As extra staff return to workplaces after the coronavirus pandemic, New York Democrats are pushing them into the Massive Apple’s subway system with insurance policies like the brand new congestion payment on automobiles and vans that enter busy components of Manhattan.
The brand new payment, criticized as a driving tax on the center class and companies, is supposed to encourage folks to take the subway, slicing down on exhaust fumes and elevating cash for the town’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
It prices drivers $9 in the event that they wish to journey south of Central Park or enter downtown Manhattan from Brooklyn or New Jersey.
Sebastian Zapeta is arraigned in Brooklyn, N.Y., Jan. 7, 2025. Zapeta is going through homicide and arson expenses for allegedly setting Debrina Kawam on hearth as she slept on a New York Metropolis subway prepare. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox Information Digital)
Scott LoBaido, a Staten Island artist and frequent critic of New York’s Democratic leaders, protested the transfer this week with an illustration at 61st Road and Broadway, the identical intersection the place supporters of the brand new charges celebrated once they went into impact earlier this week.
He mentioned a passerby approached him and expressed assist for the brand new charges as a result of they might be good for the atmosphere.
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“I simply mentioned, ‘Excuse me, son. I do not really feel like occurring hearth. I do not really feel like getting stabbed at the back of the pinnacle,” LoBaido informed Fox Information Digital Friday.
Police examine on the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station in Brooklyn after a girl aboard a subway automobile was set on hearth and died in New York Dec. 22, 2024. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu through Getty Photographs)
LoBaido was referring to a string of current subway assaults.
In a single, an unlawful immigrant from Guatemala is accused of lighting a sleeping lady on hearth, fanning the flames and watching her burn.
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Sebastian Zapeta was later arrested and allegedly informed detectives he did not keep in mind what occurred as a result of he routinely will get blackout drunk and rides the subway, in accordance with court docket paperwork.
In one other case, the NYPD arrested a person accused of knifing two strangers from behind throughout the subway system. On Christmas Eve, one other man was arrested for an alleged unprovoked stabbing on the subway platform in Grand Central, a significant hub for vacationers and commuters.
Two folks had been wounded after a knife-wielding man allegedly went on a stabbing rampage in New York Metropolis’s Grand Central Station Christmas Eve. (FOX 5 NYC)
“It is insane. You hearken to any person like Gov. Hochul, who says the subways are protected. … The man who runs the MTA says it is all in our heads,” LoBaido mentioned.
Mayor Eric Adams vowed this week to ship extra cops to patrol the subway system, and Hochul despatched within the Nationwide Guard final yr.
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However whereas authorities insist crime is down, violence and the worry of violence proceed to rise.
Felony assaults elevated barely within the transit system in 2024, and subway homicides doubled to 10 final yr from the 5 that occurred in 2023. General subway crime was down by 5.4%, in accordance with the NYPD.
Kamel Hawkins, 23, was charged with tried homicide for allegedly shoving a 45-year-old man onto subway tracks as a prepare approached. (MTA)
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Janno Lieber, the MTA chairman, informed Bloomberg Information earlier this week the concept of crime has “gotten in folks’s heads” however claimed the trains are protected.
“The general stats are optimistic,” he told the outlet. “Final yr, we had been truly 12.5% much less crime than 2019, the final yr earlier than COVID. However there is no query that a few of these high-profile incidents, you understand, horrible assaults, have gotten in folks’s heads and made the entire system really feel much less protected.”
Daniel Penny arrives at Manhattan Legal Court docket in New York Metropolis Dec. 5, 2024. (Adam Grey for Fox Information Digital)
On prime of the arson homicide and the random slashings, straphangers are nonetheless coping with shoving assaults, lots of which have been deadly as victims fall in entrance of transferring trains, and the trial of Daniel Penny, who was arrested and charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent murder after he intervened in a person’s violent rant of loss of life threats.
Penny was acquitted of the lesser cost, and prosecutors requested the court docket to dismiss the extra severe one after jurors deadlocked.
“The Boston Tea Occasion began the best revolution within the historical past of civilization over a 2% tax,” LoBaido mentioned. “And this, what is going on right here is pure r—.”
Fox Information’ Sophia Compton contributed to this report.
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