Cameras in the Subway Cars

[music]

Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Matt Katz, keeping the seat warm for Brian who has a day off. Big Brother is on the A train. I am paraphrasing Governor Kathy Hochul, who announced Wednesday that the MTA will install two surveillance cameras on each subway car. That's 13,000 cameras on 6,455 subway cars installed over the next three years at a cost of $5.5 million. Actually, I thought it'd be more. Subway stations already have cameras, but that system isn't perfect as we saw in the mass shooting on a Brooklyn N train in April when the cameras in the station didn't operate properly.

What's the latest with the crime on the subways, and are more cameras the answer, and did Governor Hochul really reference Big Brother in a positive way in making this announcement? Here to talk to us about all of this is the best person I know to talk to us about all of this and that's my colleague in the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom, transit reporter, Stephen Nessen. Hey, Steven.

Stephen Nessen: Hello, Matt. You're too kind.

Matt Katz: Listeners, we are very much looking forward to hearing from you on this. Do cameras on the subway make you feel safer? Do you feel unsafe on the subway? Are you worried about Big Brother documenting your commute and those images perhaps being used for less virtuous purposes? Give us a call at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet us @BrianLehrer. Stephen, isn't crime on the subway lower than it was just before the pandemic? What's the point of all of this?

Stephen Nessen: Well, it's sort of two-pronged, Matt. Just this week the MTA held its monthly board meeting and they were given this very detailed presentation on crime from the second person in command at the NYPD, NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey, for those that are following. He gave this detailed breakdown of crime in the system, summonses, all this stuff. The one thing that I took away from this big presentation is that he noted that, overall, crime in the transit system is at historic lows. He said crime in the subways makes up just 1.8% of all crime in the city. That's one way to look at it.

The pandemic years were very unusual 2020, 2021. You may remember the subways were shut down overnight. We didn't even have 24-hour service for several months. When you're crunching the numbers, that throws everything out of whack. Some folks will look at those numbers and see there was still crime in the subways, so per rider, it was crazy for them that there was still a good number of crimes. There were a lot of crimes in 2021 considering how few riders there were, but compared to 2019, it was obviously much, much lower because there were many fewer riders. When you talk about crime, Matt, you know this well, there's all kinds of different crimes.

Something like grand larceny, burglary, those are going to go up when there are a lot of riders because people are getting their cell phones stolen and those cell phones, they're crazy now, thousands of dollars for an iPhone 10 or whatever. That could be considered a grand larceny. Well, let's get down to the numbers. The number of murders, just five murders so far this year. Last year, there were six. It's a lot of murders for the subway system when, previously, there were maybe one or two or three. Rapes, there were eight rapes.

Those are ugly crimes. We certainly saw there was the shoving in Times Square of Michelle Alyssa Go, there was the shooting of a man point-blank in the head on a Sunday morning Q train, and of course, as you referenced the mass shooting, where no one was killed, but there were several injuries. When you compare this year to last year, crime is up. When you compare this year, not including the pandemic years, it is actually pretty low. I think we haven't seen the total number of this many crimes since 2014.

Matt Katz: There have been, as you mentioned, these high-profile incidents and unusual incidents. The pushing, the mass shooting, do you think Hochul's announcement stems directly really from these high-profile incidents more so than the aggregate data regarding safety on the subways?

Stephen Nessen: It's definitely a part of that. The other thing I forgot to mention is the MTA does these customer surveys quite frequently and the number one thing that riders complain about or say is holding them back from taking the subway more is safety. You've done some great reporting on this as well, the perception of danger versus the actual danger. The perception, perhaps they blame the media to a certain extent whenever there's a crime, especially a subway shoving or a shooting, obviously, there's going to be a lot of media coverage of this.

I think riders have a greater sense of insecurity about the subway because of that. How does this come in with the cameras? Hochul and the MTA believe that having more police presence, we certainly reported on increased police presence in the subways, and now they say cameras are also being installed to give riders a sense of security. Is it going to give riders a sense of security? Let's find out.

Matt Katz: You report that people behaving radically is the chief reason why some people are reluctant to ride the rails and maybe that's one of the main reasons why the numbers of riders haven't gone back up to pre-pandemic levels. I'm wondering if cameras really do anything about that. A few months ago, I was actually on my way to the station to host the show and an aggressive panhandler spit at me in the face.

Stephen Nessen: Jesus.

Matt Katz: I didn't report it. It happened quickly, moved on, washed my face and I was wearing a mask, fortunately. I did not report it, but if I did, would the NYPD or the MTA really have gone back to that footage and looked for the guy? Would the fact that there was a camera on the subway potentially stopped the guy, as a deterrent, from spitting at me on the face? I'm curious if cameras do anything about those little nuisance crimes that are really what upsets people maybe the most about their experience on the subways.

Stephen Nessen: That's a great question, Matt. I believe, if you reported it to the NYPD, they may look into it and may go back to the surveillance footage, but it's really interesting you said that because that's what a lot of other advocates say is that a lot of these crimes just aren't being reported, these smaller things that are still very uncomfortable and troubling. All the surveillance cameras, the 13,000 cameras they're going to install, nobody's monitoring them in real-time. It's a misnomer, in many ways, to call it Big Brother because it's a security camera that will be reviewed later in the event that someone is called upon to review it.

That's how the cameras are going to function. Is it going to make you feel better to know that if there's a crime, you could report it and that person might get caught? Maybe. Certainly, the number of, I should add, transit workers being spit on, when a transit worker is spit on, that is considered a pretty serious incident that does get looked into, and maybe the cameras would help with that.

Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm WNYC reporter Matt Katz, filling in for Brian today. We're talking to WNYC and Gothamist reporter Stephen Nessen about the announcement that every subway car will be outfitted with two cameras a piece. The governor made a remarkable admission in announcing that there would be cameras for the subway cars. I want to play a clip of Governor Hochul.

[start of audio playback]

Governor Kathy Hochul: Do you think Big Brother's watching you on the subways? You're absolutely right. That is our intent, to get the message out that we're going to be having surveillance of activities on the subway trains.

[end of audio playback]

Matt Katz: Stephen, she bragged that Big Brother is watching us. Were you as slack-jawed about that comment as I was?

Stephen Nessen: I was. In my head, I was thinking, "Surely she doesn't mean Big Brother from George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four. She must be referring to the reality TV show Big Brother where camera is always watching these people doing funny stuff."

Matt Katz: I think she was talking about Orwell.

[laughter]

Stephen Nessen: This raises the hackles of civil liberty watchdogs who are like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute here. This is not the kind of society we want to be living in where every action is monitored and you have no privacy." Although the MTA, when I asked them about this, were like, "Stephen, come on. You've got cell phones. Every bodega has the camera. There's little expectation of privacy when you leave your house these days. This is not going to radically change the landscape of America."

Sure. Okay. Let's not forget the MTA also, at some point, a handful of years ago, installed some sort of facial recognition cameras in Times Square. They did it quietly without a lot of fanfare until civil liberties folks raised the alarm and we're like, "Excuse me, what are you doing? Where's this information going? Who's using it? Where is it being stored? The key questions you would ask, and you could ask the same question about this program as well.

Matt Katz: Speaking of civil liberties folks, I'd like to bring on Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who was kind enough to call in. Hi, Donna. Welcome back to WNYC.

Donna Lieberman: Hi, thanks for inviting me on, I'm a hackles person.

Matt Katz: Your thoughts on Big Brother riding the subway, the governor's comment, and overall, this effort here?

Donna Lieberman: Who knows whether the governor was at least partly tongue-in-cheek with that comment, but ouch. A big ouch even tongue-in-cheek to suggest that we want Big Brother to be watching on the subway. I think it's interesting.

Nobody has really said that cameras will reduce crime and make people safer, they have said that it will make riders feel safer. It's a PR stunt in some ways. While I understand what the MTA rep meant, when he said, "Well, come on cameras are everywhere." I think that we cannot quietly just sign away our privacy, even when we're out in public, when it involves the government tracking our every move, we have no idea what data is being kept, how long, who has access to it, what the safeguard are for it. There's no transparency whatsoever about this. That makes me nervous.

Matt Katz: This data could be shared with who, immigration authorities? Some people have suggested who else in a Big Brother world would my morning commute video be shared with potentially, Donna.

Donna Lieberman: I think immigration authority are one, but also, the selling of data to commercial entities that are aggregators of in of data and use special recognition, which is acknowledged to be unreliable and very dangerous, particularly for people of color, and young people and old people who can track our every move, who know more about what we are doing in our daily lives, where we go than we do is quite scary, I think.

We have no idea what they're doing with the data, but the potential for abuse, both by government and by sale of this data or just giving it over through the companies that are collecting it, that are providing the text, that's a lot of information out there and a lot of potential Big Brother. George Orwell looks so quaint compared to what we're doing now.

Matt Katz: Donna, we have some skeptics on the phone lines about this privacy argument, people who think it's totally fine. If you're okay staying on with us for a moment, I'd like to go to couple of those callers. Bob in Brooklyn. Hi there, Bob.

Bob: Hi, good morning to everyone.

Matt Katz: Good morning.

Bob: The key legal issue when it comes to the privacy is whether you have an expectation or privacy. I don't understand how you can have a expectation of a privacy on a subway, which is a completely public place. If I sit in the subway, everyone, all strangers are looking at me. This is simply one more strange looking at me. As far as the Big Brother reference, remember in Nineteen Eighty-Four, big brother was in your home watching everything you did, but you do have an expectation of privacy. Whatever the intent of the governor's comment, it's completely in [unintelligible 00:14:18].

Matt Katz: Thank you very much, Bob. Donna?

Donna Lieberman: You're right. We don't have an expectation of privacy when we're out in public, but we do have an expectation that there isn't somebody, something, some camera taking notes and making a permanent record of every move we make. That, I think is, different from-- This isn't just like somebody sees us out on the streets, this is a permanent file of every move we wait. That's really, I think, dangerous.

Matt Katz: Donna, do you think the legislature or city council should be coming in with some safeguards here, like regular audits to make sure the footage is being used properly, some timetable for purging the information? Is that something that would make you feel more comfortable?

Donna Lieberman: Absolutely. Sadly, I feel like we've been seeing the same song for decades. We sang it about video cameras on the street and we have to sing the same song now. There's so little transparency about what information's being collected, who has access to it, how long it's being kept. Is it being purged? Should it be purged? Policy is lagging behind the reality of this surveillance society. The horse is pretty far out of the barn. I think it's really important here for us to stop for a minute and make sure that there are some guardrails.

[crosstalk]

Matt Katz: Please, Steve, go ahead.

Stephen Nessen: Comment. When the shooting on the train happened, as you pointed out this surveillance camera didn't work in that particular train station at that moment, but the NYPD had photos of the suspect pretty quick from when he entered the system and when he left at another station, but they had that footage, they had the image, they put it on TV.

That's not even how they caught the guy in the end. It didn't help them solve that crime. We're all giving the MTA a little too much credit here for using this technology. I would add something that is concerning and that I've heard from folks about is OMNY, the use of the tap-and-go system, which is tied most to people's cell phones or to their credit cards, at least 500 million people have used that.

That is a treasure trove of data about writers' behavior habits when they come and go. I feel like that raises a lot of security questions and that's data that also, it's not entirely clear how they're going to use it going forward and who else might have access to that information which does contain quite personal information that the MTA we know has.

Donna Lieberman: I have to say it's so refreshing for me to hear somebody who's not on the staff of the NYCLU raising these concerns because they're real, the accumulation of data without oversight, and without guardrails and without any transparency whatsoever is so dangerous. OMNY is a case in point. Maybe it makes what the MTA is about to do look great, but I think it's time for the city council and for the state legislature to be looking at data privacy standards. Absolutely.

Matt Katz: Donna Lieberman is the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Donna, thanks so much for calling in and chiming in on this topic. We're going to continue taking callers, but really appreciate you calling us up.

Donna Lieberman: Thanks so much.

Matt Katz: All right, Stephen, we're going to go back to the phone lines on this. Nicola in Harlem. I understand you are in favor of this, to some degree. Is that right? Nicola, are you there?

Nicola: Hi, I'm here.

Matt Katz: Oh, hey there.

Nicola: I am absolutely in favor of it. I've traveled to Europe. I love being in the UK. They have CCTVs all over. You go to certain countries in Asia, they have these cameras on their trains. Why can't we have that? A lot of people were surprised that we don't already have this. I think it's a great idea. I thank the governor I'm voting for her.

Matt Katz: Was this something that affirms your decision to vote for her or pushed her over the edge in that regard?

Nicola: Oh, yes. I was always in her corner, but this one, I just added to it.

Matt Katz: Thank you very much, Nicola. Appreciate it. Let's go to Joy in Morris County, New Jersey. Hi, joy. Are you there by any chance?

[crosstalk]

Oh, hi there, Joy. Thank you for calling in.

Joy: The technology for video cameras is very high. It's high investment price. [unintelligible 00:19:50] had some thought of a signaling device at each station, at each place, in each car, on each seat then that was not something that we would normally just touch randomly, but something that's explicitly located that we give an alert that there's something happening in that car, then the next time that car pulls into a station, the police could be already alerted ahead of time and waiting to find out what happened on that car.

Because they're not going to know anyway, even if there were a camera, nobody's going to know until they reviewed the film footage, but if you had a button like normally you have on buses to stop at the next stop if you want to get off, you have that kind of a device. That would be simpler and much less expensive, more expedient, and much more likely to be able to catch an offender for an incident that is occurring in real-time.

It would be alerted directly to the police possibly or to the train if there is a conductor on the train, then they could send a message that there was some incident on one car that's come to him as a signal to alert the police at this next station. That's my suggestion.

Matt Katz: Thank you, Joy. That's a fascinating suggestion, really appreciate that. Thank you. Stephen, have you ever heard of anything like that? I don't know if this is even possible, but Joy's suggestion of having a panic button on your subway seat does solve the problem of the cameras, which is that the cameras are not immediate. They're going to maybe catch an offender down the line, but there was an expediency issue here when it comes to safety that the cameras don't solve, right?

Stephen Nessen: Right. I can just imagine in the New York City environment that button being widely abused by the writing public.

Matt Katz: Yes that's true.

Stephen Nessen: I will say when I was in Seoul in South Korea doing a story about their transit system, their workers and their teams are so responsive. They were saying, if someone gets sick on a train, the next time it pulls into the station, a crew is waiting to clean it up and there's like almost no delay due to a passenger being sick. They're just like, boom, boom ready to clean it up, get the person to safety, get the trains moving again. A suggestion like that is not totally crazy in the world of mass transit, but in a New York City environment, I would be curious to see how that would work.

Matt Katz: I can imagine that the 3:30 PM weekday rides that all the kids take when schools get out and those buttons getting pressed repeatedly. Who's to say these cameras work, Stephen? We talked about the mass shooting on the N train and the cameras in that station did not work. Is that going to be an issue here? So many cameras, so much maintenance. Is the MTA budget going to ensure that these things are operating at a high level?

Stephen Nessen: I recall when the shooting on the train took place and there were all the questions about why wasn't that camera working. I believe the MTA said that there are surveillance cameras in subway stations and we should add, in case listeners don't know, there's a surveillance camera, there's, I believe, 10,000 of them in every single subway station, 472 different stations, so we're told, that 90% of them are working at any given time.

There may be some connectivity issues or internet issues or whatever, so they're not feeding data but they work 90% of the time. Yes, who's to say they're going to work? That remains to be seen. The MTA did say they've got some new train cars coming, the R211s, they're beauties and they are going to come-- When they arrive they're going to be pre-outfitted with these surveillance cameras.

Matt Katz: I'm going to go to one more caller before I let you go, Stephen. Elizabeth in Queens. Hi, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I am an Asian Senior and that's another problem we're not going to talk about right now. My feeling about the governor putting cameras on the trains is I'd rather she spent the money on getting more cops and helping the laws get tighter, where someone who knows where the cameras are, if they're criminal they couldn't spray paint all the things and you're going to have to chase them down.

If you have somebody mental that's in the train and they're in and out of the system and I just feel that the city should spend money on more cops. I feel more secure when I see a cop on a station, especially when I'm being an Asian Senior. The other person who was saying that you should notify a conductor. I actually saw something going on in the train, a mental person. I went to the conductor as I left because I want to get out of the train.

He just looked at me like, he's not going out of his box. He can't become the cop, he's just there to move the train. I'm sure as a human being, he's not going to get in the fray of things. That's my thing and she should spend more money on police and help them where we don't have to go in and out of the system. Their hands are tied and she's going to spend so much money, two cameras on a train, give me two cops on the whole station.

Matt Katz: Thank you very much Elizabeth. Fair point. Stephen, give us a quick update on the police officer situation in the subways, there are more than there have been in recent years, correct?

Stephen Nessen: There are, yes. The NYPD has a new system where they're getting some desk cops to do patrols of the subway system, they're getting cops who don't normally ride the trains to go down to the stations, check them out, and that allows transit cops to ride the trains more often. Ideally, there is more of a presence, it's a huge system with tons of stations and they do focus their efforts on the known problematic places where crimes occur, the Midtown area, downtown.

That's an effort that began earlier this year and is ongoing that the police say it's effective, it makes people feel better. The response times are faster when there is an incident. One comment about the callers, just their comment, about the conductor. You can't expect them to intervene in these sorts of things and of course, that's right. When you talk to a conductor, they can make a call.

They call the rail control center, which is the nerve center of the MTA and they can reach out to the police and this happens pretty quick. If there is an incident, it's not they're twiddling their thumbs, they are praying that it goes away. They'll make a call and that office will make a call and the police are notified pretty quickly. It is helpful to know that.

Matt Katz: Stephen Nessen is our transport reporter at WNYC and Gothamist. Stephen, thanks so much appreciate the reporting. See you in the newsroom.

Stephen Nessen: Thanks, Matt.

 

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.