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For the last two years, Mayor Eric Adams has called for gun detection technology in the subways — and one of the devices is finally coming to an undisclosed subway station this week. But for Adams, it’s just the start: On Tuesday, he said he wants the equipment at every entry point in the system.
“I think the turnstiles are going to change and eventually, every turnstile is going to be able to identify if someone is carrying a gun,” he said during a press conference.
Adams’ ambitions for a futuristic, weapon-detecting turnstile contrast with those of the MTA, which is working on a “turnstile of the future” that’s harder to hop over. Alon Levy, a research scholar at NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management, is skeptical Adams will fulfill his goal any time soon.
“Is it possible that there’s going to be a metal detector built into the turnstile?” Levy said. “There’s a very clear answer: It is ‘no.’”
Levy said the devices’ mechanics and purposes differ greatly.
“By the way, it’s especially dumb in New York because you would want the security going in and not out, and the turnstiles in New York are bidirectional,” he said.
Levy said that while it may be possible to “Frankenstein” the gun detectors onto turnstiles, the costs would be astronomical.
Still, Adam Scott Wandt, deputy chair for technology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Department of Public Management, said the latest gun detection technology is pretty good and less intrusive than traditional metal detectors, and added that putting the devices in turnstiles would make sense. But they would have to be monitored in a sprawling subway system where thousands of people hop the turnstiles or slip through emergency gates daily.
“When they [gun detectors] do go off, there’s going to need to be a stop, and perhaps a frisk to see what is going on,” Wandt said. “So there’s definitely going to need to be a manpower increase in order to get these detection systems physically monitored by law enforcement, because people will just bypass them or jump over them or go through the gate like they always do.”
Adams confirmed that the detectors would be monitored in an interview on Wednesday, but didn’t specify who would be watching.
“Someone will always be there watching the screen as a person walks through,” Adams said.
The New York Civil Liberties Union has already sounded the alarm about a surge of more police officers into the subway system.
“A fundamental right of Americans is to move through public spaces without being randomly searched by police officers,” NYCLU lawyer Daniel Lambright said. “That right is embodied in the Fourth Amendment, and people don’t lose that right by entering into the subway system.”
Lambright notes gun detectors are only allowed in certain places, like airports, schools and hospitals.
“Making people feel safer about riding the subway is not one of those limited situations,” he said.
Still, some experts are glad to see Adams thinking out of the box. So far this year nine people have been shot in the subways, three of them fatally, according to the NYPD. That eclipses all of last year, when eight people were shot in the subways, one of them fatally.
“I think the technology leaves a lot of questions, but also I’m glad to see that the mayor is thinking beyond the systems already in place,” said Sara Kaufman, director of the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at NYU Wagner.
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Question from Dante in the Bronx
Hot cars! I know the 1 train has so many. What is the timetable for updating the 1 train fleet to be more equipped for this heat? What does the congestion pricing pause mean for that timeline?
Answer
This was such a good question that we assigned a reporter to dive into the issue. Our intrepid new transportation reporter (yes, we’ve put a SECOND person on this very important beat), Ramsey Khalifeh, found the cars that run on the 1 line date back to the 1980s. A former MTA car mechanic told him the ACs on those cars constantly break down. The MTA planned to replace them with money from congestion pricing, but for now is holding off on that purchase because of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s pause of the tolling plan. Read and listen to the full story here.
