Plainclothes policemen patrol the subway looking for pickpockets who rob New Yorkers and tourists. The idea of the Special Operations squad is to capture the criminals and prevent this type of crime.
Dressed as a civilian and as one more Hispanic in the city, the Ecuadorian José walks the halls of the subway, enters the trains and goes unnoticed, but make no mistake, he is actually a New York City police detective who watches everything that happens around him, always on the lookout to arrest pickpockets who steal from passengers.
“Are you ready to arrest them?” is the standard question.
“Yes, in fact we are always in the undercover trains, to make the arrest and to see the crime in real time, not on camera at that moment,” says Lieutenant José.
“It is very difficult, very dangerous to catch them in the act, at that moment you have to be quick and coordinate with the team because many times they use the subway, the people, to go from one place to the other,” he adds.
Every day the members of this squad of the Special Operations Unit, which by the way have their offices inside the subway, meet to distribute the patrol points, in addition to going in search of the individuals they have already identified.
“And we do have many of these individuals identified, they are usually the same ones who commit these crimes again, (go from) the train to jail, get out of jail and do it again. We see the schedules, which individuals usually prefer to do their heists, on the trains, usually in the morning when there are more people,” says Detective Jonathan.
In the offices of the Special Operations Unit there is a wall full of photographs of individuals identified as pickpockets.
“We are in Times Square and as you can see thousands of people circulate through these doors, in total more than four million users use the subway system daily and our police are ready to catch the thieves and prevent New Yorkers or tourists from being victims. them,” says James Soares, Special Operations officer for the New York Police Department.
Detective Jonathan is also Ecuadorian, and knows who are easy prey for criminals.
“They are looking for the easy victim, as they say, they are looking for someone who is clueless and they do not realize that they are being watched, that they are watching them and they follow them until the exact moment to be able to carry out the robbery.”
With everything they have seen, the detectives give advice to avoid being targeted by criminals.
“Stay 100 percent alert, have all your belongings in front, don’t put anything in the backpack in the back, the most important thing: look around. Some people who come and have all their belongings in the back, the thieves are watching them, while they walk they open their backpacks, and they take them away because they already saw them,” concludes Lieutenant José Calle.
2023-07-15 17:19:00
#Undercover #cops #pickpockets #subway
