stations in our area any better prepared for widespread power outages caused by storms? good morning, everyone. i'm bill ritter, in for diana williams. this morning we begin with the n.y.p.d. and the change in policy this past week on the reporting of the use of force. any time a cop uses force, he or she has to now report it. it's all part of a balancing act by commissioner bill bratton as he pushes to keep crime rates low while addressing community concerns. and the monkey on his back -- the watchful eye of an inspector general. here's political reporter dave evans. >> the report is not in reaction to the takedown of tennis star james blake, but it serves as a good example of what sometimes happens in the department -- that not all police violence is properly recorded. the inspector general released a report faulting the department for not better tracking use of police force. >> our reaction, as in this report, is that it is absolutely unacceptable... that there is not a central mechanism for tracking and reporting use of force. >> curbing the use of police force is a huge issue in police departments across the country. the inspector general praised how los angeles and seattle report things and found fault with new york. >> they have modern, state-of-the-art use-of-force policies. n.y.p.d. was living a little bit in the dark ages with respect to its use-of-force policies. >> i would take strong, strong exception to that language. that is an outrageous comment. this department is nothing close to being in the dark ages. >> police brass were livid with what the i.g. said. still, the department is going ahead and changing how it records use of force. in the future, all such cases must be reported -- even minor ones. de-escalation will be emphasized in police training. and a new beefed-up unit will investigate complaints about excessive force. but still, "dark ages" comment about current police policy -- that infuriated commissioner bratton. >> i'm very proud of this organization, and if the inspector general of this city feels that we are in the dark ages, well, i think he's gonna have to start analyzing his capabilities to analyze. >> the mayor praised this new policy and said the law will absolutely be enforced in new york city, but he said police will only use force when absolutely necessary. for now, reporting in lower manhattan, dave evans, channel 7 eyewitness news. >> not sure we've ever seen bill bratton as angry as that. also this past weekend, not coincidentally, manhattan borough president gale brewer and brooklyn borough president eric adams, himself a former new york police officer, releasing a joint report with recommendations on how to improve police-community relations. it includes more training and programs designed to try to ease tensions with the community, like paid sabbaticals for officers -- a kind of stress-relief effort from what is an increasingly stressful job. and joining us now, gail brewer and eric adams. welcome to both of you. i can't remember having two borough presidents on this show, in this studio, at the same time. this may be a first. making history here. >> we get along really well. >> i see that. i see that. >> we normally are not in the same place, so that if we have to have ascending power, we won't have a problem. >> are we gonna have a big debate today, or are you guys on the same page? >> we're on the same page, and this report was released with civil-rights attorney norman siegel, and i think we came up with some good recommendations. >> before we get to your report, let me just go back to the bill bratton and i.g. situation. have you ever seen bill bratton that angry before? >> no, i have not. >> he's usually a little cooler and calmer than that, but you can see the seething underneath, right? he says it was his idea, but the i.g. says, "no, no. you have to do this." >> mm-hmm. >> so, what's going on here? >> i don't know. i mean, when we released our report -- and most people will give it, the night before, to the police department, so we would assume that the inspector general gave it to the police department the night before. >> and what do you think, eric? >> well, i think that i agree that it was given before. i believe that there was some information, probably, in the police department to really address the reporting of force, and the conversation between the two of them is extremely healthy. this is so good for the city. police department should not be sitting down, having this cordial relationship. they should be about, "we're watching you. you have an awesome amount of power, and we're gonna make sure you're using it correctly." >> it's an adversarial purpose of it -- but was the "dark ages" comment -- i mean, you could see why bratton -- that's what really set him off. >> mm-hmm. >> apropos? was it right on target or not? >> well, i think that it should not have been taken personal. it was not saying that the police department is really out of the dark ages. things. it is stated that a particular area of policing, of reporting, there are some problems. method. >> you're talking as the brooklyn borough president. as a former police officer, would you want this? would you want that kind of -- okay, every time, you know, you sneeze, you have to report that. every time you might have some sort of physical altercation with someone, you have to report it. as a public policy, it might be good, but as a rank-and-file cop, what would your response be? >> no, i would not, you know? and as a police officer, i wanted awesome powers. i didn't want anyone to question anything that i was doing. i wanted to believe i could do whatever i want as a police officer. but i understood we are not in a police state. we're the united states, and we're supposed to have oversight to make sure that awesome power of taking liberty and life is monitored by an outside agency, and i respected that even though i didn't like it. >> and i think the good news is that in this particular case, if it goes forward as both the i.g. and the police department indicate will, that they'll have a listing of some of these incidents, and that will give us a much clearer picture of what is actually going on. >> we are sort of all outside observers, except you guys have an inside track, and you did put forth these recommendations this week. >> we did. we want transparency, and that was one of our recommendations. absolutely. >> so, tell us what happened, how it transpired. you had a lot of meetings with people out there, right? >> we had a great time. we had forums. they were slightly differently organized, but in manhattan, we had tables and chairs, and we had about 150 people, including 35 to 40 police officers, with young people, with community police-community relations in different forums. we had them in different parts of manhattan. and people came up with -- i will say the central theme is respect -- respect from the police to the neighborhood and neighborhood to be respectful to the police officers. >> and how did the citizens react to the police positions? how did the police react to the citizens' positions? >> it was very positive. the citizens want the police to be part of their lives. they want them in the schools. they want them to be part of their community centers. the want to have police protection. they just want it to be respectful. and the police, i think, want to do the same. so, it's really a situ-- you know, we want to measure -- we talk about measuring incidents. we want to measure the community's input. that'll be another way to figure out what would be the best kind of policing. and then we did some of the other things that we heard earlier. we want slightly older, we want people who are, perhaps, school-safety officers to have a track to be able to be police officers, to make it more diverse. so, we have lots of recommendations, but the central core was these wonderful forums. >> and what was interesting is that this was not an "i hate police" report. you know, i'm a strong believer in broken-window policing. i believe in utilizing stop-and-frisk effectively and appropriately. so, this was not a group of "i hate police." this was a citizen body that was saying, "we want to better communicate with our police" and police saying, "we want to better communicate with the citizens." the good people of our city must interact better, and there has been a wall throughout the years that prevented that interaction. >> this is a little like you guys saying, "okay, let's take the extremes here. let's cool down, let's all take a time-out, and let's talk to the people in the middle who are affected by all this." >> that's exactly what happened, and i think what was so interesting to us was the fact is that everybody, even those who have had, perhaps, bad experience with the police department -- they want the police department to be part of their community. they just want them there more often, they want them perhaps not in uniform, you know, with the basketball and the chess and, you know, tutoring -- things like that. and they do want them to live in the city of new york. that was another request. >> i would think that commissioner bratton -- this is exactly what he wanted to do when he became commissioner for the second time -- is get back in touch with the community. he supported this, obviously, right? >> no, and he was -- and he was -- even on his first run under mayor giuliani, commissioner bratton was always a community-focused police leader, and so what we're hoping, as we take it to the next level, as we stated. we have a minor league in policing -- school-safety policing -- school-safety officers, traffic enforcement. allow them to come into the police department after three years of observation. they are 100% new york city residents. they are over 75% people of color and women. it would make a diversified department. and then have that officer on patrol do more proactive things in policing. >> right now the rules of being a police officer in new york city say you have to live in the city or one of the contiguous counties. has to touch it. so, nassau -- i guess you could live in suffolk county, too. >> yes, suffolk, nassau, rockland, and westchester. and it's bad economic sense. police officers are officers 24 hours of the day. we should not be paying for 18 of those or for 16 of those hours to be in a neighboring county and 8 hours in our city. we need our officers to be here in new york city. >> it's very expensive to live in the city of new york, and you don't get paid very much when you're a new york police officer. >> and you hear that from officers, but the issue is the city of new york should work harder to give certain points and opportunities for police officers to live here and make it much more affordable. that would be a real focus of our report. >> why didn't this kind of activity -- the town-hall meeting, where you get everyone together like you all did -- why didn't that happen in the last 12 years? >> well, i want to say that norman siegel was -- he's a friend of both of ours, and he was the one who said, "let's do this together." so, i want to give him credit for having this idea. >> civil-rights attorney, former head of the a.c.l.u. here. >> he was around many police issues, and what we're learning is that we ceased talking to each other and started talking at each other, and so now we're going back to "how do we communicate with each other in a very mindful way?" >> mr. de blasio, the mayor of new york city -- was he involved in this? >> at our first announcement, he sent out a staffer. at one or two of the events, he had staffers there. we communicated with his staff to let them know what we were doing and that we were gonna produce a report. >> i'm just a country reporter here, but it would make sense to me that -- why wouldn't the mayor come to the first one or a couple of them and say, you know, "thank you for all coming. this is a great thing that these two borough presidents are doing. good luck to you." >> we also had the chief of department at ours, and that was a huge asset. he stayed 2 1/2 hours -- listened to not only the workshops but also the feedback from each and every table. >> let me ask one question of you, eric. you had an interesting quote i saw when you first brought this out. you said that when you were a cop, after 11 years on the job, you needed a sabbatical -- split-second decisions, shoot or no shoot, the little amount of money you're paid. what was -- how bad was it? what was the stress like? you're in a radio car every day, and you're hearing descriptions of people who commit crimes, and you begin to believe that those numerical minorities that are committing crime are the numerical majority who are not, and you start to make actions based on all that baggage. and after someone shot at my car, it really impacted me as a police officer, and i had nowhere to go to sit down and relieve that stress. we need to give that to our officers. >> well, you both are taking the borough presidency to a new level, and we appreciate it, as do the citizens of new york city. >> thank you. >> gale brewer, eric adams, thank you for joining us this morning. >> thank you. >> just ahead, we're gonna switch topics. how prepared are local gas stations to deal with power outages? remember three years ago, when we had major shortages after superstorm sandy? lots of talk about fixing the problem. we take an up-close look next. join the millions who have already switched. we switched. and now, we're streaming netflix. who knew time warner cable's internet was so fast! mom switched. and now, we can watch our favorite shows together, on demand. i switched. so i can connect to the internet just about anywhere with my free twc wifi hotspots. join the millions who switched to time warner cable. for $89.99 a month, you'll get 100meg internet, and hundreds of hd channels. you'll also get unlimited calling across the u.s. and 34 other countries around the world. call today. i switched. now i have a free app that lets me watch tv whenever i have the time. for $89.99 a month you'll get tv, internet and phone. and if you call now, there's no risk, no contract, no catch, no kidding. i switched to time warner cable and knew exactly when they were coming. thanks to their one hour appointment window. switch to time warner cable today. and ask how you could get a $300 reward card. >> yes, we all remember too clearly three years ago long lines at gas stations, even gas rationing in parts of our area -- all this after superstorm sandy. the big issue was not only getting gasoline to the stations, but, also, those gas stations had no way of pumping the gas out because they did not have emergency generators. now, as we taped this program friday afternoon, the projected path of hurricane joaquin -- keeping it in the atlantic, away from land -- it appears we dodged this hurricane. but we wanted to take a closer look anyway at how prepared gas stations are in case of power outages caused by storms like sandy and by joaquin, if it had hit. joining us today, robert sinclair from aaa northeast. that's the combined, now, new york and new england. you're bigger than ever. >> that's right -- 5.1 million members now. >> he is manager of media relations. so, how prepared are we? do these gas stations now have the generators for backup that they were supposed to have? >> well, they don't necessarily have the generators, but they have the facilities to hook the generators up, known as "transfer switches." and legislation was passed after sandy, and the feds are helping out with $6 billion to, in part, put this equipment in. but gas stations within a quarter-mile or on major highways, evacuation routes, or major streets were mandated to have this equipment, and gasoline chains with more than 10 stations. the problem was that it's still a bit of expense to be shouldered by the individual stations, and we're talking about fairly large pieces of equipment. and because of the size and their taking up room and the maintenance involved in taking care of them, a lot of stations just opted to put the transfer switches in, and then generators would have to be delivered to them so that they could have backup power. >> but a transfer switch without a generator, as my father used to say -- "useless as 'blank' on bulls." >> yeah, exactly. >> right? >> yeah. but, apparently, the state does have a lot of generators in place. they're downstate, and they could be delivered fairly quickly. >> $6 billion in federal sandy aid, some of it used for grants so gas stations in all the tri-state could buy or lease generators, install them, and rewire their stations. why not? if you had robert sinclair -- sinclair oil. is that you? >> no. no. no relation... >> i figured not. >> ...unfortunately. but if you had a gas station -- robert sinclair gas station -- i suspect you would have a generator. >> well, it depends on how well i was doing. you have to understand, gasoline stations are not moneymaking magnets. in fact, a lot of gas stations you see these days have retail outlets where they're selling coffee and doughnuts and other things, and they're probably making more on a cup of coffee that you buy than they are on your purchase of gasoline. the profit margins are extremely thin, and some stations, if they're independently owned and operated, just didn't have the resources to put these facilities in and to maintain them. but what also has happened, too, is that, especially on long island, the gasoline retailers appealed to the public service commission to be put higher up on the pecking order of facilities that would be restored if they lost power, 'cause, previously, it was hospitals, nursing homes. now it's hospitals, nursing homes, and gasoline stations, because people can't get to those facilities if there's no gas, and they can't drive there. >> good reminder that the oil companies that produce this oil and get it to the gas stations are not the gas stations, for the most part, right? >> well, there are a lot of owned-and-operated facilities these days because of the economics involved, but, you know, that brings us to another weak link in the chain, if you will. due to our unique geography, a lot of our gasoline gets delivered from refineries by barge or ship or tanker, and these waterside facilities were what were flooded, inundated, with saltwater and knocked offline. so, in a number of cases where stations had power and the ability to pump gas, they had no gas because these waterside terminals were knocked out. >> one of them was right here -- queens, jamaica bay. couldn't get out of there in tanker vessels because of all the debris in the water. >> right. >> the boats could not get out of the waterways. >> the coast guard did not allow vessels to come in to new york harbor, i think, for three or four days after the storm, and that facility in inwood is a major facility that supplies most of long island. there's one on paidge avenue in brooklyn in the shadow of the pulaski bridge between brooklyn and queens. that supplies a lot of brooklyn and queens. those facilities, among others in new jersey and staten island, were knocked out due to storm surge. >> robert, that's one problem that we may not be able to control -- if there's debris in the water for the barges again -- but we can control gas stations not running out of juice to power the pumps. >> that's -- that's true. and part of the governor's announcement yesterday was that these generators are in place, that they are downstate. i'd heard that they were in pennsylvania, but, apparently, there are some there, but the number of generators that we'd need -- 200 to 300 -- are indeed downstate and ready to be delivered very quickly. >> interesting that aaa is involved in this, right? you wouldn't think that aaa would be one of the groups -- you know, businesses -- that would be so wise about this. >> well, a lot of our -- we have aaa-approved auto-repair stations. a number of them are gasoline stations. >> so, it affects you. >> yeah, and, listen, when gasoline hit $4 a gallon, you know, one of the services that we have is to deliver gas if you run out, and a lot of people were running out back then, and we also have the aaa fuel gauge report, which reports on gasoline prices across the country. >> well, gasoline is not $4. it is way under $2 in new jersey. >> it is. >> explain that. >> new jersey has lower taxes. that's why their gasoline tends to be cheaper, and they're pretty close to some major refineries. we have among the highest state gasoline taxes in the country -- roughly 50 cents a gallon -- and the distribution for our area is a little bit more difficult. but there are five states now that are under $2 a gallon. we're at about $2.60 a gallon, average, in the city of new york, so we think that, nationwide, we'll see gasoline drop below $2 a gallon before christmas, and we might get there in the city and state of new york, but the tax situation always keeps us a little above everybody else. >> i think i hear the audience applauding. >> [ laughing ] yeah. >> robert sinclair, with aaa northeast, thank you, and thank you for always being available when we need expert advice on what's going on. >> my pleasure. thanks for having me. >> when we come back, donald trump's wife now on the campaign stump, sort if, if making the cover of people magazine qualifies as "stumping." now, if she makes a mistake while stumping, will he yell at her as he does at everyone else? we're gonna look at the current state of affairs for the race for president with our two analysts, next. here in vineland, home of progresso, we love all kinds of chicken soups... but just one kind of chicken. white breast meat chicken every time. so if you're not going to make your own chicken soup tonight, do what we do...make it progresso. you say avocado old el paso says... zesty chicken and avocado tacos in our stand 'n stuff tortillas . (record scratch) you say stand n' stuff tortillas old el paso says... >> welcome back to "upclose." is it just us, or does the race for president already seem as if it's gone on too long? truth is there's not been one vote cast yet in any primary or caucus, and the first one is still four months away. it's an ubermarathon, this race for president -- not for the faint of heart or those who don't have money, either their own or somebody else's. taking a closer look at this week in politics, our political experts, analyst jeanne zaino -- she's a professor at iona college while also teaching at nyu -- and political consultant hank sheinkopf, who usually takes a shining when it comes to working to democratic candidates. both of you, welcome. you were here for the eric adams-gale brewer discussion. really quickly, police-community relations -- you know, at the center of so much of the political fiber of this city -- have you ever seen two borough presidents hook up like this? >> listen, gale brewer's a very, very thoughtful, extraordinary public servant, and her report has tremendous merit. eric adams is a retired captain of the n.y.p.d. he's been around government a long time, and they tend to agree on a lot of things. eric adams, certainly, is a supporter of stop-and-frisk and appropriate police activity. he was very clear about that. she's much more into the community-based argument about "let's see. how do we get people to get along better so we can reduce incidents?" is that the way to police? there's research in both directions. >> would mayor de blasio have benefited by being in some of these meetings, jeanne? >> i mean, i would think so, and, you know, i think that's where some people are scratching their head as to why mayor de blasio wasn't at these meetings, because i do think he would benefit an awful lot, and i think not being at the meetings makes it look like, you know, he's trying to play both ends against the middle, and i think, politically, that ends up being a big problem for him going forward. >> let's talk a little about the race for president. you saw donald trump and his family on the cover of people magazine. he's trying -- i think, as is a little bit of air going out of his campaign, he's trying to spread out a little bit. what do you make of that? >> um, yeah. you know, we've got hillary clinton. she's gonna be on "saturday night live." we've got donald trump on people magazine. and, you know, the race is humming along. you know, i think donald trump does feel like there's a little bit of air coming out, and he's determined to stay on top, and one way he's gonna do that is, you know, show off this family man -- nice donald trump. resonate with the voters, but that's what he's putting himself out there, and there has also been some coverage of his wife in the new york times and other places, so they're putting the family out there, certainly. >> and what's the effect gonna be, then, hank? >> listen, he is getting invaluable press that is -- you cannot calculate what this would be worth if you were to try to tie it to normal television costs or anything else. it just has no value to it. what does it mean? it means he will be a much more significant brand than he was before -- hard to imagine. is he gonna be president of the united states? don't hawk the house on >> do you think this is gonna help his campaign? >> i think it helps him. but is the balloon losing some air? you bet. why? people wake up and they say, "i got to make a real decision, okay?" saying you're gonna let everybody kill each other in syria, which he did this past week, is not necessarily the best foreign-policy decision. >> you mean letting all the people we're gonna take in -- he would send them back immediately. what was your reaction to that, jeanne? >> um, you know, it doesn't make sense from almost any perspective, and, you know, you look at his tax plan. he goes on "60 minutes" and he promises that it's gonna be this innovative, revolutionary tax plan, and we look at it, and it's pretty much the old republican tax plan, and he's not explaining. what are these loopholes he's gonna close? yet everybody's getting these tax breaks, and he's sending back all these immigrants -- 11 million from the u.s., 200,000 to syria. how is this all gonna be paid for? so, as much as i think, you know, it is invaluable you can get on the cover of people magazine, i think, at some point, people are gonna start to say, "you know, you really have to put some meat behind this," and he hasn't done that yet. >> we got to give him credit 'cause he's done an extraordinary thing. he has taken a nonpolitical person as an idea, marketed it extraordinary well, and spent not a tremendous amount of money doing it. >> and on the coattails of that, fiorina and carson -- both have benefited from having this nonpolitician do so well. >> absolutely true. >> there's no question. who else benefits? bush seems to be sort of sinking in the west. rubio has benefited to some degree by this. >> yeah, and i think rubio has benefited from scott walker leaving the race, and i think, on the democratic side, we have seen bernie sanders benefit an awful lot from this. but i'm not sure it's gonna resonate in the long-term. i think you go long-term, you're gonna get an establishment candidate on both sides, and some of the air is gonna be let out of these candidates at some point. >> the research is pretty clear. party leaders tend to determine outcomes, regardless of what people think is going on. the problem here, though, is something you mentioned earlier. this race is going on forever. this is like the gladiators' war that doesn't stop. and are americans really paying attention? the likely answer is "no." >> and we still have four months to go before, you know, iowa and before new hampshire -- still a long way to go. real quickly, hillary clinton decides not to keynote the gala for the human rights council and instead goes to "saturday night live." joe biden goes to do the keynote. smart on her part? >> probably is smart in terms of the amount of coverage she's gonna get, but i think it's also depressing when you look at everything is infotainment now. so, you've got serious presidential candidates choosing to go on a comedy show versus doing serious policy business. but, in her defense, that's how she's gonna get airtime. >> what would you have advised her? >> do "saturday night live." don't do the human rights campaign fund if there is a conflict. why? you need americans to say, "hillary, what they're saying about me, hillary, is just not true." >> because size matters when it comes to audience. >> that's correct. >> okay. jeanne and hank, thank you again for joining us. it's a long way to go. >> [ laughs ] >> thank you very much. that's gonna do it for this edition of "upclose." if you missed any of today's program, you can catch it again on our website, abc7ny. thank you all for watching. i'm bill ritter, in for diana williams, and on behalf of all of us here at channel 7, enjoy the rest of your weekend.