New York tries to stop violence in the subway with the militarization of the network

Almost three million people use the subway in New York every day, a gigantic network with more than 470 stations and trains totaling 6,500 cars. Open day and night (it only closed at dawn during the pandemic, for disinfection), the numbers are typical of a city with more than eight million inhabitants. The number of incidents that occur is limited compared to their size, but the seriousness, if not the spectacular nature, of some of the cases calls into question the safety of the system: sporadic shootings inside a carriage or passengers thrown onto the tracks, randomly, by people with untreated mental disorders.

The New York suburb is under scrutiny today: the authorities trust that a deployment of police and military, like the one recently approved, will contribute to improving citizens' perception of security, but some of the events are easier to prevent than others, as random as a push, whose unpredictability escapes any surveillance system. In addition to the aforementioned deployment of uniformed personnel, the transportation authority is considering installing metal detector arches, already being tested, to prevent the introduction of weapons. Also place sliding doors on the platforms, which open only when the train has arrived at the station, but the measure would only be feasible in 27% of the stations and would cost about 7,000 million dollars. The city is risking the tranquility of its neighbors, but also its reputation among the 60 million tourists who visit it each year.

“I cross all of Manhattan on my way home, often in the early morning, depending on what shift I have,” explains Morris, a 28-year-old nurse. “I have seen everything on the trains: from a near-fatal fentanyl overdose to a melee with knives and several injuries; many angry people, and many, many homeless people who do not receive the psychiatric treatment they need and who can suffer a sudden outbreak.” Like the 24-year-old who two weeks ago pushed a 54-year-old man onto the track as the train entered the station, the umpteenth death in the last two years. “I didn't do it before, but now on the platform I always stay away from the edge of the track until the train arrives; I try to stick to the wall because it's true that I feel afraid, and I'm not the only one,” confesses Morris, who claims not to be apprehensive.

The only experience that Morris has not had—for the moment—is witnessing a shooting in a train car like the one that left one dead a month ago, in an apparent case of self-defense on the part of the gunman; in fact, the police declined to press charges against him. The video of the episode went viral and turned the New York subway, once again, into a transcript of a violent film. Or conversely, as if real life imitated bad scriptwriters.

A recurring theme, two are the main factors that have turned the New York subway into something similar to the Wild West: the large volume of homeless people with mental problems who survive poorly in its facilities and the upward trend in the number of weapons permits that New Yorkers have requested since a Supreme Court ruling in 2022 liberalized the state's strict laws. Last year, the NYPD's licensing division received 13,369 applications to have a pistol or rifle at home, 80% more than those received in 2022 and almost triple the number in 2019.

Militarize the suburban

But neither militarizing the suburban, with measures such as the recent deployment of 750 members of the National Guard, nor admitting homeless people with mental disorders against their will, a controversial initiative by the mayor at the end of 2022, seem to have had an effect for the moment. “I was more afraid of walking past armed soldiers than of the possibility of a shooting,” explains graphic designer Anne Delmare in the hallways of Times Square, the station. zero of the network. She was not the only one who experienced with concern the incorporation of the National Guard into the surveillance work already carried out by thousands of local police officers, and the avalanche of criticism led the state governor, also a Democrat, Kathy Hochul, to limit the equipment of the military, who since the beginning of March have not been allowed to search travelers' bags and backpacks – one of their tasks – with long weapons. “I wasn't that lucky, when they searched me, who always carries several bags and backpacks with material, they were armed and it was scary to approach them,” Delmare laments.

Regarding the other maximum measure, the forced admission of homeless people with serious mental disorders into specialized institutions, mental health services insist on making it difficult. To cite just one example, the person responsible for the last fatal push, accused of murder, had spent periods in specialized shelters for this case, but had not received treatment for months. The city has 38 centers of this type, with about 5,500 beds and a budget of 260 million dollars annually, in theory enough for the census official of 2022, of more than 3,700 homeless people with some type of diagnosis, out of a total of 63,000 according to the count, also official, for that year.

The real census can multiply those figures. Furthermore, any of the proposed initiatives incur, in the opinion of activists and NGOs, a clear criminalization of the homeless and, even worse, of the mentally ill, who generally present much more possibilities of harming themselves than others. . If we add to the context the migratory crisis that the city has been experiencing for two years, the fight to get a bed, psychiatric or not, is already fierce. Another item, according to an analysis of admissions to specialized units, patients only received sporadic treatment, while violence and disorder in the centers was the usual trend. The rate of suicide attempts among them was also very high.

Private hospitals, meanwhile, have cut psychiatric beds to improve their bottom line and public hospitals are overwhelmed by almost 50,000 psychiatric patients a year. In 2021, the New York subway reached a peak in the number of violent incidents, with eight murders in 12 months. 2022 was not more merciful, with another deadly push to the roads that grabbed the headlines (the impact of some events exponentially multiplies the feeling of danger). Last January alone, suburban violence increased by 47% year-on-year.

New York's initiatives, a succession of trials and errors, are being looked at with a magnifying glass, and with interest, in other US cities. The transportation unions of Chicago and Philadelphia have requested the deployment of the National Guard in their problematic systems, a measure rejected by local legislators. The theatrical or at least spectacular use of soldiers and soldiers, as if they were extras in a blockbuster, has not stopped crime so far.

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