Now here we are in 2024 with transit crime rates through the roof and felons free to slash conductors, beat platform buskers and kick straphangers to railbeds — leaving riders everywhere in fearful anticipation of an inevitable next outrage.
But you can be sure of one thing: Nothing broadcasts panic more loudly than uniformed soldiers publicly performing duties reserved by custom and common sense to civilian police agencies.
Or maybe not panic; maybe impotence is the word.
Having lost the will to protect life, limb and personal property by traditional means — that is, by enforcing the penal and criminal-procedure codes — New York now takes tentative steps toward overtly militarized policing.
This is not the same thing as local police departments adopting military-style gear and tactics; that’s a regrettable, but not unreasonable, response to real-world dangers.
This is uniformed military personnel engaged in law enforcement.
Now, Hochul may not understand the issue because she doesn’t seem to understand much, but Americans have seen military involvement in domestic policing as a threat to civil liberties at least since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period — and they take great care to avoid it.
To be sure, there’s a difference between the Regular Army and the National Guard, and troops often are deployed for natural disasters and in response to events like 9/11.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the deployment of National Guard troops to address subway crime, a problem Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his anti-crime brain trust solved a generation ago.
nypost.com
abcnews.go.com
