Thanks to the terrific data-crunching on display in the Daily News’ three-day series on subway crime, you can zero in on trends in lawlessness at the stations you frequent. Just go to http://ift.tt/1mhKICW to track violent crimes, drug crimes, sex crimes and more at any stop from mid-2008 to mid-2013 .
This newspaper is pleased to present it, stocked as it is with facts and figures that, by all rights, the NYPD and Metropolitan Transportation Authority should be making available in the ordinary course of this information era.
On the bright side, the numbers reflect a dramatic systemwide drop in crime, mirroring what’s happened aboveground as the city has taken control of its destiny over the past two decades.
From 2009 to 2012, crime totals underground have dropped 12% — a 16% drop when you factor in the 5% bump in ridership. And all this is a different world from the scary one New Yorkers came to know and fear in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.
Fortunately, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton — former chief of the city’s transit police, back in the early 1990s when they were a separate force — is not content to let it end there. He understands that the subway shapes New Yorkers’ and visitors’ perception of the city as much as any other landscape, and absolutely must get safer still.
That’s why he’s pressing to maintain order with crackdowns on fare-beating and aggressive panhandling, including by acrobatic dancers, while also joining with social service agencies to effectively help — and remove — the homeless. Good.
Next on the agenda: trains equipped with surveillance cameras and WiFi, and tablet-computer-carrying cops able to see what’s happening inside all 10 cars at a glance.
“One of my officers could actually be standing on a platform waiting for that train to come in,” Bratton told The News Editorial Board last week, “monitoring the cameras on that subway car to see . . . is there an issue that he wants to go and focus on.”
In a city increasingly blanketed by security cameras — including on city buses — it’s an obvious evolution, and one that would give millions of straphangers peace of mind.
In Bratton’s vision, this will come in the form of getting brand-new, next-generation cars swapping out the old, perhaps starting with the 300 cars on order for 2017.
The MTA, of course, needs to get onboard, and then hunt down the best ideas for the lowest price. But the push is welcome — to prevent everyday crimes and the unthinkable.
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via Great Local News: New York http://ift.tt/1iZiLP1
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