Violence and murder have been on a highly disturbing increase since 2020 and the summer of race-baiting and mostly peaceful rioting.
The Post Millennial reported on New York Police Department (NYPD) data showing that the number of NYC subway train/station murders since 2020, which is 32, is higher than the 31 murders recorded between 2005 and 2019. This, unfortunately, is what happens when Democrats are in charge of any place — crime goes up and effective deterrence goes down.
This year is already off to a bad start, with three recorded subway murders since February. In 2023, there were a total of five subway murders recorded. The three murders so far this year mean that the city is already on track to surpass last year’s total in subway killings…
The expense of this surge is borne by taxpayers. As previously reported by Gothamist, the New York Police Department spent $155 million on overtime for subway security in 2022, despite only a 2 percent decline in significant crimes committed on the trains.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority chair Janno Lieber said that the city installed over a thousand surveillance cameras on the trains themselves, on top of the cameras installed in all of the 472 stations. Lieber stunningly tried to downplay the severe crime epidemic in NYC.
“On average, last year, we had six felony crimes a day in a ridership of 4 million,” he announced. For New Yorkers riding the subway, this is nothing to scoff at. Indeed, NYPD transit chief Michael Kemper admitted that crime had spiked by 45% in January over the previous year.
One of this year’s victims was a 45-year-old man shot and killed on Feb. 23 in a Bronx subway station. The three suspects in the murder case have not yet been arrested. Part of New York City’s problem is that soft-on-crime Democrats have ensured the release of violent criminals over and over again onto the streets, where they commit a whole series of crimes in some cases without actually being held for them. For instance, the New York Post reported that repeat crime went up in New York thanks to woke so-called “reforms” of the justice system.
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The Post Millennial noted that another victim this year, a 45-year-old named Richie Henderson, was shot and killed on a train in Brooklyn. Henderson had been trying to calm individuals fighting about loud music when he was murdered, and unfortunately, the suspect has yet to be arrested.
Thirty-five-year-old Mexican immigrant Obed Beltran-Sanchez was 2024’s other victim, murdered in February aboard a train coming into the Mount Eden Avenue station. Two teenagers had an argument and fired guns, and Beltran-Sanchez unfortunately was caught in the crossfire. One 16-year-old was arrested.
As long as Democrats are in charge of New York City, this violence and mayhem will continue. Unfortunately, Democrats are so obsessed with promoting their woke ideology that they don’t care how many people lose their lives in the pursuit of it.