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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3841 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 14, 2023

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Some questions about the NYC subway. People say Penny had been choking Neely for 15 minutes when the latter died. I started thinking about the time and realized I don't understand something about the way subway works there.

This happened on an F train in Manhattan. I checked, and you can walk between the stations in less than 15 minutes there. From this I can deduce that the train was at the station at some point during the chokehold. Where the fuck was NYPD? Here's how this would've turned out in the Moscow Metro:

  1. homeless dude starts getting agitated and aggressive

  2. someone uses the intercom and tells the driver there's a problem

  3. the driver contacts the dispatcher

  4. the dispatcher contacts the manager of the next station

  5. the station manager directs the police patrol to the correct car

  6. alternatively, the driver uses the PA system to direct the police patrol to the correct car

  7. alternatively-alternatively, someone runs out of the train car, screaming, "Police!"

  8. the police enter the car and detain the agitated homeless dude and the wannabe hero

Why hasn't it gone down like that with Neely? Are there no intercoms on NYC subway trains? Do train drivers not give a fuck? Are there no police at NYC subway stations?

I am very skeptical of the 15-min claim. Neely apparently got on the northbound F train at 2nd Avenue, and died at the Broadway-Lafayette stop. That is only one stop, which is less than a minute, once the train gets underway.

Not every station has police officers; there are something like 450 stations in the system. Nowadays, when you ride the train, if a station has a permanent police presence, the conductor says so when the train arrives. The Broadway-Lafayette stop is a pretty busy one, since it is effectively a transfer to several other lines, though it is not an express stop for one of the lines. So it would not surprise me if there are normally police there.

I am very skeptical of the 15-min claim. Neely apparently got on the northbound F train at 2nd Avenue, and died at the Broadway-Lafayette stop. That is only one stop, which is less than a minute, once the train gets underway.

I am equally skeptical of the one minute claim. This would mean he managed to antagonize the other passengers in the carriage to provoke three of them into action in just a minute.

Not every station has police officers; there are something like 450 stations in the system. Nowadays, when you ride the train, if a station has a permanent police presence, the conductor says so when the train arrives. The Broadway-Lafayette stop is a pretty busy one, since it is effectively a transfer to several other lines, though it is not an express stop for one of the lines. So it would not surprise me if there are normally police there.

There are 472 stations. NYPD has 35,030 officers. To cover all stations if none are currently covered, you would need 3776 patrolmen (2 cops per station working 12-hour shifts in 4-day periods: day-night-off-off), a 11% increase in headcount. I guess Moscow can afford to provide police presence on its ~300 stations, since there are 50k officers in Moscow Police.

I am equally skeptical of the one minute claim.

I am not saying that the incident took only 1 minute. I am saying that, if the train was running normally, it would take less than a minute to travel between the stations, once it got underway. Now, perhaps there was a delay of some sort, either before it left 2nd Ave, or between stations.

Given the rather low level of crime in subways, especially in most of Manhattan, it would be a poor use of police resources to station police at every station. Heck, it is a poor use of police resources to have many cops patrolling most of Manhattan, period.

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