New York City cannot capitulate and allow the Big Apple to revert to the bad old days of subway crime, MTA Director Jano Lieber said Wednesday, killing innocent straphangers in recent violent underground raids. This was emphasized a few days after he was stabbed to death.
“This is a nightmare for New Yorkers,” Lieber said at a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board meeting in downtown Manhattan, adding to concerns about traffic crime.
“I grew up riding the trains in New York in a time when crime and subway breakdowns were more common. My children grew up in a different time on the subways. They traveled safely back and forth through the night. “We were able to do that,” the transportation manager continued.
“We’re not going back. We’re not going back!”
The MTA CEO’s comments were his first since Monday’s grisly subway attack in Harlem, saying the unstable man allegedly responsible had a long rap sheet and severe mental illness. This was done after it was revealed that he had a medical history.
Carlton McPherson, 24, of the Bronx, is charged with murder after allegedly pushing Jason Volz, 54, in front of a northbound Route 4 train at East 125th Street and Lexington Avenue station Monday night. It was done. This was revealed by the police and officials.
“We will not surrender our cities to anyone, not to criminals, not to people with severe mental health issues, even if we have to give them a lot of weight,” Lieber said at a transportation board meeting. Even if I feel some sympathy for him,” he said.
“For millions of New Yorkers, public transportation is the only option and they need to live their lives,” Lieber said. “There is no New York for them without mass transit.”
The deadly attack comes amid a recent spike in violent crime within the city’s subway system, including a high-profile shooting on a crowded Brooklyn train earlier this month.
The number of felonies in the sprawling underground transportation system jumped 53% last year compared to before the pandemic, to 570 in 2023 compared to 373 in 2019, according to the latest data from the New York City Police Department. .
It wasn’t immediately clear what was behind this alarming spike, but many recent cases are partly related to mental illness.
Of the roughly 40 perpetrators arrested last year for attacking MTA workers in the underground system, half had a history of mental illness, a recent Post investigation found.
Of the 38 people charged with 41 separate assaults on transport workers, 20 had documented mental health problems in at least five arrests, according to documents obtained by the newspaper.
At Wednesday’s transportation meeting, the MTA touted the success of a new team charged with intervening to help mentally ill New Yorkers get the help they need when they experience a breakdown at a station.
Officials say the teams have rescued 90 people from transit in the past three months, roughly one person a day.
Mental health workers are tasked with accompanying removed individuals until they are admitted to hospital for stabilization or taken to an on-site mental health service’s shelter to prevent them from returning to the streets.
Gov. Cathy Hochul last month pledged to give the MTA $20 million to expand the program from two teams to 10 teams as part of a crime prevention plan to combat traffic crime.
