NYC Has an Assault Problem. One Reason Sticks Out: Justin Fox

After a 76-year-old New Yorker was pushed to his death down a subway-station staircase earlier this month, the profile that emerged of his suspected assailant was distressingly familiar. Rhamell Burke had been released from Bellevue Hospital that afternoon after being picked up by police for threatening, erratic behavior earlier in the day. He had been arrested four other times since February, once for a subway station meltdown in which three Port Authority police officers were injured trying to arrest him and once for attacking a young woman on a subway train. A little less familiar, although not entirely unheard of, was 32-year-old ...