In a Brooklyn subway station on Sunday afternoon, police shot and injured three people and a fellow New York Police Department officer over a $2.90 fare. This is what safety and security looks like in Mayor Eric Adams’s New York, where problems of poverty and hardship are met with policing and state-sanctioned violence.

At around 3 p.m. Sunday, at the Sutter Avenue stop in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a 37-year-old man allegedly evaded paying the subway fare. According to reports, two police officers pursued this man up three flights of stairs and confronted him on the station platform. Police say the man pulled out a knife. Both officers opened fire on the man, piercing him with several bullets, while also striking two bystanders; one of the officers was hit with friendly fire. One of the bystanders, a 49-year-old man, is in critical condition in the hospital from a bullet wound to the head.

This is what happens when you flood a major transit system with a government-sanctioned, taxpayer-funded armed gang coated with official impunity and prone to violent escalation.

Sunday’s police shooting should be a lesson in why the subway should not be teeming with cops, responding to “crimes” of poverty — like fare evasion and panhandling — with deadly force. Unsurprisingly, the Adams administration has framed the incident within its ongoing, mendacious narrative about rampant subway crime, for which more policing is the only answer.

“Earlier........

© The Intercept