Beaten on the bus? Too bad, say NYC police and prosecutors
April 23, 2023
Beat up on the city bus ... too bad.
What happens if a stranger attacks you on a Manhattan bus? Apparently, nothing.
New Yorkers worry about the surge in major violence since the pandemic — but “small” violence, too, has exploded, creating an environment of fear.
Isadora Acosta, an architect, was between business meetings March 8 around noon.
After one near Columbus Circle, she stopped at Whole Foods to get groceries and hopped on an M7 bus to drop them off at her Upper West Side home.
“If it’s doable, I would always choose the bus over the subway,” she says, because “there’s been so many subway crimes in the middle of the day.”
Acosta took a seat behind a man. Without any prior interaction, the man, who she estimates was in his 50s, “started hitting me. I was completely shocked.”
He slapped her several times, with both hands. “He was mumbling words” Acosta didn’t understand. “I said to him, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what I did.’”
Architect Isadora Acosta was attacked on a Manhattan bus in March.
A woman helped her leave the bus at the next stop. Acosta filed a police report.
The police asked her if she wanted to press charges, and she said yes. “It seemed to me that everything was leading toward some follow-up,” she says.
Yet when she called to inquire on progress, the NYPD told her the case was inactive, with no explanation. (The NYPD does not dispute this account.)
Acosta’s 16-year-old son, Emilio, fears the police aren’t investigating because the district attorney has stopped prosecuting such cases, something a family-friend detective told them, since there was “no blood.”
A spokesman for Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg says, “We will continue to thoroughly investigate any case that is brought to the office.”
But the DA didn’t respond to a letter Emilio sent in late March, wondering whether “the district attorney will not punish people who beat citizens on a public bus. . . . It’s terrible to know that random beatings are acceptable behavior in my city. I would urge you to pull the video on the M7 . . . during broad daylight and look closely at what happened.”
Not a bad idea for police or prosecutors to see if a video exists.
If there were any indication the attacker targeted Acosta because of her gender, he could have faced prosecution under aggravated harassment, a misdemeanor.
But wait — why not an assault charge, and why does it matter why this man attacked someone?
One overlooked issue in criminal-justice “reform” is that the criminal-justice system started from a point of leniency.
Most of us think hitting someone is assault — but unless a person sustains an injury, under New York law hitting someone is just harassment.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office claimed it will “thoroughly investigate any case that is brought to the office.”
And hitting someone for no reason — as opposed to because of the victim’s gender, race and so forth — isn’t even a misdemeanor; it’s just a violation, meaning police must witness it to write a summons.
But within these strictures, there’s room to work, depending on how assertive prosecutors and police are in maintaining public order.
Two and a half years ago, a young woman shoved a teenager she thought had stolen her phone. Bragg’s predecessor charged her with felony unlawful imprisonment, and Bragg accepted a lesser misdemeanor plea, if she behaves for two years — still a crime, not a mere violation.
That’s because prosecutors charged that the woman (Puerto Rican) attacked the teen (black) because of his race. A shove is a shove, or a slap is a slap, unless prosecutors and police say it’s not.
It’s understandable that lawmakers want to keep impulsive disputes in which no one is injured from clogging up the justice system.
But that’s not what’s happening. A man attacking a woman on public transportation is exhibiting disturbed behavior — behavior that will escalate.
Two women have suffered recent attacks in nearby Central Park, by a suspect exhibiting similar behavior.
In 2021, a Queens woman shoved a stranger on the subway — and went home to set a fire that killed a woman.
“This aggressor’s criminal record did not begin on March 8 at noon,” Emilio observes of the attack on his mom.
Indeed, “harassment” complaints citywide are up 15% since 2019, to 83,048 in 2022, the highest level in 20 years — and it’s reasonable to assume that “harassers,” absent a deterrent, feel free to engage in repeat violent behavior.
“It’s just mind-blowing and surprising,” says Emilio. “If someone can get away with beating people up on a bus . . . what else can they get away with?”
Says Acosta, “I just don’t want to be responsible for someone else getting hurt worse.”
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