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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We'll have our usual Wednesday breakdown now of issues that came up at Mayor Adams weekly Tuesday news conference with excerpts analysis and your calls. Public safety questions took up a lot of time yesterday. The NYPD reported that there was more crime in the subway system last month than there was in January, 2023, but despite it getting a lot of press, it wasn't much more crime. The mayor did have a response, however, and we'll talk about that deployment response.

There were also a couple of videos that went viral and gained traction in the media. Maybe you've seen them. One showed officers being pelted by flying objects, mostly bottles and backpacks. This is not the Times Square incident. This is at the shelter being used to house asylum seekers at Randall's Island. The other was a performance on PIX 11 News by the NYPD dance team. It was met with an icy reception and a fair bit of trolling.

We'll get into that, and how the mayor explained spending money on this, which by the way, the answer is, no, the city does not spend money on that. We usually recap these weekly general news conferences with WNYC and Gothamist reporter Liz Kim, but Liz is off today. This week, we're joined by Katie Honan, senior reporter at THE CITY and co-host of the podcast, FAQ NYC. Hi, Katie. Welcome back to WNYC.

Katie Honan: Thanks for having me on, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: All these people with families, Liz, so many other people who take President's Week off. Here you are. I'm glad to have you. There were a lot of public safety questions this week, including one about the NYPD's report of an uptick in crime in the subways for the month of January. Here's a little bit of the mayor's response in which he talks about a new deployment of police officers after acknowledging what's been happening.

Mayor Adams: We also shifted the tours of offices, they moved to 12-hour tours. We get a greater level of visibility, and we're finding that the offices rather have more days off where they're able to do a longer tour while they are in. It's good for morale, good for actions, good for the movement of the offices, but the goal is our subway system has to be safe. Proportionally, the number of riders that we have, we are capping over 4 million riders. We have about six felonies a day on our subway system. That's six too many, we want to get down to zero, but our subway system is a safe form of transportation in the city.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe Katie, that's a good place to start with a reminder that the fear still outweighs the risk by many measures. Six felonies a day in the subway system out of four million rides.

Katie Honan: Right. Statistically, crime is up 22% since the start of the year. That's for the NYPD, which, I guess looking at it percentage-wise, it sounds like a lot, but then when you break it down with the actual number of felony crimes-- I think also seeing so many videos, 40 years ago, you didn't see videos constantly on the news of these really graphic or violent crimes on the subway you saw a musician getting attacked.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, last month.

Katie Honan: Right. People's perception, sometimes the data is at odds with people's perception and it's hard to win over perception, even if you're fighting what the data shows and you're putting more police officers. The mayor said the subway safety plan money had sunsetted, but they're trying to get more money to deploy more officers. Yes, there's always the perception issue.

Brian Lehrer: I'm just thinking about that number you gave; a 22% increase in felonies if we're talking about felonies compared to January of last year. If it's six crimes a day, that would mean take 20% off of that. It was five crimes a day [chuckles] in 2023 in January. It's hardly different at all.

Katie Honan: Yes, exactly. I was worried you were going to make me do math live on the radio. Yes, so that's always the case, but you have this endless loop of surveillance video and people getting attacked in one way or the other. I don't think that helps, although the media has an obligation to also report it as well. Sometimes these two things are at odds.

Brian Lehrer: The deployment that the mayor discussed, 12-hour day shifts, so the police officers will do their work-week in fewer days, but there'll be a total of more bodies in the subway system, I guess. He said that it's good for morale. That's interesting on a number of levels. He also talked about the difficulties that they're having recruiting for the NYPD these days and also for the corrections department that works in the jails. He said even in the DA's offices, they're having trouble with recruitment, because of all the conflict around the criminal justice system these days.

Katie Honan: Right. I can't speak too much to the DA's office, but I know the Daily News had reported that the Department of Corrections had actually canceled or postponed an incoming recruit class because they didn't have enough recruits. The NYPD still has a very large police force and there certainly are a lot of police officers around New York City. Whether or not it's the deployment numbers that the mayor wants, he mentioned Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, Phil Banks, who he rarely goes to these off-topic Tuesday events.

I guess he's looking nationally that there's-- it's not just a New York City, it's a national problem of recruiting and then retaining police officers as well. I know the police unions a few times a year come out with the stats of what they will describe as these mass retirements or maybe people, they do the NYPD for a few years and transfer either to another police department or to maybe another uniformed agency within New York City, like the fire department if they get on, that kind of thing.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I wonder if anybody relevant to what we've talked about so far with Katie Honan from the news organization, THE CITY about Mayor Adams News conference yesterday, and we will get into other issues too, but anyone relevant to this, want to call in any police officers listening right now? Do you like the idea of a 12-hour shift? Anybody listening right now on the other 12 hours who works in the subways sometimes?

Any MTA workers? I know they've been lobbying the state really, because the state runs the MTA, as well as the city for more protection, they feel threatened. 212-433-WNYC or anyone else, 212-433-9692 for Katie Honan call or text. I don't know that it came up explicitly, but I feel like I've been seeing the MTA workers' union officials quoted in the news recently asking for things.

Katie Honan: It wasn't brought up yesterday, but yes, safety is really paramount to the TWU, and there are workers who were really the first people there, whether it's motormen in the subways or just walking around the platform. It didn't come up yesterday. That's the problem with having a weekly press conference. There's only so many questions you can ask, unfortunately.

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Katie Honan: It didn't come up and I know that's been part of these larger asks as everyone wants to keep their members and their workers safe.

Brian Lehrer: Another thing that did come up public safety related was the rollout of a new police drone program that would help people who appear to be drowning or caught in riptides. Let's hear 19 seconds of Mayor Adams on that.

Mayor Adams: New York need to lead from the front. We don't follow, we lead. I had a presentation last year on the use of drones dropping of inflatable life rafts to people who find themselves caught up in a riptides, find themselves in the threat of drowning.

Brian Lehrer: Katie, we know the use of drones in law enforcement can be controversial for various reasons and various contexts. Is it controversial even in dropping rafts to people who might be drowning?

Katie Honan: I think people are concerned about just the surveillance aspect of this and why the police department would be-- We know why, because they have the drones. I know last year when there was lots of shark watches, particularly in Rockaway Beach, the fire department and emergency management used drones to monitor the ocean for sharks. They had very clear video of lots of sharks in the water, and then that's what they would use to determine whether or not they should close the ocean, concern for swimmers.

Yes, I think there's just a lot of confusion. Realistically, and speaking to lifeguards and people who are experts in lifesaving, particularly in open waters like the ocean, people drown very quickly, unfortunately, because they don't usually realize they're drowning until it's too late. The idea that someone would be stranded, I think some people, it might be useful. I spoke to someone who said it's useful if you have a windsurfer or sometimes out of the beach you have standup paddle boarders or people in kayaks. If they're really stranded out far away and they need that, I guess if they have a kayak, they wouldn't need an inflatable raft.

The idea that a drone could get to someone quickly or quicker than a lifeguard who sees someone drowning, goes in. The mayor also spoke about how the drone could be used to communicate with lifeguards in a rescue because they have that bird's-eye view of seeing where a swimmer in distress maybe went under. I think that there's justgenuine concerns over, would these drones just be flying around beaches as you're on the beach sunbathing? What else are they looking for? Are they deployed from a central spot, like on a boardwalk?

The mayor said this is going to start in Coney Island but most of the drownings in New York City, I know there was someone who drowned last summer on Coney Island, but most of them are in Rockaway Beach because it's the roughest water. I think the city's Parks Department has a lifeguard shortage. That's the concern.

Brian Lehrer: Chronic.

Katie Honan: That's the biggest issue. A chronic lifeguard shortage. You have closed beaches. People drown when they go in after hours or over four hours between 10:00 and 6:00 is when lifeguards are there. They drown after, or they drown at beaches that are closed because of a shortage. I don't know how a drone will address that necessarily, but we'll see.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Of course, the mayor makes no secret about how much he loves to embrace new technology. He talked about that again, it's a general principle. Yesterday I saw the news conference and it reminds us that the robot cop, yes, a robot cop that was rolled out to patrol Times Square has now been, I don't know, redeployed, but not in Times Square anymore as the mayor says here.

Mayor Adams: We're going to find another use for the robot. We going to try it. If it's successful, we going to pat ourselves on the back; if it's not, blame the media.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] That was funny. If it doesn't work, we'll blame the media. He does have a sense of humor, Adams. I have to say, at these news conferences, which now that we've started covering them weekly on the show, I've been watching them a lot on TV, on Tuesdays, New York 1 carries them and I watch, and he's got a sense of humor and he's got a philosophy of government. He doesn't just respond to the immediate criticism, whether you agree with him or not. He knows where he is coming from, I think, and he gets out of laugh line now and again like that.

Katie Honan: Yes, blaming the media. That was the most self-aware I've heard Mayor Adams in a long time. You're right, he has a great sense of humor, I think, comparing to-- we always have to compare, unfortunately, comparing him to the previous mayor. He has a much better sense of humor than former Mayor Bill de Blasio. Although he was on the airwaves more than Mayor Adams on these airwaves. He had plenty of opportunity to be funny, but I don't recall Mayor Bill de Blasio ever being that funny.

Brian Lehrer: It was not one of his great values.

Katie Honan: [laughs] Yes, the Mayor Adams does have that sense of humor. With the robot, this was another controversial, much maligned in a very funny way technology, the K5 robot, Robocop as I was calling him. A few outlets had reported earlier this year that he-- Actually, I don't know the gender of the cop. I don't want to say. They were relegated to some corner of Times Square, joking that it was on desk duty or something. The mayor said that they have a new plan for it. He wouldn't reveal what it was. I don't know if it could be a lifeguard. I don't know how that works [laughter] with the wiring.

Brian Lehrer: With a drone?

Katie Honan: [crosstalk] Right, a drone cop, but yes, it was a pilot program. People were critical of the spending. Obviously, the NYPD budget is huge, but I don't know really what it did, especially because the robot, it couldn't even replace a police officer. It had to travel with more than one police officer, if I remember correctly. Again, it spoke to the surveillance concerns. What is this robot doing if it's just doing mass surveillance of a very busy subway station in Manhattan. We were supposed to ask a question, but I don't think anyone did.

Brian Lehrer: Did it fail at something in particular that they were testing it in Times Square to see if it would produce?

Katie Honan: I think the NYPD's official line was that the trial or pilot program had ended. I don't know if it had failed, and I don't even know what metrics they were using. I knew new police officers, they're on probation, they have a probationary period. Maybe the robocop was on that too, but they still have it. They didn't buy it. I think they were just renting it or leasing it from the tech company. I don't know if we'd ever be able to get the video from it or if there'd be actual data on what it did and how successful or not it was, just getting laughed at all the time in Times Square.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute folks with Katie Honan, who covers Mayor Adams, among other things, for the non-profit news organization, THE CITY, as we play excerpts, get analysis from her, and take phone calls from you around Mayor Adams Tuesday news conference. We'll get into other issues as well. There's more law enforcement stuff yet to talk about as well as other things. The mayor was asked about a video that showed police officers trying to take someone into custody near the Randall's Island, shelter for asylum seekers, and being struck by bottles and backpacks. I don't know if we have anybody listening right now in that large population or who works around the Randall's Island facility. You can call in and give your version of that or ask a question or anyone else with a question or comment, 212-433-WNYC (212) 433-9692, as we continue in a minute.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC in our usual Wednesday segment with excerpts analysis of, and your call is about Mayor Adams Tuesday news conference. Katie Honan from the news organization, THE CITY, filling in for Liz Kim, who's off this week. Let's get a couple of calls in here before we go to any more clips. Greg on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Greg. Thank you for calling in.

Greg: Hello. Good morning. I'm glad to be a part of the discussion. I wanted to speak about crime statistics. As a former law enforcement officer, it makes me pull my hair out when I hear people say, for example, there were only six felonies in the subway. The word that has to be prominently placed in a sentence is reported crime, reported crime because many, many people who are victimized in daily life in New York City don't report those crimes because they feel that the police response will be inadequate, that they'll be terribly inconvenienced.

They'll miss work, they'll miss school, they'll miss childcare arrangements. Rather than participate in reporting a crime with the thought that nothing will come of it, they prefer to just go about their business. The other thing is that crime statistics are wedded to a police officer's advancement and promotion. There is a built-in incentive to downgrade and under-report crimes, because if you are a supervisor and there is an uptick in crime in your area, your promotion prospects go out the window.

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting. What about at the level of the cop on the beat? Is there an incentive to make arrests and you get promoted on the basis of looking productive in that way or doesn't it work like that?

Greg: I wouldn't characterize it as an incentive to make arrests, but in a law enforcement agency, they measure productivity through your activity in the street, whether it's arrests or summonses. Whereas no one will ever tell you out loud because you failed to make any arrests or write any summonses, you're not going to be given any consideration for a specialized unit. It's unspoken that your activity is what measures your productivity and usefulness to the organization.

Brian Lehrer: Then it seems there are competing incentives within each precinct. There's the incentive to report. We've long heard from officers that there's a quota system that they resent, and at the same time, there's the incentive that you were describing at the beginning of your call to report few crimes in your precinct. It looks like you're effective.

Greg: There's two different statistics: arrests which mean that a crime has been reported, but it's been closed to arrest, and then there's a crime that's reported and there's no arrest. The police department is very happy to trumpet their statistics of crimes that are resolved with arrests, but when it's a crime that's simply reported and the assailant is not taken into custody. That's a problem. That's an issue. From an individual policeman's perspective, arrests are good, but reported crimes that do not result in arrest are bad.

Brian Lehrer: Greg, thank you very much. Call us again. Appreciate your perspective and input on all that. Beth in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Beth.

Beth: Hi. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. How are you?

Beth: A little upset. I have a friend that came to work this morning. This is very much on my mind. We were just talking about this at 9:10. She said two incidents on the subway in the last two weeks. She's an older woman, she's over 65, still goes to work. Was on the subway this morning, had somebody come and sit down next to her, that, as she said, looked a little bit off. Before she could get up and move, he pulled down his pants and started masturbating.  She got up and moved. The train came into a station, everyone left the car, this wasn't reported.

How good could that sixth felony statistic be? Then last week, she was riding the same train in the morning, in the middle of rush hour, on her way to work, and two people started fighting, and they fell into her and she got punched three times. All she could think of is the poor guy who got killed in somewhat of a similar situation a couple of weeks ago, who got involved in trying to stop a fight, and she was absolutely terrified. This morning incident didn't get reported-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Did she report it?

Beth: This morning's incident? No, because everyone just got up out of the car and left. The fight, she thinks it got reported, but she was terrified of getting involved. She just got away as fast as possible because of the poor guy that got shot a couple of weeks ago. Again, she's an older woman. She's like 5′ 1″ and she really did not want to be in this situation even though she got hit three times.

Brian Lehrer: It may have gotten reported, but not by her, so your story really backs up in a way what the retired police officer on just before you was saying. Beth, I appreciate your call. Katie, any reaction to those two calls?

Katie Honan: I think, unfortunately, especially what Beth in Brooklyn said, as anyone-- we all take the subway and we all have various incidents. I think some of what gets reported, in the eye of the beholder is not perhaps the best term, but it's people's own limits on what they can handle in terms of what they might find reportable. Late last year, I was on a subway car where a fight broke out and some people wanted to call the police when we got to the station and other people just said, "Just let it go."

We all see this, but again, there's millions of people who ride the subway every day. It is, in many cases, the fastest and most convenient way to get around. That feeds into the perception issue, so you see the data. Like Greg on Staten Island said, people don't report a lot of stuff. There's things that are technically even within that fall under the major felony crimes category that they just don't report for a number of reasons. Again, you can't quantify this.

This is all anecdotal from what you may experience or what you hear, but this is the reality of that. Then, of course, the more high profile cases of the worst case scenario, someone getting shoved in front of a train or subway shootings or stabbings, those also get a lot of play. You could argue about are we creating a false crime wave narrative or are people really just reporting what they see happening in the largest city in the country where you can expect to have clashes and issues? [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Some stuff.

Katie Honan: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Moving on, the mayor was asked about a video that showed police officers trying to take someone into custody near the Randall's Island shelter for asylum seekers and being struck by bottles and backpacks. Have you seen the video? Can you provide a little bit of context on the situation at the Randall's Island shelter before we play a clip of the mayor on that?

Katie Honan: Yes, sure. Interestingly enough, the mayor who usually sees the videos said he had not seen this video. It's a melee within this migrant shelter on Randall's Island. The police were trying to detain, I guess, someone who was acting out and disorderly, and then a police officer got hit in the head with a backpack, things were getting thrown around, that kind of thing. After we hear the mayor, the mayor is-- obviously, he's very supportive of the police as a former police officer, former police captain.

He has a very-- I think it falls into his narrative of trying to get migrants to work, which is a federal issue that it's not a narrative. He really wants people to have the right to work. He's almost not apologetic, but he sees where they're coming from. He's like, "You have all these people just sitting around all day, even the most peaceful person might lash out." That was his take on it yesterday.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor praised the officers for carrying out their jobs and taking the person into custody with minimal force, as he described it. He also called out the federal government. The people at the shelter aren't able to work because the federal government won't allow them to. Here's 15 seconds of the mayor.

Mayor Eric Adams Anytime you have 3,000 people who are placed in an environment that they cannot work, they have to sit around all day, things like this have the potential to happen, and I've said this over and over again.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, and we talked about the 12-hour shift that the mayor is offering now to some police officers who work in the subways, 12 hours a day, fewer days a week. Bob In Rigo Park is calling as a retired New York City firefighter, who I think likes that idea. Bob, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Bob: Hey, Brian. I haven't spoken to you for a couple of years. I'd like to thank the producer for listening to me, took my call. My statement is this: there's 12,000 firemen, there's 36,000 policemen, we work, I used to because I'm retired, 12-hour shifts. The policemen do eight-hour shifts, is 36,000. This is a solution waiting to happen. They should literally get rid of 20,000, I'll repeat, 20,000 policemen times 120,000 with pension, get rid of that. Take the 12,000 policemen, make them all work 12-hour shifts. Let them sleep in their precincts. Throw some beds in like we have in the fire department. This gives a complete coverage, not this eight hours and these guys disappear for the next eight hours instead of being around. This is a solution, and I wish Mayor Adams would listen and look through the whole New York City, not just this little thing in the train station.

Brian Lehrer: It's a different job though, right Bob? The firefighters, tell me if I'm wrong, because I've never been a firefighter, you have, but a lot of-- [crosstalk]

Bob: I know what you're going to say, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let me say it so everybody hears it and then you can respond. That it's a lot of waiting for a call and then it's an emergency with the police officers. They're going from thing to thing to thing constantly during their shifts in a different way. Go ahead, Bob.

Bob: My statement is, I knew you were going to say that. Guess what? The police department is really, in my heart, an emergency service. All these other things that they do that are non-emergencies, they should have other guys doing it, not making 130,000, making 60,000. This is a solution waiting to happen. I wish Mayor Adams, who, by the way, there's one thing about him that's not very good. He hides all the time, he doesn't come on your show regularly. I pray that he does not get re-elected because he's very non-communicative.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, thank you for being communicative and calling in. Let's see. We're going to run out of time soon. One other thing NYPD-related that came up yesterday, Katie, was the NYPD dance team, who knew they had a dance team? I didn't know they had a dance team.

Katie Honan: It's new. It's brand new.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, it's new. That's why. They recently performed on TV. They were on PIX11 on their morning news show. Then the city received all this pushback and the team itself apparently was subject to a lot of hate and trolling online. Some of it was really harsh. The mayor was asked about it and here's 30 seconds of his response.

Mayor Eric Adams: That is part of what I perceive as people just wanting to find reasons just to be mean-spirited. We have a NYPD boxing team, NYPD football team, NYPD hockey team, FDNY team. We have fraternal organizations. This costs the police department nothing. It really humanizes our officers. It is a way to alleviate the stress and difficulties and challenges of doing a job.

Brian Lehrer: One of the more substantive critiques came from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez yesterday. She was on this show yesterday too, but I didn't know about this issue, we didn't talk about this. She had said the city is spending money so the NYPD can have a dance team when they're cutting music and other arts programs in the public schools. The mayor was making the point that this is not city money, that this is privately funded, correct?

Katie Honan: Right. I think, look, the overall criticism, the mean-spirited, mean, rude, body shaming tweets aside, it's people have a real issue with the size of the NYPD's budget when it's compared to what gets cut, what doesn't get funded, when you look at like the Parks Department not even making 1% of the city's budget. Those are real and genuine criticisms. I think it's also people were misinformed about these sort of NYPD extracurriculars that, by the way, most, if not every uniformed agency, has a long list of whether it's an NYPD boxing team. I've watched the NYPD boxing team fight FDNY, corrections, sanitation, port authority.

These are what happens, and there's no money going into it from what the mayor said. These are usually just fraternal organizations. The NYPD has a salsa band, pipes and drums. Every ethnicity, every religion that has someone in the NYPD, there's an organization, they have galas, and parties, and this is a lot of ways. As it was pointed out yesterday, even as reporters, we don't have a big budget, but we play and not NYPD, we play in media softball leagues, or we do--

Brian Lehrer: Guilty.

Katie Honan: Guilty. Exactly. We join the inner circle where we're not very good dancers either. These are sort of what you do. As human beings, you're a part of a job and you do things outside of the job. I think a lot of people weren't aware of this. At the same time, there's a lot of criticism to go around for how much money is being spent for the police when you're cutting significant amount of money from the Department of Education from libraries, and that kind of thing, but was very mean tweets.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Talk about the mean tweets for a second, because I don't want to ignore that. These were a lot of sexist, mean tweets aimed I think largely, at the women, you said, body shaming. What was out there that we should know about and be disgusted by?

Katie Honan: You might find this hard to believe, but the internet, particularly Twitter, has a lot of people hiding behind--

Brian Lehrer: I'm shocked to hear this.

Katie Honan: --fake names and faces and accounts and just insulting women without really realizing the facts behind it, if this is something they wanted to go on TV to promote this new organization, this new club that they do, essentially. I don't want to read the mean tweets, but a lot of like in sales on Twitter now and a lot of people who just seem to hate women for the fact that we're alive and dancing, and not looking whatever way that they want us to. That was the reality.

They met with the mayor yesterday. They came to City Hall. They took pictures. I don't know if they taught him how to dance. He could probably use some moves, but I don't know what happened there. It was behind closed doors. Pix 11 had the-- I think they had the exclusive on it. That's just another week in New York City of people being mean on the internet. I can be mean on the internet too sometimes, but I feel that the people deserve it, what I am, but not as mean as these people.

Brian Lehrer: You are substantively mean on the internet.

Katie Honan: [chuckles] Thank you. I appreciate that.

Brian Lehrer: You are intellectually mean. You are curiosity-driven mean on the internet. Katie Honan, find her on the internet and as a senior reporter at the non-profit news organization, THE CITY, and co-host of the podcast, FAQ NYC. Thanks for doing this this week, Katie. I really appreciate it.

Katie Honan: Thanks so much.

 

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