These Dogs Are Also Firefighters’ Friends

Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll take a look at the New York Hearth Division’s latest four-legged — not mascots, precisely. We’ll additionally preview the New York Metropolis Half Marathon, again on Sunday for the primary time since 2019.

The Hearth Division’s two new greatest pals are robots. The division desires to ship them the place it’s too harmful to ship firefighters — into locations like buildings which may collapse. Or the place lethal carbon monoxide, which can’t be seen or smelled, is perhaps build up.

It’s relying on them to alter the way in which town thinks of robots. Hollywood typically casts robots in dystopian motion pictures. Captain Michael Leo of the Hearth Division’s robotics unit says that giving film robots weapons does real-life robots a disservice as a result of “then individuals suppose that’s how all robots are.”

“Our entire mission is a lifesaving one,” he mentioned. “That’s the core factor. These robots will save lives.”

They price $75,000 every and weigh 70 kilos apiece. Some Dalmatians weigh as a lot, as do some Borzois, German shepherds and Pointers. The robots won’t need to be fed, walked or groomed. They are going to by no means chew anybody, and after she watched a Hearth Division demonstration, my colleague Chelsia Rose Marcius wrote that they had been faultlessly obedient. Commanded to lie down, roll over or keep, they did.

However apart from serving to with firefighting, they should combat the adverse notion that surrounded a robotic canine the Police Division acquired in 2020. Critics raised considerations about aggressive ways — in addition to privateness and knowledge assortment — after officers responding to a house invasion deployed the robotic canine to find out whether or not anybody was nonetheless inside an residence. Extra criticism adopted after the robotic was seen with officers within the foyer of a public housing constructing in Manhattan.

John Miller, the Police Division’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, mentioned on the time the division had ended its lease on that robotic canine early as a result of the machine turned a “goal” for critics who he mentioned had been fueling the talk over race and surveillance.

A Hearth Division spokesman mentioned the robots would solely acquire knowledge on hazardous supplies conditions and added that division compliance officers had been educated on confidentiality guidelines. However Albert Fox Cahn, a lawyer who’s the manager director of the Surveillance Expertise Oversight Mission, expressed considerations about what knowledge the Hearth Division robots may acquire and the way that knowledge could possibly be used.

“When companies purchase these new programs, they all the time level to the best-case state of affairs to be used,” Cahn mentioned, “and I agree, if it really is utilized in ways in which retains firefighters protected, that may be nice. However the historical past has all the time been that even when it’s first introduced in for a compelling case, you get this creep the place it’s used for increasingly more situations till it’s reaching areas the place it simply doesn’t really feel justifiable.”

Within the Bronx, the place 17 individuals died in high-rise hearth in January after lethal smoke poured out of a single residence, deploying robots in hazardous conditions might save the lives of firefighters and different individuals, Borough President Vanessa Gibson mentioned. She mentioned she seemed ahead to a “ahead and productive dialog” with Hearth Division officers to see that the robots are used solely “on uncommon, specialised events, with a aim of defending our residents and first responders.”

Climate

It’s a sunny day with temps reaching the low 70s. Anticipate some showers late this night, with temps dropping to the 50s.

alternate-side parking

In impact till April 14 (Holy Thursday).

Hochul presses for a tighter bail legislation

The push for a extra restrictive bail legislation gained an essential ally: Gov. Kathy Hochul is privately urgent state lawmakers to make adjustments. In accordance with an inner memo obtained by The Instances, she desires to broaden the crimes eligible for bail and provides judges extra discretion to account for the felony historical past of defendants in instances involving severe felonies.

These adjustments, if enacted, would roll again a number of the adjustments to the state’s bail legislation that had been enacted by the Democratic-led Legislature in 2019.

Hochul, a Democrat working for her first full time period as governor, has come below political strain from Republicans and moderates in her personal occasion. Her proposals, a part of a 10-part public security plan first reported by The New York Publish, embody parts that seem geared toward concentrating on subway crime and the rise of gun violence.

The most recent Metro information

The pandemic

Different huge tales

A half-marathon returns with a full-size area

For Sunday’s New York Metropolis Half Marathon, returning to the streets for the primary time since 2019, the course will probably be acquainted — 13.1 miles from Prospect Park in Brooklyn to Central Park in Manhattan. Round Mile 11, the 25,000 entrants will cruise by means of Instances Sq.. The New York Half is the one occasion that Instances Sq. is formally closed for, apart from the New Yr’s Eve celebration.

It was one of many first races known as off because the pandemic tightened its grip on New York Metropolis in 2020. It was canceled once more final 12 months.

This time round, the sector contains 23 Olympians, eight Paralympians and 6 open-division runners with nationwide data in half-marathons of their dwelling international locations. Amongst them are Desiree Linden, the 2018 Boston Marathon champion; Galen Rupp, a two-time Olympic medalist and the winner of the 2017 Chicago Marathon and the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials marathons; and Sara Corridor, who set the American report within the half-marathon in January.

My colleague Matthew Futterman, in our Working publication, calls Corridor “the Energizer bunny of elite street racing” as a result of she packs her schedule with little downtime between distance races. Simply final week, she ran the Tokyo Marathon, ending eighth with a time of two hours 22 minutes 56 seconds.

Corridor mentioned the principle draw of the New York Metropolis Half was “the enjoyable of it.” She mentioned that she is targeted extra on competing than on the clock — she has no explicit time in thoughts. This, from somebody who in January broke the American report within the half-marathon with a time of 1 hour 7 minutes 15 seconds.

Matthew will probably be working it, too, as will his daughter, who’s 16 and competing in her first race. Additionally within the pack will probably be Michael Gold, a Metro reporter who did our preview of the New York Marathon final fall.

“I like that Sara Corridor and I are each simply working for the ‘enjoyable of it,’” he advised me. “However she’s going to complete in, like, half the time it takes me.”

What we’re studying

• A Coach and Zabar’s collaboration has produced a $150 bagel T-shirt, a $495 sweater and an already sold-out $550 bag, Patch NYC stories.

• The Westside Rag says soon-to-be 90-year-old David Goldstick has helped beautify Riverside Park for greater than 30 years. He doesn’t plan on stopping any time quickly.

• What we’re subscribing to: “The place ought to we eat?” is the age-old query. Nikita Richardson, a meals editor for the Instances, has solutions for diners in New York Metropolis. Each Tuesday beginning subsequent week, this subscriber-only publication (which is free for the primary 4 weeks) will characteristic suggestions, from new locations to beloved classics. Enroll right here.

Expensive Diary:

I got here to New York Metropolis in 2019 from a northern Canadian city to go to a pal. Whereas she was at work, I caught a experience on the Staten Island Ferry to get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.

It was a heat September day, and I sat exterior on the deck, staring on the giants: Girl Liberty loomed forward, huge and inexperienced; behind me, workplace towers shot up into the blue sky. Throughout me, ships handed by.

I couldn’t assist however suppose that all over the place I seemed, rusted steel, shiny glass and grey concrete dominated nearly each floor.

I took a deep breath, catching a whiff of diesel fumes from tugboats that had been competing for a patch of the harbor whereas the ferry clanged and banged ahead.

How do individuals reside right here? What makes somebody wish to be a New Yorker with all of this noise, these foul smells and exhausting edges?

Then, I seen one thing. Fluttering above the water on the breeze was a butterfly.

One thing gentle had discovered house in the midst of the entire roughness. One thing small had made its personal method. One thing tiny had discovered a house in New York.

— Lea Storry