NYC subway operator confronted by ‘defecating’ straphanger on 2 train

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Doree Lewak and David Meyer - New York Post


A veteran subway operator said she witnessed a homeless man openly “defecating” on a No. 2 train Monday — a sign the homeless have “taken over” the subway system during the coronavirus pandemic.

Angelina Malave, 46, who missed a month of work after catching the virus, said the sight of the man — kicked back on a subway bench with his legs raised in the air over his head so his full rear end was in view — was “one of the worst things I’ve seen in my 18 years as a train operator.”

“He was definitely defecating. I was shaken and upset,” she said.

Malave said she snapped a photo of the distressing scene, which later circulated on Twitter and on worker Facebook groups, at the Flatbush Avenue 2 train terminal around 10 a.m.

Cops were called to the scene shortly afterward, she said.

The 5-foot-tall train operator said she’s too scared to confront homeless offenders on the rails. At 3 a.m., when she starts her shift, all 10 train cars are occupied by vagrants, she said.

Having returned to work just last week after recovering from the virus, Malave admitted she fears exposure to the homeless population setting up camp on her trains.

“What scares me the most is that I had it, but I don’t know if I can get it again,” she explained. “Now I have to deal with COVID and who knows what else this guy is carrying? I don’t feel safe — it’s unfair.

“Coming back to this scene after a month is so upsetting. After all my years with MTA, this is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. It’s crazy,”
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Interim NYC Transit President Sarah Feinberg said the agency was boosting its response amid the pandemic by increasing the number of cleaners in train cars, adding more police and hiring private contractors to help alert authorities to homelessness.

But Feinberg called on City Hall to take action, too, saying, “Our city must do better than this.”

The city polices the system and is legally obligated to provide housing to unsheltered New Yorkers.

Mayor Bill de Blasio last week denied the homeless situation was “out of control” and argued the city does not “have the magical ability” to force people off the rails and into shelters.

But late Monday, City Hall announced it would call on the MTA to close certain end-of-the-line stations overnight to help with outreach.

[lost in melb.]

Hard to see and I feel for the workers.

Definitely a societal failure when there are so many desperate people...

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Hank Berrien - The Daily Wire


https://i.imgur.com/xyEIw3wl.jpg

On Tuesday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo made a comment that if made by a Republican governor, would certainly have resulted in getting savaged by the mainstream media.

At his daily coronavirus briefing, Cuomo was discussing the homeless people in the subways and brandishing a copy of the New York Daily News that showed pictures of the homeless, then stated, “That is disgusting, what is happening on those subway cars. It’s disrespectful to the essential workers who need to ride the subway system,” as The Gothamist reported.

Cuomo added, “We have to do better than that, and we will.”

The Gothamist noted that Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Tony Utano stated, “Mayor de Blasio has to direct the police to escort the mentally ill and the homeless out of the system. This is a life-and-death situation, not a quality of life issue.”

New York mayor Bill De Blasio wants the MTA to close ten subway stations and also close terminals between 12 a.m. and 5 a.m. so the homeless can be transported to shelters and the subways can be cleaned. He stated, “We’ll devote the police resources, we’ll devote the outreach workers, we’ll do whatever it takes, but we need the MTA to agree to this plan,”

On Monday, the interim head of New York City Transit, Sarah Feinberg, wrote in The New York Post, “We are changing our Code of Conduct to make it abundantly clear that the transit system must be used by people for transport only — not for sheltering, sleeping, storing belongings or panhandling. We will enforce these new regulations in close coordination with our NYPD partners and the MTAPD.”

MTA spokesperson Abbey Collins said, “We’re relieved on behalf of our customers and employees that the City has agreed to do more to provide safe shelter for homeless New Yorkers but it should not have taken a global pandemic for the City to do a job the MTA has called on it to do for years. Happy the city has agreed to do more to provide safe shelter for homeless NYers as we have been asking for months. We thank NYPD for their partnership, and urge City Hall to take additional aggressive actions so we can focus on safely running transit service and not providing social services.”

She added, “The Mayor should get out of his car and into the subways so he can see what is really going on and solve the problem of his own making.”

The Gothamist reported that roughly 4,000 people are homeless on the street.

As far back as 1991, The New York Times pilloried Republicans vis-a-vis the homeless, writing, “The eight Reagan years were dark ones for Federal mental health policy. The homeless — many of them mentally ill — became grimly familiar features of city streets. But the Reagan Administration did worse than ignore them; it magnified the problem.”