More efforts are underway in New York City to address sexual harassment on the subway system. This includes training transit police, with input from Hollaback!
Here’s some info about it overall, via the New York Times:
“Opportunistic sex crimes aboard subways are not new, nor are they news to many women. Some have been grabbed or leered at by a man who is masturbating. Many others have heard a story from a friend who felt an uncomfortable touch but was unsure if she should say something.
But cellphone cameras and social media have given women tools to fight back and provided the police a way to identify some offenders. Last year, in an effort to encourage more victims to come forward, the police began training more female officers to work the cases.
The police now send out a steady stream of alerts about such crimes using photos from victims’ phones to try to identify suspects. One recent Twitter post shared a photo of a man suspected of grabbing a 27-year-old woman’s buttocks on a No. 7 train in Queens this month. Two days earlier, the police posted a photo of a man who they say exposed himself to women on two trains at Grand Central Station.
Reported sex crimes on the subways rose 19 percent last year, to 738 from 620 in 2014. Many of those crimes were forcible touching and public lewdness, the offenses most commonly charged in connection with the sort of sexual misconduct that Detective Cross and his colleagues were on the lookout for that morning on the Lexington Avenue line.
Joseph Fox, the chief of the Transit Bureau, said he believed the increase in reported sex crimes was a result of more women coming forward. He expects the number of reports will keep rising as the police continue to talk about the problem.”
