MTA Chairman Janno Lieber introduced a pilot program of personal safety guards in subway stations to fight farebeating.
Daniel William McKnight
Clueless Kathy Hochul says she doesn’t know why crime “is so necessary.” However her man on the MTA understands — and he’s taking steps to get New York’s crime-wracked subway system again below management.
They’re child steps, to make certain. However that’s no reflection on Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Janno Lieber — who solutions to Hochul, who in flip trembles earlier than New York’s progressive anti-cop cult as Election Day approaches.
Lieber has employed personal safety guards to chop down on fare-beating, Only a few, in fact. And solely as a part of a low-key, ahem, “pilot program” — little question to camouflage Hochul from the police defunders she courts.
The idea is time-tested, if clichéd: Not all fare-beaters are criminals, however most criminals are fare-beaters: Goal them, as New York did within the ’90s, and the subways get safer. Stick with it, and so they keep protected.
Intuitive? To not Hochul. She controls the MTA, and if she received it a heavy hammer would have dropped months in the past.
Contemplate: Why ought to a $19-billion-plus company offering important service to tens of millions of New Yorkers — and which has its personal totally sworn police power — want unarmed rent-a-cops to guard its most valuable asset, the fare field?
To say nothing of its most valuable cargo — these hard-pressed and endangered straphangers?
The brief reply is that New York was shedding the need to make sure fundamental public security even earlier than COVID and the George Floyd rioting utilized the ending touches.
When then-Manhattan District Lawyer Cy Vance — a George Soros-style DA earlier than his time — introduced he now not would implement fare-beating legal guidelines, all bets had been off.
The rationale was clear: Criminals have a larger declare on the MTA than MetroCard customers and their tax-paying, transit-subsidizing cousins.
MTA income dropped sharply. Now the company estimates it’ll lose a half-billion dollars to turnstile jumpers this 12 months.
Additionally now, armed criminals — and the criminally deranged — roam the system just about at will. Property crime is down in comparison with pre-pandemic, however violent crime is manner up. There have been 9 murders thus far this 12 months, in comparison with six in 2021, underscoring a really disturbing development line.
This mirrors what’s occurring above floor as nicely — which, clearly, additionally displays New York’s ethical give up to its legal class.
A key distinction, nevertheless, is that subway crime is simpler to regulate as a result of entry factors to the system are simpler to regulate. The mental and operational architects of the town’s Nineteen Nineties revival — Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg and police commissioners like Ray Kelly and Invoice Bratton — proved this.
They knew a fare-beating bust permits officers to go looking suspects — usually leading to weapons prices — in addition to to run checks for excellent arrest warrants.
The consequence? Criminals depart their weapons at dwelling or keep away from the subways altogether.
Over time, all this was forgotten — and so right here we're, with crime nowhere close to early-’90s ranges, although rising sharply.
However Janno Lieber remembers — therefore his rent-a-cop scheme. It’s a half-measure, in fact, and more likely to final solely till the primary unarmed guard is stabbed.
Hochul, in the meantime, stands in wide-eyed marvel — telling Republican opponent Lee Zeldin throughout a debate this week “I don’t know why [crime is] so necessary to you.”
Nonetheless, she will really feel warmth, teaming with Mayor Adams to surge actual cops into the subways — an initiative sure to final no less than till in the future after Election Day.
And if Hochul wins, issues needs to be again to a free-for-all quickly sufficient. Pity the straphangers.
Electronic mail: bob@bobmcmanus.nyc
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