The man who ended up shot with his own gun during a violent confrontation aboard an A train in downtown Brooklyn on Thursday didn’t pay for his ride, police said.
A video released by the NYPD Friday shows the 36-year-old gun-toting suspect walking through an open emergency exit gate at the Nostrand Ave. station on the A line in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
“Small things like walking through an emergency gate or hopping over the turnstile lead to big things,” NYPD deputy commissioner Kaz Daughtry said Friday, arguing for the NYPD to conduct more fare enforcement operations.
Police and MTA brass regularly tout fare-jumping busts as a way to keep deadly weapons out of the subway system.
“If you want to keep the system safe, the first thing you’ve got to do is keep bad people out of the system who don’t pay,” said Tarik Sheppard, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of public information.
When fare evaders are caught by police and asked to identify themselves, their names are run for outstanding warrants, Daughtry told reporters. Those with warrants can then be arrested and searched.
NYPD data shows 21,016 fare evasion summons have been issued as of March 3. Since the start of the year, Daughtry said, 17 guns have been confiscated as a result of fare enforcement operations.
The system’s emergency gates, which allow for a quick exit from a station platform, are also often used by fare beaters to circumvent turnstiles. It’s easy for ffare beaters to enter through the gates when they open to allow straphangers to exit.
“It’s no surprise that a man carrying a loaded gun and a knife into the subway came through an exit gate, which — as I’ve been saying for years — is the super highway of fare evasion used by many violent criminals entering the system,” MTA chairman Janno Lieber said in a statement.
“For the past year in many stations we have posted unarmed security guards to stop people opening the gate,” he said.
The footage released Friday by cops began as the gun-carrying man had already begun walking through the emergency gate. It was not immediately clear how the gate was opened.
After the 36-year-old man entered the system, he boarded a Manhattan-bound A train, where he got into an argument with a 32-year-old man.
Bystander video taken during the confrontation between the two men shows a woman stabbing the 36-year-old man — and it also shows the 32-year-old man grabbing the 36-year-old’s gun.
Cops say the 32-year-old got off several shots, at least two of which struck the 36-year-old in the head as the train pulled into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station in downtown Brooklyn. The 36-year-old remained hospitalized Friday in critical but stable condition.
Fare jumping on the subway has been a nearly $300 million problem for the MTA annually. The agency has sought to address the issue with hardened fare collection gates and an increase in civil summonses.
Agency officials have installed time-delays on the exit gates at three of the system’s 472 stations as part of a trial run, and removed one gate as part of a turnstile modernization test at the Sutphin Blvd.-Archer Ave.-JFK station in Jamaica.
Lisa Daglian, head of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Council to the MTA and a member of the transit agency’s blue ribbon panel on fare evasion, acknowledged the importance of fare enforcement in maintaining a safe subway system, but said police are “one important tool in the tool box.”
“The problem isn’t just about enforcement,” she told the Daily News. “It’s also about strengthening gun laws and making sure there are enough mental health services.”
“There’s a holistic approach that we need to take to ensure riders are safe,” she said.
Thursday’s shooting came on the heels of Gov. Hochul’s subway safety plan, which posted members of the National Guard and New York State Police at some of the city’s busier transit hubs last week.
The plan also calls for an increased number of security cameras throughout the subway system, and a $20 million investment in mental health teams.
