Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll find out about a partial shutdown of New York Penn Station on the days there are World Cup matches in New Jersey. We’ll also get details on the sentencing of the first New York City police officer convicted of killing a civilian in 10 years.
Is April really the cruelest month? June and July may end up being worse.
New Jersey commuters will be shut out of Penn Station in Manhattan in the hours before World Cup matches during those months. And New Yorkers hoping to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary in Times Square may be disappointed, too. As July 3 gives way to July 4, there will be a ball drop, as planned, but no big public event in the streets below.
It is unusual for a public transit agency to give people attending a special event priority over regular passengers. But transportation experts said that NJ Transit had little choice. The agency simply isn’t capable of carrying its usual load of commuters in addition to the 40,000 soccer fans expected to attend each of the eight matches at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands, including the tournament’s finale.
To accommodate those fans, NJ Transit commuters will be barred from New York Penn Station for four hours before each of the matches, according to my colleagues Patrick McGeehan, Andy Newman and Claire Fahy. One of those four-hour periods will coincide with the weekend evening rush.
Only people with soccer tickets to that day’s match will be allowed into the NJ Transit sections of Penn Station. Their train tickets, specially produced for the World Cup, will include an assigned hour for them to arrive at the station.
Whether a ride to MetLife costs more than the normal fare remains to be determined. The transit authority in Boston plans to charge $80 for a round trip from South Station to Foxborough, Mass., where World Cup matches will be played. That price is four times as high as the usual one for a trip to Foxborough to see a Patriots game.
NJ Transit is finalizing its plans for the World Cup and is expected to announce them later this month, but some elected officials say that word can’t come soon enough. “For the 99 percent that can’t afford to attend the games,” Assemblyman Ravi Bhalla, a Democrat from Hoboken, said, “it would be nice to at least know how you’re going to get home from work.”
What about subway passengers? Tim Minton, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said the agency was “rock-solid, 100 percent certain” that subway riders would have access to Penn Station during the five-week tournament.
The same goes for Long Island Rail Road passengers, he said.
And Amtrak, which also uses Penn Station? The people with knowledge of the NJ Transit plan said that Amtrak passengers might be told to board trains at Moynihan Train Hall, across Eighth Avenue from the station.
As for the ball drop to ring in the Fourth of July, it will be broadcast live, “giving millions the chance to be a part of the moment from wherever they are,” according to a statement from One Times Square, the site of the drop, and America250, a bipartisan commission involved in planning celebrations of the country’s 250th birthday.
But the statement said that there would not be a public event in Times Square, although “a limited, ticketed in-person experience inside One Times Square” was being planned. The statement said that more details would be provided later on; it did not say what the tickets would cost or how many would be available.
Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, said that his group had worked with One Times Square and had applied for a permit. “The city didn’t feel they had the resources,” Harris said. “We accepted that.”
City Hall did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Weather
Expect plenty of sunshine as temperatures near 62. Tonight will be mostly cloudy with a low around 51.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended (Good Friday, Orthodox)
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Helicopters should be held to the same safety standards as airplanes.” — Representative Jerrold Nadler of Manhattan, backing a bipartisan bill that would close a loophole that has allowed sightseeing helicopters to operate under lower safety standards. A helicopter crashed into the Hudson River, killing six people, one year ago today.
The latest New York news
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N.Y.C. faces job losses: Mayor Zohran Mamdani acknowledged that the city was facing a difficult labor market after losing 19,500 private sector jobs last year. Three months into his term, he has yet to focus on economic development or job creation.
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Who has the final say? Mamdani sought to affirm his control over the Police Department, saying he had the final word on law enforcement matters and would overrule the police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, if he felt it was necessary.
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The heir to a legacy: Trevor Houston, a footwear designer, is spearheading the revival of Herbert Levine, a brand known for making shoes worn by movie stars and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis before closing in 1975.
Former N.Y.P.D. sergeant is sentenced to at least 3 years
The last time a New York City police officer was convicted of killing a civilian, the judge reduced the charge and the officer was sentenced to probation.
That was in 2016. On Thursday, Erik Duran, a former sergeant who was convicted in February in the killing of a delivery driver at whom he had thrown a cooler as the man fled arrest on a motorbike, was sentenced to three to nine years in prison.
The judge, Guy Mitchell, agreed with prosecutors from the state attorney general’s office, who had recommended the sentence. Mitchell said it would serve as a “general deterrent” for police officers “violating the law when they are making attempts to apprehend fleeing suspects.”
The delivery driver, Eric Duprey, 30, sped off on a motorbike after buying cocaine from an undercover detective. Duran grabbed a cooler and threw it at Duprey with what another officer later described as a “shot-put motion.” Duprey lost control of the motorbike, slammed into a tree and ended up under a parked Jeep.
At the trial, lawyers for Duran argued that he had been justified when he made a split-second decision to throw the cooler at Duprey, hoping to protect other officers standing nearby. Duran — who joined the Police Department in 2010 and is the son of Ecuadorean immigrants — said that he had run to Duprey and had “rendered aid as soon as I could.” Duran was fired after he was found guilty.
At the sentencing hearing on Thursday, Duran turned to Duprey’s mother, Gretchen Soto, who was in the courtroom, and said, “I am really sorry for the loss of your child,” using the word “mijo,” a term of endearment for “son.”
Soto leaned forward, put her head down and sobbed. “I never wanted this to happen,” Duran said, holding back tears himself, as Pearl Velez, Duprey’s partner, held Soto. “I pray for you and your family,” he said.
Duran’s case renewed discussions about police accountability that have accompanied other instances when officers have shot civilians. The last officer to be convicted in the death of a civilian in New York City was Peter Liang, a rookie Chinese American officer who was found guilty in the 2014 death of Akai Gurley, an unarmed Black man who was hit by a ricocheting bullet from Liang’s gun. The judge reduced Liang’s second-degree manslaughter conviction to criminally negligent homicide before sentencing the officer to probation and community service.
Duran’s former colleagues collected thousands of signatures asking for probation, and his lawyers also asked for no prison time. Vincent Vallelong, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said after the sentencing that sending Duran to jail had “sent a very chilling message to every cop in the nation.”
Norman Siegel, a civil rights lawyer and the former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that with a three- to nine-year sentence, Duran could apply for parole after three years. “With a former police officer, the parole board would be very receptive to his application,” Siegel said. “We should have neutral principles here — it shouldn’t be who you are or who you know. If the result is, after killing Eric Duprey, he winds up serving three years, that would be inadequate. It would send a wrong message.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Picking pickles
Dear Diary:
My wife and I went to a deli in the East Village for some pastrami.
While I waited at the counter for the meat and a loaf of rye bread, my wife went to the pickle bucket. She stood there picking up one pickle at a time and dropping it back in.
The woman at the counter watched her do this for a little while before speaking.
“There are no gold ones there, dearie,” she said.
— Michael L. Counts
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post Will the World Cup Create More Headaches for New Jersey Commuters? appeared first on New York Times.
