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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Chef José Andrés' coming up later this hour on his World Central Kitchens massive relief efforts in Gaza and Ukraine, and also his new book and TV specials which both come out today. Also today, as every Tuesday, our climate story of the week. This time on a big new wind farm that despite opposition has actually opened off Long Island.

Later, a call in for women with ties to South Korea in a Women's History Month segment about the so-called 4B Movement there, to limit marriage and childbirth and even heterosexual dating in a country with a very patriarchal society, but that already has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. Chef José Andrés, wind power on Long Island, and making women's history in South Korea all coming up, all with your calls, and we start here.

The news from New York City's subway system continues to be intense, right. New random bag checks, super scary incidents of violence that make the news like the shooting on the A train at Hoyt-Schermerhorn last week that got everyone talking and looking over their shoulders, but statistics that show major crime in the subway is extremely rare. Yet that was the ninth subway shooting this year, according to the stats that I read compared to just one by this date last year.

Mayor Adams says the A train shooting personifies what needs to be done with respect to people with severe mental illnesses. Adams and Governor Hochul have a new plan that they hope will address that need. We'll talk about it in a minute. As Daily News columnist Harry Siegel points out, that plan is getting less attention than Hochul's subway deployment of the National Guard. We'll talk to Harry and Dean Meminger from NY1 in a minute, but the governor wants people to know this about her various subway safety measures.

Governor Hochul: Mostly to demonstrate that Democrats fight crime as well. This narrative that Republicans have said and hijacked the story that we're soft on crime, that we defund the police, no.

Brian Lehrer: Governor Hochul on MSNBC, and she's not even up for election this year. With us now Harry Siegel, editor at the news organization, The City, co-host of their podcast FAQ NYC, and a Daily News columnist. Also Dean Meminger, criminal justice reporter at Spectrum News NY1. Harry and Dean, thanks for coming on today. Welcome back, both of you to WNYC.

Harry Siegel: Thanks, Brian.

Dean Meminger: Brian, good morning. Happy to be here with you.

Brian Lehrer: Can I ask a basic question first? With each of your long histories covering crime and life generally in New York, how safe or unsafe would you say the subways are today? As we speak, Harry, there are these competing statistics about nine shootings so far this year compared to one at this point last year, but stats showing subway crime in general is very rare, like five or six reported incidents a day of any kind out of 4 million daily rides. That's way less than what New Yorkers of a certain age look back on as the bad old days.

How does very rare versus several more shootings, versus better than many years when there actually was less fear add up to some coherent way to understand where we are, Harry?

Harry Siegel: Brian, we're all veteran New Yorkers, but not that many people really care about how safe things are in comparison to say 1990. With that said, I take the trains every day, and at all hours, and I feel generally pretty safe. January after a pretty good year last year was disastrous, I'm going to pretty directly to Hochul's plan. There was a 45% increase in the overall number of crimes and rise in violent crimes. That's a big, big spike.

This was all coming as we've had the governor paying for police to do way more overtime to have these announcements, "There are police officers in your subway station." The truth is whatever I think-- well, I think what's more important is how New Yorkers are reading this. All of the public polling shows that there's this big perception problem that things are worse.

I've talked to women who don't like to take the trains at night now after scary experiences have been here for 5 and 15 years. The MTA's own survey shows that people behaving erratically, changing that is the number one thing that would increase your satisfaction with the subway system in particular. It doesn't even make the top five for buses. There's a general sense that something needs to shift.

What was so strange about Hochul's plan is New Yorkers are worried about severely mentally ill people behaving erratically. It does not appear that this guy pulled the gun and then ended up getting shot with his own gun has any history of mental illness. He wasn't behaving in a way that immediately indicated that, as opposed to just being an antisocial and upset.

I talked to law enforcement people who were-- whose [unintelligible 00:05:30] was down that Eric Adams is saying, "Well, clearly, this is why Albany needs to do something about mental illness." Bizarrely, that came the same day, as I wrote that the head of the transit department of the NYPD, the chief for transit, said, "We can't really do anything about these mentally ill people unless they're actually in the middle of doing a crime and a serious crime."

I think there's a sense of disorder and uncertainty, smaller antisocial things like somebody just being mean, or looking to start a fight, or smoking on a subway car, or in a platform has a lot to do with that. Plainly, the effort to shift perception or psychology, as Hochul's put in, you should just read that as poll numbers. By bringing in heavily armed initially, National Guardsmen, there's just a mismatch between what writers are worried about, and what the authorities are doing, though it's been ongoing now, at least through the pandemic.

Brian Lehrer: We'll bring you in Dean in just a second. Harry, to follow up on one piece of what you just laid out about the spike in crime in January. Mayor Adams was just recently celebrating how safe things were at the end of February. Did it turn out to be a one-month spike and then things went back to where they were?

Harry Siegel: These people have made themselves deeply unreliable narrators in ways that matter. Prior to the Adams administration, the [inaudible 00:06:58] monthly CompStat briefings, whether the crime numbers were up or down. Now, they don't really say anything. They just put out the numbers when they're up 45%. Then if they go down the next month, they put out a gigantic press release with 27 statements from different people about what a wonderful job everyone is doing, in a way that makes it very hard to fully trust and credit what they're putting out.

We know that Adams and Hochul are not synced, however much they publicly insist that they are, because Hochul's announcement came right after Adams's attempt to trumpet how much better things seemed in February.

Brian Lehrer: Dean, same opening question. With your long experience covering crime and urban life generally in New York, and living here, how safe or unsafe would you say the subways are today as we speak?

Dean Meminger: Well, I think generally they are safer than they were years ago. Anybody who's been here a long time will know that. If you rode the trains in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, they are safer now. As Harry mentioned, that perception is a big issue. If I think somebody's a knucklehead, and people tell me why they're a knucklehead, that's what I perceive, that they're a knucklehead even if they're not. That perception is a big, big issue.

The numbers in terms of crimes, a lot less. Fewer crimes nowadays than years ago. Harry mentioned something about well, if people were here for 5 years or 10 years, well, those individuals to me are New York transplants. Very different from somebody who's been here for a long time riding the trains. I think you may look at it differently, but it doesn't mean that people are not fearful.

I have family that takes the train, they take the train often, so I'm concerned, "Hey, keep your head on a swivel." I know politicians are calling the NYPD saying, "Hey, are my kids safe on the train?" People are very, very concerned about this. As we mentioned, and this is not the first time this perception versus reality. This happened right at the beginning of the Adams administration when there was a little craziness in the train where they were battling the reality versus perception.

The bottom line is that people perceive that they are not safe. That's how they're going to reflect on all of this. I often tell people, "Hey, I'm a native New Yorker. Whenever I rode the train as a young man, or if I happen to get on it now, hey, you keep your head on a swivel. You pay attention to what's going on, and you be ready." That's just the way of a big, big transit system like ours and pay attention.

I think what the police will tell you is the big jump in those major index crimes, those are the major crimes, 50% of that in January, that was grand larceny; pickpockets, or people having their stuff taken if they place their bag on the chair next to them, and somebody swiped their bag. That was about half of it, but when people are getting shot in the train, that's a big problem.

Brian Lehrer: Harry just talked about the unreliable reporting that he sees the NYPD doing. Adam's touting statistics that may or may not be really accurate, or reflect the real reality down there for everyday New Yorkers. Dean, you've been covering the NYPD specifically for a long time. What's your take on how reliable their numbers are?

Dean Meminger: I think we always have to try to double-check them, but how can we do that? We're not the ones out there recording [chuckles] the numbers. It depends on, I think, the question that you asked. When we talk about these six crimes per day in the subway system, they use the term index crime. I want to let people know that those are basically serious crimes.

Those are crimes that are considered felonies, so six index crimes a day with roughly 4 million rides. When you go a little deeper--

Brian Lehrer: Before you go deeper, those index crimes, do those include the nonviolent crimes like pickpocketing that you were just referring to?

Dean Meminger: If you end up having your phone stolen, yes, because that's something over $1,000, that's the grand larceny. That's over $1,000. That's murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, and the grand larceny. When you look at other numbers, because I was interested and I spoke to some of them, I said, "Well, what about the minor crimes, like the misdemeanors?"

That could include Brian or Dean walking on the platform, and somebody runs up and smacks us in the back of the head, and we're not seriously injured. Those things happen obviously much more than the major crimes happen. I thought I wrote down some numbers here when they were telling me about this, and I said, "Oh, wow. Let's look a little deeper into this." Obviously, those numbers are much higher than just those six index crimes per day.

Brian Lehrer: Jeez, someone smacking me in the head on a subway platform feels more serious than somebody stealing my phone, but I guess that's not the way it gets listed.

Dean Meminger: I guess if you're not hurt, right? [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Yes, exactly.

Dean Meminger: If you're not hurt, that's the issue, or somebody pushes you against the turnstile as you're walking in. Those things happen a lot more. Those who ride the train, they say, "Wait, only six crimes a day? Has to be much more than that." [laughs] Like somebody getting on the train on Prospect Avenue in the Bronx, something is going on there. Kids are fighting.

I'm quite sure there's more than six fights between teenagers on the train a day. That's where that breakdown comes in.

Brian Lehrer: Sure. I'm sure many people-- I've experienced it recently. Other people I know have experienced it recently, where people are yelling in our faces on the subway. That's not even a crime, but it's definitely at least unnerving.

Listeners, if you ride the subway, how safe or unsafe do you feel these days? 212-433-WNYC. If you've been riding for decades, how similar or different does it feel compared to times past, including eras when statistically, crime was more common? 212-433-WNYC, or statistically, times when crime was about the same, but you didn't feel as scared. 212-433-9692.

What do you want the mayor, or governor, or law enforcement, or social services to do? We're going to get into that about the intersection of violence and mental illness. 212-433-WNYC, call or text. 212-433-9692. Also, has anyone had your bag checked yet under that new program, or seen National Guard troops and felt one way or another about any of that? 212-433-9692. Call or text for Harry Siegel, Daily News columnist who's been writing about this the last few weeks, also an editor at The City and co-host of their podcast, FAQ NYC, and Dean Meminger, anchor and criminal justice reporter for NY1.

Harry, your column from this weekend that triggered our invitation. It's about a new plan that you write could accomplish what the NYPD won't do and the National Guard shouldn't do, as you put it. What's this plan?

Harry Siegel: Kathy Hochul made this plan, which had already been happening but had not been announced public, at the same time she announced the Guard was coming in. It got completely buried. It's called SCOUT, which is an acronym. It's a pilot program in which you have clinicians who are going around the subway system with two or three MTA cops, not NYPD cops, notably, finding people who appear to be severely mentally ill or incapacitated, with open wounds, who are talking to themselves and swinging their arms, things like that.

Then, making a determination under this section of state law 958 about people who need to get some help, and can be compelled to get that help, which is what the MTA cops are there for if they don't want it or don't think they need it. That's actually a significant part of several of these mental illnesses is that somebody does not recognize that there's anything wrong at all that they need to deal with.

Hochul announced the existence of this, which had been two teams of a clinician and two or three cops, up to 10 teams. The numbers I've been told indicate that prior to its announcement, this had been going pretty well. There'd been 15 compulsory hospital admissions in the first about 80 days they were trying it. WNYC got them. [unintelligible 00:16:34] was actually there for one of those in a walk-along he wrote about. Another 15 people took voluntary admissions, and 45 more were placed in shelters with mental health services.

This group of erratic people who are living in or always on the trains, it's not that many people and they project very large. Big violent crimes continue to be very rare, but these nightmares come from the erratic people who are just around. What if somebody shoves me onto the tracks, God forbid, or there's a shooting on my car?

The hope is, the NYPD has no interest in dealing with this very openly and plainly. That's why this program is being piloted with MTA police, truly much more willing to do this work and to engage with people who are clearly not well, who need some help so they're not just being left and "benign neglect." We'll see over the coming year how this does, what efforts they're making to track this.

As we were talking about with statistics before, that can be really complicated, and if this has any measurable or noticeable effect that manifests in how New Yorkers perceive things in what the trends are like. The last thing I'll say, which is important is, it's great that there's some effort not to just leave people to their own devices who plainly can be dangerous to themselves and to others, and not able to take care of themselves.

This only works in the long run, and you have to start somewhere, if there are more psychiatric nurses, more hospital beds, a full system. Otherwise, you can have the clinicians and police doing whatever they like, and the ER doctors, but there has to be a place, finally, for people to go to get help and attention when that's what they need. That's expensive and complicated and something New York has been struggling and mostly failing to do since deinstitutionalization.

Brian Lehrer: Amelia in Brooklyn Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Amelia.

Amelia: Hi. I just want to echo the very last point. I absolutely agree. The issue is with severely mentally ill, and our system is absolutely failing them. As a caretaker of a severely mental ill, very close relative, I was at my wit's end for years and decades on. I'm, I would say, an upper-middle-class individual and put a lot of resources into this, and the system still failed us.

I do believe there is a massive wave coming our way of unstable, mentally ill people not being taken care of. It's not just deinstitutionalization where they don't know that they're ill and they cannot commit themselves, but also the fact that there's not enough beds, there's not enough care. I think it's a massive issue. Also, the availability of pot that often is a trigger for a lot of young people. We have legalized it but we have not properly allowed this-- It's not properly regulated. I believe it's only going to get worse, and I'm glad we're talking about this. Something has to be done.

Brian Lehrer: A dire prediction. Thank you very much. Dean, any indication on that last thing that she said that I'm sure is going to raise a lot of eyebrows, that the legalization of marijuana is contributing either to public mental illness or to crime?

Dean Meminger: I haven't spoken to NYPD officers or officials about that. Generally, if someone is high, they can be erratic, but some people who smoke weed, they relax. It depends on how it triggers you, but she brings up a very good point. If somebody has mental illness, how does smoking weed impact them?

Now, I do know if you flip it, there's a big problem with people who have mental illness and who drink. That's a double diagnosis that a lot of people deal with, people who are mentally ill and they get drunk. We know a lot of people when they are high off of alcohol, they get violent. They're still researching last Thursday's shooting, but my sources are telling me-- NY1 and myself, we may have been the first ones with that full video. I was on Thursday night talking about that video, the four-minute video, breaking it down.

When you listen to that guy, he immediately is telling the other dude, "You going to beat up cops? Well, I'm going to beat you up. You can't beat up cops." Then after he is stabbed by the girl, because he was stabbed, he said, "You stabbed a cop. Now I'm going to arrest you." He either was mentally ill, but some people are telling me he may also have a drinking problem. When you listen to his speech, if you listen closely, he does sound like he may be high or drunk. Then, that's just listening to the video.

There are problems and your caller is 100% right. Harry is on point with his reporting because it's not just in the subways, it's on the street. As a native New Yorker, sometimes that Bronx in me could come out. I've worked very hard to stop that because somebody's arguing with me, I'm arguing with them on the street, but they think they're arguing with Jesus and I'm only Dean. It's like, "Whoa, these people are mentally ill." They're just yelling at me and I'm responding.

There is a problem not only in the subway but across the city. She's right, there are many families, all economic backgrounds, that deal with this in their families. If you are not trained to deal with a mentally ill relative, you're really not equipped to do it. It is very hard. It's not just the subway, it's the caseworkers in the homeless system, are they keeping people in there? If somebody's mentally ill and you have to produce all of these documents in order to get an apartment or a room, they're not going to do it.

Harry's article talks about if you see a guy on the subway with his pants around his ankles just sitting there for hours and hours, when he goes to get help in a homeless shelter and they're asking him, "Where have you lived? Where's your ID?" If his pants are around his ankles, he probably doesn't have ID. It is a very tough, tough problem that we are facing, not just as a city, but as families, as the lady mentioned. I want to-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: One other comment-- Go ahead.

Dean Meminger: Very quickly, because I found those numbers. The felony assaults where people are getting hurt, so far this year as of this weekend or close to this weekend was about 119, the felony assaults. Misdemeanor assaults so far, year to date, 319. Those are those cases I'm telling you whether you were punched, or slapped, or pushed and not seriously injured. There are a lot of those, and those don't--

Brian Lehrer: How does that compare to last year or before the pandemic, if you know?

Dean Meminger: Well, just close to the same thing. Year to date, as of this weekend, 319 misdemeanor assaults versus 311. Up maybe 2.5%. The petty larceny 191, that's up 47%. That's no force used, your property's stolen under $1,000. That there's telling me that's usually when somebody puts a bag down, or you got your Amazon package and you place it there, or you walk away from it and go back and it's not there. There are a whole other list of minor crimes that are happening that the police they don't often talk about because there's going to be a lot of those.

It's very interesting when you look at the numbers overall. Once again, they're going to tell you, "Years ago, it was worse." We have this debate in the NY1 newsroom all the time. I'm just one of these guys that I believe you have to know history when you're talking about things nowadays. Just to say it's crazy nowadays without realizing what it was like 20, 30, 40 years ago, I think is a little unfair. Although you don't want to be shot or beat up on the train today, but you're less likely to have that happen to you than many years ago.

Brian Lehrer: One other point I guess we should make about legal cannabis is that perhaps all that's changed, is its legal status and the fact that people aren't getting arrested for it as much. It was always widely available on the streets of New York on the black market. Harry, can you talk about the part of your headline that was, What the NYPD won't do? You seem to critically quote Transit Police Chief Kemper when he says, "You cannot arrest your way out of the problem." That statement is true and you don't want to arrest your way out of the problem, I don't think, right?

Harry Siegel: For sure. I completely agree with that part of it. He's using that to camouflage his point, which is we are equipped to stop an immediate threat in one moment at a time, disrupt a single act. Obviously, our tools cannot address the persistent issue of mental illness, and that's simply not true. When you see these [inaudible 00:26:16] who are in the stations but not on the platforms in pairs or groups, sometimes on their phones, and then you go down to the train and there's somebody just living there, and the one level has nothing to do with the other.

That's a cultural choice the NYPD has made, that's why the MTA Police are involved here as effectively a route around. The NYPD is monitoring this, DHS, H+H, other city agencies are actually very involved and interested, but as a cultural matter, they want nothing to do with this. I had a former officer and department historian write me after I wrote this column and asked, "Maybe combining the different police departments." There used to be separate transit police was something of a mistake.

What we don't need here is a generalist approach and to be only tracking these numbers. That is how the NYPD fundamentally is managed. Maybe you need people who want to engage with this, again, small group that has an outsized impact on how other people perceive the trains, and are often in quite tremendous psychic pain themselves, if you have an NYPD that's simply disinterested in engaging with them. I do believe that's so, and I do believe that's what Kemper was flatly stating. That happened to be the morning of this shooting, by the way.

The mayor then said, "Fight and shooting clearly showed mental illness." That's absurd. You can feel the passivity of this approach. What's tremendously important is, if you're worried about unruly people or erratic people, you're dealing with these complicated overlapping groups. When we talk about homelessness, and some of the people are doubling up in someone's couch, some people are actually living on the streets. There are all these different groups involved.

Someone who's drunk and aggressive and has been through some trauma in life, but is not severely mentally ill. There's no difference in the moment or the circumstance if you're on that train car. The difference is in what happens afterward, what help and remedies are available. The NYPD saying until somebody does the crime, there's no role for us to play here, is the reason we now have a different police department involved. Why I'm hopeful that in this idiotic announcement of the governor's with bringing in the troopers and the long guns for the bag checks, that something good might really come out of it with this SCOUT program. Although, we will see.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Harry Siegel and Dean Meminger and your calls. Then, Chef José Andrés is coming up later this hour. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we continue with Harry Siegel, editor at the news organization The City co-host of their podcast FAQ NYC, and a Daily News columnist. We're talking about his column from this weekend on what he says the NYPD won't do, and the National Guard shouldn't do, but a program that Governor Hochul has instituted that they are doing that might actually help, but isn't getting much publicity with the intersection of severe mental illness and subway crime. Dean Meminger, a criminal justice reporter and an anchor at Spectrum News NY1. Shaw in Crown Heights, you're on WNYC. Hello, Shaw.

Shaw: Hey, Brian. Good morning. I'm so sick and tired of people letting fear get the better of them. I've lived in this city my whole adult life, and I'm not coming from a place of telling people to be a real New Yorker and tough it out. I think a real sense of humility and patience is needed with my fellow New Yorkers because something I see a lot of is I'm not sure if people are necessarily mentally ill, but they're definitely angry and popping off and addressing the entire car.

At some point, someone's standing really close to them, the train is always crowded, and it's always happening during rush hour. Someone just needs to, I don't know, have this notion of standing up for themselves or being right, and they'll answer back to this person. They'll talk to this person. They'll take the bait.

Brian Lehrer: Then it'll escalate.

Shaw: Then it escalates. This happened literally in front of me. There was this crust punk with her bicycle. She was just clearly having a bad day, and this other gentleman who looked like he was out of a Lands' End catalog. The subway stopped short and maybe his elbow hit her in the head accidentally, maybe it didn't, I don't know. She started berating him for putting his hands on her. She started saying about how she was going to kick his ass and blah, blah, blah.

At some point, this gentleman turned around with this smug look on his face, and he said, "Oh, really now?" I just lost it. I said, "Are you crazy, man?" I was like, "Shut up." Sometimes you just need to give people their space and just let them have at it.

Brian Lehrer: Shaw, I'm going to leave it there for time. Dean, you think that this post-pandemic antisocialness is real and we see it on the subways, we see it on the streets?

Dean Meminger: Oh, it's real in life. People are angry. He hit on something. I don't want to say that's every case but no. People are angry. Our young people are angry. Maybe it's a generational thing. They're not really that social if you look at the stats and studies. People are angry, but I also would say he pointed to something that I wanted to mention on very quickly.

Back in the day, if something happened on the train, if we didn't happen to be there with the camera, people really didn't know about it. They didn't see it. Everything is posted, and it's not just on NY1. Everybody wants to be a reporter now, they're posting it. Even on my social media, and I'll plug myself, you follow me on social media @Dean Meminger.

I did an interview over this weekend with the Deputy Commissioner of Operations, and he's talking about, "We're bringing in different technology to see if people are bringing weapons onto the train." I said, "You're probably going to get pushback," but then people take that interview and repost it, and put their own twist on it.

Everybody wants to analyze. Sometimes they're analyzing incorrectly and putting stuff out there, or putting these videos out there that none of us know about and some guy puts it up, but millions of people get to see this stuff. That brings the fear factor up as well. I always point this to folks, if one kid gets abducted in our city or anywhere, every parent is afraid that that may happen to their kid. The chances of it happening, it's not going to happen to you, but people are afraid.

You can see every single thing on video now on your phone. I think that raises the tension, the fear, and people being on guard. If you come to me, I'm going to set it off.

Brian Lehrer: Raises the fear beyond other times when statistically the risk of riding the subway or being on the streets was the same. Harry, that gets to a criticism that I've heard leveled at the governor, which is by deploying the National Guard and having this general police surge so it goes to the mayor too, instead of combating the exaggerated perception of risk, you're enhancing that perception with these deployments that have a subtext of saying, "You have reason to be afraid. Be very afraid," even though they say they're doing it to quell the perception.

Harry Siegel: We're having literally the New York conversation, and this is in-house.

Brian Lehrer: That's our job.

Harry Siegel: We all take the trains. Yes. Part of what's happening now with everything being on video inside the city, but significantly nationally and in an election year, is this stuff gets amplified. Hochul, who's sending the Guard quite literally to do the cops' job in a way that is really distressing, she says, "I'm doing this to show that Democrats can fight crime too by bringing in soldiers." My God.

This all ends up in the national discourse in ways that are hard to fully take in or conceptualize. There've been multiple political ads locally and nationally already with these migrants kicking the cops in Times Square. As it turns out, large parts of the NYPD narrative about that including what led to that confrontation, they said, "We told them to move on, and they wouldn't." In fact, they did and then these two officers pursued one of the guys and throw them up against a wall. That's what led to this.

There was all this reporting in The Post that they'd all fled and gone to California with the aid of nonprofits and skipped bail. Turned out to be totally untrue. Because we can see everything that happens, all these people who are not in New York, who are not riding the trains, who are maybe thinking about visiting in a couple of years and how safe they'd feel, who are just seeing this endless stream of terrible, extremely rare things that happen as though that's the entire experience.

It's very distressing and it's only going to get worse through November when magically, this will become much less of an issue as soon as we're clear with the election. I'm braced for the interim. I think it's going to be very ugly with what this conversation is like, and how little bits and pieces are picked up, amplified and distributed nationally on Fox, on talk radio, and on social media.

Brian Lehrer: Some texts coming in. Listener writes, "Can you comment on men calling and telling people to toughen up on the subway when women are more at risk of being harmed?" That person adds also, why women might be more jumpy about violent behavior generally. Another listener writes, "Definitely agree with the guy talking about people being angry." Another one, "I'd love to hear a show regarding teaching de-escalation practices to citizens."

Another one, "The growing inequality is a factor in how people behave in the subway. The anecdote by the caller is an indicator of intolerance that entitled people behavior of superiority," is the way they wrote it. Erica in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Erica.

Erica: Hi. How are you doing? Long-time listener, not exactly first-time caller.

Brian Lehrer: Glad you're on. You're going to be our last caller on this, and then we have Chef José Andrés standing by. Make your point. You have a story I see Erica, right?

Erica: Yes. Actually, last Thursday, about an hour after the shooting at Hoyt Street, Schermerhorn station, my husband was coming up from the platform at the Clark Street Station in Brooklyn Heights. Had just come up from the platform level, was heading to the elevators. Some teenage kid trying to impress his girlfriend, ran up behind him, cold-cocked him in the face, hit him in the eye, and jumped on his back.

Fortunately, my husband had kung fu training, so he knew how to stop the kid and grabbed the kid off, and held him there. Again, this is just another incident where it's not related to mental illness, it's not related to homelessness. It is some little punk teenager trying to-- and I don't know what's happening now with that.

Brian Lehrer: Erica, let me play you a clip of Mayor Adams from last week, and tell me if this changes your feeling at all, or your husband's feeling after that incident.

Mayor Adams: You on the subway and all of a sudden you come upstairs and you see that state trooper, that police officer, that National Guard, you have a feeling of safety. That uniform means a lot to people. When I speak to New Yorkers, they say we love seeing the uniform presence.

Brian Lehrer: Do you find it reassuring?

Erica: Honestly, I'll tell you what, if there had been police in the station on that level it probably wouldn't have happened if they'd been within 30 seconds of the area where this happened. Unfortunately, there weren't. I would love to see more police actually policing rather than sitting and talking to each other, or not paying attention.

Brian Lehrer: Erica, thank you very much for your call. Last thought, and Chef Andrés, thank you for your patience as we finish up this very important New York conversation before we go to your very important global one, as well as about your new cookbook and TV special.

Dean, the reaction to the uniform. We talk about, and I'll get a comment from each of you on this, and then we're at a time. We talk about the bad old days of crime, there's also the bad old days of mass incarceration. One of the tricks for government is to thread that needle, and not go back to victimizing primarily Black and Latino young males, for the most part, in pursuit of safety beyond what needs to be done.

There's the bad old days of one kind, and the bad old days of the other kind. Are we going back to the bad old days of the other kind with all this deployment?

Dean Meminger: Well, that is a major concern, because all of those things are up. Arrests are up, summonses are up, but the cops will say, "At the same time, we're getting more guns, more knives off of people on the subway." That's something where the advocacy groups have to pay attention to because we know very easily that could happen.

You had one of the police officials, Chief of Department Maddrey talk about that. Look, when we stop somebody for fare jumping, we need to be speaking to them, because maybe it's just a kid that left his MetroCard at home and we shouldn't be running that person through the system. We have to pay close attention to those numbers, who are they stopping? Once again, if you give a homeless dude, or a guy with mental illness, or a woman with mental illness, a bunch of violations, they can't pay them, so it's making maybe the situation worse in some cases.

What I would say finally is that, as New Yorkers, no matter how long you've been here, when you ride the train, pay attention to what's going on, keep your eyes open. A lot of these crimes are people's phones getting stolen, and that's a big deal if your phone cost $1,200 and you just paid for it. Pay attention to what's going on around you, and that helps to keep people safe. It doesn't stop all of the crime, but it really helps to keep people safe.

Brian Lehrer: Harry, it's a social imperative to keep people safe, but it's also a social imperative not to refill Rikers Island, or whatever the next jails turn out to be.

Harry Siegel: No doubt. It's to some extent, a question of what uniforms, plural, are dealing with this. I really don't think you want the military involved. At some point, you need to have a police department that can do things other than just effect arrests. Sometimes that's just checking with somebody who's going through a turnstile, sometimes that's connecting with social services.

The police can't be an island. That's what was so distressing about that quote from the transit chief. If they are, we're just going to keep dealing with the same problems and the same repeats of different bad old days again, and again, and again.

Brian Lehrer: Harry Siegel from The City and the Daily News. Dean Meminger from NY1. Thank you both.

Harry Siegel: Thank you.

Dean Meminger: Brian, a pleasure as always.

 

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