Police opened fire on a subway platform in Brooklyn during a confrontation with an alleged fare-beater, striking the man cops said was armed with a knife, two straphangers caught in the fray, and one of the firing officers, NYPD officials said Sunday.
One of those two passengers hit by the cops’ bullets, a 49-year-old man, was hospitalized in critical condition after he was hit struck in the head, according to the NYPD.
The two officers who opened fire were assigned to patrol the Sutter Avenue subway stop in the 73rd precinct when they spotted a man skip the station turnstile and walk through an open gate toward the train platform, Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey explained at an evening press conference from Brookdale Hospital.
The guy only threatened to use the knife after they stopped him for turnstile jumping. If the New York subway didn’t have turnstiles (the L.A. subway doesn’t), most people would still pay their fares. Most people understand that their fares keep the trains running. There was no need for this. At all.
I should say that there are transit cops that check tickets in L.A. If you don’t have one, all they do is escort you out of the station. And this is the LAPD we’re talking about.
The LA subway has turnstiles. Most people don’t pay. I’d watch maybe 2/3rds of people skip payment by using the wheelchair/bike turnstile. They would do it in front of cops.
They are starting to enforce fares again though.
If they have turnstiles, that is something they added since I lived there a decade ago.
They have the simple waste-high turnstile at every subway stop. At above-ground locations they don’t have these. They have been there for 15 years or longer.
There are no full height “man trap” turnstiles if that’s what you’re talking about.
The guy only threatened to use the knife after they stopped him for turnstile jumping.
I should say that there are transit cops that check tickets in L.A. If you don’t have one, all they do is escort you out of the station. And this is the LAPD we’re talking about.
The first step to “escorting you out of the station” is stopping you, is it not?
My whole point is that the cops didn’t get belligerent until he pulled the knife. It also sounds like he might have boarded a train with the knife out, too. (It was the L train, though, I’m sure the riders have seen worse.)
They didn’t start shooting because he jumped the turnstile. I bet if he didn’t have a knife they would have just wrote him a ticket and made him leave.
You dont think your LA cops would have treated their fare evader a bit differently if he pulled a knife?
Yes, stopping you to say, “can I see your ticket?” If the person without a ticket runs, where are they going to run to? Back on the train that just left? They can’t do that. Out of the station? That’s where they were going to be taken anyway. It’s not worth the cops’ time in L.A. like it apparently is in New York.
Again, this shit doesn’t happen there.
But it sounds like the guy said “I’m gonna kill you if you don’t stop following me”, then hopped on the train with the knife out. You think the cops in LA would have let him do that?
Didn’t it literally just happen there like two weeks ago when LAPD TSD used force against someone evading fare and they ran, jumped onto the tracks, and were then electrocuted and run over by a train?
LA metro rail has yearly ridership of a little less than 62 million.
NYC has yearly ridership of over 1.3 BILLION.
These aren’t remotely the same systems.
