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December 16, 2005
On Air Marshals and American Cities
Very little time for blogging lately, but I had to relay this little anecdote. I work right above Penn Station in New York City. Today I went down into the station to retrieve some lunch, as I often do when the weather is bad.
Shortly after passing by several policemen and national guardsmen, I encountered a clearly mentally ill man in his late 20s or early 30s. He was preparing to throw a soda can at a wall, and I imagined him doing so, perhaps coincidentally, just as people passed before him. He did not seem particularly dangerous, but evinced an air of mild, delusional belligerance such that I made sure to keep my eye on him as I passed. A small group of quasi-homeless types stood nearby him, and seemed to know him.
As I passed by, I thought about how the Federal Air Marshals are testing a plan to patrol more than just planes, but also public transit systems.
I thought about how the Air Marshals shot that mentally ill man recently in Florida. I don't claim to know the facts of that situation, and so cannot judge the Marshals' actions. But, I couldn't help think that expanding their turf to include urban public ground transportation centers, a hotspot for mentally ill homeless folk, could lead to a number of similar shootings.
As I passed the can-throwing man, I could easily see him doing something that could result in his being shot, simply by his demeanor -- especially if he encountered an Air Marshal not familiar with New York City, rather than someone in the NYPD who might detect that it was obviously just a Manhattan street person, rather than a terrorist.
After collecting my sandwich and heading back up to work, I sensed an altercation ahead, just by the body movements of several people in the crowd about 40 feet ahead of me.
Suddenly the crowd kinda scattered, and a large space opened up between me and the can-throwing man, who was clearly in a physical exchange with two teenage girls or young women. I couldn't determine who had begun grabbing or punching first and continued walking toward them, assuming it would not heat up any further, since it was my most direct path back to work.
It did heat up, and move around for that matter, however. One or both of the women were grabbing him and swinging him around. I looked around for all the cops I'd seen before, but none were around. Some people seemed to try to intercede and a woman started calling for "La policia."
There were none around, and clearly there needed to be. I knew where a police desk was about 100 feet away. So, about ten minutes after imagining Air Marshals gunning this guy down for thinking he might have a bomb or something, there I was running through the crowd of waiting Amtrak passengers to actually bring a cop into the guy's life.
The situation had ended by the time the cop arrived, and neither the young women nor can-throwing man were anwywhere to be seen. The cop began asking people what happened and, as I went on my way back here to my work station all I could hear was a woman from the quasi-homeless group of folk telling the cop "they [garbled]... They beat him up anyway."
Posted by MJuhre at December 16, 2005 02:48 PM