Unfortunately for the MTA, this Sunday’s 2 train stabbings led to a renewed focus on the authority’s plan to eliminate station agents. Although the actual murder took place aboard the 2 train in between 14th and Christopher Sts., some of the perps escaped via the southbound platform at Christopher St. while the others left at Houston, and both of those platforms are currently without station agents. Today, in the Daily News, Pete Donohue and Barry Paddock ask if station agents could have helped the solve the crime.
The answer to that question is both yes and no. As with the cameras I explored this morning, a station agent who happened to see the allegedly killers exit the station would have been able to provide a description to the police. Yet, we shouldn’t think that the station agent would have stopped this crime. The stabbings occurred on a train well out of sight from any MTA employee, and this seemingly heat-of-passion killing seems to have been nearly unavoidable. When we consider as well that station agents are not allowed to leave their booths, the best we could hope for is a more accurate description of the still-at-large killers. How to balance those surveillance needs with the MTA’s budgetary woes is a problem facing the authority right now.
3 comments
A station agent could not have prevented the murders on the train. A station agent might have gotten a good look at the perpetrator as he ran out of the subway. But then, so could anyone who was in the station. So how much should we pay people to hang around in stations just in case a killer runs by?
It’s easy to Monday morning QB this kind of thing, but I think the real question to ask is not “what would have prevented this prior killing” but instead “what will prevent the kinds of crime that MTA will regularly experience going forward?” Maybe the answer to that is security cameras or station agents, maybe it’s not, that’s not a question I’m paid to answer and I’m not going to pontificate on the subject. I’m still more conecrned about being hit by a car crossing a major avenue after midnight than I am being killed on the subway after midnight, but if there are lawful, cost-effective steps MTA can take to further enhance security, I’m all ears.
I suspect most criminologists would say that, under the American Constitutional system, this kind of crime-of-passion is not preventable unless you get lucky. But I have to admit that still I’m unhappy that MTA’s limitations may prevent its prosecution, and if such acts regularly go unprosecuted, that could have a detrimental effect on safety – a sense of lawlessness can lead to actual lawlessness. Still, I’m not going to underestimate the NYPD and the possibility that old-fashioned detective work will provide descriptions of the suspects.
For the time being, station agents or no, I still feel safer inside a subway station than outside of it in a rough neighborhood.
Nothing could have prevented that double murder except for common sense on the part of both sides.
IMHO, a caricature artist on duty at every station drawing all faces that come and go would probably be less costly and more effective than having the system wired with cameras.