Word: subway
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...decide whether Bernhard Goetz should be charged with attempted murder has put the grand jury system in the dock once again: one panel refused to indict Goetz for that crime, a second panel decided the other way, and the secret deliberations and procedures became almost as controversial as the subway shooting itself...
...TREN SUBTERRANEO ES PELIGROSA. The sign appears in nearly every subway car along New York City's 230-mile system. Literally translated from Spanish, it means, "The subterranean train track is dangerous." Though it refers to the electrified third rail and not to the dangers inside the trains, few New Yorkers would argue with its broader implications. Fewer still, however, have seen the sign recently. It has been obscured in most cars by coat after coat of indecipherable graffiti...
...beyond. Smoke from a fire on a distant track wafts through the station. A crowded train from the Upper West Side sits simmering on another track for 20 minutes while static from a broken speaker drowns out the conductor's incomprehensible explanation. "I'm afraid to get in that subway system even when I'm with my bodyguard," says Senator Alfonse D'Amato, a Long Islander. "Even my bodyguard is afraid." Although it was clearly an overstatement ("I think he should change his bodyguard," retorted Mayor Edward Koch), New Yorkers know what D'Amato means. Since the city's fiscal...
Since February, transit police have guaranteed that there will be one officer on every train from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. They have instituted sweeps of subway stations, a kind of underground rapid-deployment force that in 33 months has detected 9,000 incidents of crime. The current transit police force, which has 3,800 officers, is the largest ever for New York and the biggest in the country. Meanwhile, with subway workers threatening another strike, passengers are just hoping the trains will keep running. "The subway system?" said one young rider. "It's New York...
Indeed, many of those who defend Goetz say his indictment is really an indictment of the system, which they say is stacked in favor of the criminal. Two of the youths who accosted Goetz on the subway were granted immunity from prosecution as an enticement to testify against Goetz before the grand jury. Goetz, by contrast, was refused partial immunity and decided not to testify. Declared Barry Slotnick, one of Goetz's lawyers: "This is a case of the muggers against the muggees, and Round 2 was won by the muggers." William Kunstler, who is representing one of the wounded...