By Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MUNICIPAL DISTRICT — The average subway sexual predator is a 39-year-old male who has never been convicted of a crime and isn't registered as a sex offender.
This revealing portrait of the men who sexually harass and assault women in the subway system was presented at a City Council hearing on Thursday.
Concerned about the rise of subway sex crimes, council members, representatives from the NYPD, MTA and advocacy groups met to assess the city's current efforts to combat the crime.
Among the initiatives discussed were Operation Exposure, a police crackdown, and an MTA awareness campaign that includes advertisements on the subways.
Under Operation Exposure, teams of six to eight undercover officers dressed as civilian subway riders board the trains several times a month in an attempt to catch sex offenders. In the last sweep, five men were arrested.
“This is a drop in the bucket compared to what can and should be done,” Councilman and Comptroller-to-be John Liu said.
Liu and others expressed concerns that instances of sexual abuse on the subway would only increase as the budgets of the MTA and NYPD shrink.
The NYPD's chief of transportation, James Hall, said subway harassment was the "No. 1 quality of life offense on the subway." He reassured Liu that the number of officers under his jurisdiction this year was approximately the same as last year.
He testified that, to date in 2009, there have been just less than 600 complaints of sexual offences on the subway with 412 arrests.
But Councilman Peter Vallone, who chairs the council’s committee on public safety, argued that the number of complaints had risen 4 percent this year, while the number of arrests had dropped 6 percent.
Members of the council and other attendees also argued that the crime was underreported.
Last year, a man who had 53 prior arrests, the majority for subway sex offenses, was caught again after rubbing up against a woman on a train only two weeks after being released from his last stint in prison. Of the 400-plus arrests made for sexual crimes on the subway, 18 percent had committed prior crimes and 14 were registered sex offenders.
Councilwoman Jessica Lappin of the Upper East Side introduced legislation this week that would require the NYPD to make these statistics public.
“Women may be anecdotally aware of where the problems in our subway system lie, but guessing and rumors are no basis for making decisions about safety,” Lappin said in a statement.
“This bill will increase access to critical decision-making information to help make everyone’s subway ride safer.”
