Staying Above Ground In NYC

If you want to stay above ground in New York City, then you better stay above ground, literally. Murders in the city’s subway system are surging this year, up 60% despite an overall reported drop in the crime rate. 

The troubling trend of killings this year has the city on a collision course with the 25-year high of 10 underground murders set back in 2022. How close are they to that number? As of September 8th this year, eight people have been butchered on subway cars or in stations, up from 5 during the same period last year. 

“It’s not a safe environment to be waiting for the train… It just feels evil,” Jakeba Dockery told the New York Post. Her husband, Richard Henderson, was gunned down back in January on a 3 train in Brooklyn. 

More recently, 47-year-old Freddie Weston was shot to death on his way to work just past 11 p.m. on September 5th at Brooklyn’s Rockaway Avenue station.

“They took the opportunity because there wasn’t any camera,” Weston’s sister, Tina, told the Post. 

While I agree that cameras can be a deterrent, countless violent crimes are caught on tape every year, making them a great tool after the fact, but that is too late for the victims and their families. 

A glaring lesson here is that no matter what regulations you place on law-abiding gun owners, criminals never seem to have any problem getting their hands on a firearm. Perhaps an even more shockingly ignored fact is that criminals bent on violent crime don’t care about violating gun-free zones, magazine capacity limits, barrel length requirements or any number of piddly infractions relative to the murder they are willing to commit. 

Subway crime as a whole is said to be down nearly 6% this year, with robberies down approximately 18% and felony assaults by close to 5%, according to the NYPD. These numbers are attributed to high-profile initiatives in heavy-traffic stations, with 750 National Guardsmen and an additional 1,000 NYPD officers deployed underground. 

While I question how these numbers may be affected by reporting anomalies or fewer subway patrons due to the violence, the progress seems disproportionate to the enormous tax burden caused by such measures.

It feels an awful lot like government officials are creating problems through issues like illegal immigration, bail reform, prosecution-averse district attorneys and “raise the age” legislation, giving those under 18 a free pass to kill, then throwing American tax dollars at barely effective bandages. This begs the question as to why these officials are so opposed to dealing with problems at the source? 

“This overall crime reduction is due in large part to thorough investigations by detectives into every major crime within the subway, and the proactive work of officers deployed in the transit system…This year alone, those very officers removed 43 guns and 1,536 knives from the subway system, the highest weapons seizure rates in the last decade,” according to an NYPD spokesperson.

Sounds great, but how many of these firearms and knives were confiscated from actual criminals versus the number taken from law-abiding citizens desperately clinging to any means of self-defense in the increasingly violent landscape? This brings me to my next evident observation. Criminals have a keen understanding that the government itself has removed a major deterrent to their evil plans when citizens are stripped of the means to defend themselves. Legislators have all but plowed the field giving the criminal element unfettered reign over the innocent. 

With violent crime increasing well above pre-pandemic levels, it’s disturbing that New Yorkers and visitors to the Big Apple must contemplate whether their next ride on the subway will be their last.

“You don’t know if you’re going to make it home… There’s a lot of mental illness and it’s painful to your heart that you don’t know who you come in contact with, if they’re going to push you in front of the train,” said Vickie Reeves, a 68-year-old retiree while braving a rare subway trip at Times Square station. 

Between 1997 and 2020, the number of subway murders in a single year never exceeded five, according to NYPD data. Adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Joseph Giacalone attributes the rise in murders to an increasingly fatigued police force and transit officers, exasperated by greater numbers of law enforcement personnel resigning or retiring. 

Jakeba Dockery and her daughter say they will no longer use the subway.

“I don’t do the MTA… Between the anger, the mentally ill, I can’t.”

Even more recently, on September 15th, an officer and two bystanders were wounded when police opened fire on a knife-wielding man just after 3 p.m. at Sutter Avenue station in Brownsville. While neither the police officer, two civilians nor the suspect were fatally wounded, the story highlights the lack of accountability that led to the incident.

“It started because somebody wanted to come to the transit system with a weapon, somebody who, as the mayor said, had a history of crime and a history of violence and even gun charges,” said MTA CEO, Janno Lieber.

I’m not sure if Mr. Lieber is entitled to half credit for being half right. Weapons, including knives and firearms, are carried every day by law-abiding citizens and their mere presence in any setting is never cause for danger or violence. In most cases, the presence of a firearm isn’t even apparent to those in the vicinity. People with no intent to harm others don’t just change their minds because they are armed. On the other hand, criminal acts of violence and murder do follow tangible patterns, as officials say the man, in this case, has been arrested more than 20 times and has a significant history of mental illness, causing me to wonder if blaming firearms is more of a deflection upon the failures of lawmakers, if there is a more nefarious disarmament agenda, or if it is a little bit of both.