New Yorkers know the drill: On practically every other subway trip, you encounter an unhinged person ranting to himself or shouting at straphangers. You avoid eye contact and usually nothing happens, short of having to later explain to your child what could make a man so angry, as well as what certain nasty words mean.
Midday Sunday, that routine morphed into absolute horror. A muttering, pacing man took out a gun and murdered 48-year-old Daniel Enriquez, who was headed from Brooklyn to Manhattan on the Q train to have brunch with friends.
All lives are created equal, and all losses of life are tragic, but not all crimes generate equal terror in the populace. This — a broad daylight, wholly unprovoked stranger killing in our central common space — strikes at the heart of what is making New Yorkers and visitors afraid in 2022. That it comes a little more than a month after 10 people were shot by a madman on a train in Brooklyn makes matters worse. That it comes in the midst of a year in which crimes in the subway system have risen 62.5% — with five people shot (not even including last month's 10 victims) and four killed so far on trains this year, both totals far, far ahead of last year’s pace — means these two acts cannot merely be explained away as anomalies.
Little wonder in a poll released earlier this month, 43% of New Yorkers who used the subways in the daytime and 61% of those who used them at night said they considered the subways somewhat or very unsafe; 86% wanted more cops in the subway system; and 62% were understandably open to installing new weapons detection technology.
We don’t yet know who murdered Enriquez. When police make an arrest, we must find out what previous encounters if any he had with the justice system, homeless shelters and mental health professionals. Sadly, no one would be surprised if this becomes the umpteenth tale of an assailant who should’ve been behind bars or under psychiatric care rather than free to take a life. We must also find out how he got his weapon, while understanding that if so-called conservatives on the Supreme Court get their way, the carry of concealed firearms is likely to soon get radically easier.
If people are afraid to take the trains, New York withers and dies. This weekend, citing positive trendlines, we said Mayor Eric Adams’ plans to curb shootings seemed to be paying dividends. Transparently, his subway safety plan is not yielding results. Start by putting cops on more trains, now.
