The Reporters’ Notebook features bite-sized stories and updates from New York Focus reporters on the topics they cover. It’s our way of keeping readers updated about the subjects they care about between the time it takes to publish our longer, more in-depth articles.
How One of New York’s First Nonprofit Cannabis Partnerships Went South
In 2022, a year after New York state legalized recreational cannabis, two nonprofits — The Bronx Defenders and the Bronx Community Foundation — teamed up to create a resource for New Yorkers looking to obtain highly coveted state licenses to sell marijuana.
The state had mandated that New Yorkers with
prior cannabis convictions be given preference during the industry’s
licensing rollout, and the newly formed Bronx Cannabis Hub was an effort to help them take advantage of this new era. US Senator Chuck Schumer said he hoped the hub would “serve as a model” for similar efforts “throughout the country.”
The two nonprofits seemed to work well together: The Bronx Defenders honored the Bronx Foundation’s cofounders, Desmon Lewis and his brother Derrick, at the Defenders’ annual gala fundraiser in October 2022.
But a letter obtained by New York Focus shows the partnership ended less than a year later, when The Bronx Defenders accused Desmon of having an inappropriate business relationship with one of the hub’s clients — who eventually obtained New York’s first recreational cannabis retail license backed by a new state loan program — and asked the organization to cease all use of The Bronx Defenders’ name and logo.
The letter cited The Bronx Defenders’ need “to mitigate potential legal, reputational, and political risk.”
Roland Conner was a real estate professional whose past
convictions made him a prime candidate for a license. He was among the
cohort of the first 40 people the hub helped after legalization, and was
ecstatic
when his dispensary, Smacked, eventually opened in New York City in
January 2023. His son moved from Florida to help him run the business,
and his wife left her accounting job to work at the new family store.
In a press release from Governor Kathy Hochul’s office
celebrating Smacked’s opening, Desmon Lewis said that Conner was
“exactly the kind of business owner and community leader that we were
trying to support when we set up The Bronx Cannabis Hub with The Bronx
Defenders last year.”
But news coverage and public records from those months show a relationship that went beyond nonprofit support.
Lewis was listed as Smacked’s “operations officer” and
“strategy & outreach” coordinator. He spoke to the press as a
representative of the dispensary — not as a representative of the hub or
foundation.
“We are, for all intents and purposes, a pharmacy-style business,” Lewis told Gothamist in an article about Smacked in January 2023.
Conner declined to comment for this story. His business is currently facing mounting debts and a lawsuit over alleged unpaid bills from a Boston law firm.
The Bronx Defenders didn’t take Lewis’s behavior kindly.
Their general counsel sent a letter to then-Bronx Community Foundation
CEO Meisha Porter that ended the two organizations’ partnership on the
Cannabis Hub in June 2023.
The letter cited “concerns regarding certain business
activities conducted by Desmon Lewis … particularly relating to the
company ‘Smacked.’”
Bronx Defenders representatives had raised these concerns to the foundation’s staff in multiple meetings, the letter said.
The hub is still operational but no longer has ties to the foundation.
The Bronx Community Foundation has adopted a strategy for dealing with the situation: denial.
“I’m not aware of any split between the Foundation and The
Bronx Defenders,” Derrick Lewis told New York Focus in December. “I’ve
been in contact with The Bronx Defenders a few times in the last few
months.”
The Bronx Defenders’s spokesperson Anthony Chiarito said
that this is not true. “No one in BxD leadership, nor anyone on staff
that we know of, has met with or engaged with the Foundation on any
matter since we sent the letter,” he said in an email.
The Bronx Defenders requested in its letter that the
foundation remove any mention of the organization from its website, but
the Bronx Defenders logo was still on The Bronx Community Foundation’s
website on Wednesday.
“We appreciate learning that our logo is still on the
website, in contradiction to what our letter requested. We plan to
follow up with them to immediately remove,” Chiarito said.
New York Focus reported last month
that the Bronx Community Foundation has recently come under heavy
criticism for allegedly failing its mission of directing donations to
Bronx social services nonprofits. Half of the organization’s board quit
in the past year, the remaining board members fired the CEO, some
sources of both public and private funding have dried up, and there is a
lack of transparency around millions in state grants. Do you have any
information about this topic, or anything to share? Contact me:
—Sam Mellins, sam@nysfocus.com
‘Wasn’t an Isolated Incident’: Black Prison Workers Associations Speak Out on Killing
Associations representing New York prison and parole
officers are publicly denouncing the killing of Robert Brooks, the
43-year-old incarcerated man who died last month after prison guards
beat him.
In a public statement and an interview with New York Focus,
leaders of the state prison and parole branches of the Grand Council of
Guardians, a fraternal organization representing Black law enforcement
officers in New York, argued that what happened to Brooks is emblematic
of violence rife within the prison system.
“The incident wasn’t an isolated incident,” said Rodney
Young, a recently retired parole officer and second vice president of
the New York State Parole Guardians. (In New York, the prison and parole
systems operate under one state agency.) “This is just an incident that
was caught on camera.”
“There needs to be a change in the cultural acceptance of violence,” he said of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS.
The killing sparked national outrage after the state Office of the Attorney General released body camera footage showing 14 workers surrounding a handcuffed Brooks, some pinning him to a medical examination table at Marcy Correctional Facility, near Utica. Three guards then repeatedly punched him in the face and groin. Brooks died the following morning.
It’s uncommon for law enforcement officers to speak out publicly against one another. A “blue wall of silence” among New York’s prison guards allows officers to escape discipline after using excessive force, even when they severely injure an incarcerated person, as The Marshall Project reported in 2023.
The Guardians are trying to puncture that blue wall. They’ve complained to DOCCS about officer violence before, they said.
“But I think now we have something that will make them take a second look,” said Marsha Lee-Watson, a retired DOCCS corrections officer and president of the Corrections Guardians.
The Parole and Corrections Guardians have issued a
statement condemning Brooks’s killing. “We, the Guardians, are living
witnesses to the ills of the New York State Department of Corrections
and Community Supervision,” it said.
They also penned a letter to Brooks’s family: “His memory
will not be forgotten, and we are committed to ensuring that his story
brings about meaningful change.”
Young and Lee-Watson signed the letters; as retired members, they’re free to speak out without fear of retaliation, they said.
In a statement, DOCCS said that it welcomes the Guardians’
input. “As we continue to engage in a review of the Department’s
culture, and rebuild from the atrocious killing of Robert Brooks, DOCCS
leadership welcomes the opportunity to continue talks with the
Corrections and Parole Guardians,” a spokesperson said. “We invite them
to be a part of the discussions, so that we can learn from their
perspectives and experiences. They can be a part of the changes in
DOCCS.”
The Guardians join a chorus of advocates and experts arguing that the violence inflicted on Brooks wasn’t an aberration.
“What we’re talking about here is a culture of violence and
impunity that is rampant in DOCCS facilities,” said state Senator Julia
Salazar, head of the Senate committee that oversees prison issues.
The Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit
organization tasked by state law with monitoring prison conditions,
argued in a statement that the abuse Brooks endured is commonplace among certain prisons, including at Marcy.
—Chris Gelardi, chris@nysfocus.com
New York Quietly Publishes Disappointing Emissions Update
In the final days of December, New York released its annual report on statewide greenhouse gas emissions, updated with data from 2022. The report shows that emissions slightly increased that year, as they did the year before, while the state’s economy rebounded from Covid-19 lockdowns. At 371 million metric tons, the 2022 emissions remained a bit lower than pre-pandemic levels.
In one sense, the increase in 2022 isn’t surprising. US and global emissions followed a similar pattern amid pandemic recovery.
But it also reflects policy choices. Europe, by contrast, took gas supply cuts from the Ukraine war as a prod to accelerate its green transition, and has seen emissions drop to their lowest levels in more than half a century.
New York closed the Indian Point nuclear plant — a zero-emissions energy source — in the early pandemic and replaced it with new gas plants to power the downstate area. That came as the state’s renewables buildout stalled. As a result, the share of the state’s electricity coming from fossil fuels increased by 12 percentage points from 2019 to 2022, contributing to the overall rise in emissions as the state recovered from Covid.
The new report highlights just how far New York has to go to carry out its climate law, which requires the state to cut emissions by 40 percent, relative to 1990 levels, by the end of this decade. As of 2022, New York had cut emissions by only 9.3 percent, according to the new report.
That leaves a window of just eight years for the state to achieve the remaining three-quarters of the required emissions cuts. And the first two of those years have seen the state struggling to keep its energy transition on track, let alone speed it up, amid the continued fallout of pandemic-fueled inflation and supply chain shocks.
Could 2025 Be a Tipping Point?
The state is finally due to unveil a carbon pricing program after years of planning. It has salvaged contracts for dozens of renewable projects and is due to start building dozens more of its own.
But huge hurdles remain, and the incoming Trump administration will likely only add to them. Pro-business groups are voicing increasingly loud doubts about whether the 2030 emissions target is still achievable. The new emissions report is not likely to allay them.
Little wonder, then, that the state released it over the holidays, without a press release.
—Colin Kinniburgh, colin@nysfocus.com