NYPD is to bring back stop and search at subway stops says liberal Mayor Eric Adams in a bid to halt rampant violence – more than a decade after it was deemed ‘unconstitutional’

New York Mayor Eric Adams says he is bringing back bag checks for subway passengers after a 13 percent crime spike, more than a decade after the city’s similar stop-and-frisk policy was deemed unconstitutional.

Recent criminal activities on the trains that have made headlines include: cellist who was hit on the head by a stranger while wielding a water bottle while performing, as well as a shooting that left one dead and five others injured.

“We know people feel unsafe,” Adams, himself a former transit police officer, admitted.

The mayor said he will bring back methods previously used in times of high distrust.

‘We are introducing bag checks again. There are several things we are reintroducing into the system,” Adams added, with the NYPD reportedly searching bags for weapons such as knives, box cutters, batons and guns.

These protocols were originally brought to the MTA after the 2005 London bombings.

However, it may bring back memories of the city’s stop-and-frisk policy, which was ended in 2014 after being deemed “unconstitutional.”

That year, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio announced he would no longer pursue a lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights and ended the policy.

De Blasio’s announcement came at a news conference in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, where police made frequent stops. Attorneys for the plaintiffs who sued the city over stop-and-frisk joined city officials at the event.

In his 2019 speech at the Christian Cultural Center, a historically black church in Brooklyn, Bloomberg admitted, “I was wrong.”

Bloomberg said the practice often led to the disproportionate detention of blacks and Latinos, adding that he “cannot change history.”

But he said if anyone was wrongly stopped by police, “I apologize,” adding: “Our focus has been on saving lives. But the fact is, far too many innocent people were stopped while we tried.

The city asked the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New York to send the case back to a federal judge “so that the parties can explore a resolution,” according to a court filing.

De Blasio’s predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, apologized for his longstanding support of the strategy ahead of his failed Democratic presidential bid.

Adams, a Democrat, is working with New York Governor and fellow liberal Kathy Hochul, who says she is sending state authorities to resolve the problem after the pair met with MTA officials last week, according to NBC New York.

“Governor Hochul has made historic commitments to make our subways safer, from security cameras to mental health staff, and tomorrow she will unveil new legislation to protect passengers, new state personnel to help the NYPD with bag checks, and other new measures to protect New to stop yorkers. safe,” an Adams spokesperson said.

Hochul plans to unveil her own plans on Wednesday to protect subway passengers, which should increase funding for police overtime and mental health services.

She also plans to introduce legislation to use state personnel to help the NYPD with bag checks.

With crime up at double digits compared to this point in 2023 and citizens and workers under attack, the Transit Workers Union has slammed their bosses at the MTA for failing to protect them.

“We stand ready to stand with Local 100 as they confront this scourge of violence – and with transit drivers who are incompetent or indifferent to the harm inflicted on their own employees day and night,” TWU said chairman John Samuelsen.

“When it comes to workplace safety, the MTA has been an abysmal failure. Assaults on subway transit workers increased by nearly 60 percent last year.”

Crime in the subway has been on the rise lately, with 2023 seeing the most attacks on the subway since 1996. There have been three murders on the rails at the start of the year, compared to none at this point last year .

The NYPD Chief of Transit has made his own efforts to address the problem, bringing more than 1,000 officers into the transit system and credits it with a 17 percent crime reduction in February.

Passengers and even subway artists are trying to make their own voices heard, led by a recent victim of subway crime.

Iain Forrest, 29, a medical student and musician, played his electric cello at the 34th Street Herald Square Station on the evening of February 13.

In a shocking moment captured on video, an unknown woman came up to him, grabbed the metal water bottle he had placed on the ground and smashed it over his head. The bottle clattered to the floor as Forrest held his head in pain.

Forrest announced on Instagram earlier Sunday that he has formed a coalition with his fellow musicians called The Subway Performers Advocacy Group (SPAG) but says he will continue to entertain underground for a while.

“It breaks my heart that this is something that has to stop indefinitely, barring some sort of systemic change with protections for subway performances,” he said.

SPAG’s stated goal is to ask the MTA and NYPD to keep statistics on crimes against subway musicians so that police resources can be “smartly allocated to where they are needed to prevent attacks.”

Forrest, who said his escaped attacker still has not been caught, told the Daily news from New York he didn’t understand what exactly happened to him until the attacker literally hit him.

‘I couldn’t quite get my bearings and it wasn’t until I saw my metal water bottle rolling on the ground and I saw the face of the crowd – one of awe, disbelief and shock – that I realised: I think someone just smashed the back of my head with my metal water bottle,” he said.