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 price on vehicles and vehicles that enter busy elements of Manhattan.
The brand new price, criticized as a driving tax on the center class and companies, is supposed to encourage individuals to take the subway, reducing down on exhaust fumes and elevating cash for the town’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
It prices drivers $9 in the event that they need to journey south of Central Park or enter downtown Manhattan from Brooklyn or New Jersey.
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Sebastian Zapeta is arraigned in Brooklyn, N.Y., Jan. 7, 2025. Zapeta is going through homicide and arson prices for allegedly setting Debrina Kawam on hearth as she slept on a New York Metropolis subway practice. (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 Avenue and Broadway, the identical intersection the place supporters of the brand new charges celebrated after they went into impact earlier this week.
He mentioned a passerby approached him and expressed help for the brand new charges as a result of they might be good for the setting.
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“I simply mentioned, ‘Excuse me, son. I do not really feel like happening hearth. I do not really feel like getting stabbed behind the pinnacle,” LoBaido instructed Fox Information Digital Friday.
Police examine on the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station in Brooklyn after a lady aboard a subway automotive was set on hearth and died in New York Dec. 22, 2024. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu through Getty Photos)
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 instructed detectives he did not keep in mind what occurred as a result of he routinely will get blackout drunk and rides the subway, in line with court docket paperwork.
In one other case, the NYPD arrested a person accused of knifing two strangers from behind inside 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 individuals have 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 take heed to anyone like Gov. Hochul, who says the subways are secure. … The man who runs the MTA says it is all in our heads,” LoBaido mentioned.
Mayor Eric Adams vowed this week to ship extra law enforcement officials 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 concern 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 line with the NYPD.
Kamel Hawkins, 23, was charged with tried homicide for allegedly shoving a 45-year-old man onto subway tracks as a practice approached. (MTA)
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Janno Lieber, the MTA chairman, instructed Bloomberg Information earlier this week the concept of crime has “gotten in individuals’s heads” however claimed the trains are secure.
“The general stats are optimistic,” he instructed the outlet. “Final yr, we have been truly 12.5% much less crime than 2019, the final yr earlier than COVID. However there is not any query that a few of these high-profile incidents, you realize, horrible assaults, have gotten in individuals’s heads and made the entire system really feel much less secure.”
Daniel Penny arrives at Manhattan Felony Court docket in New York Metropolis Dec. 5, 2024. (Adam Grey for Fox Information Digital)
On high 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 dying 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 Social gathering began the best revolution within the historical past of civilization over a 2% tax,” LoBaido mentioned. “And this, what is occurring right here is pure r—.”
Fox Information’ Sophia Compton contributed to this report.
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