During Monday’s MTA board meeting, the NYPD’s chief of
transit stated that graffiti on trains has increased across the city, among
other transit crimes.
The trains may not look like they did in the 1970s and
1980s, but the NYPD and MTA have flagged this as a rising issue. They say
that those who do the graffiti go on to post their work on social media.
Transit Chief Jason K. Wilcox and the MTA’s Senior Vice
President Robert Diehl did not specify how many graffiti incidents or arrests
there have been this year, but touched upon how graffiti artists are able to
access the subways as their canvas.
“We have people walking down the in-service areas and we
have been in the process of putting cameras in those areas to try and capture
them,” says Diehl. “We work very much hand-in-hand with the NYPD in regard to graffiti
and try to deter it.”
Wilcox also mentioned two men that were fatally
struck by a 3 train in Brooklyn were from France and were intent on “tagging”
trains with graffiti.