Is Big Apple returning to the dark days of the Seventies?
MICHELLE GO almost certainly never saw or heard her killer as he rushed her from behind in the bustling New York subway, sending her sprawling from the platform into the path of an oncoming train.
The 40-year-old broker, a rising star at Wall Street giant Deloitte, died instantly at 9.40am on January 15 in Times Square-42nd Street station. Her murderer, a 61-year-old homeless man with a long criminal record and a history of mental illness, is awaiting trial.
Less than a month later a 43-year-old man and 44-year-old woman were stabbed to death by a masked assailant, and two others were left seriously wounded, in a series of random knife attacks on subway trains in Manhattan and Queens.a suspect is in custody.
Police are, however, still hunting the thug who slashed the face of 61-year-old administrative assistant Noel Quintana ear to ear with a box-cutter knife in the middle of a crowded train car as it pulled out of Jefferson Street station, Brooklyn.
Following the unprovoked attack, Quintana recalls “noticing people around me, who were gasping and cringing and covering their faces. I put my hand on my face and it was full of blood. I asked for help, but nobody helped. Nobody moved.”
Such incidents might sound like scenes from a horror film, but to more than three million New Yorkers they are terrifying snapshots of everyday life on the city’s famous subway system.
Last week’s mass shooting on a subway train, which saw 23 injured, shocked the world.
Frank James, 62, has been arrested and charged with hurling smoke grenades into the train before opening fire.
But although extreme it was far from an isolated incident.
Many now fear a return to New York’s dark days of the 1970s, when crime was so rampant it sparked an exodus of inhabitants to safer cities. A poll by Quinnipiac University found less than half the city’s residents feel safe using the subway in daytime, compared to 76 per cent six years ago. New figures also reveal a shocking 68 per cent increase in crime on the famous old underground network.
This was before last week’s horrifying rush hour attack in which a maniac with smoke grenades and a 9mm Glock semi-automatic unleashed terror and bloodshed on a Brooklyn train, leaving 10 wounded and 19 others injured.
The latest transit crime figures also show felony assaults are up 27.7 per cent and arrests have risen 53.7 per cent – despite huge cuts to the New York Police Department’s budget.
These statistics are mirrored by a city-wide crime wave that has seen a 105 per cent rise in car thefts, a 56 per cent rise in robberies, a 22 per cent spike in assaults and a 35 per cent increase in rapes.
The alarming figures come as the city prepares for its biggest influx of tourists since Covid, with millions worldwide expected to visit the Big Apple and other US cities.
They are likely to arrive in a city whose own inhabitants are increasingly afraid even to commute to work. “It’s getting scarier every day,” said 39-year-old Taina Arroyo, who travels to Manhattan every day via subway from her home near the Brooklyn Bridge.
“I have pepper spray on me at all times now,” she added, “and I also have a self-defence kit. But I’m still terrified to travel.” Fellow com
‘Nobody helped ...nobody moved’
muter Ollie Forest, 22, said: “You definitely want to see more cops on the subway, first and foremost.”
Just last month, French tourist Pierrick Jamaux, 33, was shot five times in the legs and groin by a robber who attacked him outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel in an effort to steal the designer Swiss watch he was wearing.
“Such violence is no longer unusual in New York – it is the norm,” believes Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute independent think tank.
He adds: “Tuesday’s attempted massacre was, in more ways than one, a perfect example of how far this city has slipped over the past two years.
“The only surprise is a shooting like that didn’t happen sooner.
“Let it be a wake-up call to New York’s leaders about how far conditions in the city have deteriorated.
“Though this shooting caught all the headlines, the dozens that don’t still take lives that matter. For them a safer city is needed now.”
With 322 city-wide shootings up to April 10 this year – a 70 per cent increase on the same quarterly period two years ago – new Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain who took office in January, has pledged to take a “tougher approach” to reduce crime.
After last week’s attack – astonishingly, the 131st mass shooting in the US so far this year – Mayor Adams admitted: “What we’re facing is a problem that is hitting our entire nation right now. We need a national response to this issue.”
In other, predominantly Democratic-led cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia that have seen law enforcement budgets slashed under “Defund the Police” policies, senior lawmen are echoing his demand while trying to contain equally deadly crime waves.
In LA alone, 397 homicides were recorded last year – the most in more than a decade and a 50 per cent increase from 2019.
And robberies and car-jackings are now so common that wealthy inhabitants are urged not to drive expensive vehicles or wear their finest jewellery on nights out.
Back in New York, newly-elected Democratic state Governor Kathy Hochul declared: “We say no more. No more mass shootings. No more disrupting lives and no more creating heartbreak for people just trying to live their lives as normal.”
‘I have pepper spray on me at all times now... but I’m still terrified to travel’ COMMUTER TAINA ARROYO