And here we all thought the subways couldn’t get worse. Silly us.
Oh, sure, having fresh human feces smeared all over your face isn’t like being slashed, shot or shoved in front of a moving train. It’s just revolting beyond belief and more evidence that New York has lost the will to defend its institutions, its people and its future.
Frank Abrokwa, 37 years old and with a rap sheet extending to 1999, is alleged to have smeared his own feces on a woman in a Bronx subway station last week — and then observing at his arraignment that “Sh-t happens, haha haha.”
Indeed it does. Haha haha.
But the joke was on the victim: Abrokwa was immediately cut loose — because poop smearing may be socially corrosive beyond comprehension, but it isn’t a jail-worthy offense under New York’s spanking new, thoroughly insane, bail laws.
Need more? Abrokwa was then arrested, arraigned and then re-released on an unrelated hate-crime charge — which, frankly, is beyond the beyond. New York’s public spaces are filling up with disgusting, dangerous people — with no meaningful pushback.
“We can’t allow this horrific situation to be the status quo,” said a clearly exercised Mayor Adams Thursday — which is true enough, but who is listening?
Certainly not the ideologues in Albany, who decided two-plus years ago that what New York needed was a more racially “equitable,” albeit criminal-friendly, legal environment. So they re-wrote the penal code to that end, and today they ignore the blindingly obvious result — Frank Abrokwa being only the man of the moment.
But of course it’s more than one man, and one moment. Crazy is cumulative — it feeds off itself, and the obdurate refusal of established authority to address the madness is an accelerant in its own right.
Exhibit A: Adams, hobbled by the law, announced a crackdown on below-ground disorder a couple of weeks ago — and the immediate result was a 200% year-on-year increase in subway crime.
A one-week aberration? Maybe.
But trends are trends; the arrow has been pointing straight up for a very long time now. And the “blame it on COVID” sophistries are becoming less persuasive with each new indignity.
Adams seems to understand that another outrage is just a matter of time — the only mystery being the form it will take.
He went to Albany early on seeking some modest changes in the new bail and related criminal-procedure laws, was rebuffed and had largely been silent on the subject until Thursday.
And even then, his fuming was draped in qualifiers — criminals need “intervention and support” and so on — and it was not directed at anyone in particular.
This is not a winning strategy for a new mayor who campaigned on the need to restore balance to New York’s penal code and who has only a limited time to establish a command presence on the subject.
Right now he needs to hang Frank Abrokwa around Albany’s neck.
Gov. Hochul wants New Yorkers to return to their offices for a full COVID recovery? Adams needs to let her know how unlikely that will be if commuters continue to see a subway ride as potentially disgusting, and perhaps lethal.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins are too protective of their hard-left members? Adams has constituents of his own — 8.5 million of them — and they need his support, too. He needs to say so, right out loud, and not shut up until the Legislature listens.
More than one modern mayoralty has been wrecked by crime and related civic disorder: John Lindsay, Abe Beame and David Dinkins come to mind.
Adams doesn’t want to be in that boat — but things move very fast these days. It may sail, sooner than he thinks, with him on board.
That might not be fair — but hey: “Sh*t happens, haha haha.”
