Metro cameras led to arrests in D-train murder, police say

Police said Monday that footage from a subway surveillance camera led to the arrest of three people in connection with the fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man last week.

According to the New York Police Department, Justin Herde, 24, Alfredo Trinidad, 42, and Betty Cotto, 38, were in custody in connection with the murder of William Alvarez, 45, of the Bronx.

Mr. Alvarez was on the southbound D train around 5 a.m. Friday morning when the three suspects boarded the train at the Fordham Road station and got into an argument with him, police said. Mr. Alvarez was shot in the chest, Michael M. Kemper, chief of police for the police department, said at a news conference on Monday. Chief Kemper added that Mr. Alvarez’s attackers fled the train at the 182nd-183rd Streets station.

About 1,000 of the system approximately 6,500 cars are equipped with cameras, part of a broader effort started in 2022 by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which plans to install cameras in the rest of the cars by the end of this year.

Murders on the subway are rare, but attract intense public attention. There have been two more fatal incidents in the system this year. Earlier this month, a 35-year-old man was killed and five other people were injured during the evening rush hour at the Mount Eden Avenue station in the Bronx. And in January, a 45-year-old father of three was shot on the No. 3 train in Brooklyn after intervening in an argument.

Transit leaders are under intense pressure to return ridership to pre-pandemic levels, and making the system feel safe is critical to that mission. The number of travelers increased by about 3 percent in January and averaged around 3 million daily passengers. In 2019, the daily number of passengers was approximately 5 million.

Chief Kemper on Monday described the killings as “isolated incidents,” but crime had been declining in the metro in recent months. Total crime was more than 45 percent higher in January than in the same period last year. Most of the increase is due to theft, police said.

In response, Mayor Eric Adams this month ordered an increased police presence, deploying another 1,000 uniformed officers to transit, a show of force that mirrors a similar increase in late 2022.

Over the past two years, state and city leaders have launched several anti-crime initiatives in the metro, including additional overtime for police officers and the involuntary removal of seriously mentally ill homeless people. Officials also installed the cameras in hopes of bringing more surveillance to places where bikers were concerned about random attacks, robberies and rising numbers of homeless people. Privacy watchdogs criticized the camera plan at the time as politically motivated and expensive. The mayor and Governor Kathy Hochul have said the measures were not only intended to improve public safety, but were also intended to combat the public perception – fueled by several high-profile crimes – that the system had become far more dangerous.

An analysis of MTA and New York Times police statistics published in November 2022 found that the likelihood of becoming a victim of violent crime on the subway was low, even though the number of crimes such as murder, rape, assault and theft exceeded doubled since 2019. The analysis found that the rate — 1.2 violent crimes per million subway rides — was about the same as the chance of being injured in a car crash during a two-mile ride.

So far this year, crime is up 13 percent compared to the same period last year. But after the jump early in the year, crime in the metro is down about 17 percent in the month of February so far compared to February last year.

The new cameras have also led to arrests in other crimes, including the Mount Eden attack in January, police said. “You can’t get away with it,” Andrew Albert, an MTA board member, said Monday at the authority’s monthly board meeting. “And your picture will be everywhere.”