Results tagged “streetg”

The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association says that police staffing had dropped 18% in recent years in the area where the Van Alst-21st Street G line stop is located, as the PBA tries to make the case that the subway platform rape could have been avoided. Police presence for the particular Long Island City transit district that serves this stop, plus its backup district, dropped from a total of 404 to 330 police officers on the beat. The issue of subway safety and police presence in the subways becomes a bigger issue as the L train will lose conductors on night and weekend rides, leaving only the engineer, in the coming weeks. The party line from NYC Transit, the division of the MTA that oversees subways and buses, is that customer safety is a primary focus for them. As Gothamist boarded a D train at Columbus Circle last night, the train car was completely empty except for a kind of crazy looking person - three mile stare and the whole nine yards... so when we hear about things like a fine for walking between subway cars or even locking subway cars, we get worried.

With more public outrage over the 2-3AM subway rape at a G train station in Long Island City, due to NYC Transit's rules that keep transit clerks inside token booths and the empty police booth in the station, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said there just aren't enough police officers to man every single subway station. Newsday pointed out that even though there are 32 police booths in various stations (think the Bedford L stop), "only 15 of the booths are staffed at any given time." Kelly explained:

We do rotate them, rotate officers covering those booths, just as we rotate coverage under our [Operation] Atlas program.We don't cover all of our Atlas posts. We cover them on a daily, irregular basis you might say. There is nothing unusual about the fact that a particular booth wasn't covered at a particular time. We'd like to have booths in every station to give us the option to put the personnel there, but we could never possibly have enough officers to have a booth at every station."

Well, of course not, but we hope that the MTA and NYC Transit are figuring out better safety measures! Which reminds Gothamist - Albany should cough up the money the MTA needs and the city should reevaluate giving money to the MTA - there's no way the MTA alone can figure out how to improve rider safety when it's struggling for average service. Police sources told Newsday that if the booth were manned, it's possible the attack could have been recorded on a closed-circuit monitor. Gothamist wonders if this incident will spur even more subway stations - and politicans to call for them - to be wired with video cameras.

As police investigate yesterday's morning subway platform rape at the 21st Street G stop in Long Island City, it turns out that a token booth clerk did see the suspect "pick up" the victim, but stayed in his token booth and pressed a panic button, which is standard procedure for NYC Transit workers. The NYC Transit spokesperson also added that a subway conductor saw the platform attack, but couldn't stop the train using emergency brakes because it would have injured passengers; the conductor did notify the Station Command Center. The NYC Transit said both workers acted "properly," and another transit source told the Daily News, "The clerk has no way of knowing if he's being set up." The Transit Workers Union said, "The clerk has no way of knowing if he's being set up," and stood behind the clerk staying in the booth, "Our agents are not police officer."

This morning, the local news stations reported that a woman was raped on a subway platform at the 21st Street G station in Hunters Point Queens. The woman had gotten off the train at around 3AM in the morning, when a man approached her. The G train skipped the Long Island City stop while the police investigated; the suspect is still at large.