Subway Crime Rate Rises by 14%
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Crime in the New York City subways escalated in 2005, increasing by 14% over the first two months of last year, according to police statistics. By the time 2004 was over, reported major crimes on the subways had risen for the first time in six years.
Police recorded 568 major felonies in the subway system through February 27.
Reports in five of the six categories of major crime rose.
Last month German Cabrera, 26, was shot in the chest and killed on the platform at the 18th Street station in Chelsea. His was the second murder in as many months, compared to three homicides in all of 2004, police statistics show. A shuttered roll down gate thwarted initial attempts by police to help Cabrera.
Recent days have proven particularly violent for transit workers. Last week, a group of youths slashed a subway supervisor, Charlene McDaniels, 43, with a razor on the no. 2 train at Nevins Street in Brooklyn when she asked one of the young men to stop smoking, police said. Ms. McDaniels required 30 stitches on her face but returned to work yesterday.
Around 9:30 Saturday night, a token booth clerk, whose identity police did not disclose, was robbed of $1,000 by a man wielding an ice-pick as she was leaving her part-time booth at Pelham Parkway on the no. 5 line.
The assaults have heightened fears over plans to remove clerks from token booths and reassign them to roam the subway platform. More than 115 of the 725 manned ticket booths on the subway have been closed since 2003. A further 164 face closure this year, leaving almost one-third of the token booths unmanned.
The deterrent value of the clerks will depend on their presence on the platform, a professor emeritus of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Eli Silverman, said.
“The point is they have to be visible, that would be the key,” Mr. Silverman said.
At the time of the Cabrera murder, the chief of transportation at the Police Department, Michael Scagnelli, said he favored token booth clerks’ roaming the platforms, rather than sitting in their booth, since more crime takes place on the platforms. He said the decision to close the booths would not affect the ability of police to keep the subway safe.
