Sunset Park, Brooklyn — As dozens of cops, firefighter, and reporters hurried back and forth outside of Sunset Park High School on Tuesday, a group of students pressed their faces to the glass and waved at the commotion while holding signs reading “Make NYC safe again.”
Area schools were locked down Tuesday morning after an unidentified man in a green construction vest entered the 36th street subway station, donned a gas mask, tossed what is believed to be a smoke grenade, and opened fire on morning commuters, striking at least ten people, five of whom are in critical condition. Six other riders were injured in the ensuing panic.
The unidentified gunman remains at large.
The students weren’t alone in drawing broader conclusions about the safety of their city from the day’s events. New York governor Kathy Hochul showed up for a press conference held hours after the shooting, addressing the mob of reporters who had fought their way through blocks of cops and fire vehicles.
“I’m committing the full resources of our state to fight this surge of crime, this insanity that is seizing our city because we want to get back to normal. It has been a long, hard two years,” Hochul said.
“Insanity” might sound a bit extreme, but the governor has the stats on her side: Crime in the city was up 59 percent in February 2022 compared with the same month last year, according to the NYPD. And the surge wasn’t confined to certain categories: every major index crime saw an increase, with car theft increasing 104 percent, robbery 56 percent, theft 79 percent, and subway crime 74 percent.
The scale of police response was staggering: I spoke to veteran reporters at the scene who said they hadn’t seen anything like it since 9/11. Even the response to the Bronx fire that killed 17 people in January was smaller, they said. As I drove away from the scene, I was seeing cops doing foot patrols with bomb-sniffing dogs ten to fifteen blocks away from the station itself.
A mass-shooting on the subway during the morning rush hour should serve as a flashing red warning sign for a city on the brink of a return to the bad old days. School kids have apparently grasped that much, let’s hope Mayor Adams and the City Council do as well.