The MTA and the Transport Workers Union 100 are furious after three MTA workers were assaulted within 24 hours in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens.
Both the authority and the union are calling for the perpetrators to be prosecuted to the highest degree and asking the NYPD to offer support after multiple requests.
“Attacking a public servant who is working hard to keep New York moving during this time of uncertainty is heartbreaking, outrageous, and frankly, unfathomable,” Feinberg said in a Sept. 1 statement. “Over the past 24 hours, three New York City Transit employees – workers who were simply doing their jobs, serving the public – were attacked, assaulted, threatened, and in one horrifying instance, pushed onto subway tracks. These reckless displays of violence are part of a troubling pattern we are seeing across our system. We have sounded the alarm on this disturbing trend to the NYPD a number of times. More needs to be done.”
The first attack happened in the East Village at 11 p.m. on Aug. 31, when a man approached the front doors of a bus standing at a terminal with the doors open near Fourth Avenue and East 8th Street.
According to the MTA, the man held the doors open and allowed a woman to board the bus. She then punched the bus driver several times in the face and neck.
The bus operator was taken to New York Presbyterian Hospital and treated for injuries.
Then, around 8 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the MTA said there were two more attacks within nine minutes of one another.
The first happened near the Hoyt-Schermerhorn Streets Station on the A/C line in Brooklyn, where a man pushed an on-duty train conductor onto the tracks on the Manhattan-bound side. The conductor was treated at Brooklyn Hospital for injuries to his neck, back and hand.
At around the same time in Queens, the MTA reported, a crazed man shouted at the driver of a Q56 bus standing at the corner of Jamaica Avenue and 132nd Street and then punched the window. The strike was hard enough to shatter the glass. The driver, however, was not seriously injured.
Eric Loegel, vice president of TWU Local 100, was particularly incensed by the push at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn Streets station — which endangered the conductor’s life.
“There was no argument,” Loegel said. “He just shoved the conductor off the platform onto the tracks and ran off… This was an outrageous attack on a Transit Worker… A crazed assailant pushed one of our Conductors onto live tracks. He is hurt but conscious right now. Thank God, he’s alive. Nobody deserves this, certainly not one of our front-line TWU members. I hope the suspect is caught fast and justice is served. We’re wishing our union Brother a full recovery.”
Police did not confirm if any arrests were made as of Tuesday afternoon.
Assaulting an MTA employee is a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison.
