Free Republic

Lawless NYC Takes First Step Toward Police State With Over 1000 National Guard in Subways

Nearly 1,000 New York National Guardsmen, state police, and MTA cops are being deployed to carry out bag checks in the Big Apple’s crime-ridden subway system, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday. In total, 750 guardsmen and 250 cops will help NYPD officers patrol the “the city’s busiest transit stations,” Hochul said.

Back in October, New York City Mayor Eric Adams made a joint announcement with Governor Kathy Hochul regarding a new public safety plan for the Big Apple. Dubbed the “Cops, Cameras and Care” program, they claimed that they would be adding more than one thousand additional police officers to the MTA force patrolling the subways. More surveillance cameras would be installed and they would begin moving most of the homeless out of the tunnels and into shelters. The state would provide a significant chunk of the money needed to make that happen. I’ll confess to having been a bit dubious...

Mayor Eric Adams said Monday that he is in “constant contact” with Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, declaring he is “fully confident” the city’s top cop will be able to reduce the city’s ever-increasing crime. During an unrelated press conference, Adams also told reporters he tours the subway system “just about every other night.” “It’s no secret to anyone that, just about every other night, I’m in the subway system. Because if you don’t inspect what you expect, it’s all suspect,” he quipped outside City Hall in response to a question from The Post on how he stays updated on subway...

Boston’s police force will increase its presence around subway stations as the city prepares for the Boston Marathon on Monday, following a shooting on a Brooklyn subway train. Boston police Superintendent-In-Chief Gregory Long said at a press conference Tuesday that although there is no credible threat to the city at this point, the police force is closely monitoring any suspicious activity.

Despite the troubling and ever-increasing number of COVID-19 cases in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams is urging corporations and financial institutions to end their reliance on telecommuting and bring their employees back to work. He says the city’s economic health depends on it,

In his State of the State address, Gov. Andrew Cuomo touted the $306 billion in current and proposed infrastructure projects around New York that he said would revitalize the economy after COVID-19 shut down businesses and non-essential construction. In his Jan. 14 speech, the governor said a total $51 billion was being spent for projects to revive Manhattan's Midtown West neighborhoods, citing potential new projects as well as those well into planning. That figure includes the $1.6 billion Moynihan Train Hall, which opened Jan. 1; the $1.5 billion Jacob K. Javits Center expansion, expected to be completed this year; and...

The “Occupy City Hall” protesters turned the city into a literal toilet, using subway grates as makeshift latrines during their month-long encampment in Lower Manhattan, an MTA supervisor revealed Wednesday as workers cleaned the foul mess. “All the people who were here were going to the bathroom in the vents,” the transit boss said. “They were s–tting and pissing in the vents. They were using this as a facility, as a bathroom. It’s unbelievable what’s in there.” The supervisor was overseeing several workers with the unenviable task of using poles to poke disgusting brown sludge from between the bars of...

The relentless march of urbanization, in the United States and around the world, has been coming for a long time. .. America went from 8.8 percent urban in 1830 to 25.7 percent in 1870, then to a majority in 1920, and up to about two-thirds by the mid-1950s. We were 80 percent urban by 2010. North America has the most urban population in the world. But it is not alone in seeing an accelerating trend. The U.N. estimated that, in 2009, half the world’s population lived in urban areas for the first time in human history. Over 4 billion people...

For decades, politicians who propose and promote big government have done all they could to wean Americans off the convenience and freedom of cars and pack them like sardines into subways and buses, .. the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism ... Fortunes in taxpayer monies have been misspent trying to get people to travel in ways they wish not to, sitting or standing in close proximity to perfect strangers instead of in the private company of their own vehicle with their loved...

SEPTA is contending with a new kind of fare evasion, in which enterprising scammers are using Key cards to give cash-paying riders a discounted trip on the Broad Street Line and the El. Because SEPTA does not track or estimate revenue losses due to fare evasion, said Rich Burnfield, deputy general manager and treasurer, the agency can’t say whether more people are dodging fares than usual. Cashiers working on the subway lines, however, insist scofflaws are proliferating. […] The latest trend is made possible by the Key card, which offers a $2-per-ride fare, compared with $2.50 for customers paying cash...

If we ever want to have viable public transportation in New York, it is essential that we get our elected and appointed officials onboard. Not just metaphorically onboard to adequately fund mass transit, but actually onboard the trains and buses that are the lifeblood of the city. Anyone who lives or works here knows the wretched state of New York’s mass transit. In April, there were 74,000 subway delays, up 164% from the average monthly delays in 2012. Talk to a New Yorker and you’ll get a recent subway or commuter rail horror story, or three.

Politics: President Obama removed Cuba as a state sponsor of terror Friday, forgetting the dictatorship's long record of killing, smuggling and, yes, terror. If this is the new standard, why not just scrap the list entirely? The lifting of Cuba from the list of nations that support terrorism was a farce that may well come back to the haunt the United States. After all, the ruling Castro regime that benefits from it in the name of normal relations with the U.S. and new access to World Bank loans is the same regime that once tried the first 9/11, aligning itself...

Iraq’s prime minister says his country’s intelligence operation has uncovered a plot for an attack on subway systems in the United States and Paris. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said he was told of the plot by Baghdad, and that it was the work of foreign fighters of the Islamic State group in Iraq. Al-Abadi’s assertion could not be independently confirmed. Asked if the attacks were imminent, he said, “I’m not sure.” Asked if the attacks had been thwarted, he said, “No.” Al-Abadi said the United States had been alerted, and that the suspects included extremists from the United States and...

Like human beings, who use the New York City subway system for transportation between two destinations of an unwalkable distance, the bedbugs found on three N-line subway cars earlier this week were just using the train to get around the city. Their destinations included the lockers of MTA employees and the home of one conductor. Along with fumigating the infested trains, including a fourth train on the N-line, the MTA has sent a bug-sniffing dog to inspect the remaining cars. The most worrying detail about the MTA's bedbug infestation, though, may be that the conductor who found one of the...

It’s an express train — to the bad old days. Cops are giving homeless people and panhandlers in the subways the kid-glove treatment, arresting subterranean scofflaws far less frequently than just two years ago, data show. The ranks of the homeless, meanwhile, have swelled to 1,841 this year — a 13 percent increase over last year’s tally, the city’s Department of Homeless Services says. For straphangers, it has created an atmosphere of fear. “I feel threatened, especially taking the train at night,” explained Brooklynite Lortashia Smith, who said she has been followed off trains several times. “The police can definitely...

A sculptor who shot a dog for an art film in the 1970s has won a $750,000 contract to create public art for the Central Subway. Tom Otterness, a Brooklyn-based artist, has created public art all over Europe, Asia, Canada and the United States, with an emphasis on New York City. But he garnered notoriety in 1977 when he adopted a black-and-white dog from an animal shelter and shot it to death with the camera rolling. The footage ended up in his avant-garde movie "Shot Dog Film." Otterness has since apologized, telling the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 2008, "Thirty years...

"Fact Finder: Amtrak launching big security initiative this week, 'will be noticeable'" October 05, 2010 1:05 PM Chris White SNIPPET: "Amtrak is launching a big security exercise this week that will involve all levels of law enforcement and be noticeable when and where it happens, according to a company spokesman. Though light on the specifics for security reasons, CBS 6 learned from Amtrak Media Relations Director Steve Kulm Tuesday morning about the initiative called Operation RailSafe."

Five hundred cameras installed in three of the city's busiest transit hubs started feeding live images to the police department's high-tech security network Monday and will be monitored in counter-terrorism efforts. At the system command center, more than a dozen different cameras were projected onto a large screen. They showed stairwells, train platforms and turnstiles as riders got on and off trains at the Grand Central, Times Square and Pennsylvania Station subway stops. Transit officials have more than 3,000 cameras keeping track of the subway system, but only images from the three stations are fed live to a high-tech police...