Subway riders dismiss NYC plan to wake snoozing passengers

Police said this week they would begin waking up sleeping subway riders if they appear vulnerable to becoming victims of crime.

As crime on the street remains at historic lows, the NYPD says it will now send dozens of extra officers into the subway because of a few recent slashings and thefts.

“If you are sleeping on the subway, you make yourself a very easy victim”, he said.

Bratton’s attempts at reassurance clash with the growing sense among New Yorkers that the city’s celebrated public-safety gains are increasingly under threat. According to the New York City Police Department, an unknown man had bumped into her from behind.

Overall crime is down 0.2 per cent but the rise in violence on the subways and buses has left commuters scared.

The focus on sleeping riders comes as total crime in the transit system is up despite a drop in most crime citywide.

There were 37 assaults in the subway system, 12 of which were assaults on police officers, NYPD Transit Bureau Chief Joseph Fox said. On Tuesday, a passenger who dozed off on an early-morning subway train in Manhattan was jolted awake around 3 a.m. when he felt a tug on his trousers, police said.

There were 10 slashings and stabbings on subway riders, one of which was a completely random attack, Fox said. When he woke up, he saw another man standing over him with a razor in his hand and realized his trousers had been cut around the pocket. Shootings also dropped in the city by 34 percent, de Blasio said. “But some of it has to do with the fact we live in a very crowded city of 8.5 million people, and six million of them get on the subway every day”.

When the woman got home her husband, he told her that her injury looked like a puncture wound, so the woman went to Queens Mount Sinai Hospital to get it checked out, sources said.

“Being homeless is not a crime, but the NYPD’s targeting of homeless people for law enforcement action when they aren’t violating the law and destroying property – that is a crime”, said Nahal Zamani, an advocacy program manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights.