Man cut in half by PATH train in Manhattan

From the New York Post:

By Susan Edelman and David Meyer

ay 5, 2020 | 11:41am

A man wandering the PATH in Manhattan was sliced in half by an oncoming train early Tuesday, Port Authority officials said.

The victim, who had walked the tracks from 23rd Street, was attempting to find cover as the train approached the 33rd Street Station, an agency rep said.

A source said the body’s separate halves were left lying opposite one another in the northbound and southbound tracks.

It was not clear what the man was doing on the tracks.

https://nypost.com/2020/05/05/man-cut-in-half-by-path-train-in-nyc/

Comment:
What is clear is that the NYPD will never concede that this man was probably forced on to the tracks by murderous criminals.

Suggested question to be asked of NYPD officials: how many people have ever been arrested for walking on the tracks?

Twenty-three Thousand Surveillance Cameras Installed!

This is a repost from May1, 2016.

A report of a recent assault on a young woman in a Chicago train includes a statement by the Chicago Transit Authority that included the following paragraph.

CTA has more than 23,000 security cameras across all stations, buses and trains; it's one of the few system-wide networks in the nation and has proved to be an invaluable tool for police investigating crimes committed on or near CTA property. In fact, the cameras are a contributing factor behind the 25 percent decrease in crime reported across CTA properties in 2015 - the fourth straight year that crimes have decreased on the CTA.

Why doesn't the leadership of the NYPD demand that thousands of cameras be installed in the New York transit system?

Here's what I think: such cameras would record criminals killing victims in track homicides, jeopardizing the "no evidence of foul play" mantra automatically played by the NYPD when such violent deaths occur and there are no civilian witnesses. Cameras would make life difficult for the MTA's lawyers (it would be really hard to convince a jury that a murder victim was responsible for his own death) and I think keeping those lawyers happy is more important to NYPD's leadership than is protecting passengers from violent, even murderous, thugs.

Unbelievable Numbers

There seems to be no limit to the brazenness of the MTA and its loyal flunkies, the supervising officials of NYPD's Transit Division.

As published in MTA Annual Reports, statistics provided by the NYPD show the following yearly totals of murders in the subway during the ten-year period, 2009-2018:

                                                       2009         2
                                                       2010         2
                                                       2011         1
                                                       2012         2
                                                       2013         1
                                                       2014         2
                                                       2015         2
                                                       2016         2
                                                       2017         0
                                                       2018         1

That's a total of fifteen homicides in ten years.

But according to the MTA/NYPD a total of twenty-four individuals managed to kill themselves "accidentally" during just one of those years, 2012.

How do so many (mostly un-witnessed)  "accidents" happen?  Well, these are the straight-faced explanations of the NYPD and the MTA: some people go for walks on active subway tracks and some people, ignoring warning signs, walk from one car to another and, despite the well-designed safety chains in place, manage somehow to fall "accidentally" to the tracks.

Having spent thousands of hours in the subway, I give you my count of the number of times I saw a civilian on the tracks: zero.

Having crossed from one car to another on moving trains hundreds of times, I know it is not possible to fall to the tracks while doing that. The safety chains in place would prevent accidental falls. (The man who pushed a young woman to her death in 1982 had to disconnect the chains.)

I conclude that New York City police commanders' primary objective is to protect the MTA in the event they are sued for the "wrongful death" of the deceased. If the police reports blame the victim the MTA's lawyers' case is stronger.

Of course, placing the lawyers' narrow concerns ahead of the safety of passengers also helps the thugs who murder passengers by throwing them off trains or forcing them into tunnels. Perpetrators of such murders have no need to fear the NYPD.

NOTE: I suspect that the MTA/NYPD practice of promptly reporting to the media the occurrence of "accidental" rail deaths has been discontinued or sharply curtailed. If a de facto news blackout has indeed been imposed, it probably was in reaction to what has been published on this site.

Related posting: No Cameras?  No Problem!

Another Late Night Track Killing

A  man's body found on the tracks at 3:20 AM and this report from the Daily News does not even mention the possibility of homicide.

As for the theory that he accidentally fell while walking between cars, anyone who makes a perfunctory examination of the between cars area would conclude that such an accident is a physical impossibility.

But the MTA/NYPD once even classified a witnessed track homicide as "accident" so the public should expect the world's most corrupt police department to continue the practice.

Related postings:

Another track death at 4:30 AM

Guess When this "Accident" Happened

Three Deaths, Zero Videos