Matthew Lewis)

New York train crash injures more than 100 commuters

Emergency Vehicles gathered around train crash in NYC

By Jonathan Oatis

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York City train derailed at a downtown Brooklyn terminal during Wednesday’s morning rush hour, injuring more than 100 commuters in the metropolitan area’s second major rail accident since late September.

Emergency crews swarmed Atlantic Terminal after the Long Island Rail Road train went off the tracks inside the busy transportation hub at 8:20 a.m. local time, the New York City Fire Department said.

While none of the injuries were life-threatening, at least 11 people were sent to the hospital, Deputy Assistant Chief Dan Donoghue said at a briefing at the crash site. Between 600 and 700 people were on the train, he said.

The train, arriving from the Queens neighborhood of Far Rockaway, failed to stop on time. Traveling at a fairly slow speed, it derailed after striking a bumping block, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at the briefing.

About 103 people were injured, the fire department said in a Twitter message. The front two cars of the six-carriage train were severely damaged. The station’s partitions and bumping block, which prevents railway vehicles from going past the end of a section of track, were also damaged.

Passengers said the blood and chaos following the derailment was frightening.

“There were people crying,” said Aaron Neufeld, a 26-year-old paralegal who commutes on the rail line daily. “I saw some bloody faces.”

Neufeld, who was riding in the second car, said the train appeared to be approaching normally until it crashed, knocking passengers on top of one another and shattering glass windows.

“Bags went flying,” he said. “People were thrown to the ground.”

The engineer was probably responsible for failing to stop the train before it hit the bumper, said Tom Prendergast, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that runs the railroad.

The train was traveling between 10 and 15 miles per hour as it approached the bumper, he said, which is standard.

“At that speed, it’s pretty much the locomotive engineer’s responsibility to stop the train,” Prendergast said as he stood beside Cuomo at the briefing. Investigators will interview the engineer, the conductor and brakeman to determine the cause of the accident, he said.

There were no major service disruptions for other Long Island Rail Road lines at the terminal, an MTA official said.

Earlier, officials said crews were working to restore service at the terminal by the evening rush hour.

In late September, a New Jersey Transit train crashed into a terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey, killing one woman and injuring 114 people, including the engineer.

Cuomo, who has made infrastructure improvements a centerpiece of his agenda, said Wednesday’s incident was minor in comparison. The most serious injury in the crash was a broken leg, he said.

“There was extensive damage in Hoboken,” Cuomo said. “That train was coming in much faster, did much more damage.”

The U.S. Federal Railroad Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board said they were sending investigators to the scene.

The Long Island Rail Road is the United State’s largest commuter rail system, serving more than 330,000 passengers a day, according to the American Public Transportation Association.

Atlantic Terminal, which also connects commuters to nine city subway lines, is one of the busiest New York stations.

(Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus, David Shepardson and David Ingram; Writing by Laila Kearney; Editing by Frank McGurty and Lisa Von Ahn)

New York City crime fell to historic low in 2016

New York City Buildings

By David Ingram

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Crime in New York City fell to a historic low last year, the police said on Wednesday in a report showing that the largest U.S. city avoided the spike in murders that has battered other major American cities, including Chicago.

Overall, there were 101,606 crimes that police said they knew about during 2016, down 4 percent from 2015, police said.

There were 335 murders reported last year, down 5 percent from the 352 murders a year earlier, police said. The record for the fewest since the city started keeping reliable numbers in 1963 was 328 murders in 2014.

By way of comparison, Chicago, which has about one-third as many residents as New York’s 8.6 million people, recorded 762 murders last year, more than twice as many killings as in New York.

That spike prompted President-elect Donald Trump to suggest on Monday that the city needed federal help.

The trendlines in New York pointed downward in nearly all categories of reported crime, as shootings fell 12 percent, rapes fell 1 percent, robberies fell 9 percent and burglaries fell 15 percent.

Reports of felony-level assaults were up 2 percent, while reports of grand larcenies were flat, according to police numbers.

Police, politicians and criminologists have hotly debated the reasons behind the sharp drop in U.S. crime since the early 1990s, when New York City had more than 2,000 murders a year.

They have put forward explanations such as changing tactics, better data collection or even a reduction in lead poisoning.

New York City Police Commissioner James O’Neill credited last year’s reductions to a “laser-like precision” on gangs and to the department’s neighborhood policing program, which is aimed at improving relations between officers and the communities they patrol.

In a statement, O’Neil said, “2016 was the safest year ever in the history of New York City.”

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Scott Malone and Lisa Shumaker)