He went from fighting crime to being troubled by crime.
A former federal prosecutor was punched in the face by a violent man while riding the Upper West Side subway. He said the attack shows that the crime-ridden Big Apple is “not a safe place.”
According to the victim and police, the 56-year-old lawyer was heading uptown on the “less busy” No. 2 train at 6:20 p.m. Wednesday when a crazed hanger yelled “Back the Fuck.” “Up!” she yelled and attacked him. Friday.
“He takes [his] “He balled his hand into a fist and punched him in the side of the face, knocking off his glasses,” said the lawyer, who asked that his name not be used out of concern for his safety.
“It was clearly a right hand, right fist blow to the face,” he said.
“My jaw hurts a little today too.”
A former prosecutor who sent gangsters and white-collar criminals to New York prisons for 12 years was so fed up with good old-fashioned subway violence that he never even stood near the man, he said.
“I was completely taken by surprise. It just happened so quickly,” he said.
“I said, ‘What the heck?’ I couldn’t even get close to you. ”
He got off the train at Broadway and West 72nd Street and called police, but his attacker was still at large Friday, said the former prosecutor, who now works for a private company.
He said the beating left him so frightened that he believed the city was unsafe.
“An event like this certainly gives the city a feeling that this is not a safe place. Is this the worst crime in the history of the world? No, I mean, I’m fine,” he said. .
“But it’s creating an overall sensation that this city isn’t that safe and that it’s not really being held accountable as well as law-abiding people and law enforcement.”
He added: “If a medium-sized crime goes unprosecuted, it will ultimately lead to greater chaos and larger-scale crimes.”
When asked about Governor Hochul’s plan to deploy the National Guard to the city’s subways, he said the idea is “ineffective.”
“I don’t know what the National Guard is going to do about people punching people in the face in subway cars. Unless they’re in a subway car, they’re not going to do anything,” he said.
“What we need is for police to be present in the subways and to respond quickly to situations like this.”
This raid is reminiscent of the “good old days” of subway crime in the 1970s and 80s. At the time, straphangers were afraid to ride the tracks at night, and Guardian Angle patrolled the underground.
Violence on the Big Apple’s subways has spiked significantly even before the pandemic, with the number of straphanger injuries jumping 53% from 2019 to 2023, according to data reported last month.
Additional reporting by Joe Marino
