Gubs on the subway

Wendy Ruderman and Christopher Maag have an article in The New York Times about police work:

When New York City transit officials adopted a rule more than seven years ago to bar subway passengers from walking between cars, the reason was rider safety: they wanted to stop people from darting from one car to another while the train was moving.
But, since the rule took effect in October of 2005 and transit officers were empowered to issue summonses, the Police Department has used the violation as a crime-fighting tool— a springboard to catch suspects engaged in serious crimes, like illegally carrying a gun.
“We’ve found that in enforcing these lesser offenses, we can keep order and civility and keep people safe while reducing crime at the same time,” Joseph Fox, chief of the department’s Transit Bureau, said recently. “In enforcing the lesser offenses, we often have encounters with people who are prone to do more than that lesser offense.”
That is what happened when two transit officers, Officer Michael Levay and Officer Lukasz Kozicki, saw a man moving between cars on a Manhattan-bound N train at the Fort Hamilton Parkway station. The officers were unaware that the man, later identified by the police as Peter Jourdan, 37, had an extensive criminal history, including a charge of bringing a gun to court in Los Angeles. As the train pulled into the station, the officers showed Jourdan their police shields and asked him for identification. Instead, he pulled a nine-millimeter Taurus handgun from his waistband and opened fire, the police said.
Officer Kozicki was struck three times; once in each upper thigh and once in the groin. Officer Levay was shot in the back, though his bulletproof vest protected him from serious injury; he fired seven bullets and killed the gunman. One subway passenger was grazed by a bullet, the police said.
Both officers were taken to Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn. The next day, just after noon, Officer Levay was released from the hospital. A detail of sixty police officers stood at attention, and a police band, including two bagpipers and a drummer, played. A nurse pushed him, in a wheelchair, out of the hospital, with his parents by his side. “We haven’t slept all night,” said Officer Levay’s father, Bob Levay. “Right now,” he added, “I am so relieved it’s not even funny.” Officer Levay waved, smiled, and gave a thumbs-up to reporters. He walked the last few steps before climbing into an unmarked police car. Officer Kozicki was released from Lutheran a few hours later, the police said.
The shooting in Brooklyn came about an hour after an off-duty officer, Juan Pichardo, 34, was shot in the leg as he thwarted an armed robbery at a car dealership owned by his family on Boston Road in the Allerton section of the Bronx. Officer Pichardo was in stable condition at Jacobi Medical Center. Four suspects have been arrested.
Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said the shooting in the Brooklyn subway station reflected the reality that people who violate basic rules and commit small crimes in subway stations— like turnstile jumpers— were more likely to take part in more serious crimes. For example, the police said, Jourdan was arrested and charged with fare evasion in September.
Jourdan, 37, of New York City, had been in and out of prison several times, had been arrested at least eight times, and was wanted by the authorities in Los Angeles, the police said. Offering another example, Chief Fox said a man stopped by transit officers for walking between cars had been arrested twenty times— on charges including robbery and grand larceny— and was known for stealing from sleeping passengers.
Last year, the police said, officers issued 11,189 summonses to people caught walking between subway cars, or “unsafe riding”. Of those, officers arrested 4,350 people in connection with more serious offenses. Eighty-five percent of them had been arrested previously, including some who were wanted on outstanding warrants for failure to appear in court. Transit officers made 24 arrests for gun possession in 2012; three of them grew out of stops for unsafe riding, according to Chief Fox.
A subway rider, Helena Ettu, said she often stiffened in her seat when she saw passengers walking between cars while the train was moving. “It just looks suspicious,” said Ettu, who lives on Staten Island and takes the No. 2 or 3 train regularly. “Why don’t you just stay in the car you’re in? Especially if I see somebody walk back and forth a few times, I get nervous.”
Like many riders, Ettu, 17, suspected what transit police know from experience: a subway thief may canvass an entire train in search of an easy victim.
“One of the tactics of would-be thieves is to expand their search,” Chief Fox said. “So if they are sitting in one car,” he added, “and it doesn’t seem like there is anybody who looks vulnerable in there, they’ll move to the next car.”

Rico says he can't wait for the anti-gub people to put this guy up as a poster child...