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Faulty Subway Cameras in Brooklyn Shooting Were Flagged Days Earlier

Faulty Subway Cameras in Brooklyn Shooting Were Flagged Days Earlier

New York|Cameras that failed to capture subway shooting were flagged as faulty days earlier.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/nyregion/subway-shooting-cameras.html

The 36th Street station in Brooklyn where the shooting took place on April 12.
Credit…Brittainy Newman for The New York Times

A subway security camera system that failed to capture images of a mass shooting in a Brooklyn station on Tuesday had been flagged by New York City Transit workers as malfunctioning two days earlier, transit officials said.

Maintenance workers inspected the camera on Sunday and traced the problem to a fiber-optic cable connection failure that had also interrupted feeds from cameras in two other stations: the local stop immediately before the scene of the shooting and the one immediately after it, the officials said.

The camera system failures complicated the search for the shooter, who wounded 10 people and caused injuries to at least 13 more when he opened fire on a crowded N train at the 36th Street station during the morning rush, and deprived investigators of important information from the scene. The authorities believed, for example, that the shooter left the N train at the 36th Street station and then crossed the platform to board a local R train that took him one stop north. But none of that was captured on video because of the camera system problem.

Tim Minton, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the subways, said the camera system glitches at the 36th Street station traced to “a node in a server room” that failed over the weekend but added that images of the suspect were captured by cameras and technology elsewhere in the transit system.

“The suspect was able to be seen, and movements evaluated, with the M.T.A.’s assistance,” Mr. Minton said.

The malfunctions also raise concerns about the state of the subway’s security systems at a time of intense public anxiety stoked by a series of violent incidents on the city’s transit system.

Details of the surveillance system failures emerged as the police announced the arrest of the suspected gunman, Frank R. James, 62, who was taken into custody on Wednesday in Manhattan’s East Village.

The M.T.A. has in the last several years attempted to expand its use of surveillance cameras in the New York City subway system, and last fall announced that it had placed them in all 472 stations. In 2005, the system only had cameras in about half its stations. Still, there are no cameras on subway trains and in many strategic locations.

The cameras that the M.T.A. has now vary in quality. Some, installed in a hurry to make sure every station was covered, have less definition and capability for real-time monitoring, as others can do, said Andrew Albert, an M.T.A. board member.

“Hopefully we get a lot more of those,” Mr. Albert said, noting that a man arrested on charges of raping a woman in Central Park last year had been captured on video entering a nearby subway station.

The M.T.A.’s board last month approved a $50 million contract to install closed circuit cameras near turnstiles and gates in 88 stations, records show. Some officials say monitoring such areas can make subways safer because many who commit crimes in the system do so after jumping turnstiles.

“There are thousands of cameras out there, particularly in the key hubs,” said Jason Wilcox, who was named the New York Police Department’s transit chief in January, at an M.T.A. transit committee meeting in March. “When it comes to cameras, obviously more is better. You know, it helps us out in so many significant ways.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/nyregion/subway-shooting-cameras.html