Brooklyn DA Focuses On Transit Worker Assaults; Toussaint: A Daily Occurrence
By ARI PAUL
The rate of assaults against transit workers is unacceptably high for Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, and he is hoping that a new bureau of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office devoted to his members can help.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang STEPPING UP FOR TRANSIT WORKERS: Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes announced a new bureau focusing on assaults on transit workers, which under a 2002 law is punishable by up to seven years in prison. He also called on the State Legislature to lower the threshold for what types of injuries constitute assault.

Standing With Management

During a press conference July 22, the union president joined rank-and-file members and New York City Transit President Howard H. Roberts as Brooklyn DA Charles J. Hynes announced the Assault on Transit Workers Program, a new unit modeled after the Assault on Police Officer Program. Since 2002, an assault on a transit worker has been punishable by up to seven years in prison.

"There isn't a day that goes by in which there isn't an assault on a Bus Operator or Conductor," Mr. Toussaint said.

He added that in 2007 Local 100 tallied 146 assaults on Bus Operators that resulted in lost time, 27 on Conductors, eight on Station Agents, and four on Train Operators, and there was "an untold number of assaults in which employees do not suffer lost time."

Mr. Hynes said that the new unit would allow his office to pursue transit worker assault cases more effectively, but that the difficulty in prosecuting such cases was that suffering a split lip or a punch to the eye does not legally constitute physical injury.

"If you don't have a physical injury, you can't charge assault in the third degree," Mr. Hynes said. "And if you can't charge assault in the third degree, you can't use the protection that the Legislature had in mind for both police officers and transit workers, so it doesn't become a felony."

Local 100 logs three incidents per day where a member complains of assault on the job, Mr. Toussaint told reporters.

'From Spitting to Stabbing'

"It ranges from the type of disrespectful and nuisance crimes that could potentially be hazardous like spitting on an operator to full-fledged assaults and stabbing incidents and menacing incidents where a person produced a weapon," he said.

There are more egregious cases that stand out. Mr. Hynes said that a Bus Operator was severely beaten by a passenger who refused to pay the fare and cited a past wave of incidents where people started fires with kerosene at station booths. Mr. Roberts recalled that during his time with what was then known as the Transit Authority in the 1980s, two Bus Operators were killed under his watch.

Mr. Toussaint added that the DA's decision to aggressively prosecute assaults against transit workers with the new unit would aid the riding public as well.

"Obviously, Transit Authority employees are in control of the equipment," he said. "If you assault the people responsible for the safety of the passengers, you put the passengers at risk."