Updated "NYPD says 'No criminality is suspected' "

For those who think my estimate of "hundreds" of hidden homicides in the years since the nearly-successful attempt to blame Tanya Middleton for her own subway murder is too high—or who think the "bad old days" of subway crime are long past—I invite them to ponder the reported track deaths for the year 2012.

For a number of reasons the media's reporting of "death-by-train" incidents is sketchy. If the New York papers and other traditional media are told foul play is not suspected, they will probably ignore it, and, based on the following summary and my reading of scores of other reports, I am convinced that NYPD officials responsible for transit matters never officially suspect foul play in any unwitnessed track death. 

Why Do So Many "Accidents" Occur When There are So Few Riders?

According to NYPD officials, people who ride the New York subway after midnight have some very strange habits. With remarkable frequency, they place themselves in great danger when there are no other passengers available to verify their fatal carelessness.

None of the underlying reports mention any civilian witnesses to the violent deaths listed below.

We know that since New York City has the world's most un-surveilled mass transit system that they were not recorded by any camera.

So we are left with a simple choice: do we believe the NYPD/MTA claims that every one of these individuals was entirely responsible for his own violent deaths?

Or have we learned that when it comes to unwitnessed violent deaths in the subway the NYPD has one mission: protect the MTA, even if it means allowing vicious killers to go unpunished?  

• Another Late Night "Accident" 1:00 a.m.
• Teen found dead on Bronx train tracks at 2:30 a.m.
• Two track walkers killed by trains at 5:00 a.m.
• Another Track Death at 4:30 a.m.
• The victim was hit by the F train just after the Parsons Blvd. train station at 2:09 a.m. in Jamaica, officials said.
• A 24-year-old man was killed after hitting his head while “surfing,” possibly atop a train rumbling through Brooklyn  ... about 2:30 a.m., police said.
• The victim was on the tracks when he was smashed by an elevated southbound 6 train ... at 2:43 a.m., according to officials.
• A man laying on the tracks ... was hit by a northbound train about 4:30 a.m. ... a NYPD spokesman said.
• ... another "accidental" death of a person who was "walking" on the tracks ... at 4:15 a.m..
• A 58-year-old man walking along the tracks in a Queens train station was struck and killed by an oncoming train early Saturday ... about 3:10 a.m., officials said.
• ... unidentified man, in his 20s, was found dead at the 79th St. station ...his lower body seen dangling beneath the elevated subway line — about 4:50 a.m., officials said."
• Man dies after jumping in front of train at 5:00 am, police say.
•  ... unidentified commuter was at the Third Ave. station near E. 14th St. at about 4:45 a.m. when the train rammed into him.
•  ... the victim was walking on the train tracks when he was struck by a southbound 6 train about 5:49 a.m
• ... the man, whose age was not known, was hit by a southbound 1 train at the 72nd Street station just before 2:40 a.m.
•   ... the unidentified, 24-year-old man was hit by a Manhattan-bound N train ... just before 5:30 a.m.,
•   ... the man, who was not immediately identified, was hit by a Manhattan-bound 7 train ... at 3:15 a.m., police said.
• ... the victim, whose identity has not been released, was struck in the station ... at about 5:30 am.
•  ... unidentified man apparently jumped into the path of a southbound train at the 137th Street - City College subway station just after 5 a.m., the MTA said. [emphasis added]`
  
  
  
  
  

No Cameras? No Problem!

In December 2012 a woman pushed a man to his death. He had been waiting for a train on a Queens elevated subway platform. This was not a cowardly unwitnessed late night attack by criminals—it was not a hidden homicide—but the act of an irrational person who was seen muttering to herself before she pushed her victim in front of an incoming train. 

The crazed woman quickly fled the station but police—thanks to a recording made on a surveillance camera—soon had a complete description. She was quickly apprehended and charged.

But that camera was not on the subway platform. It was in a retail store window on Queens Boulevard. 

Yes, riders on the world's largest transit system, who are supposedly protected by America's largest metropolitan police force, can only hope that their attacker leaves the subway and runs past a Chinese restaurant (or a nail salon or a pawn shop) that just happens to have a camera pointing toward the sidewalk. If not, the criminal will go free. 

The lack of cameras in the subway has been noticed by The New York Times and the Daily News. Reporter Pete Donohue wrote in the News that in a certain high-crime area in Queens,