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!
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!
