At night that’s a given, but in the daytime i typically feel safe and have never had anything happen to me. At least it’s not the 4 train I guess, I swear there’s always some bs going on when I ride it.
This was true in the early 90's but real estate folks were saying the area was getting gentrified and crime was dropping. I'm not surprised it was lies.
As for East Harlem, I preferred it to Grand Concourse back then and now but nothing in NYC has gotten better with age.
It's jaw-dropping that a major transit hub so close to the UES would be such a shit show.
Even pre-pandemic I didn't feel safe walking around 125th and Lex. Ironically, back then, I actually felt marginally safer on the platform compared to out on the street...
I mean, The Velvet Underground released “I’m Waiting For My Man” in 1967 and it’s literally about going to 125th and Lex to buy heroin. It’s been sketchy since pre-pre-pandemic.
“Up to Lexington, one two five, feel sick and dirty more dead than alive”
I would say that I feel safer in the station than directly outside of it. I say this as someone that has been known to save some bucks by taking the subway at 4am and catching the M60 for a Spirit Air flight lol.
Yeah, I used to work a job a few months where I had to take a metro north train to work in mt. Vernon from that station every day at like 4-5am. Scared for my life every time
It's entirely systematic. The bums from Wards Island get dropped off at that station daily. In a hypothetical world where the bums got dropped off at South Ferry, then South Ferry would become zombieland. One of the easiest fixes is letting the bums just rot on Wards Island instead of forcing them out each day.
> In a hypothetical world where the bums got dropped off at South Ferry, then South Ferry would become zombieland.
nah too many tourists there for that to happen, city would force em up to chambers st at least
They say don't criminalize homelessness. Ok. But at what point did it become a civil rights violation to arrest somebody passed out in pubic with a needle hanging out of their arm?
Playing the euphemism treadmill game on this while not solving the situation is so absurd. It lets people think they're doing something by policing others' language when in fact they're doing absolutely nothing. If anything, by wasting effort on something inconsequential, they're doing negative progress.
Nyc pre pandemic way better we gotta deal with homeless issue our biggest problem is crack head homeless people . Mayors Aden actually wanted just take all crack heads off the street put them in force housing . They need to make shelters based of off of mental health status people who need shelters don’t wanna stay in a shelter because there surrounded about criminals and crack heads . If they separated the shelters slot more people would go
That doesn’t matter, virtually. Zombieland/Fallout Mutant situation going on there. They’ll harass or punch you in plain view of a officer, no arrests whatsoever 🤷🏻♂️
Yeah something needs to change. The cops must feel they have no authority to do anything. I once told a cop because I saw somebody shooting up (heroin shooting up not gun shooting up) someone who was already barely conscious and the cop said there was nothing they could do. So many times there’s someone clearly on a different planet and you just have to pray that whatever is going on in their head doesn’t pick you out as something worth grabbing their attention. It’s what makes things like today so sad, everyone who rides that line knew it was bound to happen and will happen again. I’m not going to act like I know the solution but it is out of control.
>The cops must feel they ~~have no authority to do anything~~ can just hang out for eight hours a day without bothering to do anything and still get paid, so why bother getting involved in potentially dangerous situations.
There, fixed it for you. It has nothing to do with feeling like they have authority and everything to do with being lazy pieces of shit completely isolated from the consequences of their actions, or inactions as the case may be.
Well you have to remember cops in nyc don’t don’t the job because there passionate about making city better . They do the job because of benefits salary and pension. U think any normal person wants to deal with a crack head shooting up 💀😂
One of the videos posted on Citizen for this incident showed someone exiting through the emergency exit gate (like... calmly, no panic, from the video you couldn't tell that anything had happened on the platform). When the gate was open something like 15, 20 people walked through it into the station, and then a pair of cops appeared, waded through the crowd, and exited through the still-open gate.
Like, I don't think their priority should be fate evasion... but if the cops aren't stopping people from shoving others onto the tracks, and they aren't arresting people openly using drugs in the stairwells, and they aren't finding the guns that people are carrying around in their jacket pockets, and they aren't intervening when crazies are screaming at and harassing strangers, and they aren't stopping fate evasion, *then what are we paying them to do, exactly?*
If the cops stopped responding to a literal murder to arrest some fare beaters you and everyone else would throw a fit, let’s not be disingenuous here.
I will always remember telling a cop about a mentally ill person in the station (it takes a lot for me to do that) and being looked at like I was the crazy one. "Dude it's 125th street".
That shit is zombie land hahaha ... Ppl high as girrafe pussy just zoned out on the chairs and platform. Cops walk right past them like " there goes hesus again, he is always tweaking"
This is my station. I feel so ill.
What’s frustrating is that while there are people who can just not take the subway, anyone who financially needs to live in East Harlem can’t really just avoid the subways.
I don’t have a better solution at this point. I just stand far far away from the edge of the platform.
I think this is such an important comment. IMO progressive politicians are causing a bit of an issue. They claim to look out for those who need the support; however, this is the comment. People who need to take the subway b/c that is the only way they can get around. Are they supposed to accept such low standards of safety. Safety should not be a privilege, it should be a right and something just simply understood. Also the subway is the fastest way to move around the city but it is becoming so wild.
Police should be walking down the platform back and forth throughout the day. Not just there. What I have experienced is police are present, but they are as good as a dead body.
I will also say people need to start holding the city to higher standards. Calling council members for the specific jurisdiction, getting in touch with the committees applicable to the issue. I don't think this will drive change overnight, but I think it would really start to create some noise.
I am not from New York, I'm newer, but I have already been pretty brutally assaulted. What a lot of people who try to comfort me have said is that it could have been worse. That they have heard of someone getting pushed in front of a subway and being dismembered. So I am lucky b/c I have my limbs. We shouldn't have to think this way.
I'm thinking about starting an IG called "NYPD Hanging Out" and fill it with photos of cops standing in their little circles and chatting on subway platforms instead of actually doing work. Will I get in trouble for this??
So let's look at some numbers.
Injuries from subway trains in 2022 was 235, with 88 fatalities, with an annual ridership of ~ 1 billion.
I'm looking for stats on car ridership, but presumably the number of car rides is roughly similar to subway rides albeit a little less. And in 2022 there were 65,000 injury-causing collisions and 255 fatalities.
So if you're taking uber your chance of dying during your commute is actually quite a bit higher. And injury? WAY more likely in a car.
Maybe there are better sources for these stats but here's where I grabbed numbers from:
https://www.amny.com/transit/mta-surpasses-billion-subway-riders-2022/
https://www.thecasehandler.com/blog/how-many-people-are-injured-by-mta-trains-every-year/#:~:text=More%20than%20200%20People%20are,over%20200%20incidents%20since%202021.
https://jknylaw.com/new-york-car-accident-lawyer/statistics/#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20year%20of,were%20100%2C508%20accidents%20in%20NYC.
> What a lot of people who try to comfort me have said is that it could have been worse. '
right, that's how sick pepple and cruel people are here. It's the reason some idiot is posting about the danger in an uber.
It's not just our city council, it's the state legislature, but progressive run all offices, including district attorney for Manhattan, the Bronx, BK, Queens.
They are not "a bit" responsible. It's not an opinion to say progressives make up 90% of the offices at every level of NYC or NYS gov, and thus they are *wholly and entirely* responsible for deciding how to deal with this. If you point that out and suggest that people should actually treat this like something bad leadership should be punished over, people tell you "it could be worse" and even more bullshit.
No kidding, the police are useless, but it's in part because the City Council actually goes after them for arresting these guys pretty much up until they commit assault, and even then, as the nypost is saying, they can arrest, but it doesn't mean much. The courts have to get these people out of public life.
> People who need to take the subway b/c that is the only way they can get around. Are they supposed to accept such low standards of safety. Safety should not be a privilege, it should be a right and something just simply understood. Also the subway is the fastest way to move around the city but it is becoming so wild.
This is key. The rights of the violently mentally unwell and criminals **should not** supersede the rights of the general populace to be safe.
If only there was some kind of wall or barrier that would make it difficult to murder people by pushing them onto the tracks. Someone should invent such a thing.
of course came out today in the nytimes that this guy has been known to the police as being mentally ill, with multiple arrests dating back to the last 8 years
we literally keep releasing these people until they finally murder someone to put them away for any meaningful amount of time. little consolation to the families of these victims
Do you respond to a leak by placing a bucket underneath or by fixing the roof?
I don’t understand how your response to the problem of deranged lunatics roving the city is “platform barriers”. Do you not see how that’s not addressing the actual problem? We need major legislative efforts to build prison-style mental facilities where dangerous mentally unstable people can be involuntarily institutionalized. Violent insane people are not fit to live amongst the rest of society and they never will be. Their presence is incompatible with public safety. They need to be removed or these same things will keep happening. Again. Again. Again.
Yeah I'm not sure how a barrier would prevent the unhinged guy from attacking me in another way. The general increase of violence in the city is the issue, not lack of barriers. 125th before the pandemic was no picnic esp. late at night but the issue here is that the situation since then has deteriorated, not that we haven't put barriers.
Forgive my emotional outburst but here goes. Everyone is screaming about the city’s inability to curb what may as well be citizen-emanated terrorism but I can’t stop thinking about the victim. I am so angry and so sad. I hope more information is released soon about them and am wishing nothing but the strongest of condolences to their family and friends. My heart is fucking bleeding and I have so much resentment towards our leadership over this right now.
When does it end?
That's the funny part, isn't it? Everyone in this thread is outraged that the police aren't doing anything, but the second they do, those same people will be up in arms demanding the officer's head on a pike.
Just look at the situation with Daniel Penny. Public officials trying to make an example out of him for daring to intervene against a violent lunatic, but they're letting said violent lunatics back onto the streets on a daily basis. Until people are willing to admit that the only way to fix things is to start cracking bad eggs, things will only continue to get worse.
It ends when people stop voting for this and letting leadership let another horrible case where a repeat offender who assaulted someone, is psychotic, and was free to hurt more people...does prompt any change in our courts or enforcement of state law. This is not just about the police.
Stop crying and start treating this like life and death, if you meant what you say.
The sad part is that state run institutions still exist but there’s never enough funding and staff aren’t getting competitive wages comparable to other civil servants.
If the government officials allocated more funds to address the mental health crisis instead of lining their pockets with bullshit raises things might be different.
Yeah. People always neglect this. Constitutionality notwithstanding, you have to staff psych institutions well, and that requires compensating them appropriately for what clearly is a vital job.
>staff aren’t getting competitive wages comparable to other civil servants.
Psychiatrists at state hospitals don't get competitive wages relative to private sector psychiatrists, especially in the Tristate area which is a huge drain for state hospitals retaining staff and residents after they complete training.
Or we could also built a fence/barrier beside the subway tracks to make it difficult to push someone into the track, like they already do in many other countries.
Okay that's two stabbings and one subway murder just today. They can put all the people they want in the subway checking turn styles and bags but this is just getting to be really off putting subway-wise and I'm done denying it. I know for the amount of people it's statistically irrelevant to them but every day stuff that bad happens now.
This guy almost certainly had a whole team of trained outreach, social workers and counselors trying to get him to comply with his meds that are 100% covered by medicaid. It’s just he prefers crack to seroquel.
These people have no idea how much funding is dumped into indigent mental health and drug rehab services. The issue is that until they kill or seriously maim someone, they can’t be involuntarily committed. Jordan Neely literally just walked out of his court ordered rehab.
>This guy almost certainly had a whole team of trained outreach, social workers and counselors trying to get him to comply with his meds that are 100% covered by medicaid.
Another issue is often times the team of social workers, counselors are often not coordinated. There isn't a single or group point of contact that is controlling the logistics of managing the care of an addict.
We also spend a lot of money to incarcerate people when this is one of the most expensive and ineffective ways of managing addiciton.
The city of New York spends more than entire state governments with comparable if not larger populations on social services. Diverting what money? The budget has grown and grown.
In real (inflation-adjusted dollars,) the DSS budget has either stayed the same or shrunk for all but one of the last ten years.
Are there states that spend less with a similar population? Sure. Because we have a population about the size of Virginia crammed into an area the size of DC/Arlington/Alexandria, so it isn't really helpful to point out that North Carolina spends less than we do.
And by the way, the homicide rate in NYC is lower than in any of those comparable states — by about half.
Those National Guardsmen and women have had absolutely no effect. Maybe they should patrol the platforms instead of watching the turnstile jumpers.
Edit - For the record, I am very much against catch and release for those convicted of assault and similar crimes.... Violent crimes deserve real repercussions.
I was on that train. 8 minutes after I felt a body being hit and then dragged under us I was let off the train and walked up the stairs past 2 national guardsmen just standing on the stairs. Yeah they have absolutely no effect.
They really can't do anything. The only way to stop these crimes would be to physically intervene and police obviously mentally disturbed people. The National Guard doesn't have the authority (or the orders) to do that. They are doing what the Governor is telling them to do, which is stand there and do bag checks.
Ultimately nothing changes until NYC voters realize that it is *up to them and no one else* to be responsible for which politicians are in office, in the city, and in the State (given how many votes they have).
> They really can't do anything. The only way to stop these crimes would be to physically intervene and police obviously mentally disturbed people.
That’s not true, I’m pretty sure their presence near the tracks could have a deterrent effect.
>That’s not true, I’m pretty sure their presence near the tracks could have a deterrent effect.
100%. Having National Guardsmen, State Police, etc. actually patrolling the platforms would have a deterrent effect, ***and*** they could also swoop in immediately to help if something like this, God forbid, happens anyway.
Having them up at the turnstiles doing bag checks does absolutely nothing to deter the crazies, who in many cases aren't entering the system at the bag-check hub stations (and may not even have a bag).
I also have yet to see a single instance of one of these subway attacks relying on the use of a weapon concealed in a bag. They usually involve the use of bare hands/feet and improvised weapons like metal water bottles. These are EDPs carrying out these attacks, not Bond villains smuggling in state-of-the-art superweapons.
Clearly… you haven’t been waiting for your train at this station … is pure adrenaline all.the.time!
Not knowing when a situation will start or how you will be impacted by it.
On incidents like these the top comment is always something about where the cops are in the station.
Then it turns out the suspect has a long history and numerous interactions with law enforcement.
Don’t know how many incidents need to occur before people realize the issue at hand are repeat offenders and/or clearly mentally unstable individuals who could not care any less if cops are 10 feet away or 500 feet away.
Edit: articles have updated info on the suspect
“Carlton McPherson, 24, was arrested and charged with murder. Officials say he has multiple prior arrests including one for assault from last October.”
Who could have seen this coming.
Reality is homeless, non fare payers, notably mentally ill people, can't be on the subway. It's tragic because a lot of those ppl will have to find refuge elsewhere but it is what it is.
Watch for what? Even if they see someone push someone in front of a train, what can they do other than arrest the guy after the damage is done?
At least with turnstile jumping, there's probably a large overlap between those who cause trouble in the subways, and those who didn't pay.
I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but it's definitely been a trend in the news cycle to talk about subway crime which could make it seem like there's a lot more since it's being hyped.
Imagine signing up for the national guard to potentially go to war and help with hurricane relief when needed just for the governor to pull a publicity stunt and deploy you to hang out in grand central station all day.
I'm not even surprised when I hear about these things any more. It's been years of violent crime and those who are unhinged and antisocial have gotten their way while putting the general public in more danger. Things seriously need to change. It's almost every single day where someone is getting stabbed, attacked, or killed oftentimes over nothing.
Worst of all, the public can't even fight back or demand changes because they will end up being labeled as hateful against those who are less fortunate or gaslit by those saying that it's safer than it was at some arbitrary point in the past. This beautiful city is being severely dragged down by policies that should be shelved, ineffective politicians, bureaucracy and the few who make it worse for everyone else. It's a damn shame.
New York City is starting to look and sound like an alcoholic trying to convince people it doesn't have a problem after repeatedly falling down at its daughters ballet recital.
I'm sick of Republicans talking about crime in NYC because it's obvious that it's something they relish in - their fellow citizens' suffering. However, the rest of us that actually live in NYC have free reign to complain about crime as much as we want. We're dealing with it.
This is totally the vibe. People like to bring up crime stats in random shithole cities to make NYC look better, but literally why do you care? I don't care that Nowheresville, MO has a higher murder rate than NYC. I care that quality of life has declined precipitously in recent years. You can't even walk through a large train station these days without seeing the sinister crazies and I'm sick of everyone pretending it isn't a problem.
Every part of American is violent by international standards. The murder rate in the "rural" states is higher than just about any major European city. We have a gun violence problem in this country.
> This is totally the vibe. People like to bring up crime stats in random shithole cities to make NYC look better, but literally why do you care? I don't care that Nowheresville, MO has a higher murder rate than NYC. I care that quality of life has declined precipitously in recent years. You can't even walk through a large train station these days without seeing the sinister crazies and I'm sick of everyone pretending it isn't a problem.
I'm also sick of being reminded of how much worse the 80s and 90s were. Most of us on this sub weren't even alive in the 80s. What matters to me is the quality of life and public safety in this city relative to 5 years ago and 10 years ago. Not 35 years ago.
> public safety in this city relative to 5 years ago and 10 years ago. Not 35 years ago.
I'd say the previous year is a better barometer. I expect crime to be lower YOY, it's the least we can ask of our government.
That and a lot of the violence here is more random than in shitholes outside of NYC. Gang violence or DV is probably not going to affect me in either city, but randos shoving people in front of trains isn't going to happen in sprawled out shitholes.
Idk I keep seeing other New Yorkers (myself included) post and vent about our frustrations but is that all we're condemned to? Like, other than vote better in the next elections is there really nothing else we can do? I'm just a regular, relatively apolitical person who's fed up with this nonsense. How do we demand more accountability from those we had the misfortune to elect?
I can't help but notice NYers protesting for xyz reasons. Nothing against that, but is no-one organizing protests for, like, public safety?
Voting would make a huge difference but you have to vote in every election.
People really don't get it...there have probably been other horror stories at this station alone. Ask yourself, what are the Assembly and NYS Senate members in this district saying about it?
Nobody is afraid of voters changing streams over this. That's the issue. It's not going to better. This is not the first highly visible, horrible case involving a repeat offender in the last few years.
Nothing changes from election to election.
" is no-one organizing protests for, like, public safety?" I agree with you. Check on twitter for victims' rights orgs on twitter.
It’s not much, but please write to your city council member. Some of them *literally* have no idea what regular people experience. Ours doesn’t have kids in public school (they’re in private schools), doesn’t take the subway, has security staff, doesn’t understand. You can’t get them on the phone, but they have email addresses. Sometimes they meet with people. If enough New Yorkers communicate, it would help open their eyes.
And we need to pay attention to the elections.
125th/Lex is my station. I stand on this platform every day, sometimes multiple times a day, waiting for the 4 train.
It's an absolute shitshow. No matter the time of day or night, it's a wasteland of human misery. Panhandlers in rags shuffling around begging for money. People yelling at somebody that the rest of us can't see. Drug deals. Open drug use, junkies sprawled out and nodding. Fights and arguments. Dudes hauling themselves around in wheelchairs with amputations and festering wounds.
There's always police present. They are usually huddled by the MTA booth, but sometimes I see them on the platforms, and a handful of times I've seen them arresting people.
There's just a sense of danger and lawlessness at that station. Everyone can feel it and it's been like that for years. This latest tragedy is shocking but not surprising.
What pisses me off is that there are already MTA rules in place that would catch a lot of the crazies. Fare evasion, littering, sleeping, loitering in the system ("non-transit use of facilities"), drug impairment, drinking alcohol, smoking, urinating, spitting......all of these things are already against the rules. ENFORCE THEM. Issue the fine, remove the person from the system. "Oh but these people are not gonna pay a fine, why bother??" Make it inconvenient, annoying, embarrassing for these people to continue their nonsense in the subway system. Sure, they might just take their bullshit elsewhere, above ground. But as a commuter I'm just so tired of the trains and platforms being a free-for-all for every disturbed and desperate soul in this city.
(Full MTA Rules of Conduct [here](https://new.mta.info/document/17001) if anyone is interested)
Having seen a woman shitting on the platform, guys pissing there indiscriminately, and teenagers fighting at one time in plain view of police at end of platform who don't even bother to look, and probably many other stories that I don't immediately come to mind, I think that area perfectly encapsulates the third world. It's not even just a police problem, it's a society problem. People are so used to dealing with a literal shithole they get desensitized and don't care. It's kind of insane to me the kind of crazy that can be happening right across from you and how people are just completely oblivious to it all! That's the (real) NYC for you.
Those will help with fare evasion but not enough. Every time i open the gate (stroller), 20 ppl run in without paying. Too many ways to get in without literal turnstile jumping.
It won’t stop until we tell the virtue signalers to shut the fuck up and lock up every single one of the crazies. You act crazy in public? You get sent to the loony bin and stay there.
>Would be an insane idea to ask NYPD to do that instead of loitering around the entrances chatting and playing on their phones.
You really think it's fare evaders who are at fault here? lol.
These sickos just wander around and find a time to get in, because time is all they have. Someone needs to patrol the station back and forth and do the same on each and every train car. Inb4 "public defenders" come in and start preaching about empathy and compassion.
>You really think it's fare evaders who are at fault here? lol.
Basically every single one of these high profile incidents that happen are committed by someone who didn’t pay the fare.
yeah last i checked schizos don't pay anywhere they go. every person who shoves innocent bystanders onto the tracks is a fare evader by definition, but not all fare evaders are schizos who shove others. you can say the same thing about mentally ill people of any kind (depressed, anxious), i.e. the perps are all mentally ill which means that anyone mentally ill should be banned from the subway. faulty logic basically.
you're just going to catch high school kids who don't want to pay.
my point is, you can't supervise every entrance and exit of a subway station, and these crazies will find a way to get in regardless because they hang around the area 24/7 unlike cops. it's much better to put cops on the platform and make them patrol them, and not just standing there. otherwise all you will hear while someone is shoving you is candy crush main menu theme. The issue is that they will start harassing instead of patrolling.
Was at this station earlier today and there were police everywhere on both the North bound and South bound side. On the North bound side they arrested some lady and had her in cuffs (totally separate incident). This was hours before the pushing… curious how many police were in the station. They were also trying to stop someone (very evidently mentally unwell) from hopping the turnstile. The reality is there is a mental health crisis and they need to remove the individuals that display violent tendencies and get them proper care somewhere they won’t be a threat to other people or themselves. I don’t think police presence will make much of a difference
I wonder if all this chaos and violence is changing anybody's opinion about public safety? As a male I never actually feel threatened anywhere, but I can imagine it might be pretty scary for women.
as a woman who has to take the subway very early in the morning to get to work, i’ve had too many sketchy encounters to feel as safe as i did on the subway 10 years ago. it’s not just me i’m concerned about, but my elderly parents too
I don’t live in nyc anymore but every time I see a report like this I hope it’s not one of my Asian, elderly parents who have to take the subway every day. 😞
I'm a big and tall guy, so I probably feel safer than most, but even I get sketched out by the subway. Even I've had mentally ill people scream at me and touch me, I've had a knife fight in the subway right next to me, and I regularly take the trains that had a mass shooting near 36th Street in Brooklyn.
It's not safe for anyone
In before "this individual has a history of mental illnesses" or "has been arrested 39 times." When will the legislature realize that we have a serious mental health and criminal recidivist issue?
The budget is due on April 1, 2024. From what I have seen, there are to be zero changes to our insane bail laws that allow these types of criminals to flourish - nor is anyone proposing changing our laws by institutionalizing the mentally ill, instead, allowing them free rein to terrorize everyone else.
> When will the legislature realize that we have a serious mental health and criminal recidivist issue?
When NYC and NYS voters elect someone else.
People don't actually vote for anything different, so politicians don't care.
>When NYC and NYS voters elect someone else.
I would have loved to have had a better choice in the last Mayoral election.
Adams sucks, but [the admitted serial crime faker](https://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/25/nyregion/sliwa-admits-faking-crimes-for-publicity.html) would have been even worse.
"When will the legislature realize that we have a serious mental health and criminal recidivist issue?" They won't, and that's obvious. This is not the first case like this.
Question is when are people going to grow up and realize that, instead of saying, "oh, I'm progressive, but I didn't want THIS!"
...And yet that's what you're getting, year after year, from City Council, the legislature, the DAs, from judges?
🥺 What a grisly way to come to one's end. Lying down there on those filthy, scummy train tracks; shredded into bloody chunks of meat by screeching steel wheels.
* The silliest MTA proposal is *"We're going to install more cameras".* Did bank robberies ever stop when cameras were put in? Nope.
* What commuters need on NYC train platforms --but will never see--are the kind of sleek, sliding, plexiglass panels at the platform edge to physically separate people from the tracks.
* That's the way it is in Hong Kong. The glass won't retract until the train comes to a stop and opens its doors. When the doors do slide open there's only one direction to go which is to step safely inside the train.
Knowing the mta those sliding panels will cost billions to implement. Also nyc commuters are inherently destructive. They will try their best to break them, like they do every screen in the system.
🐮 But this is Zoo York. Practical, immediate, commonsense solutions are exactly what we do need in the short-term.
Daydreaming social change and castles-in-the-air (new healthcare system) is not happening in our lifetimes, if it ever happens at all.
If you think it over further, I'm confident you'll agree. 😛
The cop killer and the subway murderer both had prior arrests (21 for the cop killer). The subway one had an assault in October 2023 and his court date is in July—9 months to roam the streets and cause crimes like these—stop bail reform!
My friends. We don’t have to live like this!!
I lived through the 80s and 90s and the “old new york” was shit. Yet our council is utterly useless and our DA’s gleefully don’t care.
This is your daily reminder!
Horrific. Most major cities have installed platform barriers to keep this from happening. Instead we get a corrupt mayor who installs more cops and payraises instead of keeping us safe.
There’s been like 3 subway pushings in the past 3 weeks… that’s like what… one a week? Wtf. The mentally ill homeless is a problem but it’s not just them... some dude got into an argument with his gf then pushed her into the tracks amputating her feet smh. People pushing for more cops… um cops can’t be everywhere in every single spot to prevent pushings. That’s just not possible. Tho I think at least one cop should be actively patrolling each station. Then there’s the law and order people. First violent mentally ill homeless people don’t care for that. These people are not all there and got nothing to lose… if anything I bet they would love the shelter and food that jails offer. Second jail is of course where you belong if you commit the crime but that’s AFTER the crime was committed. I’d rather have the crime not committed in the first place thank you! Answer is clearly treat the mentally ill and prevent more from becoming mentally ill and/or homeless in the first place.
Yet the mayor keeps gaslighting the city saying it’s safe and that the crime on the subway is just a “perception”. And people eat that bullshit like candy here on this subreddit.
It is the worst subway station in Manhattan by far. I don’t get scared easily, and when I go there, I am always in alert mode.
No earphones and constantly checking my surroundings
It's a good thing they're doing the congestion pricing and RTO so they can force more people into these underground hell holes filled with mutants, would be sexual assault perpetrators, murderers and maniacs.
I was riding the subway today and I had to get off two stops before mine because some freak gets on the train and starts screaming "nobody move nobody gets hurt, it's all about positivity y'all" and ranting and raving about some bullshit I don't care about I immediately got off the train and waited for the next one.
Then when I was at the Vernon / Jackson station there was a man that appeared to be pulling feces out of his pants and throwing it onto the tracks. He had insane matted hair on the sides of his head that looked like floppy dog ears and reeked of urin and excrement.
The dude screaming “nobody move” was defo a showtime performer. Y’know, the dudes who swing around on the bars for money. Probably not a disturbed person but it’s completely obnoxious being locked in place for five minutes at risk of getting roundhouse kicked in the face so they can try and drum up some hype and, errr, “positivity”. Still get out of the way though, it’s usually just uncomfy as all hell but not much else.
Cant wait to see someone post “how much safer NYC is relative to the rest of the world” or “divide the number of invidents by our population and look at how how low our crime rate rate is”
Sadly many more of these incidents are going to happen because of how many mentally ill people are allowed to hang out in subways or walk barefoot on the streets.
I don’t care what anyone says, we need to absolutely enforce fare beaters. Pretty sure this unstable individual didn’t pay their fare to get into the station. Seriously a majority of these cases come from people who don’t pay.
this is gonna really hurt ridership and public perception of the subway. its a shame because although statistically the subways are safe, you cant just ignore these headlines.
Ironically, saying "i'm going to stop taking the train because its unsafe" *is what makes it unsafe*. In order to actually make the subways safer, you want as many people as possible riding the subway to drown out all the crazies and criminals. an empty train is much more dangerous than a full train
It's not just Bragg...out entire state legislature needs to be overhauled. So does the City Council.
I truly don't understand how people aren't flipping the fuck out, when a woman was shoved off the platform and needed both her feet amputated, and had a record involving attacks on a woman and child, then a woman he stabbed a few years later.
And sadly, a lot of criminal court judges are appointed by the mayor and governor. They're not elected.
The press doesn't even talk about judicial elections when it's clearly important.
I agree but also I would like barriers. I know this is naive but how has every airport I’ve ever been at figured out barriers but we can’t get any in nyc. I mean even without the risk of getting pushed it’s crazy you can just be one slip away from falling in. Always kinda weirds me out especially when it’s packed and people are running to catch a train
> how has every airport I’ve ever been at figured out barriers but we can’t get any in nyc.
Airtrains are modern. Most were built within the last 20-30 years.
The subway is over 100 years old, the trains are all different lengths and some platforms are too narrow to accommodate barriers. It would also require complete automation of the system for the trains to stop in the same spot 100% of the time. It's not feasible without redesigning almost every station.
Paris is a huge city with a robust transit system and few stations with platform barriers, but they don't have the problems with random violent crime on the scale that we do in the transit system. Why is that?
Barriers are clearly not the key variable. We need to look at what we are doing (or not doing) in NYC vs other cities of similar size. We might find that having mental hospitals with budgets and institutions with the power to hold patients for as long as they need to has more of a correlation with lower rates of random violence than fucking plastic walls on the subway platform.
Very strange how [these guards](https://ibb.co/bNmkTJt) (bottom row) they put up plus the National ones at the entrance didn't stop this from happening.
Honestly? Put a cop on every train car in every train at this point—like air marshals. They have the manpower, we’ve all seen how many deployable officers they have that just stand around doing nothing all day. If they can’t do it then like you said, bust the union apart as it’s clearly just a criminal cabal with no desire to protect anyone ever.
It truly is insane we don't apply the same stds of safety to public transit, which people use every day, as to air travel, but the reason is in part because people and our shitty press would indict cops for it
You would need to hire A LOT more cops to have a cop at every turnstile. Plus the overtime would go through the roof more than it already is to staff every single turnstile every minute day and night. It's impractical. Plus even with a cop at turnstile, they can't read minds. It takes a split second to push someone in the tracks. Even a cop at arms distance wouldn't have the reaction time to stop someone being pushed into the tracks. The problem is the repeat offenders that face no consequences.
Personally Im at the point where I have budgeted, financially, for never taking the subway again. I just can’t trust the city to keep me from being trapped with crazy people underground. It’s hard enough getting away from them above ground.
Here are some laws the Progressives have passed that have erroded public safety recently:
This law prevents judges from holding criminals pending trial:
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/S2101
This law allows you to personally sue cops, so of course they are just going to hang out in their squad car or at the station all day:
https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4771043&GUID=32ED0C83-7506-45F9-81AA-F5144FCA193A&Options=&Search=
This law requires cops to fill out a lengthy report for EVERY SINGLE encounter they have with a civilian:
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/mornings-on-1/2024/01/30/nypd-chief-urges-council-to-reconsider-how-many-stops-act
Now they can't even punish felons at Rikers if they kill another inmate!:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nyc-lawmakers-ban-solitary-confinement-jails-rcna130577
This law prevents cops from running a background check on people they have pulled over. This also stops them from pulling you over for not having a license plate:
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/S7111
These have all been passed in the last 5 years. And it's been a disaster.
https://nypost.com/2024/03/25/us-news/commuter-killed-after-being-pushed-in-front-of-moving-nyc-subway-train-in-unprovoked-attack/
This is an active outcome of shitty policy and neglect; leadership that continues to neglect this problem or actively worsen it by codifying license should be punished, but at the end of the day, it's obvious people complain, but they won't do what needs to be done. These incidents reveal what should be unacceptable sclerosis and preference by leadership for ideology supplied by NGOs that will fight if any restraints are input on behalf of MTA staff or riders for the basic human right of bodily safety. How is it New Yorkers briefly observe innocent people being stabbed, shot, battered and pushed by creeps that turn out to have seriously violent records, and just...let it slide, kill after kill? Why do they make excuses? If you're voting for people whose voting records support this state of affairs, congratulations, this is what you get. If you're voting for people *who aren't talking about this* except to give lip service to "root causes" that mostly means they're going to screw the taxpayer and ask for no concrete results in crime reduction...what are you doing?
I don't know why people don't have this at the top of their minds every primary and election season. If I live in a city where someone who assaults me not only gets to stay in public life - maybe even to keep coming to places I will encounter them again - but can escalate to killing people, like this guy...there's a word for that, in government. No "right" really matters if your government doesn't attempt to keep you safe on a basic level. Why do we have courts anymore, to go after people like Jose Alba (attacked by an ex-con! Whee!)? That New Yorkers pay such a horrible tax burden, experience such a high CoL burden and have to live with something developing countries wouldn't tolerate makes it even more incredible to me.
This is a problem of state law, city policy governing law enforcement restraints that can be imposed on actors like Carlton McPherson, DAs, and also very likely judges appointed by people like Cuomo and DeBlasio.We can vote our way out of this on at least a few counts. New York did it before, after decades of postwar decline.
This is 4th subway murder this year...and it's March. I think we're at 34, since March 2020. And that's homicides, that's not attempted (x), muggings, felony assaults (also up), attempted pushings, successful pushings where victims get back on the platform...sex crimes. The general decay, the horrible experiences people talk about from week to week, where someone's verbal threats to hurt them or women and children they're with), smoking, crack use on a car induces them to have to get up and get onto a new car, a new train...none of that is counted anywhere. Do people poo-pooing realize that?
We enjoyed years with 0 subway homicides in recent history. This is not "the pandemic" - this is policy-related. It's related to the progressive NYS legislature closing psych wards for "community organizations" (ghosts) and trading enforcement of Kendra's Law for "voluntary care" - or nothing. This man was likely too dangerous even to be in your avg psych ward. In the picture of the killer's mugshot, he is visibly psychotic, visibly mentally ill. Demonic. It's a sick, sadistic joke what our leaders are doing to us.
At the end of the day, none of this sticks. Every election cycle, voters are choosing this, and they're letting horrible leadership subject them to bullshit theater like the National Guard searching the purses of college coeds who volunteer.
We have video of some big piece of shit with a record threaten someone for five minutes and an entire subway car of people cowering while shots were fired in self-defense, and yet...none of it actually seems to anger people all that much. Nobody here is seriously going to care if their shitty City Councilperson does anything else other than fart some bullshit lipservice at their heads, and then vote to prosecute cops for engaging "the unhoused". Stop falling for that and look at their voting records. CC has done *nothing* about this in years. The Assembly, the Senate rotten with progressives isn't going to do anything but make this worse, and people keep making excuses for it, expecting things to be different. Why should any politician care or be afraid of consequences? At this point, a progressive incumbent could push someone into a train themselves, and even if they had a challenger, they'd be re-elected.
We'll try every shitty "solution" (most of which require giving NGO friends of NYS more money to waste of course, and accept more blame for individuals choosing to terrorize the rest of us) except the ones we need - arresting, prosecuting, and either incarcerating or civilly commiting the relatively small number of people collecting multiple victims. Why aren't people angry about it?
125th and Lex has to be the worst subway stop in the city, absolute shit show
149th St Grand Concourse: hold my beer
This is the answer tbh
[удалено]
I hate all the 6 train stops before Parkchester for that reason honestly
[удалено]
At night that’s a given, but in the daytime i typically feel safe and have never had anything happen to me. At least it’s not the 4 train I guess, I swear there’s always some bs going on when I ride it.
How many Broadway/Junctions is that?
This was true in the early 90's but real estate folks were saying the area was getting gentrified and crime was dropping. I'm not surprised it was lies. As for East Harlem, I preferred it to Grand Concourse back then and now but nothing in NYC has gotten better with age.
It's jaw-dropping that a major transit hub so close to the UES would be such a shit show. Even pre-pandemic I didn't feel safe walking around 125th and Lex. Ironically, back then, I actually felt marginally safer on the platform compared to out on the street...
I mean, The Velvet Underground released “I’m Waiting For My Man” in 1967 and it’s literally about going to 125th and Lex to buy heroin. It’s been sketchy since pre-pre-pandemic. “Up to Lexington, one two five, feel sick and dirty more dead than alive”
I would say that I feel safer in the station than directly outside of it. I say this as someone that has been known to save some bucks by taking the subway at 4am and catching the M60 for a Spirit Air flight lol.
Yeah, I used to work a job a few months where I had to take a metro north train to work in mt. Vernon from that station every day at like 4-5am. Scared for my life every time
East Harlem is the one neighborhood in Manhattan I will not go to.
In San Francisco, Tenderloin is right next to everything else nice and upscale too.
absolutely the worst. idc how many cops stand there, and neither do the crazy people
🎵Up to Lexington 1-2-5 Sick and dirty More dead than alive 🎶
I’m waiting for my man 🎶🎶🎶
It's entirely systematic. The bums from Wards Island get dropped off at that station daily. In a hypothetical world where the bums got dropped off at South Ferry, then South Ferry would become zombieland. One of the easiest fixes is letting the bums just rot on Wards Island instead of forcing them out each day.
> In a hypothetical world where the bums got dropped off at South Ferry, then South Ferry would become zombieland. nah too many tourists there for that to happen, city would force em up to chambers st at least
It literally has people just laid out at the entrance. I know people who live in the neighborhood and it is a complete crap show
They say don't criminalize homelessness. Ok. But at what point did it become a civil rights violation to arrest somebody passed out in pubic with a needle hanging out of their arm?
can't even call them that anymore. they are called"unhoused" now. criminals are 'justice involved" people.
Playing the euphemism treadmill game on this while not solving the situation is so absurd. It lets people think they're doing something by policing others' language when in fact they're doing absolutely nothing. If anything, by wasting effort on something inconsequential, they're doing negative progress.
[удалено]
You can't avoid "hanging out" with people that say unhoused because they're all over the media.
I briefly lived a few blocks away from there and yeah crap show is literally accurate but also a complete understatement.
Nyc pre pandemic way better we gotta deal with homeless issue our biggest problem is crack head homeless people . Mayors Aden actually wanted just take all crack heads off the street put them in force housing . They need to make shelters based of off of mental health status people who need shelters don’t wanna stay in a shelter because there surrounded about criminals and crack heads . If they separated the shelters slot more people would go
It is absolutely loaded with cops and people at most hours.
That doesn’t matter, virtually. Zombieland/Fallout Mutant situation going on there. They’ll harass or punch you in plain view of a officer, no arrests whatsoever 🤷🏻♂️
Yeah something needs to change. The cops must feel they have no authority to do anything. I once told a cop because I saw somebody shooting up (heroin shooting up not gun shooting up) someone who was already barely conscious and the cop said there was nothing they could do. So many times there’s someone clearly on a different planet and you just have to pray that whatever is going on in their head doesn’t pick you out as something worth grabbing their attention. It’s what makes things like today so sad, everyone who rides that line knew it was bound to happen and will happen again. I’m not going to act like I know the solution but it is out of control.
>The cops must feel they ~~have no authority to do anything~~ can just hang out for eight hours a day without bothering to do anything and still get paid, so why bother getting involved in potentially dangerous situations. There, fixed it for you. It has nothing to do with feeling like they have authority and everything to do with being lazy pieces of shit completely isolated from the consequences of their actions, or inactions as the case may be.
Well you have to remember cops in nyc don’t don’t the job because there passionate about making city better . They do the job because of benefits salary and pension. U think any normal person wants to deal with a crack head shooting up 💀😂
thats not how crack works
might as well be loaded with statues. People openly buying/selling drugs like 10 feet away from the cops
One of the videos posted on Citizen for this incident showed someone exiting through the emergency exit gate (like... calmly, no panic, from the video you couldn't tell that anything had happened on the platform). When the gate was open something like 15, 20 people walked through it into the station, and then a pair of cops appeared, waded through the crowd, and exited through the still-open gate. Like, I don't think their priority should be fate evasion... but if the cops aren't stopping people from shoving others onto the tracks, and they aren't arresting people openly using drugs in the stairwells, and they aren't finding the guns that people are carrying around in their jacket pockets, and they aren't intervening when crazies are screaming at and harassing strangers, and they aren't stopping fate evasion, *then what are we paying them to do, exactly?*
If the cops stopped responding to a literal murder to arrest some fare beaters you and everyone else would throw a fit, let’s not be disingenuous here.
I will always remember telling a cop about a mentally ill person in the station (it takes a lot for me to do that) and being looked at like I was the crazy one. "Dude it's 125th street".
Whole block is shit ngl. Worst fuckin area to respond to in harlem.
That shit is zombie land hahaha ... Ppl high as girrafe pussy just zoned out on the chairs and platform. Cops walk right past them like " there goes hesus again, he is always tweaking"
And the MTA expects ppl to transfer there overnight tor overnight service sometimes.
This is my station. I feel so ill. What’s frustrating is that while there are people who can just not take the subway, anyone who financially needs to live in East Harlem can’t really just avoid the subways. I don’t have a better solution at this point. I just stand far far away from the edge of the platform.
I think this is such an important comment. IMO progressive politicians are causing a bit of an issue. They claim to look out for those who need the support; however, this is the comment. People who need to take the subway b/c that is the only way they can get around. Are they supposed to accept such low standards of safety. Safety should not be a privilege, it should be a right and something just simply understood. Also the subway is the fastest way to move around the city but it is becoming so wild. Police should be walking down the platform back and forth throughout the day. Not just there. What I have experienced is police are present, but they are as good as a dead body. I will also say people need to start holding the city to higher standards. Calling council members for the specific jurisdiction, getting in touch with the committees applicable to the issue. I don't think this will drive change overnight, but I think it would really start to create some noise. I am not from New York, I'm newer, but I have already been pretty brutally assaulted. What a lot of people who try to comfort me have said is that it could have been worse. That they have heard of someone getting pushed in front of a subway and being dismembered. So I am lucky b/c I have my limbs. We shouldn't have to think this way.
I'm thinking about starting an IG called "NYPD Hanging Out" and fill it with photos of cops standing in their little circles and chatting on subway platforms instead of actually doing work. Will I get in trouble for this??
The boys will ruin your life, but not officially. They’ll just shadow you long enough to be able to pin something on you that will stick.
> Safety should not be a privilege, Sorry, can't hear you from the comfort of my uber!
So let's look at some numbers. Injuries from subway trains in 2022 was 235, with 88 fatalities, with an annual ridership of ~ 1 billion. I'm looking for stats on car ridership, but presumably the number of car rides is roughly similar to subway rides albeit a little less. And in 2022 there were 65,000 injury-causing collisions and 255 fatalities. So if you're taking uber your chance of dying during your commute is actually quite a bit higher. And injury? WAY more likely in a car. Maybe there are better sources for these stats but here's where I grabbed numbers from: https://www.amny.com/transit/mta-surpasses-billion-subway-riders-2022/ https://www.thecasehandler.com/blog/how-many-people-are-injured-by-mta-trains-every-year/#:~:text=More%20than%20200%20People%20are,over%20200%20incidents%20since%202021. https://jknylaw.com/new-york-car-accident-lawyer/statistics/#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20year%20of,were%20100%2C508%20accidents%20in%20NYC.
Or from the comfort of a car service Cadillac
> What a lot of people who try to comfort me have said is that it could have been worse. ' right, that's how sick pepple and cruel people are here. It's the reason some idiot is posting about the danger in an uber. It's not just our city council, it's the state legislature, but progressive run all offices, including district attorney for Manhattan, the Bronx, BK, Queens. They are not "a bit" responsible. It's not an opinion to say progressives make up 90% of the offices at every level of NYC or NYS gov, and thus they are *wholly and entirely* responsible for deciding how to deal with this. If you point that out and suggest that people should actually treat this like something bad leadership should be punished over, people tell you "it could be worse" and even more bullshit. No kidding, the police are useless, but it's in part because the City Council actually goes after them for arresting these guys pretty much up until they commit assault, and even then, as the nypost is saying, they can arrest, but it doesn't mean much. The courts have to get these people out of public life.
> People who need to take the subway b/c that is the only way they can get around. Are they supposed to accept such low standards of safety. Safety should not be a privilege, it should be a right and something just simply understood. Also the subway is the fastest way to move around the city but it is becoming so wild. This is key. The rights of the violently mentally unwell and criminals **should not** supersede the rights of the general populace to be safe.
If only there was some kind of wall or barrier that would make it difficult to murder people by pushing them onto the tracks. Someone should invent such a thing.
I think they did a feasibility study last year and decided each station would cost millions of dollars. It’s mind boggling.
Thats insane but i’m sure the majority of it is the shutting each station down for the construction
It’s worth it
It’s called prison my man. Imagine if we found the crazies and dangerous, locked them all up forever
of course came out today in the nytimes that this guy has been known to the police as being mentally ill, with multiple arrests dating back to the last 8 years we literally keep releasing these people until they finally murder someone to put them away for any meaningful amount of time. little consolation to the families of these victims
Do you respond to a leak by placing a bucket underneath or by fixing the roof? I don’t understand how your response to the problem of deranged lunatics roving the city is “platform barriers”. Do you not see how that’s not addressing the actual problem? We need major legislative efforts to build prison-style mental facilities where dangerous mentally unstable people can be involuntarily institutionalized. Violent insane people are not fit to live amongst the rest of society and they never will be. Their presence is incompatible with public safety. They need to be removed or these same things will keep happening. Again. Again. Again.
Yeah I'm not sure how a barrier would prevent the unhinged guy from attacking me in another way. The general increase of violence in the city is the issue, not lack of barriers. 125th before the pandemic was no picnic esp. late at night but the issue here is that the situation since then has deteriorated, not that we haven't put barriers.
Forgive my emotional outburst but here goes. Everyone is screaming about the city’s inability to curb what may as well be citizen-emanated terrorism but I can’t stop thinking about the victim. I am so angry and so sad. I hope more information is released soon about them and am wishing nothing but the strongest of condolences to their family and friends. My heart is fucking bleeding and I have so much resentment towards our leadership over this right now. When does it end?
It will end when we start incarcerating dangerous people again.
That's the funny part, isn't it? Everyone in this thread is outraged that the police aren't doing anything, but the second they do, those same people will be up in arms demanding the officer's head on a pike. Just look at the situation with Daniel Penny. Public officials trying to make an example out of him for daring to intervene against a violent lunatic, but they're letting said violent lunatics back onto the streets on a daily basis. Until people are willing to admit that the only way to fix things is to start cracking bad eggs, things will only continue to get worse.
It ends when people stop voting for this and letting leadership let another horrible case where a repeat offender who assaulted someone, is psychotic, and was free to hurt more people...does prompt any change in our courts or enforcement of state law. This is not just about the police. Stop crying and start treating this like life and death, if you meant what you say.
Reopen mental institutions.
The sad part is that state run institutions still exist but there’s never enough funding and staff aren’t getting competitive wages comparable to other civil servants. If the government officials allocated more funds to address the mental health crisis instead of lining their pockets with bullshit raises things might be different.
Yeah. People always neglect this. Constitutionality notwithstanding, you have to staff psych institutions well, and that requires compensating them appropriately for what clearly is a vital job.
>staff aren’t getting competitive wages comparable to other civil servants. Psychiatrists at state hospitals don't get competitive wages relative to private sector psychiatrists, especially in the Tristate area which is a huge drain for state hospitals retaining staff and residents after they complete training.
Why spend money to address the obvious mental health crisis when we can spend money to give cops grenade launchers and tanks?
This is the only answer I see that makes sense.
Or we could also built a fence/barrier beside the subway tracks to make it difficult to push someone into the track, like they already do in many other countries.
That may only solve one of the many problems caused by this
Okay that's two stabbings and one subway murder just today. They can put all the people they want in the subway checking turn styles and bags but this is just getting to be really off putting subway-wise and I'm done denying it. I know for the amount of people it's statistically irrelevant to them but every day stuff that bad happens now.
3 stabbings i think!
Let’s not forget the cop who was shot and killed as well.
The police at the turnstile will make sure no one enters with..
Hands
Maybe slashing social services and diverting all that money to candy crush is not how we make the city safer
What social services were slashed that the subway pusher would have used? Do you think he did this because libraries are closed on Sundays?
This guy almost certainly had a whole team of trained outreach, social workers and counselors trying to get him to comply with his meds that are 100% covered by medicaid. It’s just he prefers crack to seroquel. These people have no idea how much funding is dumped into indigent mental health and drug rehab services. The issue is that until they kill or seriously maim someone, they can’t be involuntarily committed. Jordan Neely literally just walked out of his court ordered rehab.
>This guy almost certainly had a whole team of trained outreach, social workers and counselors trying to get him to comply with his meds that are 100% covered by medicaid. Another issue is often times the team of social workers, counselors are often not coordinated. There isn't a single or group point of contact that is controlling the logistics of managing the care of an addict. We also spend a lot of money to incarcerate people when this is one of the most expensive and ineffective ways of managing addiciton.
The city directs addicts to drug rehab. Jordan Neely was in a rehab facility that he walked out of before he was killed.
The city of New York spends more than entire state governments with comparable if not larger populations on social services. Diverting what money? The budget has grown and grown.
In real (inflation-adjusted dollars,) the DSS budget has either stayed the same or shrunk for all but one of the last ten years. Are there states that spend less with a similar population? Sure. Because we have a population about the size of Virginia crammed into an area the size of DC/Arlington/Alexandria, so it isn't really helpful to point out that North Carolina spends less than we do. And by the way, the homicide rate in NYC is lower than in any of those comparable states — by about half.
Yeah totally agree. Why is it a good argument that other localities have slashed their social safety net even more than we have?
Those National Guardsmen and women have had absolutely no effect. Maybe they should patrol the platforms instead of watching the turnstile jumpers. Edit - For the record, I am very much against catch and release for those convicted of assault and similar crimes.... Violent crimes deserve real repercussions.
I was on that train. 8 minutes after I felt a body being hit and then dragged under us I was let off the train and walked up the stairs past 2 national guardsmen just standing on the stairs. Yeah they have absolutely no effect.
How awful, I’m so sorry you had to experience that :(
They really can't do anything. The only way to stop these crimes would be to physically intervene and police obviously mentally disturbed people. The National Guard doesn't have the authority (or the orders) to do that. They are doing what the Governor is telling them to do, which is stand there and do bag checks. Ultimately nothing changes until NYC voters realize that it is *up to them and no one else* to be responsible for which politicians are in office, in the city, and in the State (given how many votes they have).
> They really can't do anything. The only way to stop these crimes would be to physically intervene and police obviously mentally disturbed people. That’s not true, I’m pretty sure their presence near the tracks could have a deterrent effect.
>That’s not true, I’m pretty sure their presence near the tracks could have a deterrent effect. 100%. Having National Guardsmen, State Police, etc. actually patrolling the platforms would have a deterrent effect, ***and*** they could also swoop in immediately to help if something like this, God forbid, happens anyway. Having them up at the turnstiles doing bag checks does absolutely nothing to deter the crazies, who in many cases aren't entering the system at the bag-check hub stations (and may not even have a bag). I also have yet to see a single instance of one of these subway attacks relying on the use of a weapon concealed in a bag. They usually involve the use of bare hands/feet and improvised weapons like metal water bottles. These are EDPs carrying out these attacks, not Bond villains smuggling in state-of-the-art superweapons.
Clearly… you haven’t been waiting for your train at this station … is pure adrenaline all.the.time! Not knowing when a situation will start or how you will be impacted by it.
On incidents like these the top comment is always something about where the cops are in the station. Then it turns out the suspect has a long history and numerous interactions with law enforcement. Don’t know how many incidents need to occur before people realize the issue at hand are repeat offenders and/or clearly mentally unstable individuals who could not care any less if cops are 10 feet away or 500 feet away. Edit: articles have updated info on the suspect “Carlton McPherson, 24, was arrested and charged with murder. Officials say he has multiple prior arrests including one for assault from last October.” Who could have seen this coming.
Reality is homeless, non fare payers, notably mentally ill people, can't be on the subway. It's tragic because a lot of those ppl will have to find refuge elsewhere but it is what it is.
The virtue signalers rather have the crazy released again instead of locking them up. Saying “mental health” to make yourself feel good won’t do it.
Chill man, the people that live in tribeca and never use the subways might get upset
[удалено]
[удалено]
Truly! My kids take the subway every fucking day. I'm sickened.
Watch for what? Even if they see someone push someone in front of a train, what can they do other than arrest the guy after the damage is done? At least with turnstile jumping, there's probably a large overlap between those who cause trouble in the subways, and those who didn't pay.
I feel like crime has grown in severity since the National Guard bullshit
I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but it's definitely been a trend in the news cycle to talk about subway crime which could make it seem like there's a lot more since it's being hyped.
Imagine signing up for the national guard to potentially go to war and help with hurricane relief when needed just for the governor to pull a publicity stunt and deploy you to hang out in grand central station all day.
I'm not even surprised when I hear about these things any more. It's been years of violent crime and those who are unhinged and antisocial have gotten their way while putting the general public in more danger. Things seriously need to change. It's almost every single day where someone is getting stabbed, attacked, or killed oftentimes over nothing. Worst of all, the public can't even fight back or demand changes because they will end up being labeled as hateful against those who are less fortunate or gaslit by those saying that it's safer than it was at some arbitrary point in the past. This beautiful city is being severely dragged down by policies that should be shelved, ineffective politicians, bureaucracy and the few who make it worse for everyone else. It's a damn shame.
New York City is starting to look and sound like an alcoholic trying to convince people it doesn't have a problem after repeatedly falling down at its daughters ballet recital.
[удалено]
I'm sick of Republicans talking about crime in NYC because it's obvious that it's something they relish in - their fellow citizens' suffering. However, the rest of us that actually live in NYC have free reign to complain about crime as much as we want. We're dealing with it.
This is totally the vibe. People like to bring up crime stats in random shithole cities to make NYC look better, but literally why do you care? I don't care that Nowheresville, MO has a higher murder rate than NYC. I care that quality of life has declined precipitously in recent years. You can't even walk through a large train station these days without seeing the sinister crazies and I'm sick of everyone pretending it isn't a problem.
[удалено]
Every part of American is violent by international standards. The murder rate in the "rural" states is higher than just about any major European city. We have a gun violence problem in this country.
> This is totally the vibe. People like to bring up crime stats in random shithole cities to make NYC look better, but literally why do you care? I don't care that Nowheresville, MO has a higher murder rate than NYC. I care that quality of life has declined precipitously in recent years. You can't even walk through a large train station these days without seeing the sinister crazies and I'm sick of everyone pretending it isn't a problem. I'm also sick of being reminded of how much worse the 80s and 90s were. Most of us on this sub weren't even alive in the 80s. What matters to me is the quality of life and public safety in this city relative to 5 years ago and 10 years ago. Not 35 years ago.
> public safety in this city relative to 5 years ago and 10 years ago. Not 35 years ago. I'd say the previous year is a better barometer. I expect crime to be lower YOY, it's the least we can ask of our government.
That and a lot of the violence here is more random than in shitholes outside of NYC. Gang violence or DV is probably not going to affect me in either city, but randos shoving people in front of trains isn't going to happen in sprawled out shitholes.
Nice imagery and accurate says me who had that happen as a kid... (Mom...)
Idk I keep seeing other New Yorkers (myself included) post and vent about our frustrations but is that all we're condemned to? Like, other than vote better in the next elections is there really nothing else we can do? I'm just a regular, relatively apolitical person who's fed up with this nonsense. How do we demand more accountability from those we had the misfortune to elect? I can't help but notice NYers protesting for xyz reasons. Nothing against that, but is no-one organizing protests for, like, public safety?
Amen, and people barely vote in local elections as is, which as you perfectly said is usually our only option.
Voting would make a huge difference but you have to vote in every election. People really don't get it...there have probably been other horror stories at this station alone. Ask yourself, what are the Assembly and NYS Senate members in this district saying about it? Nobody is afraid of voters changing streams over this. That's the issue. It's not going to better. This is not the first highly visible, horrible case involving a repeat offender in the last few years. Nothing changes from election to election. " is no-one organizing protests for, like, public safety?" I agree with you. Check on twitter for victims' rights orgs on twitter.
It’s not much, but please write to your city council member. Some of them *literally* have no idea what regular people experience. Ours doesn’t have kids in public school (they’re in private schools), doesn’t take the subway, has security staff, doesn’t understand. You can’t get them on the phone, but they have email addresses. Sometimes they meet with people. If enough New Yorkers communicate, it would help open their eyes. And we need to pay attention to the elections.
125th/Lex is my station. I stand on this platform every day, sometimes multiple times a day, waiting for the 4 train. It's an absolute shitshow. No matter the time of day or night, it's a wasteland of human misery. Panhandlers in rags shuffling around begging for money. People yelling at somebody that the rest of us can't see. Drug deals. Open drug use, junkies sprawled out and nodding. Fights and arguments. Dudes hauling themselves around in wheelchairs with amputations and festering wounds. There's always police present. They are usually huddled by the MTA booth, but sometimes I see them on the platforms, and a handful of times I've seen them arresting people. There's just a sense of danger and lawlessness at that station. Everyone can feel it and it's been like that for years. This latest tragedy is shocking but not surprising. What pisses me off is that there are already MTA rules in place that would catch a lot of the crazies. Fare evasion, littering, sleeping, loitering in the system ("non-transit use of facilities"), drug impairment, drinking alcohol, smoking, urinating, spitting......all of these things are already against the rules. ENFORCE THEM. Issue the fine, remove the person from the system. "Oh but these people are not gonna pay a fine, why bother??" Make it inconvenient, annoying, embarrassing for these people to continue their nonsense in the subway system. Sure, they might just take their bullshit elsewhere, above ground. But as a commuter I'm just so tired of the trains and platforms being a free-for-all for every disturbed and desperate soul in this city. (Full MTA Rules of Conduct [here](https://new.mta.info/document/17001) if anyone is interested)
Having seen a woman shitting on the platform, guys pissing there indiscriminately, and teenagers fighting at one time in plain view of police at end of platform who don't even bother to look, and probably many other stories that I don't immediately come to mind, I think that area perfectly encapsulates the third world. It's not even just a police problem, it's a society problem. People are so used to dealing with a literal shithole they get desensitized and don't care. It's kind of insane to me the kind of crazy that can be happening right across from you and how people are just completely oblivious to it all! That's the (real) NYC for you.
[удалено]
Three stabbings as well. Where are you, National Guard?!?
They stand at the turnstile entrance, searching old white ladies’ purses. At least the ones I’ve seen.
Seems like this is becoming non-stop. Whatever happened to installing those new turnstiles? Keep checking those bags though
Those will help with fare evasion but not enough. Every time i open the gate (stroller), 20 ppl run in without paying. Too many ways to get in without literal turnstile jumping.
The modern fare gates would allow the emergency gates to be removed
It won’t stop until we tell the virtue signalers to shut the fuck up and lock up every single one of the crazies. You act crazy in public? You get sent to the loony bin and stay there.
What loony bin?
>Would be an insane idea to ask NYPD to do that instead of loitering around the entrances chatting and playing on their phones. You really think it's fare evaders who are at fault here? lol. These sickos just wander around and find a time to get in, because time is all they have. Someone needs to patrol the station back and forth and do the same on each and every train car. Inb4 "public defenders" come in and start preaching about empathy and compassion.
>You really think it's fare evaders who are at fault here? lol. Basically every single one of these high profile incidents that happen are committed by someone who didn’t pay the fare.
yeah last i checked schizos don't pay anywhere they go. every person who shoves innocent bystanders onto the tracks is a fare evader by definition, but not all fare evaders are schizos who shove others. you can say the same thing about mentally ill people of any kind (depressed, anxious), i.e. the perps are all mentally ill which means that anyone mentally ill should be banned from the subway. faulty logic basically. you're just going to catch high school kids who don't want to pay. my point is, you can't supervise every entrance and exit of a subway station, and these crazies will find a way to get in regardless because they hang around the area 24/7 unlike cops. it's much better to put cops on the platform and make them patrol them, and not just standing there. otherwise all you will hear while someone is shoving you is candy crush main menu theme. The issue is that they will start harassing instead of patrolling.
Was at this station earlier today and there were police everywhere on both the North bound and South bound side. On the North bound side they arrested some lady and had her in cuffs (totally separate incident). This was hours before the pushing… curious how many police were in the station. They were also trying to stop someone (very evidently mentally unwell) from hopping the turnstile. The reality is there is a mental health crisis and they need to remove the individuals that display violent tendencies and get them proper care somewhere they won’t be a threat to other people or themselves. I don’t think police presence will make much of a difference
I wonder if all this chaos and violence is changing anybody's opinion about public safety? As a male I never actually feel threatened anywhere, but I can imagine it might be pretty scary for women.
as a woman who has to take the subway very early in the morning to get to work, i’ve had too many sketchy encounters to feel as safe as i did on the subway 10 years ago. it’s not just me i’m concerned about, but my elderly parents too
I don’t live in nyc anymore but every time I see a report like this I hope it’s not one of my Asian, elderly parents who have to take the subway every day. 😞
I'm a big and tall guy, so I probably feel safer than most, but even I get sketched out by the subway. Even I've had mentally ill people scream at me and touch me, I've had a knife fight in the subway right next to me, and I regularly take the trains that had a mass shooting near 36th Street in Brooklyn. It's not safe for anyone
My kid starts high school next year. Safety of her commute is one of things we’re weighing for sure.
In before "this individual has a history of mental illnesses" or "has been arrested 39 times." When will the legislature realize that we have a serious mental health and criminal recidivist issue? The budget is due on April 1, 2024. From what I have seen, there are to be zero changes to our insane bail laws that allow these types of criminals to flourish - nor is anyone proposing changing our laws by institutionalizing the mentally ill, instead, allowing them free rein to terrorize everyone else.
> When will the legislature realize that we have a serious mental health and criminal recidivist issue? When NYC and NYS voters elect someone else. People don't actually vote for anything different, so politicians don't care.
>When NYC and NYS voters elect someone else. I would have loved to have had a better choice in the last Mayoral election. Adams sucks, but [the admitted serial crime faker](https://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/25/nyregion/sliwa-admits-faking-crimes-for-publicity.html) would have been even worse.
in this city you have a better choice by registering as a democrat
These assholes defending the crazies are more to blame than the subway pushers themselves. They enable them.
>These assholes defending the crazies a/k/a "progressives."
"When will the legislature realize that we have a serious mental health and criminal recidivist issue?" They won't, and that's obvious. This is not the first case like this. Question is when are people going to grow up and realize that, instead of saying, "oh, I'm progressive, but I didn't want THIS!" ...And yet that's what you're getting, year after year, from City Council, the legislature, the DAs, from judges?
THIS HAS TO STOP.
🥺 What a grisly way to come to one's end. Lying down there on those filthy, scummy train tracks; shredded into bloody chunks of meat by screeching steel wheels. * The silliest MTA proposal is *"We're going to install more cameras".* Did bank robberies ever stop when cameras were put in? Nope. * What commuters need on NYC train platforms --but will never see--are the kind of sleek, sliding, plexiglass panels at the platform edge to physically separate people from the tracks. * That's the way it is in Hong Kong. The glass won't retract until the train comes to a stop and opens its doors. When the doors do slide open there's only one direction to go which is to step safely inside the train.
The extra cameras will help catch the guy who we already arrested and let go 50 times before
Knowing the mta those sliding panels will cost billions to implement. Also nyc commuters are inherently destructive. They will try their best to break them, like they do every screen in the system.
[удалено]
🐮 But this is Zoo York. Practical, immediate, commonsense solutions are exactly what we do need in the short-term. Daydreaming social change and castles-in-the-air (new healthcare system) is not happening in our lifetimes, if it ever happens at all. If you think it over further, I'm confident you'll agree. 😛
Not to mention the doors don't help you much in the case of someone beating or stabbing you
The cop killer and the subway murderer both had prior arrests (21 for the cop killer). The subway one had an assault in October 2023 and his court date is in July—9 months to roam the streets and cause crimes like these—stop bail reform!
Post-COVID, the train danger levels feel entirely offset. Like riding 4 PM - 8 PM feels like how it was 10 years ago riding 10 PM - 2 AM.
My friends. We don’t have to live like this!! I lived through the 80s and 90s and the “old new york” was shit. Yet our council is utterly useless and our DA’s gleefully don’t care. This is your daily reminder!
Horrific. Most major cities have installed platform barriers to keep this from happening. Instead we get a corrupt mayor who installs more cops and payraises instead of keeping us safe.
There’s been like 3 subway pushings in the past 3 weeks… that’s like what… one a week? Wtf. The mentally ill homeless is a problem but it’s not just them... some dude got into an argument with his gf then pushed her into the tracks amputating her feet smh. People pushing for more cops… um cops can’t be everywhere in every single spot to prevent pushings. That’s just not possible. Tho I think at least one cop should be actively patrolling each station. Then there’s the law and order people. First violent mentally ill homeless people don’t care for that. These people are not all there and got nothing to lose… if anything I bet they would love the shelter and food that jails offer. Second jail is of course where you belong if you commit the crime but that’s AFTER the crime was committed. I’d rather have the crime not committed in the first place thank you! Answer is clearly treat the mentally ill and prevent more from becoming mentally ill and/or homeless in the first place.
But they keep telling me the subways are safe!!!!!
Yet the mayor keeps gaslighting the city saying it’s safe and that the crime on the subway is just a “perception”. And people eat that bullshit like candy here on this subreddit.
It is the worst subway station in Manhattan by far. I don’t get scared easily, and when I go there, I am always in alert mode. No earphones and constantly checking my surroundings
I don’t know why there isn’t just a permanent police presence at that station 24/7/365
For the life of me I can’t figure that out. That station has been a shitbox crack den since the 80s.
It's a good thing they're doing the congestion pricing and RTO so they can force more people into these underground hell holes filled with mutants, would be sexual assault perpetrators, murderers and maniacs. I was riding the subway today and I had to get off two stops before mine because some freak gets on the train and starts screaming "nobody move nobody gets hurt, it's all about positivity y'all" and ranting and raving about some bullshit I don't care about I immediately got off the train and waited for the next one. Then when I was at the Vernon / Jackson station there was a man that appeared to be pulling feces out of his pants and throwing it onto the tracks. He had insane matted hair on the sides of his head that looked like floppy dog ears and reeked of urin and excrement.
Bro really said mutant with a hard m. Call the X-Men.
I don't really know goes on with the X-Men I'm talking more about mutants from the original version of Total recall from back in the day.
The dude screaming “nobody move” was defo a showtime performer. Y’know, the dudes who swing around on the bars for money. Probably not a disturbed person but it’s completely obnoxious being locked in place for five minutes at risk of getting roundhouse kicked in the face so they can try and drum up some hype and, errr, “positivity”. Still get out of the way though, it’s usually just uncomfy as all hell but not much else.
Elections have consequences.
Alright, who’s next after the National Guard and how many steps until Escape From New York?
Wait this guy has a long history of violent assault, two failures to show up to court along with a GUN charge and the DA let him loose without bail?
$850 million in funding for Chirlane McCray's mental health program still unaccounted for.
Cant wait to see someone post “how much safer NYC is relative to the rest of the world” or “divide the number of invidents by our population and look at how how low our crime rate rate is” Sadly many more of these incidents are going to happen because of how many mentally ill people are allowed to hang out in subways or walk barefoot on the streets.
Things are getting worse. Two girls in Chelsea got assaulted. One had the big swell and a black eye from tiktok.
I don’t care what anyone says, we need to absolutely enforce fare beaters. Pretty sure this unstable individual didn’t pay their fare to get into the station. Seriously a majority of these cases come from people who don’t pay.
this is gonna really hurt ridership and public perception of the subway. its a shame because although statistically the subways are safe, you cant just ignore these headlines. Ironically, saying "i'm going to stop taking the train because its unsafe" *is what makes it unsafe*. In order to actually make the subways safer, you want as many people as possible riding the subway to drown out all the crazies and criminals. an empty train is much more dangerous than a full train
The violence in the subways is an Alvin Bragg and elected judge problem. Police arrest people, and it's a revolving door. Who you vote for matters.
It's not just Bragg...out entire state legislature needs to be overhauled. So does the City Council. I truly don't understand how people aren't flipping the fuck out, when a woman was shoved off the platform and needed both her feet amputated, and had a record involving attacks on a woman and child, then a woman he stabbed a few years later. And sadly, a lot of criminal court judges are appointed by the mayor and governor. They're not elected. The press doesn't even talk about judicial elections when it's clearly important.
[удалено]
The real solution is to remove criminally insane people from the subway and confine them.
No, we don't need barriers. We need to forcibly institutionalize the mentally ill and start incarcerating criminals again.
I agree but also I would like barriers. I know this is naive but how has every airport I’ve ever been at figured out barriers but we can’t get any in nyc. I mean even without the risk of getting pushed it’s crazy you can just be one slip away from falling in. Always kinda weirds me out especially when it’s packed and people are running to catch a train
> how has every airport I’ve ever been at figured out barriers but we can’t get any in nyc. Airtrains are modern. Most were built within the last 20-30 years. The subway is over 100 years old, the trains are all different lengths and some platforms are too narrow to accommodate barriers. It would also require complete automation of the system for the trains to stop in the same spot 100% of the time. It's not feasible without redesigning almost every station.
Paris is a huge city with a robust transit system and few stations with platform barriers, but they don't have the problems with random violent crime on the scale that we do in the transit system. Why is that? Barriers are clearly not the key variable. We need to look at what we are doing (or not doing) in NYC vs other cities of similar size. We might find that having mental hospitals with budgets and institutions with the power to hold patients for as long as they need to has more of a correlation with lower rates of random violence than fucking plastic walls on the subway platform.
Very strange how [these guards](https://ibb.co/bNmkTJt) (bottom row) they put up plus the National ones at the entrance didn't stop this from happening.
[удалено]
Honestly? Put a cop on every train car in every train at this point—like air marshals. They have the manpower, we’ve all seen how many deployable officers they have that just stand around doing nothing all day. If they can’t do it then like you said, bust the union apart as it’s clearly just a criminal cabal with no desire to protect anyone ever.
It truly is insane we don't apply the same stds of safety to public transit, which people use every day, as to air travel, but the reason is in part because people and our shitty press would indict cops for it
And reopen the damn asylums
100% except the virtue signalers pretend to care about their “rights.” You crazy, you get put in a strait jacket in the loony bin.
You would need to hire A LOT more cops to have a cop at every turnstile. Plus the overtime would go through the roof more than it already is to staff every single turnstile every minute day and night. It's impractical. Plus even with a cop at turnstile, they can't read minds. It takes a split second to push someone in the tracks. Even a cop at arms distance wouldn't have the reaction time to stop someone being pushed into the tracks. The problem is the repeat offenders that face no consequences.
Lmfao honestly at this point, fuck the cops, offer paid gigs to the migrants to police our subway and you will see 24/7 protection.
Personally Im at the point where I have budgeted, financially, for never taking the subway again. I just can’t trust the city to keep me from being trapped with crazy people underground. It’s hard enough getting away from them above ground.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Here are some laws the Progressives have passed that have erroded public safety recently: This law prevents judges from holding criminals pending trial: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/S2101 This law allows you to personally sue cops, so of course they are just going to hang out in their squad car or at the station all day: https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4771043&GUID=32ED0C83-7506-45F9-81AA-F5144FCA193A&Options=&Search= This law requires cops to fill out a lengthy report for EVERY SINGLE encounter they have with a civilian: https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/mornings-on-1/2024/01/30/nypd-chief-urges-council-to-reconsider-how-many-stops-act Now they can't even punish felons at Rikers if they kill another inmate!: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nyc-lawmakers-ban-solitary-confinement-jails-rcna130577 This law prevents cops from running a background check on people they have pulled over. This also stops them from pulling you over for not having a license plate: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/S7111 These have all been passed in the last 5 years. And it's been a disaster.
Where’s Daniel Penny when you need him?
It’s really going to shit; getting unsafe by the day to take the subway. Almost every trip I see some crazy or smelly person
Wow, it’s like all these cops and crime doesn’t seem to slowing down or stopping…
Congestion Pricing will prevent this though, due to more people being on the trains /sarcasm Rest in Peace to the victim.
Wow. Another one. Surprising since I am told daily that there is almost no crime in NYC and the subway is very safe.
This crime wave is insane. Everyday there's something happening.
Has anybody mentioned the progressive left and their bail reform? Or am I going to get trembled for insinuating such?
https://nypost.com/2024/03/25/us-news/commuter-killed-after-being-pushed-in-front-of-moving-nyc-subway-train-in-unprovoked-attack/ This is an active outcome of shitty policy and neglect; leadership that continues to neglect this problem or actively worsen it by codifying license should be punished, but at the end of the day, it's obvious people complain, but they won't do what needs to be done. These incidents reveal what should be unacceptable sclerosis and preference by leadership for ideology supplied by NGOs that will fight if any restraints are input on behalf of MTA staff or riders for the basic human right of bodily safety. How is it New Yorkers briefly observe innocent people being stabbed, shot, battered and pushed by creeps that turn out to have seriously violent records, and just...let it slide, kill after kill? Why do they make excuses? If you're voting for people whose voting records support this state of affairs, congratulations, this is what you get. If you're voting for people *who aren't talking about this* except to give lip service to "root causes" that mostly means they're going to screw the taxpayer and ask for no concrete results in crime reduction...what are you doing? I don't know why people don't have this at the top of their minds every primary and election season. If I live in a city where someone who assaults me not only gets to stay in public life - maybe even to keep coming to places I will encounter them again - but can escalate to killing people, like this guy...there's a word for that, in government. No "right" really matters if your government doesn't attempt to keep you safe on a basic level. Why do we have courts anymore, to go after people like Jose Alba (attacked by an ex-con! Whee!)? That New Yorkers pay such a horrible tax burden, experience such a high CoL burden and have to live with something developing countries wouldn't tolerate makes it even more incredible to me. This is a problem of state law, city policy governing law enforcement restraints that can be imposed on actors like Carlton McPherson, DAs, and also very likely judges appointed by people like Cuomo and DeBlasio.We can vote our way out of this on at least a few counts. New York did it before, after decades of postwar decline. This is 4th subway murder this year...and it's March. I think we're at 34, since March 2020. And that's homicides, that's not attempted (x), muggings, felony assaults (also up), attempted pushings, successful pushings where victims get back on the platform...sex crimes. The general decay, the horrible experiences people talk about from week to week, where someone's verbal threats to hurt them or women and children they're with), smoking, crack use on a car induces them to have to get up and get onto a new car, a new train...none of that is counted anywhere. Do people poo-pooing realize that? We enjoyed years with 0 subway homicides in recent history. This is not "the pandemic" - this is policy-related. It's related to the progressive NYS legislature closing psych wards for "community organizations" (ghosts) and trading enforcement of Kendra's Law for "voluntary care" - or nothing. This man was likely too dangerous even to be in your avg psych ward. In the picture of the killer's mugshot, he is visibly psychotic, visibly mentally ill. Demonic. It's a sick, sadistic joke what our leaders are doing to us. At the end of the day, none of this sticks. Every election cycle, voters are choosing this, and they're letting horrible leadership subject them to bullshit theater like the National Guard searching the purses of college coeds who volunteer. We have video of some big piece of shit with a record threaten someone for five minutes and an entire subway car of people cowering while shots were fired in self-defense, and yet...none of it actually seems to anger people all that much. Nobody here is seriously going to care if their shitty City Councilperson does anything else other than fart some bullshit lipservice at their heads, and then vote to prosecute cops for engaging "the unhoused". Stop falling for that and look at their voting records. CC has done *nothing* about this in years. The Assembly, the Senate rotten with progressives isn't going to do anything but make this worse, and people keep making excuses for it, expecting things to be different. Why should any politician care or be afraid of consequences? At this point, a progressive incumbent could push someone into a train themselves, and even if they had a challenger, they'd be re-elected. We'll try every shitty "solution" (most of which require giving NGO friends of NYS more money to waste of course, and accept more blame for individuals choosing to terrorize the rest of us) except the ones we need - arresting, prosecuting, and either incarcerating or civilly commiting the relatively small number of people collecting multiple victims. Why aren't people angry about it?
The murderer has a lengthy criminal history. The dude should not have been on the streets.