My family and I spent the holidays with my brother in Connecticut and on Dec 22 we all went into Manhattan so the kids could see a show with their aunt while my wife and I had a nice lunch. On the way back from lunch on the F train we were stopped mid-tunnel. We first spent 20 minutes between platforms and then advanced to the 34th Street/Herald Square station where we spent another 20 minutes. It was extremely uncomfortable because the subway car was absolutely packed and was getting increasingly hot inside. At the 34th St platform we could see people walking past us, but the doors were not opening. Finally we got an announcement from the conductor that there was a technical malfunction with the doors and that they would be opened car by car to release us to the platform.
We could see uniformed police officers all over the platform, and after some time a team of three officers entered our car through the communicating door from the previous car and walked all the way through to the next car. No explanation, but it seemed that they were looking for something. The doors were still not open. A couple of minutes after they left our car I saw a light-colored blur sprinting down the platform followed by several dark colored blurs. It turns out that the malfunction story was a cover and in fact we were in the middle of this:
They caught the guy immediately after I saw the people sprinting down the platform and then released everyone from the train.
It was a bit of excitement that ended well for everyone (well, not everyone). But later on I got to wondering, was NYPD’s approach safe? I understand them not wanting to tell the passengers what was going on, but leaving us trapped in a packed train with a suspected murderer could have ended very badly. It turned out that he had only the cigarette lighter, but he well could have been armed with a gun, knife, or bomb. And after 40 minutes he must have known something was happening.
I have followed the news a bit since then and didn’t see any criticism of NYPD’s tactics, but in hindsight they do seem very risky to me. What do you think?
Onj the one hand, if there is an active shooter or whatever, you don’t want hundreds of possibly panicked passengers runnign around on the platform, causing confusion.
On the other, I have never ever believed the police care one whit about average citizens. More than one police procedural show has “the mayor” asking the police to clean up the crime scene and open the trains, and they are portrayed to the audience as being clueless political hack getting in the way.
So if they keep you all cooped up in the car for hours, they don’t care.
We had a fatal traffic accident about 8 in the morning nerby, and the very wide, very busy street was closed well past 4 pm when I was trying to use it to go home. How slow ARE these crime scene people?
I am not sure it would necessarily cause panic on the platform, not any more than the panic it could have started in the car (imagine the stampede of 200 people in a packed car with no where to go).
I don’t see why the cops didn’t just stake out all the doors to the train and cover the exits from the station. They already knew exactly what the guy looked like. In fact, since the kids called in the sighting, they probably had a pretty good idea of where he was in the train.
They caught a vicious psycho and no one was even injured in the process. Kudos NYPD!! In terms of “might have gotten hurt”, I say that, had he escaped, he would have murdered more people until he was caught or killed. No “might” about that in my mind.
The NFL has something called an “Expedited Review”. When a play is very obvious, they don’t go through the entire lengthy, boring, channel changing process. They simply radio down to the refs immediately and bypass the bullshit.
I believe that we need a legal form of an “Expedited Review” for cases like this. Many witnesses saw him attack this innocent woman and burn her to death. He should be arrested, tried, and executed within 30 days. Maybe they can use the money they normally waste on the victim’s family that is horribly scarred for a lifetime.
how many doors are on the train, how many cops would that take at 2 or 3 per door?
how long would it take to get that many cops to the train location?
how big a rush of exiting people would have pushed thru those doors, and how likely is it that the suspect would be spotted in that rush?
how likely is it that this suspect would have moved to a different car from their “pretty good idea of where he was”?
How many other crimes would have happened meanwhile, with all the cops pulled from local streets to do this?
Seems to me that they are the experts on this, and our leisurely 20-20 hindsight pondering should consider that. The result (suspect captured, nobody killed, nobody injured) seems to confirm their judgement.
In 2012 I was in Times Square, just about to head down 42nd street to the subway and saw a lot of blue (NYPD) running downtown and being pursued by tourists with their cellphones out for video at least as far down as 38th street. Before I reached the subway stairs, lots of gunfire echoing around. I hadn’t seen the guy with the knife yet (as I read later) it was one of those “drop your weapon” scenarios and he was not following orders and threatening them so down he went. The police performed their duty well.
I have been thinking about this a bit more and I think that NYPD did a good job.
When the suspect was reported to them, the train was probably moving, and they couldn’t take a chance that he might get off at the next stop before they were in place. So they had to stop the train. The 40 minutes was probably the time they needed to get everyone in place at the 34th St station. (there were many dozens of cops there) Regardless of whether they tried to catch him on the train or waited for him on the platform, the long wait was unavoidable. And I do see the point of several posters that there would be risk either way, either to those on the train, or to those on the platform. And to grab him on the train had lower probability of him somehow eluding them.
It could have turned out badly if he was armed and panicked, but that risk was there regardless of what NYPD did. And they did ultimately get their man.
Just to add, I am impressed by how well the body cams worked and how effective CrimeStoppers was.
Some years ago I was on BART in East Bay. The train stopped at a station and, being SRO, there was a couple standing by the doors. Just as the doors started to close a young man darted to the woman, snatched her purse off her shoulder, and out the door. He went up the stairs pursued by the man and several other passengers while the woman rubbed her shoulder.
The doors opened again, several minutes later the other passengers reboarded and announced, “Got 'im!” and the car cheered. Another couple minutes the cops came, the woman accompanied them, and we finally departed.
same with our train. Once the cops tackled the guy and they opened the train doors, the same people who were desperate to get out of the train for 40 minutes took two steps out of the car, whipped out their phones and started filming the arrest, blocking the exit of everyone else…
I can’t help but think when this kind of thing happens the police actions are guided more by not wanting witnesses with smart phones, rather than any desire to keep the public safe or protect crime scenes.
Possibly that’s a bit cynical but I did use to regularly travel on BART trains through Fruitvale station.