New York to install security cameras on every subway car
By Jonathan Allen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is putting in safety cameras in all of New York Metropolis’s subway automobiles, officers introduced on Tuesday.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, mentioned the cameras would make riders extra assured within the security of the transit system.
The plan is to put in two cameras in every of 6,355 subway automobiles, constructing on a pilot program that noticed cameras put in in 100 automobiles. The work must be accomplished by 2025, the MTA mentioned.
The MTA is spending $3.5 million on the set up, and the remaining $2 million wanted is thru a grant from the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety’s City Space Safety Initiative.
There are already safety cameras within the subway system’s greater than 470 stations, although they don’t at all times work.
Tuesday’s announcement got here 5 months after a person began capturing a rifle at passengers on a subway practice in Brooklyn, placing 10 folks in a extremely uncommon assault. All survived their accidents, however the police seek for the shooter was hampered by issues with the safety cameras within the station.
An MTA spokesperson declined to say who made the cameras used within the pilot program or whether or not the seller would proceed for use within the enlargement.
The New York Civil Liberties Union mentioned the MTA was being unduly secretive about surveillance and had given no details about how the digicam knowledge can be analyzed and saved and no proof that increasing the usage of cameras improves security.
“Dwelling in a sweeping surveillance state should not be the worth we pay to be protected,” Daniel Schwarz, an NYCLU know-how and privateness strategist, mentioned in a press release.
Ridership on the subway plummeted after the COVID-19 pandemic unfold to the USA in 2020, however has been step by step rebuilding to about 3.7 million rides on a typical weekday. There have been greater than 390 robberies on the subway thus far this yr, in response to police knowledge, in comparison with greater than 320 in the identical interval in 2019.
Danny Pearlstein, a spokesperson for the transit advocacy group Riders Alliance, mentioned there have been extra urgent areas of funding.
“Finally, the governor also needs to make a focused funding in additional frequent public transit service to chop platform wait occasions and appeal to extra folks to the system, creating security in numbers,” he wrote in an e-mail.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Enhancing by David Gregorio)
