‘Inadequate and antiquated’: New Yorkers call out NYPD and Mayor Eric Adams after Brooklyn shooting

As the New York City police force continues to field criticisms over their handling of the Brooklyn subway shooting, the 30-hour manhunt has resurfaced both new and old critiques of the department, including the alleged mishandling of the investigation, their treatment of unhoused persons and a skyrocketing budget.

Several key details have emerged in the days since 62-year-old suspect Frank R James was arrested that suggest there were mishaps that could’ve been avoided, which might’ve even have led to an earlier arrest of the suspected shooter.

Mayor Eric Adams revealed in an interview with WCBS Radio that there was “some kind of malfunction” at the 36th Street station in Sunset Park on Tuesday morning, which failed to capture footage of the attack that sent 29 people to the hospital after police said 33 bullets were fired into a train car packed with early morning commuters.

Online, critics were swift to point out how inconceivable it seemed that a police force that adopted a $10.4bn budget for the 2022 fiscal year was unable to maintain the surveillance cameras that would have provided essential footage in the wake of Tuesday’s shooting.

“$10,400,000,000 NYPD budget and they couldn’t get their radios to work in a crisis, the surveillance cameras ‘malfunctioned’ and no officers prevented anything or apprehended anyone. But politicians plan to just throw more money at it, no questions asked,” wrote Samuel Sinyangwe, a policy analyst and creator of Mapping Police Violence, a database of police killings in the US.

Another user, @mythserene, took up the same point and referenced a 2019 audit conducted by the state comptroller’s office of the surveillance cameras, in which the report notes that though the MTA had “made progress” in addressing the problems identified in the 2018 audit report, of the six recommendations only “two were implemented, two were partially implemented, and two were not implemented”.

“I am actually angry. It’s bulls*** for @NYCMayor to double down on cop theater when he knew or should’ve known the cameras weren’t working. Look at this s***,” the Twitter user wrote.

In the 2019 follow-up audit, two of the recommendations that were partially implemented relate to repairing defective surveillance cameras and maintenance schedules for said devices.

For instance, the report states a recommendation to “Ensure defective cameras are repaired timely”, but the MTA was only partially able to implement the recommendation.

The agency did not “set a standard time frame for camera repairs”, it wrote

“We sampled 24 of 525 trouble tickets that took longer than five days to close, of which 10 were for defective cameras (5 of which took between 43 and 323 days to repair),” it continued.

“We note that the total elapsed time between the first visit to assess the condition and subsequent visits to do the repair accounted for most of the time, ranging from 40 to 217 days.”

A measure that was not implemented from the 2018 audit was to “focus resources on meeting preventive maintenance targets”.

The report notes that the agency failed to meet this recommendation, and that “EMD continues to miss preventive maintenance scheduled for its CCTV system”.

“For example, from April 13, 2018 to April 30, 2019, EMD Radio and Security System technicians missed scheduled preventive maintenance almost 52 percent of the time (missing 586 of 1,136 scheduled preventive maintenance visits) for 216 CCTV cameras at four stations,” the report reads.

MTA Communications Director Tim Minton said in a statement that, as is routine following a major incident of this nature, the agency is “reviewing its protocols regarding safety measures to ensure best practices are deployed and that transit managers are doing all they can do to assist the NYPD in protecting riders”.

“NYC Transit cameras assist in dozens of investigations every day, as happened following the terrible Brooklyn subway shooting this week, providing investigators with leads that remove guns and wanted criminals from city streets and subways,” said Mr Minton in the statement.

Outside of the complaints circulating online regarding the defective surveillance cameras, there were others who took the manhunt for the Brooklyn shooter as an opportunity to criticise the force’s Strategic Response Group, a counter-terrorism unit, which, as many pointed out, was deployed to a homeless encampment to evacuate tents on Wednesday while Mr James remained at large.

“The subway shooter has not been found, but where is NYPD’s anti-terror unit? At a homeless encampment with a few tents,” wrote Joshua Potash.

Kristin Richardson Jordan, a councilwoman of New York City Council’s District 9, emphasised how measures such as these, despite having access to “military equipment, facial recognition technology, robot dogs, drones, and 36,000 cops” are still failing to protect New Yorkers.

“We must invest in real public safety, for once and for all,” the councilwoman wrote on Twitter.

“The truth is the NYPD’s job isn’t to fight crime. Their job is to wage war against poor people who can’t afford a $2.75 subway fare, it’s to harass immigrant street vendors trying to make ends meet, and it’s to terrorize the unhoused and the activists defending them.”

Mayor Adams, who banked his mayoral campaign on public safety and announced an ambitious plan for tackling the city’s crime in his first few weeks of assuming the office, was also sharply criticised online for what some saw as dated policies that only provided a perception of safety but failed to deliver on that promise.

“In his first month, Mayor Adams added 1,000 new NYPD officers to the subway system bringing the total to 3,500 cops who failed to stop yesterday’s subway shooting in Sunset Park. Investing in more police isn’t making us safer. Abolition is creative and we must move towards it,” wrote Ms Jordan.

“Eric Adams is asking for more cops to “protect” the city. The massive NYPD military he already controls couldn’t stop the attack because they are inadequate and antiquated, not because there aren’t enough of them,” wrote author and activist Frederick Joseph.

The Independent reached out to the MTA, the NYPD and the New York mayor’s office for comment but did not hear back in time for publication.