The nervous chuckles, undercut by Covid-tinged anxiety, perforated the atmosphere in the 207th Street Station crew room on the A line last Saturday. Sure, the water cooler talk about which train crews got dropped trips and what lines we wanted to work on, was there. But amongst that standard cackling, we all knew what the subway train in the room was.
Someone, or some people, had been traveling all along the A line since that Friday, stabbing people at random.
We knew that at least two people were dead--bodies found at both ends of the line--one at the Far Rockaway station Friday. A few hours later, another body found, almost literally right outside our door, at 207, under a train's seats.
The pictures, something out of a Halloween Adventure decoration, soon made their rounds through our texts and online social media groups.
Word got around and kept flowing in loud, proclamations that more victims were incoming.
..."Someone else got cut at 181st Street too??!"
..."Another person sliced AND thrown onto the tracks at 135st?!"
..."Four people dead!"
...No solid proof of these last two things I wrote , but we were saying it repeatedly so there's gotta be at least some truth to it.
Virtually no train movement going downtown--NYPD investigations launching one after the other. WTF is going on? Are they targeting transit workers too?
Then the switchblade jokes came rushing in.
I shoot one at Conductor Eric King as he heads out to man his R46 train doors for the trip to Queens. Maybe for the last time. I don't know, man. Haven't heard from him since then. Maybe he left his piece at home.
Eventually, after being on call since 5 am, I get to go home at 1, no train assignments. And as I depart, the picture becomes clear; we all failed in our debuts as criminal investigators.
Turns out only one guy was allegedly responsible for the two killings-21-year-old Rigoberto Lopez. Two others were also cut, but will live to tell the tale: a 67 year old man and a 43 year old-both at 181 Street,
(The 135th Street thing was just someone struck by a train.)
The dust is settled, and we're left wondering why and how this happened. But without taking the appropriate political lens to the situation, many have deferred to worn out tropes about 80s New York life amidst a push for more policing, wrapped in a global pandemic bowtie.
The NYPD announced it would be adding 500 cops to the subways in response to the stabbings and recent incidents (though Transit wants triple that number).
Tony Utano, the leading court jester of TWU Local 100, issued a statement praising that step.
At their monthly meeting Thursday, the MTA Board further banged the "Mo Cops, Less Problems" drum, with Chairman Foye saying we need "roughly 900 more police officers" to keep your trains gucci.
Train Order Maintenance Sweeps, when cops randomly stop and inspect trains for slapping Black and Brown people with fines to make their quotas and keep putting cash in city coffers our safety, are also up.
The Q train I operated this past Tuesday had such a visit at Church Avenue, for example.
And the fervor has spilled into online Facebook groups for transit workers. Several posts from one I follow demurred to the dystopic times where Wildstyle was the rage in theatres and Bernie Goetz was on his way to becoming an urban legend.
"The system has definitely gone back to the 70s/80s," read one such posting.
(Side note: That's not even remotely close to being true. In September 1979, the system saw 250 felonies reported on a weekly basis. That's 12,000 per year; 1981 saw 15,295.
June of 2020 didn't even see 20 felonies in the tunnels--crime has indeed risen over the years, but no need to call the Guardian Ang...too late.)
In the comments section, someone wrote, "...we need Broken Windows Policing back asap." Like Hell we do!
But wait! It only gets better from there.
Another post promoted a Twitter PSA from out beloved PBA--the Police Benevolent Association, or as we like to call them, the Union That Does Great Job For Make Acquittals Of Racist Killer Cops.
In it, the PBA's Tweet, which features a link to a story about Mr. Lopez, derides the NYC City Council for "debating anti-cop legislation, while completely ignoring the public safety deteoriation of our streets and subway."
And yet another post--this one depicting a meme featuring some cross eyed fuck, captions, "We just had a late night double murder--let's bring back late night train service," a reference to Cuomo's
announcement this week scaling the subway closure from 1 to 5 am to 2 to 4 instead.
At least one of those murders happened during morning business hours and one of the non-fatal stabbings just before the subway closed to the riders so I'm not sure how keeping overnight service closed protects much against that, but go off, sis.
There's more where that came from but you get the point.
The subway is seeing a noticeable uptick in incidents involving the homeless and mentally unstable attacking transit workers and straphangers. These are people who, since the pandemic began, can no longer frequent churches, shopping malls or other buildings that gave them little reprieve to begin with, hence why they flocked to the subway when it was still open 24/7.
Then that ended, closing another option and further exacerbating their conditions. And indeed the subway should not be used as shelter for anyone.
But rather than city and federal governments taking actual steps to fix the problem, like, you know, paying all workers a sufficient monthly wage during this ordeal to stay home, building true low-income housing, and greatly expanding access to the thousands of vacant properties nationwide--the prevailing idea is that throwing more cops at the problem and packaging it with the lie that the homeless are drug addicts who don't want help at all, is best.
Mr. Lopez, a man of Dominican origin, was known to have mental health and drug issues. Black and Hispanic people are more likely to report negative mental health symptoms from the pandemic. Yet, Daddy Cuomo saw no issues with the state withholding aid for providers offering mental health and addiction services to plug the state's budget gap. Maybe raise taxes on the state's billionaires who've only gotten richer during the pandemic to fill the hole?
The average pol, of course, will throw burecratic water on almost all of the above ideas, saying they're too costly or would never garner bi-partisan support at the local, state, or federal level.
Funny how all that red tape pulled a Waldo when Congress gave a $500 billion bailout to corporations with CEO's making $30 every second they breathe.
But that's life under such a system as this.
And one day, when transit workers in the city realize en masse that these physical attacks we're under are a direct result of purposeful neglect by those sworn to serve us-and that uniting with other workers in all industries to form a mass movement the bosses can't ignore is the cure, maybe we'll collectively get somewhere just a tad bit better.
Or not, and we can keep Curtis Sliwa and the gang on speed dial.