No, Mayor Adams, the subway is not safe
A New York City Asian woman was pushed to her death on the subway Saturday morning by a deranged homeless man who claimed to be God.
Michelle Go was standing on the platform at the Times Square Station at 9:40 A.M. when Simon Martial allegedly walked up behind her and pushed her into the path of an oncoming train, killing her.
The incident is the latest in a series of attacks on riders of the city's transit system.
According to the New York Post, Martial yelled, "I am God" when taken into custody by police.
However, newly elected mayor Eric Adams, a former transit cop, doesn't think Big Apple residents should worry. The mayor believes that the subways are safe; there is just a "perception of fear."
"New Yorkers are safe on the subway system," he says in the Post article. "I think it's about 1.7 percent of the crimes in New York City that occur on the subway system. Think about that for a moment. What we must do is remove the perception of fear."
That's a pretty tepid response from the mayor who campaigned as his top priority to reduce crime. In a television interview last November, Adams said, "We're going to make sure we have a well-trained antigun unit in our police department. We're going to make sure we have our transit officers on our subway system with mental health professionals and start removing people off the system who are dealing with mental health illnesses and give them the services they deserve. And we're going to go after guns and gangs."
But New Yorkers have good reason to fear using the subway because there have been numerous attacks on riders over the last several months. People have been beaten, stabbed, choked, robbed, and pushed onto the tracks. Witnesses have reported multiple attacks within a few hours, gangs have targeted some victims, and some of these attacks have occurred during the day when other people are around.
"How can he say the subways are safe when incidents are happening almost every day?" said Sharon Zhao, a target of anti-Asian slurs while riding the subway, as quoted in the Post. "People get pushed, people get stabbed — just regular people riding the train home from work."
The alleged attacker, Simon Martial, 61, is originally from Haiti with a history of mental illness and a lengthy criminal record, according to the website ConanDaily.com.
When asked by reporters why he shoved Go onto the tracks, Martial said, "Because I'm God. I can do it."
The spate of attacks has New York City commuters justifiably fearful of using public transit. The new mayor faces his first test in tackling the rising crime in New York.
Mayor Adams, enough of the hollow reassurances that everything is fine. It's time to act.
Image: Epicgenius.