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NEW YORK CITY – New York subway riders are weighing in after Gov. Kathy Hochul sent in the National Guard and state troopers to help the NYPD secure Big Apple subway stations amid fears of crime and chaos.
Many support the move after recent mayhem included surveillance video showing a man at a Manhattan subway station hurling flaming cans at people through a turnstile.
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The week capped off with dramatic eyewitness video of a man shot in the head with his own gun after a brawl in a packed subway car.
On Friday, the NYPD revealed the victim also displayed a knife or razor blade during the scuffle, and did not pay the fare at the turnstile.
WATCH: Terrified passengers record subway shooting
Random shoving attacks on the city’s subway platforms have also left people killed or severely injured by oncoming trains, and last week an ex-con was accused of ditching his ankle monitor before shoving his ex into a moving train in Manhattan during an argument.
An NYPD officer patrols a subway station in New York City Monday, March 11, 2024. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a five-point plan earlier this month, deploying 750 members of the National Guard to combat a near 20% rise in crime levels throughout the subways.(Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
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BODYCAM VIDEO SHOWS NYPD OFFICERS SPRING INTO ACTION TO PULL MAN FROM SUBWAY TRACKS
A conductor who survived having his neck slashed at random on the job told the New York Post over the weekend he never plans to get on another subway train.
“It’s not safe.”
— Gabriela, NYC commuter
And straphangers have reported incidents of indecent exposure and other deviant behavior they say increased police patrols would combat.
WATCH: New York straphangers weigh in on subway crime
“It’s not safe,” one rider, Gabriela, told Fox News Digital this week.
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Another rider, Tally, said she avoids the trains at night and prefers to take an Uber during off hours.
Members of the NYPD and National Guard conduct random bag searches in New York City’s subway system Monday, March 11, 2024. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
“We need more jobs in this country, so they should hire more officers,” added David.
VIDEO: Man throws cans of fire at strangers in NYC subway station
GOV. KATHY HOCHUL HITS BACK AT CRITICS OF SENDING NATIONAL GUARD TO PROTECT NYC SUBWAYS: ‘I’M NOT BUYING IT’
NYPD crime statistics show robberies and transit crime have both risen in the Big Apple so far in 2024 compared to last year, and the string of high-profile violent incidents have travelers on edge.
Commuters travel through a subway tunnel in midtown Manhattan on Monday, March 11, 2024. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
“I think no one really feels safe,” Tally said. “But I see officers and I see an effort being made. So, I don’t know. I don’t know where the solution would be.”
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Hochul sent the National Guard last week to assist the NYPD with random bag checks, which were reimplemented by Mayor Eric Adams in an effort to curb the violence.
“For people who are thinking about bringing a gun or knife on the subway, at least this creates a deterrent effect,” she told reporters March 6. “They might be thinking, ‘You know what, it just may just not be worth it because I listened to the mayor and I listened to the governor, and they have a lot more people who are going to be checking my bags.’”
Members of the NYPD and National Guard conduct random bag searches in New York City’s subway system Monday, March 11, 2024.(Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
She also proposed a law that would ban people from the subway system if they are convicted of assaulting a fellow passenger and adding cameras to trains after the conductor slashing.
Adams also announced he would increase NYPD patrols on the subway system to fight the crime spike. And amid those increased patrols, NYPD officers were already able to rescue a man who fell onto tracks in the Bronx before a train arrived.
LONG ISLAND BODY PARTS SUSPECTS FREED AGAIN UNDER NEW YORK BAIL RULES
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WATCH: NYPD officers spring into action to save man from subway tracks
But not everyone was receptive to the bag checks, which prompted some angry grumbling from commuters running late.
Another potential straphanger turned around when he saw the bag station, even though authorities had not stopped him at random.
EX-CON NYC MURDER SUSPECT SMILES WITH DA BRAGG SHORTLY BEFORE SHOCKING ARREST
Members of the NYPD and National Guard patrol the subway system in New York City Monday, March 11, 2024.(Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
He declined to give his name but said he escaped communist Romania as a child and came to the U.S. He called the bag checks “unconstitutional.”
“It doesn’t matter what your politics are,” he said. “They need probable cause to search you.”
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With transit crime plaguing the city, critics of progressive district attorneys in four of the five boroughs have complained about low- and no-bail releases of repeat offenders while a Marine Corps veteran is being prosecuted in the death of an erratic passenger who was terrifying fellow riders in May.
NYC MAN SCREAMING ABOUT KNIFE, HOLDING MOTHER IN CHOKEHOLD SHOT DEAD ON NYPD BODYCAM
Members of the NYPD and National Guard randomly search bags in New York City’s subway system Monday, March 11, 2024.(Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
Daniel Penny, 24, is facing charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide after he placed Jordan Neely, 30, in a chokehold while Neely was shouting at and threatening passengers on a Manhattan F train. Neely, who had dozens of prior arrests, including multiple subway assaults, died in the encounter.
US MARINE VET DANIEL PENNY PLEADS NOT GUILTY TO MANSLAUGHTER IN CHOKEHOLD DEATH OF JORDAN NEELY
Penny has been released on $100,000 bail and is due back in court next week.
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Daniel Penny departs Manhattan Criminal Court following his arraignment, June 28, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
“I’m not comfortable with my wife and my children taking the subway right now,” said Staten Island attorney Louis Gelormino. He said the city’s crime problems began spiraling out of control after Bill de Blasio abandoned the tough-on-crime policies of his predecessors, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg.
“We have to have the [National Guard] to go there and protect our subways when we have the best police department in the entire world, to navigate that system and protect us, is ridiculous.”
Members of the National Guard and the NYPD randomly search bags in New York City’s subway system Monday, March 11, 2024. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
In addition to hiring more police, he said, New Yorkers could try electing new district attorneys.
“Other than Mike McMahon in Staten Island, who happens to do a very good job, the district attorneys in this city have all fallen under that major liberal, progressive attitude where they don’t want to prosecute crimes,” Gelormino said. “And it seems like they’re very selective on who they prosecute crimes against. We need to vote for different district attorneys.”
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The subways appeared unusually empty outside rush hour Monday.
The city is losing tens of thousands of residents as illegal immigrants and migrants continue to pour in.
About 78,000 people ditched the Big Apple in 2023, The New York Times reported Thursday. That’s on top of 126,000 in 2022, and more than half a million residents left between April 2020 and July 2023, according to the paper.
Fox News’ Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
BOSTON – The Massachusetts State House is typically quiet on Fridays but not this week, as state lawmakers work to push major pieces of legislation to the governor’s desk, including a possible return of Happy Hour.
“This place is going to be buzzing”
“I think for the next five days, this place is going to be buzzing,” State Sen. Barry Finegold told WBZ-TV from his Statehouse office. Buzzing with fellow legislators, lobbyists and stressed-out staffers racing to beat the Wednesday deadline. “We’re very hopeful that it’s going to get done.”
Republican State Rep. Marc Lombardo is frustrated by the procrastination, pointing to the House, Senate and corner office being dominated by Democrats. “It’s a tornado of activity that really doesn’t have to wait until the last week of July,” he said.
The House and Senate have until Wednesday to hammer out their differences on key bills. Bills that don’t get voted out of conference committee essentially “die” on Beacon Hill.
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Finegold heads the Joint Economic Development Committee, working on a multi-billion-dollar package that could pave the way for a new soccer stadium in Everett for the New England Revolution.
Will Happy Hour come back to Massachusetts?
How about bringing Happy Hour back to Massachusetts?
“We’re hopeful to get that passed as well,” Finegold explained. “We do have a lot of younger people in our city and throughout Massachusetts and we want to do things that we think they’ll like.”
While Rep. Lombardo can see how this could help the economy, he’s not a fan of the last-minute rush to the finish line.
He said lawmakers are “expected to read bills very quickly as they come out of conference committee…hundreds of pages of documents and yet forced to get a vote because we’ve waited to the last moment to put things on the floor.”
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Complex legislation, packed with all sorts of line items.
The CEO of Boston Pads is watching the housing bill closely as lawmakers debate whether or not to ban broker’s fees for renters.
“These agents spend a lot of timing calling all day. It’s not uncommon for them to show an apartment at eight or even nine o’clock at night,” said Demetrios Salpoglou.
It’s a vote that he said could have crippling impacts on the real estate industry in Massachusetts.
This is just a glimpse of the mad rush and closed-door negotiations at the State House.
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“This is what it takes,” Finegold said. “We have to get things done.”
Tiffany Chan
Tiffany Chan is a general assignment reporter for WBZ-TV.
CONCORD — Out of Joe Biden’s shadow, Vice President Kamala Harris’s historic campaign to become the nation’s first woman president began well here this past week, though she didn’t lack for detractors.
“I think Granite Staters are really excited to have Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket,” said Craig Brown, who was state director of her 2020 presidential run.
“She is someone who has really been a fighter her entire career. … She has what it takes to be president,” Brown said.
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But to win New Hampshire this November, Harris will need a script vastly different from the one that received lousy reviews during her first presidential bid four years ago.
Harris never got to the 2020 presidential candidate filing gate in New Hampshire, dropping out in December 2019, weeks after her campaign said she would “mail” in her candidacy papers rather than show up in person.
“To call that campaign an epic failure is a gross understatement,” said Greg Moore, regional director for Americans for Prosperity, a fiscally conservative group that backed Nikki Haley’s 2024 White House run.
After a successful New Hampshire visit, Harris infamously said on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah that New Hampshire journalists acted surprised that a woman of color would spend so much time campaigning in mostly white New Hampshire.
“The first line of questioning I got was, ‘You’re in New Hampshire, and we heard you’re not going to come to New Hampshire. We thought you weren’t going to compete in New Hampshire,’” Harris said at the time.
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“And what no one said, but the inference was, well, the demographic of New Hampshire is not who you are in terms of your race and who you are.”
Since being elected with Biden in 2020, Harris has been in the state once, for an April 2021 visit that was well-received. Her husband has been here twice.
A wide open race
Pat Griffin, a Republican media strategist who worked on the ground here to help elect both Bush presidents, said, “She truly has been thus far a terrible candidate — the cackle, the prancing around, it’s difficult to watch.
“All that said, she has one important thing Joe Biden did not have. She behaves 24/7 like she’s truly alive, and against Donald Trump, with all the baggage he has, that counts for a lot.”
Academics and political insiders agree Harris has a brief window to cultivate an image that offers a contrast not just to Trump but to her current boss.
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Then-candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris spar during a 2020 Democratic presidential debate in Detroit in August 2019. Some observers say Harris’s performance then makes them look forward to a debate with Donald Trump.
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Lucas Jackson/Reuters File
“This race is now wide open both here and nationally,” said Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
“If she takes this moment to sort of change things, it could really have an impact. Whether she does it or not is the question. She is not brand-new, she’s a known commodity, but there is the potential to reshape her image as someone other than a West Coast left-wing liberal.”
As if on cue, a new University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll of New Hampshire voters has Harris leading Trump 49% to 43%, with a solid 45% to 33% edge among independent voters.
In a UNH poll in May, 84% of Democrats were solidly backing Biden. In the new poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday, the party base support for Harris was up to 94%.
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Dante Scala, professor of politics at UNH, believes this quick sprint to Nov. 5 will work in Harris’s favor.
“They don’t have to worry about overthinking it,” Scala said. “So many times we see candidates and campaigns try way too hard. This is going to be all about impulse and instincts. If she has the right ones, this could go real well.”
Scala said her 14th-place showing in the New Hampshire primary after she quit the race won’t matter a whit.
“You remember all that, I remember all that, but most voters don’t even have a memory of her as a presidential candidate,” Scala said. “In that respect, she’s a clean slate.”
Appeal to youth
There’s no disputing that young Democratic-leaning voters are energized by the prospect of nominating Harris, 59, rather than Biden, 81.
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New Hampshire has 11 young delegates going to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, one of the largest groups per capita of any state in the nation.
“Young people know what’s at stake this fall because our rights are on the ballot,” said K.R. Epstein of Manchester, one of those younger delegates. “We also know that young people have the power to sway presidential elections and Vice President Kamala Harris is focused on earning our votes. I know that VP Harris has the ability to take on Donald Trump and win.”
Another young delegate, Prescott Herzog of Claremont, said he’s confident Harris will reunite the Democratic Party.
“This will be my first time voting in a presidential election. and I couldn’t be prouder to cast my vote for Kamala Harris,” Herzog said.
“Her work with President Biden enacting legislation on the issues young voters care about, from climate to gun violence, shows that she will continue the Biden-Harris administration’s effectiveness.”
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After fiercely fighting to preserve the state’s first-in-the-nation primary, Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said he was determined to put together a delegate slate that looked like America. He did it with many minority delegates and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley conducts a press briefing with fellow democrats including Sen. Becky Whitley (D-Hopkinton) at a party office in downtown Nashua on Wednesday.
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DAVID LANE/UNION LEADER
Concord lobbyist Jim Demers, who has been a pledged delegate to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, said this may prove to be his most memorable convention.
“I’ve never been this stoked for a convention before. They are all fun, but this one is one for the history books,” said Demers. “I am really thrilled for the youngest members of the delegation, because this is a great story they’ll be able to tell their grandchildren.”
State Rep. Latha Mangipudi, D-Nashua, a superdelegate to the convention this time and a leader in the state’s growing Indian community, said “it’s long past time” for a woman to ascend to the nation’s highest office.
“We have even had Third World nations that have had women presidents. This is the time, this is the election, this is the candidate,” Mangipudi said.
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Delegate Sumathi Madhure, a physical therapist, said she had doubts there would be a South Asian on the presidential ticket in her lifetime. Now there’s an even shot one becomes president.
“Fairly or not, there was some apathy out there with President Biden at the top of the ticket,” Madhure said during a news conference this past week. “Now, all that is gone and wiped away.”
State Rep. Latha Mangipudi, D-Nashua, talks with then-U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris during Harris’s presidential campaign stop in Nashua in May 2019.
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Kimberly Houghton/Union Leader File
A surge of energy
Despite her stumbles as a candidate in 2020, Harris had her moments, including her comments at the first presidential debate about Biden’s past support for forced busing.
“I for one can’t wait for that debate or debates with Donald Trump,” said former state House Speaker Terie Norelli, D-Portsmouth, and the first female Democrat to lead the 400-person House.
“What’s most amazing to me was that this surge of energy came flooding in literally in an instant. You can’t manufacture that.”
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Scala believes the election here may be determined by the middle-class male vote, which Trump won decisively in 2016 but Biden securely captured in 2020.
“How they vote will determine if this is a nail-biter like it was for Hillary Clinton (who narrowly won here) in 2016 or a pretty easy ride like it was for Biden four years later,” Scala said.
“Yes, we’re a swing state, but a Democratic-presidential leaning state.”
Griffin, the Republican media strategist, said he just doesn’t know where the small but pivotal number of truly undecided voters will move here and in other swing states.
“I think she’s got a better shot at them because so many have looked at Trump and decided they aren’t eating that dog food,” Griffin said. But, he said, “She has to make a very strong sell.”
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Buckley, the state Democratic Party chair, thinks his party’s secret weapon is its ground game. Democrats have 16 field offices and counting. Trump has a single headquarters and only has started to bring on a few dedicated staffers.
The reality is the Trump team nationally views the Granite State and its four electoral votes as a luxury — one they don’t need to get to the 280 needed to clinch the victory.
“Trump’s not going to play here,” Buckley said.
Scala said the 2024 race is all about Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona.
But New Hampshire still could be telling.
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“Come September, if New Hampshire is still a toss-up, very much in play for Trump, then that’s a very bad look for Harris,” Scala said.