DOJ Should File Civil Rights Charge Against Brooklyn Subway Shooter Suspect

On Wednesday, April 13, one day after the mass shooting on a Brooklyn subway train, the New York Post's Miranda Devine published an article, "Suspect Frank James Was Spewing Racist Hate Years Before Brooklyn Subway Shooting."

Devine quoted several of the suspect's bigoted rantings in YouTube videos, which are directed against whites, Jews, Asians, and Hispanics. 

However, Devine misleadingly claimed that the "29 victims of Tuesday's shooting were a multicultural mix, as you would expect in a crowded rush-hour subway train."

By contrast, Daniel Greenfield wrote in a FrontPage Magazine article on April 15 that an "initial survey of photos from the scene appear to show wounded white, Latino and Asian victims, but no black people, suggesting that the terrorist may have targeted people by race."

Greenfield didn't provide any documentation about the residential demographics in southwestern Brooklyn where the terrorist attacked occurred to support his frightening hypothesis.

But that same day in an article for PJ Media, Kevin Downey Jr. wrote that "many of Frank James's victims are Asian."

Downey then gave the demographics of Sunset Park, where the attack occurred: Hispanic, 36%; Asian, 35%; white, 24%; and Black, 4%. But he didn't cite them for the four neighborhoods that the N-train passes through before reaching Sunset Park.

At 6 a.m. on the morning of the attack Frank James parked his rented van in the Gravesend neighborhood in southern Brooklyn, according to the Post.

At roughly 8 a.m., James entered the N-train's Kings Highway station at the height of the morning rush hour, which is the third stop from the line's southern terminal in Coney Island, the Post said.

The N-train, on its northwestern route from Coney Island to Sunset Park, transverses Gravesend, Bensonhurst, Borough Park and Dyker Heights, neighborhoods that, like Sunset Park, have fewer than 5% Black residents.

Bensonhurst and Borough Park have many Jewish residents.

The Census Bureau reports that 898,000 of Brooklyn's 2,641,000 residents, or 34%, are Black.

The demographics of Gravesend, according to Niche, are: White, 46%; Asian, 32%; Hispanic 14%; and Black, 4%.

Bensonhurst: Asian, 43%; White, 38%; Hispanic, 16%; and Black, 1%.

Borough Park: White, 58%; Asian, 26%; Hispanic, 13%; and Black, 1%.

Dyker Heights: White, 43%; Asian, 41%; Hispanic, 13%; and Black, 1%.

By contrast, if James had chosen the Number 3 train, whose southern terminal is located in East New York in southeastern Brooklyn, there would have been very few white and Asian, and a majority of Black, commuters.

East New York's demographics are: Black, 66%, Hispanic, 27%; White, 4%, and Asian, 2%.

Brownsville, the next neighborhood on the Number 3 route, has a population that is 73% Black.

(Between 1991 and 2001, I taught at a public high school in East New York, and I rode the subway every day to work from my apartment in central Queens.)

For readers who are having difficulty visualizing the geography and demographics of Brooklyn neighborhoods, I linked this color-coded map.

Regrettably, an April 13 press release from the U. S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Breon Peace, announcing the arrest of Frank James, egregiously ignores the extensive evidence of the suspect's virulent hatred of whites, Asians and Hispanics.

The Eastern District encompasses three of NYC boroughs, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Nassau and Suffolk counties, otherwise known as Long Island.

First, Peace's press release incorrectly claims that the alleged perpetrator of the attempted attack, Frank James, at approximately 6:12 a.m. on April 13, "parked the van on Kings Highway, approximately two blocks from the entrance to an N-train station, near where the shooting took place."

In fact, the attempted attack occurred five miles from the Kings Highway station in Gravesend, where James boarded the northbound N-train.

Secondly, the U.S. Justice Department has only charged him with a terrorist attack on a mass transit system, and it omits any of James' YouTube threats against white people.

While the press release cites "videos [James] posted publicly on YouTube before the attack," it focuses on James' rants about the homeless on the subway system and the failure of Mayor Eric Adams — who has only been in office since January 1, 2022, — for not solving the problem.

Then, this section of the press release hypocritically ends by quoting an anodyne threat from the suspect: "I should have gotten a gun, and just started shooting mother****ers."

Undoubtedly, James' threats to kill white people and his alleged targeted shootings of them, and Asians and Hispanics, require a federal civil rights indictment.

But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Attorney General Merrick Garland's Justice Department to file this additional charge against James.

Mark Schulte is a retired New York City schoolteacher and mathematician who has written extensively about science and the history of science. Read Mark Schulte's Reports — More Here.