Mayor Eric Adams,Single Officer PatrolOn Tuesday's subway. Give him more credit for completing the experiment the day after the experiment turned out to be dangerous.
Adams knows that crime is the city's top priority and must be dissatisfied with New York'scriminal law,prosecutors and judges. So he turned to a single patrol, hoping to save the city the cost of additional police officers while expanding his police presence.
Alas, on the first day of the program, a homeless manattacked a uniformed detectiveafter being found smoking on a Brooklyn platform. The man is alleged to have picked up a policeman's gun several times before being crushed. The results could have been terribly different.
Almost instantly, the NYPD abandoned the program. Wise move.
In deploying the solo patrol, Adams stated thathe patrolled himself as a young transit police officer decades ago. Mayor, I'm fine, but that was then — this is now.
Today's bad guys are no longer afraid to get involved with the police. Police say Alex Elemin, a suspect in the Brooklyn attack, has a history of attackingpolice officers.(It's a real scandal that El'ad wasn't sitting at Rikers after the February and May assaults.) Now, police in the cityare often criticizedand tied hands. Faced with many new laws that empower. Criminals and mentally ill. You need at least one partner as a backup.
Police Unionpatrols the subway alone toWarned that it was dangerous. They didn't seem to be wrong.
Adams and the NYPD must continue to challenge. After all, transit crime has increased by 54% year-on-year. Yes, district police are appearing at subway stations as part of their patrol mission — a welcome change. However, due to the surge inpolice retirement, Hizzoner should consider adding a new police academy class, even though he is trying to curb city spending.
He and police commissioner Keychant Seawell have shown agility to try new tactics and quickly throw them away based on real-world situations. Of course, there are other things to try, but without the help of Albany, the prosecutor, and the judge, he's in a tough fight.
