( John Minchillo / AP Photo )
Ashley Southall, New York Times law enforcement reporter focused on crime and policing in New York City, talks about the latest developments in Tuesday's subway shooting.
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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Well, here it is a minute before 10:00, so today's morning rush hour is now over, the day after the worst shooting ever on a subway train in terms of the number of victims, 10 people shot on that N Train in Sunset Park yesterday, as you probably know by now, plus the injuries of almost 20 others from smoke inhalation or the crush of trying to escape. Listeners, if you took the train this morning, help us report this story.
What was different today than yesterday? Did fewer people seem to be riding? Did more police seem visibly present? Did people seem present? Did people seem to be looking around nervously more than usual? If you've already taken a subway today, call in and help us report the day after story while yesterday's shooter is still on the loose. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.
We'll have Governor Hochul later in the program today with the shooting yesterday, with the resignation of her lieutenant governor yesterday, all of which took place after she had planned this appearance. We didn't know if she was going to be able to keep this appointment, but she is coming on. That will be 10:45. Here's something else to remember. As an article on Gothamist reminds us today, mass shootings in New York City subway history are extremely rare.
The last biggest one before this was almost 40 years ago, the infamous shooting by that writer named Bernhard Goetz in the 1980s. He shot four teenagers he says he thought were going to rob him. That was 1984. Other major incidents in the subway system Gothamist reminds us include a man setting off a homemade bomb in a Hellman's mayonnaise jar on the 4 train as it pulled into Fulton station, injuring more than 40 people. You have to go back to 1994 for that one.
More recently, there was the March 2020 arson on a 2 train, which killed an MTA worker. We're going to talk to the head of the TWU, the Transit Workers Union, a little later this hour, and injured 16 others. That was in 2020 that arson incident. On the commuter rails, the other big one in New York City history besides Bernard Goetz, in 1993, a gunman killed six people and injured 19 others aboard a Long Island Rail Road train heading from Queens to Nassau County.
That's really it. You're much more likely to get killed or injured driving your own car than riding in a subway car or in Metro-North or in LIRR, so a little bit of perspective there. There's a whole field in Psychology called risk perception that has learned through research over the years that we overfear things that are spectacular, like terror attacks and plane crashes, and we statistically underfear risks that come from people or things familiar to us, like our cars, or maybe our favorite junk foods [unintelligible 00:03:15] cigarettes, but we also move on.
Look how New York came back to more crowded and active than before 9/11. For right this moment, however, the suspect in yesterday's shooting remains on the loose. Mayor Adams came on the station this morning on Morning Edition with Michael Hill to upgrade or downgrade depending on your point of view the categorization of this man who was a person of interest.
Mayor Adams: We have now upgraded the person from a person of interest to being a suspect.
Brian Lehrer: Being a suspect. With me now New York Times Metro Police Bureau Chief Ashley Southall. Ashley, I know this is an extremely busy day for you, so thanks very much for some time. Welcome to WNYC.
Ashley Southall: Thank you for having me, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: What changed as far as you could tell for the police to switch from person of interest to suspect regarding Frank James?
Ashley Southall: What I think has happened is that they've probably looked at the evidence that they have, and they have also probably spoken to friends and acquaintances, looked at his M.O., some of his videos, and determined that he came here alone, that he is working alone. One of the videos that the suspect posted that we watched, he's driving to Philadelphia in a U-Haul van from Wisconsin, and he's in that van, it appears, by himself.
They likely looked at all the evidence they have put together, saw no connections or communications with other people, and then decided that he's probably more than likely working alone.
Brian Lehrer: What are they saying about the trail to finding him? Is it hot? Is it cold?
Ashley Southall: Sure, Brian. They have lots and lots of leads. It's probably that he hasn't gone far, he's just hiding somewhere. He left behind some things, his weapon, so that made it easier for him to kind of blend into the crowd as he escaped. He has some ties to Philadelphia. He has ties as far as Wisconsin. They're looking far and wide for him. There are dozens of agencies, thousands of law enforcement officials looking for this man. It's probably just a matter of time before he's captured.
Brian Lehrer: This Frank James, 62 years old, so there goes our stereotype of fearing young people. He is said to be from Wisconsin, like you say, rented the van. He drove here from Philadelphia. Does he have connections to New York or did he just come here allegedly to be a mass shooter?
Ashley Southall: From what we've looked at in the videos, he does appear to have some history in New York. He was born in Manhattan. In one of the videos, he indicates that he grew up in the South Bronx. It's not clear to us yet when he left New York, if he ever came back, and why he came back when his original intention was to go to Philly. His connections to New York remains somewhat mysterious, at least his present-day connections, so we're working to find out more about that.
Brian Lehrer: I see that you stayed up late last night watching videos that Frank James has posted in recent weeks. From what I've seen in the little clips on TV and from things I've read about them, they included references to crime in New York, homeless people in New York, Vladimir Putin, and also Mayor Adams. Is it clear to you from the videos if he's got a certain politics, like hatred of homeless people on the street would be one thing, hatred of Mayor Adams for his homeless encampment sweeps would be very different politically? Is either of those things or something else political at all, as far as you can tell, motivating him?
Ashley Southall: Well, I think he indicates that he does have some form of mental illness diagnosis, so I think that we have to consider that. He appears to be very attuned to the news and has a lot of hatred to go around, frankly. He was very vitriolic towards Black women, Black men, Jews, politicians. He just had enough anger and vitriol to go around. I'm not sure how much we can read into his viewpoints, but he certainly was paying attention to what was happening in New York, he was paying attention to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination and confirmation, but what to make of his views at this point and how they planned the shooting I think is a little early.
Brian Lehrer: What did he write or say about Ketanji Brown Jackson? Do you have it?.
Ashley Southall: Yes. The video was about an hour long, but a part of the gist of his comment was that Judge Brown Jackson kept saying that she is our ancestors' wildest dreams, and he thought that was misguided, that we should not be living the dream of people who were enslaved. Very controversial views, very appalling views, but he just thought that regardless of where she is and the power that she has, the people who are responsible for, say, incidents like 9/11 would escape accountability.
Brian Lehrer: In cases like these, they're shockingly often an act of domestic violence against a woman before the big public crime. I haven't seen anything explicitly like that reported about him, but you just said he said things on his videos about Black women. I saw in your reporting in The Times that one of his video rants blamed Black women for violence among Black people. Do you have anything else like that on him to get into more detail on?
Ashley Southall: He suggested that he grew up in the South Bronx. He describes it as a ghetto. He blamed Black people for trying to get over on him, using gender slur to refer to Black women, he just thought that everyone was trying to keep him down. It was a very paranoid point of view, frankly, and we're not sure what incidents in his life led him to these viewpoints. [crosstalk]
Brian Lehrer: Do you have any--
Ashley Southall: Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Brian Lehrer: Any indication of a psychological profile of the suspect? We sometimes jump to conclusions about evil when a person is mostly mentally ill. You said something about mental illness before.
Ashley Southall: Yes, he indicated in one of his videos that he did have a diagnosis for some sort of mental illness. It may be post-traumatic stress disorder as he indicated in one video or it may be something like bipolar disorder or something else. We don't know at this point. That appears to play a role into what he's saying. When you listen to his videos, it's long incoherent rants, jumping from subject to subject, lots of profanity, lots of vulgarities, he appears to believe in these ideologies where he wants to form a new Israel, all these kinds of fringe ideologies, and frankly, some white supremacist ideologies that Black fringe groups have adopted.
We're not sure yet what exactly he's about and what might have fueled this attack, but I'm sure that we'll get closer to that as this case winds down.
Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few questions for New York Times Metro Police Bureau Chief Ashley Southall, what are your reports if you have ridden the trains this morning, what was it like? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Here's a tweet that has come in about riding the trains this morning. Listener writes, "We all looked nervous on my train which was full. More cops were out but they were chatting in the sun up on the street at 25th, nowhere near platform or train cars. What's the point of that?" Asked that listener.
Another listener asked a question for you, Ashley. It says, "Is there any anti-Asian violence connection to the Sunset Park shooting? James had 888 at the end of his YouTube username, which indicates he has some understanding of Asian culture." I don't know honestly what 888 represents for Asian culture, if anything, but that's what that tweeter says. There are a lot of Asian people who live in Sunset Park, and we know what's been going on in the city elsewise with respect to that, any indications of that according to officials or your observations?
Ashley Southall: Actually in the videos, I did not see any indication of anti-Asian hate. Now that said, again, there are dozens of these videos, and some of them are as long as an hour, two hours, and it's just a lot of long, incoherent ranting, so we skipped some parts, but we will go back and scrub them. One of the things I'll say about people who had-- particularly Black fringe groups is that, one of the beliefs is that the original man is Afro Asiatic, so there is some belief that-- or some reverence at least toward Asian people, though I'm not sure if that includes what we consider Asian people today, people who would be Indian or Chinese or Korean or Philippine or anything like that.
Brian Lehrer: On the other tweet that mentioned the police that she saw just standing around outside a subway station. Mayor Adams said something yesterday about flooding the system with more cops. What was that exactly and what can you report as actually taking place as a crime and law enforcement reporter?
Ashley Southall: Well, in addition to the subway attacks, we have several religious holidays coming up from Easter, Good Friday, Passover coming up, and--
Brian Lehrer: It's Ramadan too.
Ashley Southall: It's Ramadan as well, so the city is already on high alert for the Holy holidays. What the mayor said that they were doing yesterday was holding over some cops from the day shift to the night shift. Already the city had put an additional thousand cops in the system. They're supposed to be on the train, riding the trains, in station, they're above ground. As the mayor would say, show of force.
Brian Lehrer: There are tweets going around on the political left about how more police are not the answer to subway crime and just create more subway persecution of young Black and brown people. There are posts like, "The police let this guy get away. If only he had jumped the turnstile, they would have caught him." Are police press responding to that view at all, has anybody asked them to your knowledge?
Ashley Southall: I have not seen a response to that question just yet. What I will say in speaking to law enforcement experts, is that they acknowledged that the subway is the city's biggest soft target. We have 36,000 cops in a subway system that spans all five boroughs, nearly 500 stops, numerous bus lines, it would be impossible and a huge expenditure for cops to be everywhere all the time on the transit system.
It is a vulnerability, but the way that they believe you can protect the system is to show people that you just can't do anything that you want on the subway. To them, that means enforcing fare evasion. That means enforcing smoking on the platform. That means enforcing these low-level offenses that the city has, over the last decade, moved away from because many prosecutors and people on the political left felt like they were not essential to public safety.
Brian Lehrer: My guest for another few minutes is Ashley Southall, who covers the NYPD for The New York Times. Then we're going to talk to the Head of the Transportation Workers Union, who represents subway workers, a lot of perspective to get from them. Then Kathy Hochul, the Governor of New York obviously will be on starting around 10:45. We'll talk about the shooting, we'll talk about her campaign, we'll talk about the resignation of Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin. Later on, we'll get to some more of your phone calls and tweets in a minute for Ashley Southall from The Times.
Ashley, I want to ask you if he dropped his car keys during the attack in the subway, he dropped his gun reported to be a Glock semi-automatic handgun, which had jammed, or it might have been much worse, he dropped his credit card, how could he have gotten very far without those things and with his picture plastered everywhere online?
Ashley Southall: Well, it's not clear that he's anywhere far. New York City is very big, and it has a lot of nooks and crannies, so he may be hiding somewhere in the city, he may have already left the city, we're not exactly sure yet. With the credit card, what you need in New York City is-- He still has his driver's license, if he rented a U-Haul van, that was not among the things that was covered. He may also have other payment methods.
He did talk in the video about having cash, having money on him, and he also talked about having already rented a place when he was on his way to Philadelphia, so that may be paid for. Now, if there are other cars that he has, the NYPD and federal authorities are probably trying to gain access to any information about transactions that he may be making, but it's also likely that he may be using cash to get around.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. The way he carried out this attack, he put on a gas mask, set off a smoke bomb, and then started shooting, is that an M.O. that's familiar from any other crime or type of crime that you're aware of?
Ashley Southall: We've not seen a crime like that in a while. I was on a train last week with a guy wearing a gas mask, and I thought he was weird, but it actually turned out to be someone else having an episode on the train. We haven't seen an attack like that in a while, but we have seen mass shootings. The last mass shooting of a similar size we saw with 10 people shot in Queens, that was a gang shooting between as many as four people. This kind of attack is pretty rare in New York City.
We have seen in the past with subway with people trying to explode themselves to set off bombs near Times Square, there was a Central Park bombing. People who like to attack New York City have an affinity for bombs, but in this case, this is a handgun attack and a smoke grenade.
Brian Lehrer: Listener tweets, "How did this guy in the subway attack get a gun, legally?" Is that known?
Ashley Southall: If it's known, it remains to be disclosed. They have traced the gun I think to its origins, but it's not clear to us yet who the buyer was and at what point Mr. James gets a hold of it.
Brian Lehrer: Does he have a criminal record?
Ashley Southall: He does have some arrests that we are looking into. They're fairly old, older than at least 10 years, but he may have other records that we have not yet discovered in other states. He's lived in Wisconsin. He's lived in Chicago, but as far as New York City, we don't see anything yet for him.
Brian Lehrer: Tim in Murray Hill, you're on WNYC with Ashley Southall from The Times. Hi, Tim.
Tim: Hi. I just wish we'd pay more attention. You just briefly touched on it on where these guns come from. If they're coming from states with lax gun laws through these gun mills in Pennsylvania or Virginia, why we can't take action as a state against them if that's where they're being fed from? We talk a lot about gun crimes, but not where the guns come from and how that can be stopped.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. The Democrats in Washington talk about it all the time, but they can't get interstate, meaning federal gun laws passed for universal background checks from state to state, things like that. Ashley, anything to add to that?
Ashley Southall: Well, in recent months, the authorities have really stepped up efforts to find where guns come from and to talk to officials in those states about how those guns made their way to New York City and how they can stop that from happening again. Another thing that's happened in New York over the last couple of years is that the state legislature passed a law that would allow New York to sue gun manufacturers for the damage their guns cause in New York City. However, that has been challenged by the gun lobby, and that case is still pending in court.
Brian Lehrer: Before you go, I know you're a police reporter and crime and law enforcement reporter, not a transit reporter, but do you have anything on how the rush hour commute was this morning from your colleagues at The Times?
Ashley Southall: Yes, Brian. The train service in all lines are up and working, people are a bit skittish about riding the train, everyone is on edge. This just happened yesterday. The suspect is still unapprehended. They're not sure-- The concerns would be about, one, coming into contact with this guy, and two, copycat attacks. People-- [emergency alert sounder goes off]. Sorry, I got an emergency alert in the middle of our phone call.
People are nervous that every time New York is attacked, there is some residual fear, especially when the suspect is unapprehended, but people have to go to work, they depend on the subway, and a number of us have to go back into the office. I am fortunately at home in front of my computer where I'm probably attached all day, but the subway is an essential part of New York City. For many people, it's not optional.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. We'll talk to the Head of the Transit Workers Union, Transport Workers Union technically, coming up in just a minute. I don't know if you heard the emergency alert sounder go off on my phone just there as I was asking you that last question.
Ashley Southall: It went off on my phone.
Brian Lehrer: I guess this is the City or the NYPD putting out the wanted alert for Frank James now that he's officially been listed as a suspect, not just a person of interest, is that what you're seeing?
Ashley Southall: Yes, that's exactly what I'm seeing.
Brian Lehrer: Ashley Southall reporting on crime and law enforcement as the Metro Police Bureau Chief for The New York Times. Again, I know you're going in 12 different directions at once this morning, so thank you for giving us some time today. We really appreciate it.
Ashley Southall: Thank you for having me.
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