After transforming into a safe, thriving metropolis near the end of the last century, New York City is spiraling downward into the frightening, barely livable concrete jungle it was decades before.
It isn’t just the recent Black Lives Matter riots the city’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio supported or the general filth and immorality that has returned to the streets, but it is the random acts of senseless violence that are most reminiscent of the bad old days in the Big Apple.
On a subway platform in Manhattan on Sunday morning, 30-year-old homeless man Demetrius Harvard allegedly hurled metal railroad tie plates into the path of an oncoming “A” train, then laughed maniacally as the locomotive derailed and tore against support pillars, the New York Daily News reported.
Police said the tie plates he threw, used to fasten tracks to the roadbed, were likely left behind by Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers.
A bystander initially witnessed Harvard chucking the fasteners onto the tracks and quickly jumped down from the platform to clear them away.
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But Harvard threw metal pieces down again, this time into the path of an uptown train, causing the train to jump the tracks as horrified onlookers realized he was laughing at the destruction.
“As the train was coming to a stop in the station after striking the debris, the train’s first car scraped four columns that separate the northbound express track from the southbound express track,” New York City Transit Interim President Sarah Feinberg said, describing the incident as an “act of vandalism” in a news release Sunday.
A CBS News report showed the wreckage, with the metal outer layer of the subway train peeled back and mangled.
The 135 passengers on board were safely evacuated, and only three riders reported minor injuries.
“We have significant damage to the train car itself. We have significant damage to the trackbed and track components as well as some damage to the structural steel columns in between the tracks,” Frank Jezycki, MTA’s acting senior vice president for subways, told the news outlet.
Kevin Fucillo, who witnessed the incident, described it as sounding like “a screech, kind of a thud, but it was enough to make people stop.”
“At that point, the fire alarms went off as smoke started coming up the stairs,” he said.
Fucillo recounted how another man held Harvard in a “bear hug” until police arrived as the suspect “tried to get away, but he couldn’t.”
CBS described Harvard as “emotionally disturbed and homeless” with a rap sheet already 21 arrests long, now facing charges of criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, criminal trespass and assault for the train derailment.
But Harvard shouldn’t have even been on the streets. According to the New York Post, he was arrested Sept. 5 for allegedly throwing a metal bench at a bus window but was “granted supervised release.”
At that time, he also had an open warrant for failing to appear in court on charges stemming from an incident in March 2019 where he threatened employees at a Boost store, bashed the floor with a three-foot metal pipe and broke a store sign after he hurled a metal garbage can into it.
It’s clear the city isn’t interested in stopping criminals like Harvard, however, as politicians have cut funding and disbanded the plainclothes police unit to appease the leftist lunatics who are now running the asylum.
Do you think Democrats are responsible for the uptick in crime in New York City?
They have tolerated, permitted and even encouraged rioting and vandalism, with de Blasio leading the way in an all-out effort to turn New York into the crime-ridden cesspool it was in the 1970s and 1980s before GOP Mayor Rudy Giuliani turned it around.
Releasing mentally unstable criminals back out onto the street is awful policy, but then again, this is the city that the U.S. Department of Justice just cited for “permitting anarchy, violence and destruction” during riots that followed George Floyd’s death after a police officer knelt on his neck for roughly nine minutes.
For reasons that escape common sense, de Blasio and other Democrats have been reluctant to put an end to civil unrest in their cities and didn’t seem bothered by homeless criminals who terrorized helpless citizens before that anyway.
In fact, it’s hard to distinguish the senseless violence committed in the name of BLM from that perpetrated by a mentally ill homeless man, which is maybe why Harvard was allowed out.
After all, what is so different about what Harvard did to a subway car versus what rioters have done to New York City businesses?
Harvard simply picked up what was around, hurled it at something he didn’t own and enjoyed the fruits of his labors as life and property were put in peril — exactly what rioters have done while de Blasio and his ilk have stood idly by.
The city that allowed looting at famous commercial locations in Manhattan surely can’t be expected to do anything about a single homeless man bent on vandalism and destruction.
It appears the recent decline of New York City into lawlessness demonstrates a universal and undeniable truth: Wherever leftists rule, crime and misery are sure to follow.
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