Nine people have been pushed onto the subway tracks this year.
Including an 83-year old Air Force veteran, who was pushed last month at the Lexington and 63rd St. station — just 10 blocks from here — and died from his injuries last week.
I used to live in this neighborhood and take my kids on that train. They were in love with the subway when they were younger. Like many kids in New York, they read the book “Subway” by Christoph Niemann. They had every train and every stop memorized. On weekends, we would take the train just to take the train.
Now, I worry about taking them on the train. On our recent trips we have encountered people who are violently threatening other riders, experiencing a mental health episode, or otherwise acting in a manner that makes entire subway cars unusable for New Yorkers.
Anyone who has ridden the subway in the last 5 years has seen the deterioration of safety. Assaults, robberies, and drug trafficking are far too common.
This should not be happening in New York.
It is not fair to the millions of hardworking New Yorkers who take mass transit. For many, mass transit is not optional — it is how they get to work, go to school, and care for their families. Many cannot afford a car, especially with rising costs like congestion pricing and parking fees, and cannot afford to live close to where they work. The proposal we are making today is about protecting hardworking, law-abiding New Yorkers.
If we’re going to ask New Yorkers to use mass transit, we have to make it safe.
The right Attorney General can do that. With two simple measures:
First, we need to prosecute transit crimes to the fullest extent of the law. We need a zero tolerance policy for charging these crimes, and limitations on charge bargaining and plea bargaining. As Attorney General, I will create a Transit Crimes Strike Force made up of criminal prosecutors to prosecute the offenses that the DAs are not prosecuting.
This approach is informed by my experience as a terrorism prosecutor. In a terrorism case, unlike a murder case, if someone has died, then we’ve already failed. We look at crime through the lens prevention. And prosecuting crimes like fare evasion, even though it may seem minor, is critical to preventing major crimes. Think about it: the people pushing others on the tracks, stealing from passengers, doing drugs on trains, they’re not paying the fare. We should be stopping them at the gates, and doing so will remove them from the trains. What is more, when criminals know that they will be checked at the turnstyles, that they will be arrested and patted down when they try to get in without paying the fare, they stay away — anyone with an outstanding warrant, or who is carrying weapons or drugs, won’t come in. Stopping them at the gates is how you make the system safe.
Second, we need to kick people out of the subway system that don’t belong there. Repeat and violent offenders should be banned from the subway, period. If you get into a fight at Yankee Stadium, you get thrown out and banned for a year. If you break the traffic rules too many times or in serious ways, you lose your driver’s license. The subway should be no different. People who won’t or can’t follow the rules of the rails shouldn’t be allowed to ride at all. As Attorney General, I will work with the head of the MTA to issue trespass notices to ban repeat and violent offenders from the subway.
Robust prosecution, and revocation of riding privileges, on their own will go a long way to solve the problems in the subway, and make the subway, the buses, and all mass transit systems in the state safer, to prevent crimes from happening in the first place.
When transit crimes do happen, it is imperative that the criminals face swift and serious punishment. To this end, I am calling for legislation to impose stronger penalties for offenses committed on public transit.
First, we need penalty enhancements for specific crimes committed in mass transit systems, including assault, robbery, weapons possession, and drug trafficking. When someone assaults a transit worker, there is an enhancement for that, it is automatically treated as a felony, not a misdemeanor. The same should be true of an assault on anyone in the transit system. We are all trapped in there, and we should all be afforded the same protections. Treating a punch or a push or a shove in the subway as a felony also ensures that the offender can be detained pretrial, and that the judge is not required to release the offender under our bail laws.
Second, murder in a mass transit system should be treated as murder in the first degree, so that the murderer will face life without parole.
Third, we need a new felony offense for Reckless Endangerment on Public Transportation. Pushing someone onto the train tracks, on its own, should be a 25-life offense.
I am honored to stand alongside leaders in our state assembly and senate, Assembly Minority Leader Ed Ra, State Senator Steve Chan, Assemblyman Michael Novakhov, and Assemblyman Lester Chang, who take transit crime as seriously as I do and support these measures.
New Yorkers should not have to feel anxious and afraid just getting on the subway. They should not feel trapped in an unsafe system. The lawlessness on the subways is entirely preventable and can be stopped. Let’s put an end to it.