Simon Balto, in The Guardian, points out what should be obvious. The New York City Police Department is one of the largest in the world. (Okay, it's also a big city.) The Metropolitan Transit Authority employes its own police force of 3,500 officers who heavily patrol the subway system. But they couldn't stop a 62 year old man with a bad back from setting off smoke bombs and shooting up a subway car, and then disappearing for more than 24 hours, until he apparently called the police to tell them where he was.
Mayor Adams responded by pledging to double the size of the MTA police force, which, according to Balto's analysis, would eventually cost more than $700 million a year. This is insane. Quoth Balto:
When we are told that police organizations like the MTA’s force exist to “keep us safe”, what are we to make of the fact that they quite clearly cannot or do not in moments of legitimate crisis, but that, as evidence suggests, they primarily engage in punishing low-income people of color for fare evasion? . . .
The amount of money we spend on police has no demonstrably measurable positive impact on “public safety”. Exactly none. And yet we are expected to believe that propositions like that of Eric Adams – to double the number of transit police in New York City in the face of Tuesday’s incident – will magically change that pattern. When the city that spends more on its police than any other in this country not only cannot keep a person from shooting up a train station, but also cannot find him for more than a day and cannot do so without asking every living, breathing person with a cell phone to help them do so, we are asked to believe that the solution is to simply give more money over to the police.
Let's spend that money in ways that will make people safer.
And by the way, Frank James owned his weapon legally.
5 comments:
Like treating mentally ill people? That would be a double win, because people like Donald Shitler and Ron deSuckass could never become politicians -- but they would find decent institutionalization.
I think you're expectations are off. Police have no obligation to protect the public.
https://prospect.org/justice/police-have-no-duty-to-protect-the-public/
Even if the police had a legal duty to protect the public, they can't be everywhere. It would would have changed nothing.
Best advice is to protect yourself.
If the police have no duty to protect you, why in God's name is the government making so hard for you to protect yourself?
The NYC Subway has not been deemed mentally ill in any way.
He has, however, been characterized as a black nationalist and racist with internet posts calling for race segregation, admiration for Louis Farrakhan and a lot of hatred of white people.
So, how do you protect yourself from that?
Well Maud, I agree that the guy is obviously dangerous but the whole point is, the police failed to protect the public in this case. So throwing more money at them does not seem to be a solution.
Duck -- What do you mean? How is the government doing that?
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