Transit employees and riders are always in concern of being assaulted by crazies on the subway.
Christopher Sadowski
New York has grow to be Dodge Metropolis, due to legal guidelines with out penalties and judges who follow revolving-door-justice.
Don’t consider me? Learn The Submit any day of the week and also you’ll discover tales about brazen daylight shootings, jewellery retailer smash-and-grabs, shameless shoplifting and tales of serial offenders wreaking mayhem throughout the 5 boroughs.
It’s notably private for me given my shut encounter with a homeless emotionally disturbed particular person on an 6 practice in The Bronx early this yr.
Readers could recall my spouse and I encountered a younger, matted and barefoot man standing over and threatening an older rider with a blade. The person, later recognized by police as Johnathan Gonzalez, threatened to chop the opposite passenger’s throat, dared anybody to cease him and ranted about getting “three squares a day” on Rikers.
I distracted him lengthy sufficient for the opposite man to get away. After getting off the practice on the Parkchester station, I known as 911 and NYPD cops caught as much as him a number of station stops later.
Subways in chaos
Gonzalez was arrested, despatched to an area hospital for analysis and later charged with menacing by The Bronx District Legal professional’s Workplace.
The case continues to be open. Gonzalez failed to point out up for his March courtroom date and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Since then, he has been arrested seven or eight instances on petit larceny shoplifting fees on the Higher East Aspect — but nonetheless isn’t being held.
Since shoplifting isn’t a bail-eligible crime, Gonzalez can’t be remanded. And for some purpose, Manhattan judges seem reluctant to carry him on the Bronx warrant — probably solely urging him to return to the Bronx courtroom.
It’s maddening. Gonzalez most definitely suffers from a psychological sickness. He’s clearly not getting the assistance he so clearly wants. But Manhattan judges consider that he’s able to making his courtroom dates.
The entire catch-and-release strategy to recidivist shoplifters in Manhattan is disheartening and undermines public confidence in our courtroom system.
I’m an inveterate subway rider. I refuse to be deterred from my every day commute as a result of we are able to’t cede floor to crime and dysfunction.
On a latest morning commute, I prevented a subway automobile the place a muttering, shoeless vagrant was seated within the nook. And within the automobile the place I settled down, I noticed a homeless man lined with a white bedsheet mendacity asleep throughout one of many practice automobile’s benches.
I seemed out of the automobile on the MTA subway cleaners earlier than realizing that there was little that they might do — or ought to do.
On the similar station final month, their co-worker Anthony Nelson was hospitalized with a damaged collarbone, dislocated nostril and different accidents after making an attempt to cease one other demented homeless serial arrestee (42 arrests eventually depend) from harassing straphangers.
That suspect, Alexander Wright, one in every of a number of revolving-door-justice poster boys, sits in Rikers awaiting trial for this newest assault. Nelson’s household and the Transport Employees Union have rallied round him in urging that his attacker be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the legislation.
In the meantime, the MTA is seeking to ask the courtroom to ban Wright from the subway system for 3 years. And people who assault transit employees and menace commuters want to know that legal conduct has penalties.
These individuals proven to undergo from extreme psychological sickness have to be held accountable and, from a humanitarian perspective, they want mental-health therapy in an applicable setting given their crimes.
The EDP scenario on the subway continues to be actual and harmful. I used to be lucky to not have suffered Mr. Nelson’s destiny.
The sample of “catch, launch, and repeat” for people like Johnathan Gonzalez places public security in danger and does nothing to offer them the mandatory care.
Mayor Adams positively doesn’t have the subway scenario below management. He wants Albany lawmakers and judges to cooperate together with his effort to make the transit system safer.
Former Assemblyman Michael Benjamin is a member of The Submit’s editorial board.
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