Subway Gun Arrests Are Way Up, But Apparently This Is a Good Thing
Most of the subway-related news you hear about nowadays has more to do with manspreading and fare hikes than it does with crime. And this is a good thing! We’re old enough to remember what it was like to ride the subway on elementary school field trips, and seeing a parent chaperone twisting her engagement ring around so that the stone was on the inside of her palm instead of flashing brightly outward. Plus, we read Heartburn! We remember what happened to the Nora Ephron character! It was not cool. Not at all. But so, subway crime. Despite it not being something we think all that much about while we’re wedged into the F train like a sardine, it turns out that it is something that plenty of other people are thinking about. How do we know this? Well, because gun arrests on the subway are up by 42 percent this year. That’s a lot of guns.
CBS 2 reports “the NYPD has recorded a big spike in gun arrests in the New York City subway system over the past year – amounting to an increase of 42 percent… An assortment of guns has been confiscated by police in the subway system this year, from .38-caliber revolvers to a semi-automatic Ruger. Police displayed 10 guns from 10 different subway riders busted just since the beginning of the year.”
Lest you think this is really scary (just think of what a ricochet would be like on the G), maybe just dial that fear back a bit to, uh, kind of scary. As Chief Joseph Fox, head of the Transit Bureau, said to CBS, “The numbers going up are reflective of detection and good work by the officers.” In other words, the guns were probably always there, they just were going undetected. Feel better? Cool. Me too. Now, back to worrying about that potential fare hike!