For at least two decades, the NYPD has blown past its annual budget, despite steady increases in the department's gargantuan allotments—now it's leaving money on the table over crime-data transparency, the New York Post reports.
For six years, the FBI has been warning the NYPD and other police agencies that they'll face penalties should they fail to update their crime reporting systems, a task for which the department has been given ample funding: Since 2017, the federal government has given the City of New York nearly $24 million in grants, grants the NYPD could have used to update its reporting system and yet has so far failed to do. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, there has been an "overwhelming" lack of participation from police forces across the country in the implementation of this new system, which would provide more detailed information about arrests and demographics. Failing to comply with these reporting systems could cost the department some $4 million in annual grants from the feds, a paltry amount compared to its some $5 billion in annual funding, yet still money a force allegedly struggling with a lack of resources during a "crime wave" could use.
The NYPD, in a statement to the Post, blamed its sluggishness on "technological challenges," which certainly begs the question of where all that grant money went.
Elsewhere in New York on this truly 10/10 autumn day, we've got a police-officer-slash-DJ, a pay-to-play scheme for natural landscapes, and a crowd-surfing administrator in NY schools:
- The Berlin-based grocery delivery company Gorillas, which promised to treat employees better than its competitors, is nonetheless facing a legal complaint from a worker over wage violations.
- Construction of the tent site on Randalls Island has begun, though it remains unclear when it will be ready to receive asylum seekers, as well as how they'll be transported to the rather remote site.
- The City Parks Foundation, a nonprofit associated with the Parks Department, has determined the cost of a single tree: For a donation between $1,800 and $3,100, New Yorkers can skip the notoriously slow tree-planting line.
- An "action plan" recommending the Department of Correction backfill positions with civilian, rather than uniformed, staff isn't seeing much action: Commissioner Louis Molina has yet to hire a single new civilian employee.
- Anthony D'Esposito, the former NYPD detective running for Congress in Long Island, was disciplined by the department for losing his gun—and for working as a bartender and DJ without permission.
- Attorney General Letitia James is requesting a federal appeals court judge rule in favor of continuing a gun ban in "sensitive places" like the subway and Times Square after the group Gun Owners of America challenged the rules.
- Congestion pricing could be "devastating" to the yellow cab industry, according to the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.
- A New York school district superintendent has been placed on administrative leave after crowd-surfing at a football game and being arrested on a DWI.
- Deputy Brooklyn Borough President Diana Richardson will soon lose her job following allegations of creating a "toxic" workplace, including, reportedly, physical violence.
- And finally, something nice:
