A deadly assault draws attention to crime on public transit : NPR

A violent stabbing in Charlotte’s transit system is getting a lot of attention — all the way up to the Oval Office.

In a video posted online by the White House, President Trump held up a photograph of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old refugee from Ukraine, moments before she was attacked by a stranger on the light-rail system in Charlotte, N.C. last month.

“A beautiful young girl,” Trump said, “with a magnificent future in this country. And now she’s dead. She was slaughtered by a deranged monster who was roaming free after 14 prior arrests.”

Politicians and commentators on the right have seized on the deadly assault as a symbol of what’s wrong with public transit. The numbers say that trains and buses are still overwhelmingly safe, but the nature of crime on public transit may be changing.

The man who allegedly killed Zarutska has a history of mental illness and a long list of convictions. Since the killing on Aug. 22, authorities in Charlotte have announced changes, including more officers in the transit system.

But criminologists say there’s a limit to what public transit systems can do to address bigger problems — including rising homelessness, drug addiction, and a lack of mental health treatment.

“That larger social problem, that we have just a very inadequate sort of mental health safety net or treatment system — that’s not something that the mass transit system itself can fix,” said Jens Ludwig, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and the head of the university’s Crime Lab. “But that winds up playing out in things like what we saw in the tragedy in Charlotte.”

Still, the Trump administration has been blunt in its criticism of public transit systems — and not just in Charlotte.

“Public transportation has become an epidemic of violence and homelessness across the country,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Fox News earlier this month.

For months, Duffy has criticized the New York City subway system in particular, calling it dirty and unsafe.

So we asked subway riders what they think. NPR spoke to a dozen riders at the Atlantic Avenue station in downtown Brooklyn during the morning commute, and some of them say they don’t feel safe on the subway anymore.

“Not at all,” said Desire Brazell, a social worker who frequently rides the 3 train in Brooklyn. Brazell says she’s noticed a change for the worse since the COVID pandemic.

“A lot of the homeless population gets on that train,” she explained. “I work with that population. And you never know what is in their mind or what they’re thinking at that time. So they can attack anyone that’s sitting on that train.”

But other riders in Brooklyn say they still feel safe, including Margo Moses.

“I have no fear of riding the subway,” Moses said. “I see a lot of crime reported on TV, but I never have ever encountered it. So I think I feel safe.”

The numbers back Moses up. More than four million people ride the subway every weekday, while the crime rate in the system fell this summer to its lowest levels in at least 15 years, according to New York’s governor.

“The subway is safe,” said Paul Reeping, director of research at Vital City, a think-tank in New York that focuses on public safety. “The New York subway is one of the safest, if not the safest, in the nation.”

Violent crime on the subway is incredibly rare, Reeping said, though there has been an uptick since the pandemic.

The more significant change, Reeping says, is in the kinds of crime on the subway, with fewer robberies and thefts — but many more assaults.

“For the first time, about a year or so ago, felony assaults actually surpassed robberies on the subway. And the misdemeanor assaults, there’s many, many more of those,” Reeping said. “Those have substantially spiked since the pandemic.”

Vital City noted that shift in a report on crime in the subway system published earlier this year.

Data compiled by the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics also show an increase in reported assaults on public transit across the U.S., even as other crimes stayed steady or declined. Assaults on transit workers have risen, as well.

Then there is the brutal case in Charlotte last month. In the aftermath, local officials announced they would deploy more police officers in the transit system.

“It’s a good start, and we have to keep it up,” North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein told reporters on Thursday. “With more public safety on trains and law enforcement in our communities, we can deter criminal activity and we can start the work of rebuilding trust.”

Stein also said the state should reexamine its pretrial policies to make sure they adequately protect the public, as well as rules around the involuntary commitment of people with mental health diagnoses and a history of violence.

“Obviously, we don’t want to deprive people of their liberty without thorough due process. But there are times when a person is a real risk to other people or to themselves where that is the appropriate resolution,” Stein said.

The governor’s remarks reflect the complexity of the challenge facing public transit systems across the country.

“A lot of those sort of assaults are very spur of the moment,” said Ludwig. “The tried and true tools of the criminal justice system historically, like based on deterrence, I think work a lot less well for the sort of assaults that are increasingly important on mass transit.”