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New York Times
10-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
A Simple Way to Check Police Corruption? Parking Tickets.
On a February morning, as light snow turned to light rain, traffic backed up behind a truck on a Brooklyn side street. The driver had stepped out to measure whether he could get past one of a long line of parked S.U.V.s and sedans, jutting off the sidewalk and into the street, outside the 67th Precinct station house in East Flatbush. Recent visits to Manhattan's Chinatown found one driver had secured a parking space forbidden to others by leaving a crumpled yellow N.Y.P.D. vest on the dashboard. A second driver left the top half of a police uniform. On a yellow-striped median on Canal Street, a driver had overcome parking laws with a handwritten note indicating that he or she was a police officer. All over New York, police officers and staff start their workday by disregarding the law. They park their personal vehicles at bus stops, on sidewalks and in crosswalks, in turning lanes and no-standing zones. Jessica Tisch, who became Mayor Eric Adams's fourth police commissioner last November, may have bigger problems to fix than her officers' parking practices. She has focused her tenure on cleaning up after Mr. Adams, a former police captain who suffused the department with a culture of impunity while accusations of corruption spread and quality-of-life concerns persisted. But putting a stop to police parking abuses would not only alleviate a quality-of- life concern for other drivers, walkers, bus riders and cyclists, it would make clear to the police and the public that officers have to abide by the rules. Mr. Adams, who has apparently worked things out with the Trump administration to try to get his federal corruption indictment dismissed, has shown little interest in following rules. Police leaders have been among the many Adams officials who didn't think rules applied to them and left amid criminal investigations. By addressing parking abuse, a longtime problem for the N.Y.P.D., Ms. Tisch would give the public a simple sign that she expects officers and staff to obey rules, and the law. By rebuilding discipline, Ms. Tisch can keep the N.Y.P.D. focused on what it is supposed to be doing: cutting crime and disorder. Ms. Tisch recently announced a new 'quality of life' division to track complaints and responses to issues such as 'aggressive panhandling, unruly street vending, public urination and abandoned vehicles.' She should add to that list uncontrolled, haphazard government-employee street parking, with the worst offender being the N.Y.P.D. The city government has long provided some employees with windshield placards letting them park without charge in metered spaces, and in no-parking zones and some loading zones. In a report published last year, the city Department of Investigation found that the city issued more than 100,000 parking placards. The Police Department, with almost one-fifth of city workers, accounts for almost one-third of the placards. Lower Manhattan is the epicenter both of legal placard use and flouting of the rules. On a recent cold, sunny day, Jan Lee and Triple Edwards, longtime Chinatown residents, guided me along the streets around One Police Plaza, the N.Y.P.D. headquarters. Mr. Edwards paused every few feet to point out cars bearing a placard or some notification that the owner was a cop. Dashboards displayed white-paper printouts of police insignia, handwritten notes about the driver's status and pieces of police uniforms. A 2007 study of much of Lower Manhattan found 1,012 instances of illegal parking by cars with placards on a typical midday, and Mr. Lee and Mr. Edwards believe the situation has worsened since then. Downtown Brooklyn, too, is crammed with parked vehicles sporting placards. The area under the Brooklyn Bridge, near the 84th Precinct station house, is a riot of haphazardly parked passenger cars and S.U.V.s parked at odd angles, parked on sidewalks, creeping up the ramp to the bridge. In Queens, too, if you look around any precinct building, said Robert Holden, a City Council member whose district includes the 104th Precinct house in Ridgewood, 'the cops, their personal cars, are blocking hydrants; worse than that, they're parked on sidewalks.' 'I'm pro-cop,' Mr. Holden added, 'but not when they endanger the public.' Last year, federal investigators from the Southern District of New York found that city vehicles parked on sidewalks and crosswalks created a 'pedestrian grid that is often inaccessible to people with disabilities,' with such people 'risking injuries from vehicles' to navigate the streets. The N.Y.P.D. thwarts enforcement of such violations. 'Integrity tests' by the city's Department of Investigation of calls to the city's 311 complaint line found that 'in half of the reported instances, N.Y.P.D. personnel did not respond to the complaints at all.' The N.Y.P.D. could allow police parking just on a precinct house's block, with the commander awarding spots, Sam Schwartz, the former city traffic commissioner and a longtime critic of police parking practices, told me. Beyond the block, Mr. Schwartz said, 'you ticket them, you tow them.' The city could also reconfigure precinct house blocks to create and clearly mark legal spots for officers' cars. The City Council should have the Department of Transportation enforce rules against placard abuse, rather than leave it up to the Police Department. City streets will never offer enough legal parking for every government employee, including every police officer, who wants it. Longer term, the Council should reduce legal placard use, perhaps limiting placards to officers working late-night or early-morning hours, or for making trips between work sites that are difficult to reach on mass transit. Digital placards could let the city monitor, regulate and permit employee parking, even potentially charging for commuter parking. Ms. Tisch has the right temperament to take this on. In her first months in office, she has shown a calm but firm willingness to assert authority over even top-ranked officers. When he was running for mayor in 2021, Mr. Adams dismissed placard abuse concerns. To 'focus on placards, while 5-year-old girls are being grazed with bullets,' Mr. Adams said, 'that is not the problem that the New Yorkers I know are thinking about.' But Mr. Adams's poll numbers indicate that New Yorkers are tired of his unchecked culture of impunity.
New York Times
19-02-2025
- Automotive
- New York Times
Nikola, E.V. Start-Up That Once Thrilled Investors, Files for Bankruptcy
Nikola, an electric vehicle start-up that had once hoped to become the Tesla of heavy trucks, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday. Founded in 2015, Nikola promised to develop long-haul semi trucks powered by hydrogen and electricity, and listed itself on the stock exchange in 2020 before it had sold a single vehicle. Its share price surged briefly as individual investors and some Wall Street firms clamored to bet on companies that they thought could replicate Tesla's success and its soaring stock price. Investors' short-lived enthusiasm for Nikola made its founder, Trevor Milton, and other early investors wealthy. But before long, significant doubts emerged about Mr. Milton's claims about the company's technology and orders from customers. He was soon ousted, and later convicted on fraud charges. In recent quarters, Nikola had begun delivering small numbers of electric trucks but far too few to make money. Late last year, the company said it had $200 million in cash and $270 million in long-term debt. Its stock plunged in early February on reports that the company was nearing a bankruptcy filing. The company said in a release it had about $47 million in cash on hand, and intended to continue 'limited' service and support for trucks out on the road. The bankruptcy filing listed liabilities of between $1 billion and $10 billion, and put the number of creditors it owes at between 1,000 and 5,000. Nikola is one of several fledgling electric vehicle companies that have struggled to turn their ideas into actual cars and trucks. Lordstown Motors, which had tried to make pickup trucks in a shuttered General Motors plant in Ohio, sought bankruptcy protection in 2023, and in 2024 was charged with misleading investors by the Securities and Exchange Commission. A start-up based in Britain called Arrival planned to make electric vans and buses. But it struggled to make its vehicle and manufacturing ideas work and then sold its assets to another start-up, Canoo. That company filed for bankruptcy protection last month. A few electric vehicle start-ups are still operating though their share prices have tumbled and it's not clear how or when they will become profitable. Rivian, which makes electric pickups and sport-utility vehicles, has had trouble ramping up production to the levels it originally aimed for, and its stock now trades at just under $13 a share — a tenth of where it was in late 2021. But the company secured an important lifeline last year when it established a partnership with the German automaker Volkswagen, which has taken a big stake in Rivian. Lucid Motors makes luxury electric cars and S.U.V.s but has fallen well short of its original sales and production targets. It, too, is hoping to make deals in which it sells its technology to other automakers. 'Like other companies in the electric vehicle industry, we have faced various market and macroeconomic factors that have impacted our ability to operate,' Steve Girsky, Nikola's chief executive, said in a statement on Wednesday. 'Unfortunately, our very best efforts have not been enough to overcome these significant challenges.'
New York Times
30-01-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Elon Musk's Next Target: Government Buildings
Elon Musk appears to have his next target for cost-cutting: the General Services Administration. Mr. Musk visited the agency's headquarters in Washington on Thursday afternoon, according to three people briefed on his activities who insisted on anonymity, and met with the acting administrator of the agency, Stephen Ehikian. Mr. Musk, joined by one of his young children, arrived shortly after noon and spent a few hours at the agency, with several black S.U.V.s parked out front. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency, President Trump's new cost-cutting group led by Mr. Musk, has so far focused on terminating leases of what it has called 'mostly empty' federal offices, which are managed by the General Services Administration. On Monday, the group said the agency had already terminated three leases. 'These are the first steps to right size the Federal real estate portfolio of more than 7,500 leases,' the group wrote in a post on X, Mr. Musk's social media platform. Mr. Musk's visit to the General Services Administration could presage more cost-cutting efforts focused on federal real estate. The agency also plays a role in federal contracting and in providing technology services across the federal government. This week, engineers at the G.S.A. were asked to submit a recent 'technical win' to Thomas Shedd, a Tesla engineer who was named the agency's director of 'Technology Transformation Services.' Tapping the agency's technical talent could allow the cost-cutting effort to advance its stated goal of modernizing government systems. Mr. Ehikian, a Trump appointee, told workers in an email on Tuesday that, in addition to terminating three leases, two of the agency's properties would be listed for sale. Ending the leases would save about $11 million and was a 'first step' in cutting real-estate expenditures, according to the email. Steve Davis, an executive at Mr. Musk's tunneling start-up, the Boring Company, has led the billionaire's work at the Department of Government Efficiency and has spent much of his time focused on the G.S.A. But the appearance on Thursday was Mr. Musk's first known in-person visit to the agency. Mr. Davis played a key role in Mr. Musk's cost-cutting efforts at X, formerly known as Twitter, after the billionaire's 2022 acquisition of the social media company. Mr. Davis was an ever-present figure at its San Francisco offices, overseeing layoffs and at times even sleeping in the building. Mr. Davis was joined by his wife, Nicole Hollander, who managed the reduction of X's real-estate footprint. Mr. Davis and Ms. Hollander have G.S.A. email accounts, two of the people said. The couple are part of a cadre of Silicon Valley executives who have joined Mr. Musk in Washington, many as part of his cost-cutting effort. Mr. Ehikian comes from Silicon Valley himself, having sold two companies to Salesforce. Precisely what Mr. Ehikian and Mr. Musk discussed on Thursday was not immediately clear. The G.S.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Musk's movements in Washington are being closely watched given his highly unusual and empowered role in Mr. Trump's administration. Last Friday, Mr. Musk visited the Office of Personnel Management, which functions as a de facto human-resources agency for the federal work force. It is currently being led by tech executives, including Amanda Scales, who once worked for Mr. Musk at his artificial intelligence company, xAI, and Brian Bjelde, a longtime human resources executive at Mr. Musk's rocket company, SpaceX. A few days later, the Office of Personnel Management unveiled a series of drastic changes that bore the unmistakable imprint of Mr. Musk. The agency sent a mass email to federal employees, setting requirements for them to work from the office and to meet new performance standards. If employees did not want to comply, they could resign, the email said — echoing an offer that Mr. Musk made to employees at Twitter shortly after his 2022 takeover. The emails even shared a subject line: 'Fork in the Road.'
New York Times
28-01-2025
- New York Times
It's Time to Bring Back the Duel
I prefer autumn for a duel. A nip in the air and the thick butterscotch warmth of bourbon. A whiff of wood smoke. The rustle of our feet through the leaves as we walk those 20 paces. The explosion of colors — and of pistols, too, of course: deep crimson on that rustled bed of bright orange and amber. Oh, don't mind me. I'm just imagining. I've never been in a duel, of course. We don't allow duels anymore. They're barbaric, archaic. We can just shoot people on the spot now, over whatever slight or insult or dust-up has us riled. We don't need rules, or a quiet meadow at dawn. The strip-mall parking lot outside a suburban Italian restaurant will do. That happened a few years ago where I live. There was a disagreement over two S.U.V.s parked too closely to each other. The men argued, then one went to his vehicle for a gun and shot and killed the other. Over a parking dispute. Over nothing. The judge at the sentencing lamented how a gun, ever so handy when things became heated, 'controlled' the man's 'mental condition' and 'emboldened him.' A couple of hundred years ago, this quick escalation, from mundane to murderous, might have taken several days. After the challenge was made and accepted, the duel would have to be scheduled, and a suitably secluded plot of land identified, and the weapons chosen, and the seconds (dueling's version of the bridegroom's best man) signed on. Then the appointed day would come — and what if it rained? Oh, snap! Were there rainouts in dueling, like in baseball? Heck, they might have decided to wait until autumn. Not to make sport of duels, mind. They could be lethal. Alexander Hamilton most famously died from one, shot by his longtime political rival, Aaron Burr, in a dispute partly over the former's deeming the latter 'a dangerous man.' More than he knew! But dueling, though fraught, was seldom fatal — only about 7 percent of duels resulted in death, according to scholars. Consider the early American politicians John Randolph and Henry Clay, who staged what the Kentucky secretary of state's website calls 'one of the most ludicrous exchanges in the annals of dueling.' After some early misses, Clay put a bullet through Randolph's coat, then braced for his opponent's return fire. Randolph shot harmlessly into the air. No one died, or was even wounded that day. 'But you owe me a new coat,' said Randolph to Clay. Har. History is strewed with duels that weren't — called off for one reason or another, cooler heads or back-channel collusion or whatever. A young Illinois politician named Abraham Lincoln avoided one rather craftily. When challenged by the aggrieved state auditor James Shields over personal insults, Lincoln chose swords as the weapon, in a nod to his height and reach advantage. They met on a Mississippi River sandbar called, a little too aptly, Bloody Island. In a flourish of preduel gamesmanship, the future American president swung his sword high and hacked off a tree branch. Shields saw the folly of bringing thin skin to a sword fight, and a truce was called. So the story goes. You could also just apologize and avoid a duel. Or your second — cool head to your hot one — could talk you down. This was a crucial part of a second's job, turns out — to see that the duel never came off. (So scratch that best-man comparison from earlier.) Finally, if the duel could not be avoided, you could always 'delope.' That is, the duelists would miss on purpose, a sort of let's-not-and-say-we-did maneuver. With such subterfuge, it's a wonder they didn't do away with pistols altogether. Why not dirty looks at 20 paces instead! So maybe they were onto something, back in the barbaric, archaic United States. Maybe the whole idea of a duel was to give would-be duelists time to cool it. To stand back for a bit, and make peace. Or anyway, live to loathe another way. Imagine the applications today in this agitated America of ours — where guns, at some 400 million, outnumber the nation's population. We have people taking potshots at one another on Interstates. We have shootings at schools, churches, grocery stores, food courts, hookah lounges, nightclubs and parks. We have shootings at Easter parties and after-prom parties and trail rides. Mix the easy availability of guns with our politics of incitement, division and (let's just call it what it is) old-fashioned hate. The threats, the bullying. The fighting over every little thing — over books and bathrooms and whether facts are facts. Two people of opposing views can't even talk calmly about the weather anymore — there's climate change, you know. Unless it's a hoax! See? I've gone and worked myself into a state. It doesn't take much, honestly. Bit of a hothead I am. One more combustible American. I have one of those hair-trigger tempers that's just too quick for me sometimes. It reacts before there's time to stop, think, reason. I don't own a gun, but who's to say I won't get crosswise someday with someone who does? I'll have been a co-conspirator, if a dead one. So it seems to me we need, as a country, a little time to calm our collective bad selves, to temper our flaring tempers. You see what I'm proposing here, don't you? We have to bring it back. Yes, dueling. Think of the lives we'll save.
