Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/06/new-yorks-governor-deploys-national-guard-to-protect-subway-riders.html
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There’s no business, like Security Theatre business.
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Perhaps more security cameras will help … produce more Youtube shorts.
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judges should be able to ban convicted subway offenders from riding the trains.
The same way they ban people with revoked licenses or no insurance from driving? How’s that working out for them?
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There’s this interesting dynamic of New York crime - the rate is really low, but anecdotes are extremely powerful in creating the perception of a lot of crime, especially with the subway. It’s especially powerful with right-wingers, who have made it this whole national political football, despite accusing New York of being a cesspool of violence while living in areas with much, much higher crime rates. The subway is presumably a particular source of horror for right-wingers because it’s a place where you’re forced to mix with “those people,” and are vulnerable to stranger crime. (Never mind how many people are killed and injured as a result of road-rage incidents involving strangers in this country, particularly red states, where road-rage gun violence has been going up year after year even as crime goes down in New York…)
It’s weird that New Yorkers are buying into this too, but I guess stranger violence, no matter how rare, really gets to people. And the anecdote is more convincing than mere statistics.
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Bag checks without a warrant?
Really wish people in New York City and state would stop electing right-wingers who pretend to be Democrats.
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but we must do something! /s
even if it’s completely the wrong thing. often especially…
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In addition to reality, it’s a common setting for movies about crime, from Spiderman back to Death Wish. You noted the fear of “stranger crime”, and I think that’s part of it too. In smaller towns, like where I’m from, there was thuggish criminal behavior, but was noted as “well, that’s the Stimsons, you know what they’re like”, as opposed to shadowy stereotypes where you don’t know the backstory of the perpetrator.
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Yeah, it’s amazing how much water people in a rural community will carry for each other. I grew up very near to where Ken McElroy lived. He was so awful he was well known throughout the entire region as a complete monster. He was assassinated “in broad daylight”, as the subsequent book and film stated, by someone from the town who had had enough (the killer was never revealed and no one ever snitched). Despite this, one day in Social Studies class when his name came up, a girl in my class began crying and raging at us for “judging” him. He bullied that town for decades, yet some people still felt they had to be apologists for him and make him a martyr.
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Perhaps the girl was a relative and had been taught to believe that he was misunderstood and unjustly hated.
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I think they were friends of the family, and I don’t blame her for being indoctrinated, but it was so shocking that someone so notorious that 20+ miles away everyone knew to avoid them still had people willing to look the other way.
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Wow. It takes a lot for me to start rooting for mob justice but he tipped that line. Sounds like the only good thing he did was give Brian Dennehy another role. But clearly New York City is the place where crime runs rampant and unchecked.
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Maybe people have just stop reporting ‘crime’. Nobody bothers to report the crazy guy, screaming, and acting aggressively.
Take crime stats with a grain of salt. Some interpretation is required.
Oh. So screw actual data and just believe what you want to be true? That’s not how you make things better. Crime statistics aren’t perfect, but, in a relative sense (comparing data from this year to previous years) it’s a hell of a lot better than just saying, “Hmmm, I feel like crime is rampant, therefore it must be.”
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Please tell me this won’t be abused on the “unwanted” or “others” /s
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National Guard are not trained for policing the public, including things like de-escalating a situation. I fear this won’t end well.
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‘Data’ always needs an interpretation; who is it collected by, who sorts it and cleans it, who presents it, who reports a crime, how is crime categorized, who invented those categories…?
