In April, when an unhinged shooter opened fire on a crowded train at the 36th Street station in Brooklyn, there were no operational video cameras due to a series of MTA blunders involving “haphazard” maintenance, internal communications, and inadequate staffing.
The MTA Inspector General’s Office discovered that the video outage, which affected the nearby 25th Street and 45th Street stations, persisted for three days before the responsible team was notified, and it took them another day to make repairs.
The investigation determined that by that time, on the morning of April 12’s mass shooting, Frank James had already fired 33 shots inside the Manhattan-bound N train, striking 10 persons and leaving a total of 29 wounded.
The technicians arrived at the scene about 10 a.m. and were instructed by the NYPD “within minutes” to evacuate the premises.
James, age 62, was the focus of a 30-hour manhunt when he voluntarily called Crime Stoppers, resulting in his arrest. He is awaiting trial on federal counts, including an attack on a mass transit system-related terrorism offense.
During the shooting on April 12, ten persons were shot and wounded.
Armen Armenian via REUTERS
The leadership of the NYPD has stated that the absence of CCTV footage at the three locations did not impede their hunt for the alleged shooter. However, internal sources at the time stated that the lack of film hindered the department’s first search.
Since 2002, transit officials have spent $658 million on surveillance camera equipment and plan to spend $437 million more in the future years, according to the IG.
Investigators discovered that despite this enormous investment, the MTA failed to perform essential preventive maintenance on the camera network.
According to the investigation, the filter of the fan that likely caused the problem should have been replaced every 90 days, but it had only been examined once between its installation on December 20, 2019 and the shooting on April 12, 2019.
This pertains to maintenance. “Investment in technology is essential, but without a commensurate commitment to upkeep, the benefits are transitory,” stated acting IG Elizabeth Keating.
The timetable outlined in the IG report appears to contradict statements made by transit officials following the shooting.
In May, MTA CEO Janno Lieber told members of Congress that the video feed for the three stations was down for “less than twenty-four hours” before to the incident.
The IG discovered that the website actually went offline on April 8, but that an internal MTA system alerted the issue seven weeks after the attack.
According to the study, transit personnel were unable to restore the video feeds until the next day because to “inadequate staffing” and “inadequate training.”
The issue delayed law enforcement’s efforts to apprehend James, according to sources.
“There is no doubt that building a streaming camera network throughout a system as huge and venerable as the New York City subway is a monumental endeavor, and NYC Transit has successfully completed it,” the report stated.
“There is no doubt that the loss of video from these cameras in the three stations for five days showed flaws in NYC Transit’s camera network response methodology.”
MTA officials refuted the allegation, stating that 99 percent of the authority’s 11,000 cameras are working at all times and that many of these cameras were utilized to capture James.
The tremendous redundancy built into our network guarantees that images from several cameras are always accessible following an incident, according to spokesman Sean Butlet’s statement.
Even when a small number of cameras are temporarily offline, investigators can quickly obtain the data they need from the NYC Transit camera network.
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