City takes aim at hate vs. Asians
17 workers since Jan. 1 bring pandemic toll to at least 148
City leaders are boosting efforts to fight hate crimes that have targeted Asian New Yorkers, in particular, since the start of the coronavirus outbreak.
The recent deployment of extra NYPD officers to the subways will focus in part on preventing hate crimes, while Mayor de Blasio promised meetings with community leaders this week to hear what else the city can do.
“The NYPD is watching to protect folks and stop these horrible actions,” Hizzoner said at a Tuesday news conference, after a series of alarming subway incidents prompted the NYPD to send 500 extra cops to stations and trains this month.
The recent crime streak includes unprovoked attacks on two Asian senior citizens on subways within a 24-hour span on Feb. 16.
“These racist attacks have been outrageous, unconscionable, disgusting and it must end,” Rep. Grace Meng (D-Queens) said at the news conference.
Meng and de Blasio partially blamed former President Donald Trump for fomenting hate through racist language about coronavirus.
“Although Donald Trump is no longer in office, his past anti-Asian rhetoric and use of terms like ‘Chinese virus’ [and] ‘kung flu’ continues to threaten the safety of our community in New York and around the country,” Meng said.
While police have logged 28 known incidents of “COVID-related” hate crimes against Asians and made busts in 18 of those cases since the start of the pandemic, the commanding officer of the NYPD’s Asian Hate Crimes Task Force acknowledged the number of incidents is likely higher.
“These numbers are definitely underreported,” said the commander, Deputy Inspector Stewart Loo, explaining that the NYPD categorizes hate crimes as “COVID-related” only if the attacker makes statements related to the virus.
De Blasio and Meng urged New Yorkers to speak out if they see hate crimes.
“So many Asian-Americans literally live in fear and are afraid to leave their homes because they don’t know what might happen to them,” the congresswoman said.
COVID-19 deaths are on the rise again at the MTA, which reported Tuesday that 17 employees have succumbed to the virus since Jan. 1.
The 17 deaths bring the agency’s pandemic death toll to at least 148 — and represent a sharp increase from the final six months of 2020, when just six MTA workers died of the virus.
Another 125 were killed by the disease during a horrifying twomonth stretch between late March and early June.
“We grieve and mourn the loss of every one of our colleagues, as well as all New Yorkers and Americans,” MTA Chairman Patrick Foye said at a news conference.
Foye said at least 10,000 of the MTA’s 70,000 employees have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine — and announced the opening of a new vaccine facility in downtown Brooklyn that will administer up to 1,000 inoculations a week to transit workers.
“We want to make sure that every MTA worker who wants to get vaccinated has access,” Foye said.
Robert Worthy, 56, a dispatcher at the Queens Village bus depot, said more vaccines for transit workers can’t come soon enough.
“We’ve had four bus operators out of my depot that have passed away [from COVID]; one just passed away last week,” said Worthy.
“I’m tired of saying that I’m sorry someone passed away. Perhaps if we all start getting the vaccine we can stop saying goodbye to some of our co-workers.”
Foye — who tested positive for COVID-19 in March and received his first dose of the vaccine Tuesday — said the MTA’s workforce is in better shape than it was last spring, when a surge of infections among frontline workers sparked crew shortages and cuts to subway and bus service.
He noted that MTA employees’ COVID-19 infection rate was lower than the rest of the city’s rate during the surge of new cases
after the holiday season.
Crew shortages are not expected to cause more service cuts this winter, Foye said.
Transit officials, however, have retained service cuts on some
subway lines that went into effect last year.
MTA workers have been eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines in New York since Jan. 13 — but a shortage of supply from the federal government has hindered distribution of the jabs across the country.
Foye said another 10,000 MTA workers who have signed up for vaccines still await vaccination.
“Our employees heroically moved this city during its most challenging hour,” said Foye.
“Today is about making sure that those efforts are honored.”
Foye and MTA officials recently sparked a quarrel with Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents a majority of the agency’s workforce.
MTA Chief Financial Officer Bob Foran last week announced plans to rescind a previously negotiated pay raise for roughly 40,000 transit workers.
Local 100 President Tony Utano declined to attend Tuesday’s news conference in protest.
“We’re not doing any public relations events with them while they continue to disrespect us by denying us our contractually negotiated raise,” said Utano. “A deal’s a deal. They’re not holding up their end of the bargain.”
The mother of a Black man shot dead as he jogged through a white Georgia suburb filed a $1 million civil rights lawsuit Tuesday alleging a vast conspiracy enabled and protected the men charged with her son’s killing.
Wanda Cooper filed the complaint in Georgia federal court on the one-year anniversary of Ahmaud Arbery’s shocking caughton-video slaying.
Arbery, 25, was unarmed when he went jogging Feb. 23, 2020, and was “maliciously” pursued, confronted and shot dead by a “racist” group of three men acting as neighborhood vigilantes, the lawsuit states.
The horrific incident generated no arrests for months, with Arbery’s family fed lies about what truly transpired, the suit alleges.
It wasn’t until video was leaked to the media in early May that widespread outrage led to arrests of shooter Travis McMichael and his retired cop father Gregory McMichael on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault.
A third man, William “Roddie” Bryan, was arrested two weeks later and charged with felony murder and false imprisonment. He recorded the video.
“For nearly three months, Glynn County police officers, the chief of police and two prosecutors conspired to hide the circumstances surrounding Ahmaud’s death and to protect the men who murdered him,” Cooper’s lawsuit states.
“None of this would have been discovered but for video footage leaked to the media, which showed the horrific and brutal murder of Ahmaud,” the 47-page complaint alleges.
Cooper is suing the McMichaels and Bryan for excessive force. She adds state officials to subsequent claims of civil-rights violations and wrongful death.
“The cover-up of Ahmaud’s murder began the moment that uniformed Glynn County Police Department personnel arrived at the crime scene,” the paperwork states.
It says investigators immediately learned the McMichaels and Bryan “hunted Ahmaud down without any legal purpose or justification” based on admissions and video they obtained “while Ahmaud’s body still lay on the street.”
The lawsuit claims officials invented a cover story for the slaying — the false narrative that Arbery had been involved in a burglary and was confronted by
“the homeowner” — to bury the fact that law enforcement essentially deputized and encouraged Gregory McMichael “to act as law enforcement” and investigate local instances of trespassing at a construction site.
The day Arbery died, he stopped at the construction lot “to get a drink or water from a spigot within the structure or to rest,” the lawsuit states.
Arbery then continued on his jog and passed Gregory McMichael, who was working in his front yard.
McMichael did not see Arbery enter or leave the construction lot, but he still grabbed his department-issued revolver and called police to say he had a “gut feeling” Arbery was responsible for previous thefts in the neighborhood.
His son grabbed a shotgun, and together they chased Arbery with their truck for several minutes before Travis McMichael fired a shotgun blast into Arbery’s chest “without provocation,” the lawsuit says.
Arbery was shot two more times at close range, staggered and fell to the ground, the lawsuit states.
Attempts to reach lawyers for the McMichaels, Bryan and Glynn County were not immediately successful Tuesday.
The new lawsuit seeks “in excess of $1 million,” including punitive damages.
AUSTIN, Texas - Five board members of the state’s power grid operator, including chairwoman Sally Talberg, announced their resignation Tuesday, a week after power outages left millions across Texas shivering in their homes during severe winter storms and state officials criticized some board members for not living in the state.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which manages the flow of electricity to more than 26 million Texas customers, has taken the brunt of the criticism from state officials. Gov. Greg Abbott last week supported calls for resignations by the council’s leadership, calling the power outages a “total failure by ERCOT.”
On Tuesday, Abbott said ERCOT’s lack of preparedness and transparency is unacceptable and welcomed the resignations.
“When Texans were in desperate need of electricity, ERCOT failed to do its job and Texans were left shivering in their homes without power. ERCOT leadership made assurances that Texas’ power infrastructure was prepared for the winter storm, but those assurances proved to be devastatingly false,” he said in a statement. “The State of Texas will continue to investigate ERCOT and uncover the full picture of what went wrong, and we will ensure that the disastrous events of last week are never repeated.”
Abbott, who has also been heavily criticized for last week’s power outages, plans to deliver a televised statewide address on Wednesday at 6 p.m.
All five board who resigned are believed to live out of state.
Along with Talberg, the four other current board members who resigned are: Peter Cramton, an unaffiliated director; Terry Bulger, an unaffiliated director; Raymond Hepper, an unaffiliated director; and Vanessa Anesetti-Parra, who represents independent retail electric providers.
Talberg’s bio on the ERCOT website said she lives in Michigan. Bulger, who was paid $65,250 a year according to ERCOT’s 2018 tax filings, lives in a suburb of Chicago.
Talberg and Cramton were elected board chair and vice chair respectively during a meeting on Feb. 9, just days before the winter storm that brought about their resignation. Cramton, who joined the board in 2015, was paid $87,000 in 2018.
The resignations mean that all five unaffiliated positions on ERCOT’s board will soon be open - the fifth position is currently vacant.
All five are approved by the three-member, Abbott-appointed Public Utility Commission, which so far has escaped major criticism.
The four unaffiliated directors resigned together in a joint letter addressed to other ERCOT members and the Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT. The letter was posted on the Public Utility Commission’s website.
The board members said they acknowledged the pain and suffering of Texans last week.
“We have noted recent concerns about out-of-state board leadership at ERCOT,” they wrote. “To allow state leaders a free hand with future direction and to eliminate distractions, we are resigning from the board effective ... Wednesday.”