Federal court in Brooklyn, New York, this Thursday ordered unconditional detention without bail for Frank R. James, the 62-year-old African American man arrested as a suspect in the shooting that caused 23 injuries on Tuesday, 10 of them by gunfire , in a city subway car. To justify its decision, the court stressed that James’ presence on the street would pose a “serious and active” threat to public safety. He faces charges of terror attack on the public transport system and faces life imprisonment if convicted.
What prompted New Yorker James, a man with a long history in the police force, to shoot passengers indiscriminately with a 9mm Glock pistol can only be determined by the investigation, including the psychiatric evaluation requested by the defense. A bustle like so many others – the B-side of the American dream, the nightmare – in whose biography the commission of various crimes (theft, robbery, sexual harassment) and behavioral disorders mix.
More notorious were the decades of recorded videos he had posted on YouTube over the past few years, where his page remained visible until 24 hours after the attack, when it was shut down for “violating acceptable use policies.” The content of the videos was disturbing: deranged, sometimes aggressive, political speeches, many against New York Mayor Eric Adams; Paranoid paranoia and messages in which he portrays himself as “full of hatred and anger”, the victim of “horrible psychiatric treatments”. Alongside outbursts of homophobia, misogyny, and racism — against blacks and Hispanics, even against whites — James also denounced the presence of tramps on the subway, a sad reality Adams doesn’t want to eradicate without controversy, and expressed his desire to seize it a gun and shoot randomly at anyone. His anger at African Americans like himself, victims of violence, was particularly shocking, as he accused them of deserving it.
His sister Catherine told the New York Times of her “surprise” that her brother was making headlines. “I never thought I could do something like this,” said the woman after specifying that she hadn’t heard from him in a long time. James has been a personal and social black hole over the past few years, which eventually erupted in anger. That which modulates cinema into becoming art (e.g. A Day of Rage) but which in real life produces the sinkhole of violence. His wanderings took him from town to town, with no known profession, though he presented himself as a driver, stumbling through dwellings whose neighbors remembered him as a gruff, aloof man, prone to losing his temper; often argumentative.
In the subway car, which could well have been the scene of a massacre – most of the injured were discharged, the rest are not to be feared – the police found remnants of James’ disordered existence. An unorthodox arsenal (bullets, smoke bombs, firecrackers and flares, and an axe) in addition to the Glock 17 pistol, which police say the alleged attacker bought legally in Ohio in 2011. Also the keys to a U-Haul van — a popular rental company for affordable transportation — and a credit card in his name, which left some wondering if James himself didn’t leave those footprints to find them, as if to hurry up end of his escapade. According to unconfirmed information, the suspect even warned of his presence at the scene of his arrest, a street in the East Village, by calling the police.
As for the gun that sent ten people to the hospital, what can one say: despite attempts by the Joe Biden administration to limit its distribution and the majority of the population calling for greater control, the nine-millimeter Glock 17 had the papers in order and was legal for all purposes thanks to the Second Amendment to the Constitution. At his Philadelphia home, police also found a magazine for a semi-automatic rifle, much deadlier than the used handgun, and a propane gas tank in the rented and then abandoned van.
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Biden faces criticism from Republicans and the powerful gun lobby, personified by the National Rifle Association (RNA), as he attempts to curb what the White House is describing as an epidemic of guns on the streets. Also trying to stem the bleeding is Mayor Adams, who after the good news of James’ arrest had to decide the rosary of shootings that had roiled the city over the past 48 hours. “No one is safe,” a Brooklyn police officer on duty told the New York Post of another incident unrelated to the subway attack. A good summary.
Loose ends also follow; questions and cabal. Many US cities have more effective subway video surveillance systems than New York, despite the Big Apple being the country’s global flagship. They did not work at the 36th Street station in Brooklyn, although just two days before the shooting they were stopped by New York City Transportation Authority (MTA) workers at the request of police, who complained that they had not received pictures of the Train station. The cameras worked, underground union sources said, but fiber-optic transmission failed. Further proof of dysfunctionality, where the battered New York subway and even the city abound.
In videos posted to YouTube, James called himself a “prophet of doom”. “There will be blood, lots of blood,” he warned in his delusion and warned that the population had to be reduced. “It doesn’t matter if they’re black or white.” In one published March 23, he warned of future interracial wars, the possibility of a third world war and the racism he experienced as he stumbled across the country. “We live in very dangerous times, I would say, very uncertain times.” He was prophetic in that, many New Yorkers think today as they venture down the stairs and subway platforms.
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