MAD TRANSIT
Subway attacks increase as another shoved on tracks
Rosa Galeas, 54, shows the bruises she suffered after being randomly shoved onto the subway tracks Tuesday, the latest in a string of attacks on the transit system. Mayor de Blasio has denied there is a problem even as MTA and NYPD officials have raised the alarm.
The New York City transit system has seen a terrifying spate of attacks in the last seven days that includes subway slashings, a woman shoved to the tracks and a bus driver bashed in the face with a 2-by-4.
The NYPD revealed a previously unreported knifing on Tuesday, bringing the number of attacks to at least seven in the past week alone, police and sources said.
“I don’t ever remember it being this bad,” a retired transit supervisor said. “But I am not surprised considering the city is running amok and the politicians just keep putting their heads further in the sand or, in this case, the hole.
“The city is full of homeless and mentally ill people, but the city keeps throwing good money after bad but not helping or solving problems,” he added.
The surge in transit crime comes amid a lingering mentalhealth crisis in the city, which prompted interim transit boss Sarah Feinberg to ask Mayor de Blasio to allow social workers to be dispatched on 311 calls for incidents in the subway system.
“There is no doubt the city can better serve the vulnerable homeless and mentally ill population by connecting them with trained professionals, instead of forcing bystanders to call 911, which inevitably results in repetitive police action,” Feinberg wrote in a Jan. 5 letter to the mayor.
“The individuals are rejected from the system only to return the moment police leave.”
MTA statistics show an overall drop in felonies but an increase in burglaries and robberies plus six murders over the year — double the 2019 figure — despite a 70 percent drop in ridership during the coronavirus pandemic.
The year also saw a 62 percent plunge in total arrests in the transit system.
But the past week has seen a spike in violence.
One attack came above ground Tuesday morning, when the MTA bus driver was assaulted near 277 Remsen Ave. in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
The driver got into a dispute with a passenger who spit on him and ran off the bus.
The driver chased the suspect, who turned and smashed him with a 2-by-4, leaving him with a gash to the head that sent him to Kings County Hospital.
In a statement, the MTA called the incident “reprehensible and unacceptable.”
Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Tony Utano said in a statement that cops have to make protecting MTA workers a higher priority — there were 58
attacks against transit workers last year, while hundreds more were harassed or spat on, according to the MTA’s statistics.
“We have asked the NYPD chief
of patrol to form a special unit to focus only on bus routes and reducing the horrific assaults taking place against bus operators instead of leaving it up to individual precincts,” Utano said. “We need a uniformed presence on buses.”
But most of the latest attacks have taken place on the rails.
The Big Apple’s latest subway shove took place about two hours earlier, when a 54-year-old Bronx woman was pushed onto the elevated tracks at the 174th Street/ Southern Boulevard station in an unprovoked attack.
The victim was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where she was treated and released.
Meanwhile, police have reported five subway slashings in the past week, including a Sundaynight attack that left a 28-year-old man with a laceration to the face.
The victim got into a dispute with another man aboard a D train at the West 4th Street/Washington Square station in Greenwich Village.
In the newly revealed assault, a 33-year-old man’s hands were slashed by a stranger who had made inappropriate comments to the victim’s friend Sunday morning at the Sutphin Boulevard/ Archer Avenue station in Jamaica, Queens.
On Saturday morning, a 30-yearold Brooklyn straphanger was stabbed in the face on a J train at the Kosciuszko Street station.
And on Wednesday, two straphangers were attacked in separate attacks.
One victim, 22, was slashed in the face after telling another passenger aboard a 6 train to turn down his music at Grand Central Station, and a 61-year-old straphanger was slashed in the face earlier in the day after a dispute on an L-train platform at 14th Street/1st Avenue.
“My mom is really, really scared,” a veteran cop told The Post. “She drives into work at Rikers Island every day because she’s scared to death to get on the subway.
“She says she’s afraid of being pushed on the tracks,” he said. “She’s scared for her life.”