It's Thursday. We'll look at the moment when Eric Adams, the incoming mayor, found his police commissioner. We'll also see why Thursday will be a big day for two city parks. |
 | | Thalia Juarez for The New York Times |
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The selection process that led to the choice of a new police commissioner included a mock news conference. The candidates were given a hypothetical situation — a white New York City police officer had just shot and killed an unarmed Black man. Then they were asked what they would say if they had to face reporters. |
Keechant Sewell, the chief of detectives in Nassau County, got the attention of Eric Adams, the incoming mayor, with what she said — and got the job. |
Others competing for the job recited the details of the shooting. Sewell began by acknowledging that someone had been killed. |
"That made me sit up because she understood that there was a tragedy because a life was lost," Adams said. "That's what we have to understand." |
Three of my colleagues — Ashley Southall, Ali Watkins and Troy Closson — write that Adams's choice of Sewell will put her at the front of a movement to remake policing from within. |
This comes in the wake of last year's protests against police brutality and systemic racism that were prompted by the persistence of police killings of Black people. It also comes as the city continues to struggle to add Black and female officers, who have long been underrepresented in the ranks and now account for about 15 and 18 percent of the force. |
It also fulfills Mr. Adams's campaign promise to name a woman to lead the department where he served for 22 years. |
Even the location where he announced Sewell's appointment was symbolic: the Queens headquarters of Community Capacity Development, an anti-violence organization that uses former gang members to defuse conflicts and prevent shootings. Adams has said that his administration will seek to work more with community organizations to give the public a greater role in helping the police to fight crime. |
Sewell is expected to play a major role in finding the balance that Adams wants to strike between community-led strategies and traditional policing practices, including some that Adams plans to reinstate, like the use of plainclothes units to target illegal guns. |
But that is hardly the only challenge she will face. Morale in the Police Department has sunk under the pressures of the pandemic, the protests and stalled efforts to arrive at a new contract with the union that represents its police officers. Sewell will also inherit a tense relationship with the City Council and State Legislature. Her predecessors were unusually vocal in their criticism of laws aimed at making the criminal justice system fairer, saying such measures put the police at a disadvantage and gave criminals the upper hand. |
Adams said on Wednesday that Sewell's emotional intelligence and composure in handling the hypothetical shooting case had vaulted her past candidates who had attained higher ranks and had more experience. He said she had demonstrated that she has the capacity to lead in tough situations, from terror attacks to social unrest. |
"Those are the scenarios we're going to be facing," he said. "Hopefully we don't have a shooting like that, but if we do, I need the police commissioner to stand in front of the room and let New Yorkers know we're going to be all right, because it's not only substantive, it's the perception, right?" |
It's mostly cloudy with wind gusts and temps in the low 60s. Late in the evening, there's a chance of rain as temps dip into the low 50s. |
In effect until Dec. 24 (Christmas Eve). |
When the show doesn't go on |
 | | Sara Krulwich/The New York Times |
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In each case, at least one member of the cast or crew tested positive. Either for lack of replacements or concern about contagion, performances were called off. As my colleague Michael Paulson writes, they were not the first, and almost certainly won't be the last. |
A playground for Battery Park, a restoration for Prospect Park |
It's shaping up as an important day for two parks. Battery Park in Lower Manhattan will celebrate its new "playscape" — a playground three times the size of the one that was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. And Prospect Park in Brooklyn will announce that the city is allocating $40 million to restore an area named by a long-ago mayor's wife. |
The $18.3 million Battery Park project replaces a playground from the 1950s. "It was unimaginative," said Warrie Price, the president of the Battery Conservancy, the nonprofit group whose mission is to reinvigorate the Battery. "When I started to reach out to families to say what did they want in a new playground, they said, 'We know how terrible this one was, but it had a lot of space to run and be totally safe.' So many places are chockablock with equipment. They said keep the circulation. We've done that." |
The new playground also has a improv and puppet theater, which Ms. Price said was the first at a playground in New York City. The project was designed by BKSK Architects and Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners. |
As for Prospect Park, the Irish poet Thomas Moore asked: "Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere, with its roses the brightest that earth ever gave?" |
The Prospect Park Alliance, which runs the park, has heard of the Vale of Cashmere — that was the name given to a part of the park by Grace Chapin, the wife of a 19th-century mayor of Brooklyn. The Vale of Cashmere is now a defunct reflecting pool filled with vegetation. It is not far from the Rose Garden, which Susan Donoghue, the president of the Prospect Park Alliance, said has not had any roses for years. |
That is about to change with the $40 million from the city for the restoration of the Vale and the Rose Garden. "This area is a beautiful natural area, active with the birding community," Donoghue said. "We did a whole lot of outreach with the community. We said we have to hear what the public wants. What came back was people liked the contemplative nature of the space, the fact that it's woodlands and it's quiet. We want to respect and enhance that." |
In tribute to a New York City institution, this week's Metropolitan Diaries offers readers' tales of encounters with Stephen Sondheim. |
One Sunday night in the early 1980s, I dropped by my office on Park Avenue and 48th Street. As I was heading across Park Avenue to a parking garage in my small two-seater, a car ran a red light and T-boned me. |
My car was crushed, and I was pretty shaken up. The police came to the scene. The other driver told the officers that I had run the light. |
There were three people on a nearby corner who had seen the whole thing. Without hesitating, one approached the officers. He told them what he had witnessed and confirmed my story: The other driver had run a red light before crashing into me. |
Still shaken, I approached the man and thanked him. He was reserved, humble and forthcoming. I asked for his name and phone number in case my insurance company needed to contact him. It was only when he told me his name that I learned this witness was Stephen Sondheim. Extraordinary! |
The insurance company said later that the other driver's claim had been closed because of the witness's account. I called Mr. Sondheim to thank him again for stepping forward. |
He asked how I was feeling. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
Melissa Guerrero, Jonah Candelario and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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