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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, on the morning after the 2024 Oscar Awards. Maybe some of you got to see the whole thing this year as I think they didn't get the memo about moving the clocks ahead for daylight saving time. It started at seven o'clock, not eight o'clock as it has in many years in the past, which, blessedly, I think, for many folks, meant you could stay up through the end at 10:30, which was earlier than the State of the Union address ended on Thursday night. Jimmy Kimmel was apparently up and watching to the end of that, Senator Katie Britt from her kitchen giving the Republican rebuttal, that's how that ended. Here's Kimmel from his opening monologue at the Oscars last night when he noted the role that Emma Stone played in Poor Things.

Jimmy Kimmel: Emma played an adult woman with the brain of a child like the lady who gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday night.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Later, Kimmel read live on the air a social media post from Donald Trump criticizing his hosting of the Oscars, which Kimmel turned into an opportunity for a laugh at Trump's expense. More on the Oscars coming up later with Sam Sanders. More on national politics coming up with Susan Glasser from The New Yorker later this hour, but let's start local with the announcement by Governor Hochul that she's deploying a thousand National Guard troops and state police to the New York City subway system.

Governor Hochul: If I have 1,000 individuals, I don't have to keep them there long. I may keep them there a long time. I'm not going to tell the criminals the day I'm stopping this because then they'll be back the next day.

Brian Lehrer: Governor Hochul on MSNBC. We'll hear more clips as we get two opposing views on this and on Mayor Adams' own deployment of more NYPD officers and his new order for more bag checks as you enter the subways. We'll invite your reactions. We'll hear in a few minutes from Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who's concerned that this will all do more harm than good. With us first, Richard Davis, president of the TWU Local 100, the union that represents MTA workers. The union supports these moves after the recent attacks on MTA workers that have been in the news and, in fact, as I hear him, wants the mayor and the governor to go further. I think that's what we'll hear. Richard, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Richard Davis: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: By way of background first for our listeners, there have been a few attacks on subway personnel that have been in the news lately. The middle-of-the-night slashing of a conductor on an A Train in Brooklyn. Another one a few weeks ago and someone followed a station agent who got punched and had a fractured eye socket after a man followed her down a platform is how I saw that reported. How would you describe the safety of the working conditions for your members today?

Richard Davis: Currently, our safety is at risk. Members are currently in danger every single day trying to get to work safely and go back home to their family safely. That seems to be compromised. My goal is to make sure our members come here safe and go back home safe. That's our main focus, main concern for the safety of our members and for the public as well.

Brian Lehrer: I'm curious. Do you see safety for your members as any different or any worse than before the pandemic?

Richard Davis: Well, right now, we have so many assaults, spitting, and the violent assaults seem to increase. Alton Scott, our conductor, was slashed in the neck nearly to death, about an inch short of an artery. He would have died. Luckily, there's a good Samaritan doctor that saved his life. We see a rise in violent assaults and the punch to our innocent station agent, who was just doing her job by checking to make sure someone is safe. That person pummeled her in the eye and damaged her eye socket. Those are serious, serious concerns for us.

Brian Lehrer: Those are two isolated incidents that have made a lot of news, or is "isolated" the wrong word? Do you think they're part of a larger pattern?

Richard Davis: It is very much a part of a larger pattern just because those two were made on the news and the media follow those stories, but there are so much more of our members at risk. Just not our members but the riding public. Someone was killed. There was a shooting, a stabbing, three stabbings right after the conductor. It's not just isolated just to our members. It's for the public as well for both sides. Our members are in danger trying to protect the public. If we cannot do our jobs safely to get the public back and forth safely to their destinations, whether it's a doctor's appointment for an elderly person or just to get to the supermarket, we have to be able to perform our jobs safely in order to protect the riding public.

Brian Lehrer: I played the clip of the governor saying she doesn't know how long she'll keep the National Guard there. I saw you quoted saying this should be permanent, not temporary. Give us your overall reaction to what the mayor and the governor are doing.

Richard Davis: The permanent goal is not for the National Guard. The permanent goal is what I asked for deployment of the MTA police and support from the mayor and NYPD to put an officer at the conductor's cab and at the conductor's position and the conductor's area. We have to make sure there's some kind of safety in the subways. Both for us and the riding public. The National Guard is just a temporary solution. We were requesting for some permanency. We met with Janno Lieber three days prior to the slashing.

Brian Lehrer: For people who don't know, that's the head of the MTA. Go ahead.

Richard Davis: Yes, Janno Lieber, the head of the MTA, who we've been meeting with and tell him our concerns prior to the slashing. On the night of the slashing, the next morning, I made the comment, "We need help. We need people to come in now and help us. We are at risk." That was a temporary solution that's been deployed. We're not looking for a permanent solution. We have to come up with different ideas that are sustainable for the future.

Brian Lehrer: I think I heard a clip of someone from the union. Honestly, I'm not sure it was you. I came in in the middle of it that the union would like a return to the pre-1990s transit police force when there used to be a transit police force that was separate from the NYPD and then it was absorbed. Is that a position you hold?

Richard Davis: Yes, I think they do need a dedicated NYPD or MTA police, a dedicated group of law enforcement that's going to be able to sustain us throughout the next years or so for our safety. I think that used to be an initiative they had where the police officers had some-- it's like community policing where they have a relationship with our members. Our members are the ones that know the system, who understands it in every way possible. We need for them to have a relationship with us where we give them information, not coming to make a statement that you don't understand the system. Our members want to have a relationship with the police force, whether it's MTA, NYPD, to be able to help them help us and help the public.

Brian Lehrer: You think a transit police force separated from the NYPD with its own commissioner, I guess, and everything could do that better. Have you gotten a response from Mayor Adams on that?

Richard Davis: I don't know about separating them to a commissioner. What I do know, our members need to be protected. We did have meetings with Mayor Adams. He did commit to putting some resources, but he said he needs funding from the governor as well. The governor has to take some of our input, not just Janno Lieber who was sitting in his office, not deal with the rank-and-file member to know what we need. The governor has solicited as well. We did have a meeting with Mayor Adams. He did commit that he would put more resources into helping us.

We are going to join with different community organizations, the clergy, all the different groups that's out there for the riding public, and the basic community leaders to let them know that a riding public is in danger and we're in danger. We're going to make sure we work with these groups towards helping the people with mental health illnesses, those who need help traveling, those who are in danger. We want everyone to be safe. That's our main focus for our members to be safe and making sure that the riding public is safe.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is the president of TWU Local 100, which represents bus and subway workers in New York City, on the new deployments and new rules and other policies, which we'll get to some of as we go for safety in the subways. We'll get another view from Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, coming up. Listeners, I'll open up the phones in just a second, but I want to get through this question first with another clip of the governor.

Richard, subway crime in January was above January of last year. In February, it was below February of last year. Here's another clip of Governor Hochul on MSNBC in which she seems to admit that the subways are statistically very safe. Rather than emphasize that reality, she's undertaking this massive deployment in response to a public misperception. Listen.

Governor Hochul: That is exactly what we're trying to fight here. I can show you all the statistics in the world that say you should feel safe because the numbers are better, but you're the mom on the subway with your baby in a stroller. You're the parent putting your kid on the subway to go to high school. You're that senior citizen going to a doctor appointment. If you're anxious, then I'm the governor of the state of New York, I'm concerned about it. If you feel better walking past someone in a uniform to make sure that someone doesn't bring a knife or a gun on the subway, then that's exactly why I did it.

Brian Lehrer: What's your reaction, Richard, to the governor basically saying she is flooding the zone with the National Guard to solve a non-problem that is based on a public misunderstanding?

Richard Davis: That is her response. She had a conversation with Janno Lieber, the MTA chairman. That was their strategy. We just know that our focus is our members' safety. We've been asking to deploy the MTA police over and over into those positions. I referred to the conductor's position and the station agent area to help them to be able to be safe. We have different views and strategies that we need to sit down and come together to figure out how to keep our members safe and the riding public safe. That was discussed at the announcement, the press conference.

She was standing with Janno Lieber and they would have to be able to answer those questions and what their strategies are. For our strategies, we're basically concerned about our members' safety and the safety of the public. We did prior meeting, asking about the ban. Janno Lieber had the right to ban people. He did it for the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North, where he banned people that committed crimes off of the Long Island Rail Road. He should do the same thing here in the subway system for New York City transit. We are just as equal as anyone else.

Brian Lehrer: Ban people who've committed crimes in the subway. How do you do that though? There's all these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stations in all kind of locations. How does anybody know if somebody's coming in and swiping in?

Richard Davis: They're committed to putting cameras in the subway system. We did have to sit down and figure out how to enforce in these challenges. It's great to ban. The con to that, like you said, it's how would they track? They have to figure out what that means. Janno Lieber, he cashed out on the state of New York on government contracts, contracts for outsourcing work, but he has to be able to take into account and protect us.

Whether it's in the buses, whether it's in the subway system, they have to come up strategies to protect us. I know it was said that the trend for February is down, but the trend for us is up. There's spitting assaults. There's violent assaults. We want to make sure that the judges and the DAs are doing their part and making sure they put these people behind bars and not let them back out. The street is a revolving door. Those issues still exist.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your reactions to Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul, adding more than 1,000 additional police officers or National Guard members to the subway system and increasing the number of bag checks. We'll get to the bag checks. Are you seeing it? Does this make you feel safer, more threatened? Does it look just like theater that's not going to make a difference or does it make you feel safer in a meaningful way or anything else? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text for Transport Workers Union Chief Richard Davis with Donna Lieberman from the New York Civil Liberties Union also coming up, 212-433-9692. Let's take a phone call right now. Q in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. You're not on the Q Train, right, Q?

Q: No, thanks for taking my call. A couple of things. Just before I raise my points and comments, I'm a native New Yorker. I ride the train all the time, all types of hours for most of my life. I feel safe. I'm over 50 and I'm a female. I'm concerned, but I don't feel like I'm going to be attacked every minute I'm on a subway. This thing about fighting perception with the National Guard, we're not at war.

My points are, A, we're not at war, so they should not be in the transit system. Also, I feel like a lot of the solutions are coming from people who actually don't ride the subway often. The bag checks? I don't know the last time I saw someone commit a crime. God knows I've gotten into scrapes with people starting trouble with me or me intervening in situations. I've never seen, usually, the perpetrator carrying a bag. Inspecting bags are pointless. We've done that and they've never worked in the past.

The other thing is they're saying to counter weapons. I know in the past what has happened is that they caught a lot of guys who were going to construction. There was that lawsuit that the city had to engage in with people carrying box cutters, but I think it was box cutters or some kind of weapon. Some group filed a lawsuit against the city and they had won. The thing is weapons need to get out of the system. The most effective way and I've thought for years, there needed to be some kind of weapons detector in the system, but not a metal detector thing because that's impossible to enforce everything.

Brian Lehrer: How else do you prevent a gun from coming into a subway station, Q?

Q: Oh, I think it's a combination like the mayor's talking about technologies to make it so that they can screen weapons and so forth and he's looking into it. I think it's a combination of the fare-beating system. They're talking about having--

Brian Lehrer: The new gates?

Q: Yes, the new gates where people pay. I think that can work in tandem. If you're going to have a weapons detector system, you need it everywhere. You can't have this selective thing because then it involves certain people getting screened. I'm a person of color. I'm going to be selected because I fit some kind of a profile or I'm carrying a lot of bags.

Brian Lehrer: Q, let me leave it there. You put a lot on--

Q: The subway system, the bars, I think there's a way to put a strip there so that you could detect weapons when people are going to pay. That's where you screen everybody, not the selective screening. That's why--

Brian Lehrer: Just selective. The governor does say, and we'll talk about this with Donna Lieberman, that is not going to be based on profiling. It's going to be based on every x people who are in line at a particular station where they are screening. Q, thank you for all of that. To Q's point, Richard, about being profiled, our next guest will be Donna Lieberman from the New York Civil Liberties Union.

She has said previously, "These heavy-handed approaches will be, like stop-and-frisk, be used to accost and profile Black and brown New Yorkers, ripping a page straight from the Giuliani playbook." What's your reaction to the idea that bag checks aside because if those are random, maybe that solves that problem, but that this might do more harm than good with all these new officers and National Guard members and take us back to the bad old days of pre-de Blasio levels of mass incarceration?

Richard Davis: For me, our main concern is our membership. Our conductor innocently looking back and forth on a platform slash their neck, it's proof that we have an issue. It's their responsibility, the governor and Janno Lieber, the MTA chairman, to come up with resolutions. They acknowledged the problem. We acknowledge there's a problem. We've seen the public at risk. We've seen people get hurt, stabbed, pushing in front of the train. The problem is there. I'm a person growing up in New York City who was profiled.

I understand the concerns will be profiled. I like to think of myself as a person who's concerned about civil liberty and civil rights. I've been active in my life fighting. I've been harassed quite a few times in my life. At this point, our members' life are in danger. Our life matters. You can see the assaults are on the rise, so we want to make sure they're being protected. It's the governor's responsibility to come up with solutions with us in a room together with the community, with the public--

Brian Lehrer: Does the presence of more police officers prevent assaults? Q brought up one point about not seeing people with bags on the subway trains. Another listener texts, "I've seen a lot of disturbing subway incidences in the last three to four years and none of them involved a gun or a knife." There's also a school of thought that says, "This is just theater and won't change anything because the deployment as announced is mostly to high-use stations like Times Square and Grand Central." The real danger is in remote locations like where the conductor was slashed at 3:40 in the morning on an A Train out in Brooklyn. Do you agree with that critique at all?

Richard Davis: I believe that they should have police officers in all the station. I believe New York City in areas that--

Brian Lehrer: You mean on the trains?

Richard Davis: On the trains. Well, there should be ridership on the trains and the buses in the police department that get to know our members and making sure they know where the concerns are. They could come and sit down and meet with us. We could tell them where the concerns are, just not in the high-profile areas. We said, absolutely, New York City, is where we needed police. We did not pick out certain areas. We said Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North don't have the amount of crimes that they have here in New York City subway system. Why they pick two specific areas?

We asked the police across the system in entirety. To shed some light for NYPD, the NYPD themselves are being attacked by people on the subways and in the streets as well. NYPD also face some challenges on their own that we support them as well. We encourage and we want to work with the NYPD. They're our brothers and sisters from another union. We want to make sure we do that as well. The MTA, Janno Lieber, again, it's their responsibility to sit down and come with ideas with us. We are willing to do that and we're calling for help. Our membership has to be safe. The riding public has to be safe.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a call, I think, from a retired NYPD lieutenant. Edwin in Flatbush, you're on WNYC. Edwin, thanks for calling again.

Edwin: Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Mr. Davis, and Donna, if she's on. I recently retired as a lieutenant in the NYPD. I've called in before. I don't know if you recognize me.

Brian Lehrer: I do.

Edwin: The first seven years of my career, I was a transit cop, so I had front-row seats to how the Transit Bureau operates. The issue is and has always been deployment. The NYPD Transit Bureau has often been led by chiefs who have never worked transit. Brian and Mr. President, their nuances to how the transit system operates when it comes to policing it, that do not correlate with outside of the transit system, what transit cops refer to as topside.

Topside policing and subway policing are two different things. Deployment has always been the issue. The reality is officers are often hiding in rooms at the mezzanine to affect arrest rather than being at the platforms and trains where statistics show over 80% of the crimes occur. There are other law enforcement-sensitive things that I'm going to hold back from saying, but transit cops who analyze this are the people that need to be in the room.

Deploying the National Guard is not the way. This is a big, big mistake from the governor. The NYPD is more than capable if it gets the right leaders making the right decisions deploying officers in a way that makes sense. Omnipresence is important, but flooding the system with cops that have never worked transit where they're only comfortable standing next to the token booth at the mezzanine, that's not it. That's not where the issues are. The issues are on the platforms and on the trains.

Brian Lehrer: Then let me ask. If I understood the beginning of your comment correctly, tell me just for clarity for the listeners. Do you think it would be better therefore to have a dedicated transit police force?

Edwin: We do have a transit police force. It's the Transit Bureau where over 2,600 cops are assigned. The problem is, again, Brian, they're not deployed adequately. They're incentivized to make fare-evasion arrests instead of the omnipresence and all of the benefits that we can get from them being on the platform and on the actual train because that's where MTA staff is getting assaulted. That's where people are getting pushed. That's where people are getting robbed and even getting shot. If you take a look, officers are almost always at the mezzanine because that's where they're going to get the fare-evasion arrests.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you one other thing then, Edwin, and just get your perspective on this. I was on an A Train yesterday and they played a recorded announcement that a police officer was on board and would be patrolling the train. Now, the officer never came through my car as it happens while I was on for about 20 minutes, but do you know if the deployment is mainly for-- Is it clear to you if there are new officers, if there's a new presence of officers on the train, and if they're patrolling the trains as the recorded announcement said, what that means?

Edwin: Unfortunately, Brian, again, the omnipresence that you've seen now, it's coming from officers that aren't assigned to transit. They're not comfortable with how the system operates. They don't know the nuances, the way that transit cops know it, the tunnel rats as we call ourselves. They don't know the system in the same manner. Now, when a community is entering the system, they see cops there. It gives a perception of more safety. In reality, again, statistically, where the crimes are actually happening, that's not where the cops are.

Brian Lehrer: Edwin, thank you for your call. I really appreciate it. Richard Davis, give a reaction to that, then we're going to be out of time and bring on Donna Lieberman for her point of view.

Richard Davis: I 100% agree with the comments. It is great to hear from someone who has seen it from that point of view. We want to work with law enforcement. I believe that their presence in the system create a deterrent, and it does create a deterrent. At the end of the day, we want the public to be safe, but we want our members to be 100% safe. When they had officers stopping the buses asking questions, it was a way of joining with our members and getting our members ideas on where the needs would be. That's an idea that we're talking about where we're asking for an officer in the conductor's position in the station agent area and those platforms and mezzanines that need that help.

Brian Lehrer: Richard Davis, president of TWU Local 100. May all your members be safe. I love our bus and subway workers. I've been riding the subways and the buses my whole life. I've just had so many excellent encounters with people who work the system who are so helpful. I hope everybody stays safe. I hope everybody figures out what the right policy is, whether it's this or something else, but thank you for coming on with us.

Richard Davis: Thank you. Thank you for having me and thank you for your concern. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Another point of view after the break with Donna Lieberman from the New York Civil Liberties Union and more of your calls and texts.

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Governor Hochul: We're going to make sure we take back our subways if you feel safe again. No stop-and-frisk. This is not punitive. This is more of a deterrent.

Brian Lehrer: Governor Hochul on MSNBC as we continue now with reaction to Mayor Adams' and Governor Hochul's new anti-crime measures in the subways, bag checks entering the system for more people, 1,000 National Guard members and state police being deployed by the governor, and more NYPD officers by the mayor. With us next is Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Thanks for coming on, Donna. Welcome back to WNYC.

Donna Lieberman: Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, our lines are still open for your questions and comments. 212-433-WNYC, call or text. Well, we heard TWU President Richard Davis and we just heard the clip of the governor there saying, "This is just a deterrent. No stop-and-frisk." Do you not believe her?

Donna Lieberman: [chuckles] I believe that the governor wants to support New Yorkers in the subway system, but I believe that this is more political theater than solutions. What New Yorkers want is solutions. I think that despite perhaps the best of intentions instead of allaying New Yorkers' fears, the presence of the National Guard with or without their long guns, and I'm relieved that they've ditched the guns. New Yorkers need more.

The National Guard presence, I think, just builds on the narrative that there's a crime wave, that the subways aren't safe, and the data doesn't say that. Even the mayor. As the governor's announcing her plan, the mayor is touting what a great job he's done because crime is down in the subways for this month. Which is it? New Yorkers are having data whiplash. The mayor's doing a great job because crime is down one minute. The next minute, crime is up, crime wave. We need 1,000 new officers.

Brian Lehrer: Let me follow up on that on this question of whether more law enforcement present actually reduces crime in the subways. The mayor says crime was up in January, then they surged more cops into the system, then crime was substantially down in February. Does that not indicate that there is more of a relationship than your perspective would like to believe?

Donna Lieberman: I think that having the conversation about with one month's data is really not the way to do it, and also having the conversation in the context of police as the only solution that we have. The New York Civil Liberties Union and others have been saying for years. We have problems in this city with people who are unhoused, people who need mental health care, and people who need social services, whether it's drug treatment or other care.

Those solutions are not what we're talking about in a serious manner. In the past year, the mayor has increased overtime for cops in the subways from $4 million to $155 million. What do we have to show for that and what have we lost out on by way of social services, by way of housing, by way of treatment programs, by way of mental health care, by spending so much on policing? It feels like New York is a one trick pony.

Brian Lehrer: He would say that the overtime in 2023 did help subway crime goes down. When there was a reduction in January of this year, subway crime went back up, then it went right back down when they surged police into the system in February. I guess he would argue that whatever the long-term underlying causes of crime are, the many things you mentioned that also need to be addressed in a big way, that's not a reason to pull back on immediate safety in the system, you would say.

Donna Lieberman: The problem is that the mayor has failed to put forward a vision and a long-term set of solutions to address the long-term social problems that face New York City. That's the real unfortunate reality that we're dealing with. We need housing. We need affordable housing. We need treatment programs for mental health issues, for drugs. We need supported housing. Where is the plan for that?

What we see time after time after time is the law enforcement approach, police in the lead. Even when the mayor provides some mental health care, it's always from a policing point of view, never from a public health point of view. We need public health services in New York that are accessible and that are not led by the NYPD. Sure, the NYPD has to be there in emergencies, but not in the first order.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Naqib in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Hi, Naqib.

Naqib: Hi. Good morning, Brian. Hi. Good morning, Ms. Lieberman.

Donna Lieberman: Good morning.

Naqib: I'm calling because back in 2005, when they first started doing these random bag checks, I actually was arrested at the 57th and 7th Avenue station. I was in law school at the time and had a backpack. I actually declined to be searched. I said, "No, thank you, officers. I'm going to leave the system," because I'd seen the police commissioner on the news say that you could do that.

Well, that's not what happened. I got arrested. They held me at Midtown North for hours well into the middle of the night and interrogated me and asked me if I had terrorist leanings because they found a New York Review of Books article, ironically enough, about the war on terror and how it required better and more policing and not war. Anyway, they eventually let me go.

I ended up suing the city over the issue or the incident and settled with them eventually, but I am just very skeptical that the policy will actually do anything to deter violent crime, which is terrible. I don't want the riders or the workers to be injured or threatened. I take the subway and buses every day. I don't think this will deter crime. I think this is not going to be applied randomly. I also am worried that if you decline to be searched that folks will actually be allowed to leave the system as they're saying.

Brian Lehrer: Since you're telling your story from back in 2005, what was the premise, as you understand it, of why you were arrested? Because they're certainly saying now and I believe they said back then as you just cited, you can turn around and walk out and not go through the turnstile if you don't want your bag searched. What was the premise?

Naqib: I don't know. Yes, I don't know what's in their hearts. I'm a Muslim Bengali, short, darkish-looking person. I think that's probably what it was because they said, "Come back," and four of them seized me and took me over to the table and went through my bags. Hare Krishna had given me a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and then this article by Max Rodenbeck called The Truth About Jihad. That really-

Brian Lehrer: -was enough for them to take you in.

Naqib: -made them think, I guess, that's-- Yes, they took me in and, yes, they had the FBI come in and interrogate me and sent the cops over to my brother's apartment in the middle of the night. He confirmed, "No, he's just a law student. He's not a terrorist or criminal of any kind." I'm worried that--

Brian Lehrer: Sound like a terrible experience. Naqib, thank you for sharing with us as potentially instructive for what might happen now. Donna Lieberman, do you want to expand on that at all? Because, again, the governor said in the clip, the governor has said elsewhere, that these bag checks will be random based on every xth person in line, depending on what their rate of inspection is, and that anybody can turn around and leave rather than go through it. Sounds like if his experience is as he describes, it doesn't always work out that way.

Donna Lieberman: It sure doesn't. One might say that the fare-beating on steroids program that Mayor Adams has implemented is also just based on whoever jumps the turnstile, except for 90% of the people who were arrested are Black or Latino. Whenever we create a point of conflict with law enforcement, there's bound to be conflict. There's bound to be something other than random stops that happen.

It's no surprise what happened to the caller and I would fully expect that similar things will happen again. The New York Civil Liberties Union challenged that bag search policy. We lost. It was approved because it was an anti-terrorism measure supposedly. This is different. This is like an ordinary law enforcement tactic. You need suspicion in order to stop somebody and subject them to a search of their person or their belongings.

Brian Lehrer: Is that a Fourth Amendment, unreasonable search-and-seizure case that you plan to file on different grounds than last time, what you were just describing?

Donna Lieberman: The devil's in the details, Brian. We're certainly looking into the details of this program because it's different from last time. It feels like a search. It looks like a search. It sounds like a search. It's ordinary law enforcement and that doesn't meet the standard. We have to acknowledge the likelihood, the possibility that this will be racially targeted as well.

This combined with the fare-beating on steroids enforcement that's going on, it feels like a throwback to broken windows policing that we know was harmful to New York. We know it didn't solve or stop crimes. We know that it did result in tens of thousands of Black and brown New Yorkers ending up in conflict with the police, hurt by the police, in jail, and also lots and lots of lawsuits like the caller's, which result in money payouts by the city.

Brian Lehrer: Right, yes. We know that when de Blasio came in and stop-and-frisk ended, crime went down even further than when there was stop-and-frisk. Just to be clear on your last answer, do I understand that you're considering at the Civil Liberties Union whether to take this policy to court and you haven't made a decision yet?

Donna Lieberman: That's correct, Brian. We're always thinking about where there's a lawsuit, we're not looking to go to court. If there's a reasonable way, it's certainly not off the table.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Jill in Park Slope, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jill.

Jill: Hi. I realize I'm probably going to sound a bit like a cliché here being a Park Slope mom who's worried about her kids, but [chuckles] I will say that my two older sons were both assaulted on the system in recent months. My older son has special needs. He was spat upon and yelled at. My younger son, who was 11 at the time, a disturbed individual came up to him, grabbed his head and squeezed it, and yelled the N-word in his face repeatedly.

These things were not happening two or three years ago. I think it's really disingenuous for people to say this isn't an emergency. I think it is an emergency. I think things have changed and maybe we do need more visibility. I don't disagree that other services are also in order for the unhoused and those who need help, but people are getting assaulted more and there is more happening on the trains. It's just that simple.

Brian Lehrer: Jill, thank you very much and I hope you and your kids are safe. Donna, respond to that Park Slope mom.

Donna Lieberman: Yes. I love Park Slope moms and I'm the equivalent on the Upper West Side. Of course, the safety of our children as they're coming and going from school, the safety of all New Yorkers is very, very important. We can't just say as an afterthought, we need services. The system for providing mental health care is so fundamentally inadequate, broken, and failing to meet the needs of the tens of thousands, but it's not more than tens of thousands of New Yorkers with unmet healthcare needs.

Right now, the biggest provider of mental health services is Rikers Island. Well, that's the wrong way to go. We need to ramp up and provide public health-led services at every level of need so that people with small needs can get treatment before their problems get worse because of lack of care. People with big problems who need temporary shelter or permanent housing, supported housing, can have access to that.

That shouldn't be a pipe dream, but it feels like it is because there's not a single politician who has been successful in putting forward a program and implementing it to address the problem. It's always like, "Get the police in there." Police visibility is not bad. Of course not. I feel reassured when I see cops on the train sometimes, but that's not the only answer. It feels like that's all we're throwing at a much more complicated and substantial problem.

Brian Lehrer: Well, listeners, we've gotten two points of view on the mayor's and governor's new anti-crime policies in the subways earlier from the head of the Transport Workers Union representing subway workers, and now from Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU. Thanks a lot for coming on with yours.

Donna Lieberman: Thank you.

 

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