The subway system should have its own special prosecutor dedicated to subterranean justice, an MTA board member says. amNY reports that at yesterday's transit committee meeting, NYPD transit bureau chief Joseph Fox revealed that 40 people prosecuted for crime in the subway this year are on parole and not supposed to be using the subway system. “What is it that the district attorneys and courts are doing?" board member Charles Moerdler wants to know. "If they are not assisting us and incarcerating this garbage, and putting them in the pen, they are causing or assisting the crime rate."
Fox told the committee that all five district attorneys are planning to meet with NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly on Wednesday to discuss “how to jointly work with the district attorneys on this issue.” But that's not good enough for Moerdler, who wants Governor Cuomo to empower a special prosecutor to go down into the subways and take out the trash. Cuomo has not yet responded to the proposal, which Moerdler wants the city to try for a year, to “make it clear to those people who like to engage in that that crime does not necessarily have to pay." Bring on Aaron Eckhart!
Subway crime is up 21% this year, though Fox cautions that there was a decrease in major felonies last month, and fewer electronic devices were stolen from straphangers. But more sleeping straphangers are being targeted, like the man who was lulled to sleep listening to Andrew Bird and woke up with his iPhone stolen.
And the News points to "career subway bandit" Thomas Coles, a repeat offender who was sentenced to just nine months in jail for trying to slice open a sleeping subway rider's pockets and steal their contents. The Manhattan DA's office says it could only charge Coles with a misdemeanor because he didn’t actually succeed in stealing anything.
