New York’s deployment of the National Guard on public transit is ludicrous and dystopian.
Yeah in London this led to the death of a guy whose only crime was being a nerd. Because of trigger-happy soldiers :(
What was this? All I can find is the 2005 killing of an innocent man after the subway bombings.
It was this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes . Probably the one you mentioned.
Apparently he had some wires in his bag. He was an electronics geek, and he also looked similar to one of the terrorists apparently. Still, no reason to shoot him like they did of course.
I’ve never felt unsafe on the subway. Sure, I’m always looking around to be aware of my surroundings, but the only thing I see is people just trying to live, get from A to B, entertain, (have unexpected bodily functions), argue, and actually be good to each other. It’s actions like you would find in any other major city, but NYC has such density that people generally live and let live. The article is absolutely spot on and reinforced my experiences that perception is driving this frivolous law enforcement spending, not statistics.
This is weird. I think my local transit needs some kind of police protection on actual transit and at the stations…but I don’t think I would feel safer if they had rifles. Our issue is thieves mugging people, and people on drugs going out of their minds. There have been a couple stabbings and one lady was pushed onto the train tracks. There have been assaults on the train, and our city busses too.
We have security at some of the stations, but they only call the police. They don’t get involved. The crime is already committed and done before police arrive. So on one hand, I feel like some places could use added security on their public transport. But on the other hand I don’t think this is exactly the way to go about it either.
I would rather see solutions to the root of the problems (wealth disparity being a major one) rather than trying to play a game of whack a mole