NYC Streetblog - Investigation: NYPD Nixed Thousands of Calls at Coney Island Station Before Horrifying Fire Attack

Nearly two-thirds of calls from the station were closed out just seconds after they were assigned to a police unit, evidence that nothing is being done to help troubled people like Debrina Kawam.

By Nolan Hicks
12:04 AM EST on March 3, 2025

One month into his administration and one day after a stabbing aboard a train, Mayor Adams stood beneath the glimmering spaceship atrium at the Fulton Street subway station to roll out his Subway Safety Plan.

The plan, he said in that 2022 press conference, would restore order and rider confidence in the system. One of its major planks was "[r]equiring — instead of requesting — everyone to leave the train and the station at the end of the line."

Three years in, that hasn’t been happening at the biggest terminal in the entire subway system, Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue — the very same chaotic place where Debrina Kawam was burned to death in a horrifying attack in December.

A Streetsblog investigation into the NYPD’s own dispatching data showed that nearly two-thirds of the calls — 5,850 out of 9,013 — coming from the station between January 2022 and September 2024 were closed out in an average of 13 seconds after they were assigned to a police unit.

Those 13 seconds are 10 times less time than the two minutes it would take someone to walk the length of a 600-foot subway train. It’s also 10 times less time than the roughly two minutes it takes to walk from the fare turnstiles and up the ramp to the closest train platform at the sprawling station in southern Brooklyn.

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