NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams and MTA Chair Janno Lieber on Thursday criticized the release of the 37-year-old man who allegedly smeared feces on a woman in a Bronx subway station and is facing charges for other incidents.
On Wednesday, Frank Abrkowa was arraigned and released in the unprovoked feces attack last week, but he was quickly rearrested on hate crime charges for allegedly spitting at a 46-year-old Jewish man in Brooklyn and threatening to murder him, authorities said.
However, after he was arraigned for that September 2021 incident, he was given supervised release.
Adams, who has focused his young administration on subway safety amid an onslaught of transit attacks, bashed "a failed mental health system, a failed housing and support system, and failing criminal justice laws that allow someone with a history of violence who poses a clear threat to public safety to just walk out of court."
He added, "We can’t allow this horrific situation to be the status quo and must make changes to our laws to both prevent these sort of attacks, through intervention and support, and, when they happen, to subsequently keep people who are clearly a danger to others off the street."
Abrokwa has a history of alleged recent transit attacks, including allegedly punching a 30-year-old man on the subway platform at 125th Station at Lenox Avenue in Harlem in January, according to ABC 7.
He allegedly punched a man at the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Feb. 5 and was most recently arrested on Feb. 22 while attempting to steal screwdrivers and pepper spray from a Bronx hardware store.
That arrest came a day after his alleged feces attack on a 43-year-old woman who was sitting on a bench on the southbound platform of the East 241st Street subway station in the Wakefield section.
Overall, Abrokwa has 44 prior arrests, a felony conviction and 10 misdemeanor convictions.
Lieber said Abrkowa's latest release "defies common sense."
"I'm not a criminal justice expert but I don't understand how someone who commits this kind of assault, which was violent, horribly victimizing a transit rider, can just walk free even when he has four other open cases against him, including two other transit assaults and a hate crime charge. It defies common sense," he added.
At an event Thursday, Lieber said he would like to see the MTA get the power to ban repeat offenders from the subway system.
“I have to say, and I’m quite passionate about this: I don’t understand why the MTA cannot ban people who, like that guy, who had three priors of attacks in the subway system, from ever being allowed to use the system again," Lieber said. "We take away driver’s licenses for one drunk driving episode. Why don’t we have these measures for people like the individual I just described. This guy had 19 priors, had attacked subway riders, and actually had a hate crime attack as one of his crimes.”
Danny Pearlstein, spokesperson for the Riders Alliance, said banning individuals from the subway will not solve the crime problem.
"A ban in the subway system is not really a functional thing, it's symbolic," Pearlstein said. "There's 472 stations, there's 9 million people in the city of New York, even with thousands of police in the subway you can't effectively ban anyone from it. It's public space."
Pearlstein believes the only effective way to make the subways safer is to increase service which would bring an end to long, lonely waits on platforms.
"As far as policing, the MTA and the city are doing what they can do, but there's more to this than policing," Pearlstein said. "Service is a key component of what makes people ride the subway and feel comfortable in the subway and better service will bring more people in, and ultimately, that's what'll make people especially safe."
The Riders Alliance said with Gov. Kathy Hochul pushing through a record state budget she should include money for six-minute service on the subway.
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