Janae Pierre: Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Wednesday, August 14th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill.

Michael Hill: The Adams administration is facing criticism this morning over tent encampments near a migrant shelter on Randall's Island. Under city policy, shelters may evict single adult migrants after 30 days. Those who've applied for asylum are eligible for extensions. Camille Joseph Varlack is the mayor's Chief of Staff. She says the city plans to address this issue.

Camille Joseph Varlack: We will have conversations with the folks there, understand exactly why they're there, who the individuals are, whether or not they are asylum seekers, whether or not they may be other individuals, and make sure that they're given the resources so they can move on.

Michael Hill: The number of migrants arriving in the city dropped below 1,000 last month. That's the lowest level since 2022, but the city is still caring for around 65,000 migrants. Local officials are asking the New York City Department of Education to ensure there's a student newspaper at every high school. The City Council will vote on a resolution tomorrow that says school newspapers provide students with a platform to express their ideas while developing critical thinking skills.

Student journalism advocates say the measure is a step in the right direction. Katina Peron is working with CUNY's journalism school to develop a new curriculum as part of a new high school elective.

Katina Peron: Young people deserve to have a seat at the table on issues that affect them, and high school journalism, scholastic journalism is a step towards that.

Michael Hill: The DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. As NYPD statistics show, most violent crimes, such as murder and shootings, continue to decline across New York City. A new report is highlighting a rise in felony assaults. As WNYC's Brittany Kriegstein reports, researchers say there are a lot of reasons those numbers are growing.

Brittany Kriegstein: Felony assaults are typically the most harmful kinds of assaults, the ones that can lead to severe injury or even death, and they've been climbing every year since 2020.

Elizabeth Glazer: That's particularly concerning because to become a felony assault, it's not just getting punched.

Brittany Kriegstein: That's Elizabeth Glazer, the founder of Vital City, the nonprofit that made the report. She also served as director of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice under De Blasio. Her team crunched several years’ worth of NYPD data. They found other usually less violent crimes like harassment, misdemeanor assault, and criminal mischief have also gone up since the pandemic.

Elizabeth Glazer: They're the kinds of incidents that can happen anywhere, in any neighborhood, on the subway, and the street in Midtown.

Brittany Kriegstein: Glazer says that could be fueling New Yorkers' fears about public safety. Jeffrey Butts is a professor at CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He says it's hard to figure out why people are committing assaults but necessary to address the problem.

Jeffrey Butts: It could be housing issues, income, family trauma. Lots of things can lead people to react violently against one another.

Brittany Kriegstein: He says New Yorkers should keep the stats in perspective. On a per capita basis, the city's crime rate is still below other major cities like LA, Chicago, and Philly. Brittany Kriegstein, WNYC News.

Janae Pierre: Stay close. There's more after the break.

Michael Hill: New York City's Campaign Finance Board is paying close attention to some donations to Mayor Adams' 2021 campaign fund and is scrutinizing some contributions from a Queen's trash hauling company called Royal Waste Services. Here to explain is WNYC's Liam Quigley. Liam, tell us about this company's donations to the Adams campaign back then and what licenses they were given.

Liam Quigley: This company was flagged on a Campaign Finance Board draft audit for making a number of donations on the same day in June of 2021. That got the suspicions aroused and flagged them on this list. Then years later, they went on to get licenses in these commercial waste zones. The donations totaled a little over $10,000, and they were all made on the same day. That got them flagged.

Michael Hill: Liam, tell us, what is a commercial waste zone?

Liam Quigley: These are new zones. Basically, residential trash is picked up by the sanitation department, but all businesses in the city have to use private carting companies. For years and years, those companies could come from all over the city. They could pick up in the Bronx and could then go to Manhattan, but the waste zone system is designed to restrict the amount of miles all those companies were racing around for decades and because people were dying and it was just a really dangerous industry.

The sanitation commissioner called it the Wild West. These new zones are kind of key to survival for these companies. You really need to get in a zone to keep picking up commercial trash in New York City.

Michael Hill: The city has been trying to reform the private waste industry for quite some time. What was the goal of the overhaul?

Liam Quigley: Really, it's about cutting down on the miles these vehicles are traveling that produces effects for the environment that are negative. It's bad for the workers. It's bad for pedestrians and bicyclists who are dying under the wheels of these trucks. It's really a whole suite of issues that the city wants to fix by restricting these companies to certain zones, which they have to get into by proving that they're safe operators and that they have a plan to really operate in a way that's less dangerous.

Michael Hill: Has the mayor's campaign, has it had anything to say about this?

Liam Quigley: Mayor Adams' campaign officials didn't reply to a request for comment about this particular company that was flagged in the audit. To be clear, they're not accused directly of any wrongdoing, and neither is Royal Waste.

Michael Hill: Have you heard from good government advocates, any of them, about any of this?

Liam Quigley: Yes. Rachel Fauss with the group Reinvent Albany told me how these type of donations that get flagged by the Campaign Finance Board can be indicative of an individual or a group of people trying to gain some influence by amplifying their donations.

Rachel Fauss: If you are gathering donations from a bunch of people and you deliver them to the campaign and you are the intermediary, you are definitely in the way of amplifying your standing with the campaign. Right?

Liam Quigley: Sanitation officials are really strongly defending their selection. They say the process was very rigorous and that companies that wanted to get in these zones, including Royal Waste, had to submit thousands of pages of paperwork, safety plans, et cetera. They're really defending this selection process, which has been years in the making.

Michael Hill: Liam, what else is mentioned in the Campaign Finance Board audit that made your head turn?

Liam Quigley: There's definitely some names that are familiar if you're following these investigations into the Adams campaign and how some of the fundraising happened behind the scenes. There's KSK Construction Group, which has been the subject of investigation by the FBI into potential straw donors. There's also New World Mall. Royal Waste ends up on that list. It doesn't mean that they're the subject of the same type of investigation, but it's a thing that auditors were looking into.

Michael Hill: WNYC's Liam Quigley. Liam, thanks for joining us. You can read Liam full story at our news site, Gothamist.

Janae Pierre: Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. Also, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.

 

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