Pols press MTA for lifetime bans
The MTA can — and should — bar incorrigible perverts from the subways for life, lawmakers and officials said Monday, despite the transit agency’s claims that it is beholden to prosecutors when it comes to bans.
“Recidivist transit sexual offenders use the trains and buses as their hunting ground, assaulting, abusing and terrorizing other riders,” said Councilman Chaim Deutsch (D-Brooklyn), who is on the Transportation Committee.
“Allowing them onto mass transit is tantamount to welcoming a pedophile into a school. They should absolutely be subjected to a lifetime ban from mass transit.”
NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill also weighed in Monday, a day after The Post revealed cops’ struggle to keep up with the subway’s dirty-dozen sex-crime recidivists, including serial public masturbators James Hunt, Ramon Vega and Roberto Rodriguez.
“Riders have the right to use the subway in safety, free from fear, injury or harassment,” he said. “Crime on the trains is down significantly, but there is a small group of recidivist offenders driving sex crimes in the subway, and they are repeating these disgusting crimes over and over again.”
He added, “If arrests and the current judicial penalties are not deterring this behavior, we have an obligation to New Yorkers to use stronger methods to stop these offenses.
“Exclusion for these serial sex offenders must be [on] the table.”
It’s an option NYPD insiders say they have been imploring the MTA to enact for years, only to have their pleas fall on deaf ears.
“As far as banning people, it’s really the MTA not pushing that,” a former police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The MTA could slap sicko straphangers with a “trespass notice” prohibiting them from even setting foot on its property under penalty of prosecution, similar to orders retail stores use to ward off shoplifters, sources said.
If they refuse to comply, they could be charged with trespassing for just entering the subway system, or burglary if they commit a crime once they have been put on notice to stay away.
But an MTA source said that the agency has no legal authority to ban people and that the restriction would require action by the criminal-justice system.
The former police official said the NYPD had tried for years, “through a couple different MTA presidents,” to prod the transit agency into exercising its authority to institute lifetime bans.
“Every new one [president] that came said, ‘We’re going to look into this,’ ” the ex-official said. “It always dries up in a legal hole.”
Lawmakers at both the city and state levels insisted permanent bans shouldn’t be discounted.
“Sexual misconduct has a price, and in this case, it should be the cost of finding an alternate way to travel,” Deutsch said in supporting lifetime bans for pervs who just won’t stay away.
“The most effective solution here is a combination of removing these offenders from their favored targets, increasing penalties as a deterrent and affording them treatment options.”
Mayor de Blasio said a permanent ban for the worst offenders is worth considering, even as City Hall anticipated roadblocks.
“There would be a lot of enforcement issues to work through and likely some collateral consequences,” mayoral spokesman Eric Phillips said, adding the administration is willing to look at the option.
State Sen. Diane Savino (D-SI, Brooklyn) said she would renew a push for legislation to raise the severity of many sex crimes from misdemeanors to felonies.
While she backs lifetime bans “depending on the severity of the crime,” Savino noted that if transit pervs’ crimes were felonies, people “wouldn’t have to worry about them riding the subway because they would most likely be in jail.”