It's the Brian Lair Show on WNYC. I'm Bridget Bergen, sitting in for Brian today. When it comes to public safety,

there's a persistent debate over how the NYPD should handle low-level offenses.

If someone operates an unlicensed pedicab or shoplifts food, are those crimes that warrant an

arrest and arraignment, or can those matters be handled with a desk appearance ticket?

This debate takes on new urgency and complexity, with the news of five deaths this year of people in police custody.

That comes on top of a report of 40 deaths in custody in the previous two years.

Last week, the Legal Aid Society sent a letter to the New York City Inspector General calling on the office to investigate all deaths in police custody.

For more in this story, I'm joined by Megna Phillip, director of the special litigation

unit at Legal Aid. Megna, welcome to WNYC. Thank you for having me. Now, Magna, I want to take a step

back. Before legal aid sent a letter to the NYPD's Inspector General for the police

department last week, there was another letter that you sent back in March. Can you talk about

what prompted that? That's exactly right. So back in March, we sent a letter to the Inspector

General about two deaths that had happened at courthouses of people that we would

have represented had we had the chance to interview them. They were awaiting the chance to see a judge

on low-level charges, and instead they were experiencing medical crisis. They needed urgent attention and they

died in holding cells in criminal court without getting that attention. And so that happened

within a two-week span in March. There was Sosovili, uh, was the first of those people who died in

custody, um, in NYPD custody in Brooklyn criminal court. He had been arrested for allegedly

shoplifting. And he was, uh, detained for an extended period of time. And yeah, he died in a holding cell at a courthouse.

And then, I think within two weeks, in a Manhattan criminal courthouse holding cell, a 43-year-old

man who had been arrested on a nonviolent, low-level drug possession charge, died waiting for the chance to see a judge.

And this is just unacceptable.

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